[Hervams]

Central London is probably one of the safest areas in the world, every car number plate coming in to the city is scanned and virtually every street in central london has CCTV Survailance, there are tens of thousands of cameras, which are watched 24 hours a day. Like Manhattan the whole area is on terrorist alert, and you are constantly being monitored.

There were 50 gun crime deaths in Britain last year (population 60 million) and 750 murders (the murder rate is falling here btw) compared with 8,000 gun crime deaths in America and 17,000 murders. There were 170 murders in London last year, compred to around 550 in NY.

America has five times the population, but if it had the UK's gun crime figures, the US would only have 250 gun deaths a year and around 4000 murders.

As for the robbery rise it mainly related to kids stealing other kids, ipods and mobile phones,
each one being recorded by the Metropolitan Police so they can get a crime number and go
to the insurance company and get a new phone. The fact is these figures have been massively increased by kids claiming their phones were stolen, getting a crime number and then claiming on insurance to get a more up to date phone. Fortunately the police are becoming more wise to this and have started prosecuting.

In NY property crime under $500 is a misdemeanor and not counted in felony figures, again London counts everything, and even counts one crime as multiple crimes.

Oh and it's best not to use articles with Joyce Lee Malcolm, as most of her assumptions are idiotic and have no bearing on UK Society.

Firstly guns aren't banned in Britain, only automatic weapons and handguns, we still have rifle clubs, shotguns and hunting, and the shooting industry is a major money earner running in to billions of pounds.

Secondly prior to the handgun ban (pre-Dunblane) only 50,000 people owned handguns in the UK, and there were strict controls regarding how they should be stored and where they could be used, there certainly was no concealed carry.

Thirdly the British Crime Survey (the most reliable crime figures) have shown a massive decrease in violence in the last ten years, as have figures relating to hospital treatment for violent crime injuries in England and Wales.

As I have already explained the police have changed the way they count crime, they count trivial crime, and are increasingly pushed to meet targets.

If UK Police (Basic Command Unit) Management do not show enough detected and recorded crime they face budget cuts , and therefore they record as much trivial nonsense as possible in order to justify budgets.

The whole system has been criticised in a recent report, and there have been calls to scrap the system and give officers their discretion back.

Half of all violent crime in the UK involves no injury to anyone and the rest is mainly very trivial in nature.

A good website - http://www.anxietyculture.com/crimescare.htm

NY police management have the opposite problem, they are increasingly pushed to show as little crime as possible, to reclass crimes and downgrade them, to sweep them under the carpet, in order to please the City Fathers.

Finally I know both London and NY, and to be honest, I have never had a problem with crime in either city. I naturally feel safer in London, because it's my home, and I am sure most New Yorkers feel safer in their familiar home surroundings than they do in cities abroad.