UN says Scotland is the most violent country in the "developed" world.

[bobbieinok]

Anyone know anything about this statement/claim?????

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=11275

Frantz Fanon's diagnosis
by David Austin
October 26, 2006

....

...Scotland's brutal orgies of "booze and blades" among rival gangs of white youth recently led the United Nations to designate it the most violent country in the "developed" world. It is also one of Europe's poorest countries: A quarter of Scotland's children live in poverty and are dependent on government assistance.

more....

[tblue]

1. You mean they one-upped us?

[darkism]

40. My first thoughts exactly. n/t

[Rainscents]

2. HUH???

:rofl:

[AndyTiedye]

3. But Scotland Isn't Really a Country. It's Part of the United Kingdom

[John Gauger]

8. It is a country or nation.

It is not a state. That would be the U.K. Most nations are states as well, but not England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, or Scotland.

[Divernan]

16. Ireland is an independent, sovereign country.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK, Ireland is not.
(From Wikipedia, for a quick reference)
The Constitution of Ireland is the founding legal document of the state known today as Ireland. The constitution falls broadly within the liberal democratic tradition. It establishes an independent state based on a system of representative democracy, and guarantees certain fundamental rights. The constitution was adopted in 1937 by referendum, and may only be amended in the same manner. It is also widely referred to in English by its Irish language title, Bunreacht na hÉireann <1>.

[John Gauger]

17. Whoops!

That's right. That's the problem - Ulster is part of the UK while the rest of Ireland is independant. That's a stupid mistake of me to make. Sorry about that.

[Bridget Burke]

23. To nitpick, Northern Ireland is not the whole of "Ulster"

Three of the nine counties in the ancient province of Ulster were excluded because the people were excessively Catholic.

Michael Collins called Northern Ireland "Northeast Ulster."

[John Gauger]

33. Really?

I didn't know that. I just learned about Ireland in Geography. My professor specializes in Ireland and he didn't tell us that. He just told us that the 26 counties are Ireland and the 6 are Ulster. I'll have to ask about that on Friday. Thanks.

[Bridget Burke]

38. Here's the Wikipedia article....

I generally take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. But Geography is fairly cut & dried.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster

[achtung_circus]

10. It has a parliament

and a separate legal system and most importantly separate teams at the World Cup. It was also the last part of the mainland British Isles conquered by the English, rebelled in the 45, and has these boys
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Boys

[LostinVA]

68. Scotland is indeed its own country

[Marie26]

71. Don't tell Sean Connery that. nt

[NJ Democrats]

4. But Scotland isn't even a country is it?

I tohught it's part of the UK

[theHandpuppet]

30. Scotland is a country like England is a country

Unless you consider England just another part of the UK.

[Retrograde]

45. it acts like one when it's convenient

see response #10 - it has its own parliament, issues Scottish pounds (I still have an old paper one, c. 1980), participates as an independent entity in some sporting events, etc. But it's also part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland when it comes to things like passports, defense and so forth.

I have only a superficial knowledge of the country. I never would have pegged it as the most violent, though.

[Dorian Gray]

50. Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland

Also included in the UK are Bermuda, Gibraltar, and St. Helena's. It's all very interesting. The people of each country truly try to maintain their own culture.

The Commonwealth is also a crazy designation, and it includes Australia, Canada and a bunch of other countries who view the Queen of England as their Queen, despite not being a part of the same Union/Country.

[LostinVA]

69. Yes, it is a country

[achtung_circus]

5. Oatmeal savages

speaking as a Campbell.

[Cha]

7. It's the Thistles!

Speaking as a Graham! I wish I had a little Scottish dude or dudette.

[Cha]

6. Scotland! My heritage..

my homies!

[John Gauger]

13. What does that even mean?

"Most violent?" In terms of gang violence only? In terms of all violence? Most violent overall? Because I have news for you: in terms of overall violence, Iraq is the killingest country.

[FastHorizon]

58. Iraq....

is not a "developed" country

[TheBaldyMan]

9. It's not that bad, although it is more violent than England.

Scottish guys like drinking - that's the problem. I have lived in England for a few years now and I did notice that there is a LOT less fighting down here.

There was a study a couple of years ago in the UK that found you were twice as likely to get involved in a fight in Scotland as you were in England. I would agree with that on what I've experienced myself.

However in the UK we don't have readily available firearms so the fatality rate is much, much lower.

on edit: Scotland, England and Cymru (Wales) are all countries, N.Ireland is a principality. The four nations of the UK are no different from your different states in the US or in Spain. To suggest that Scotland is not a country is as nonsensical as suggesting England isn't a country.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Strictly, that's not quite right

Northern Ireland is a 'province', Wales is the 'principality', and Scotland and England are both 'kingdoms', if you're using the terms that differentiate between the four. All four are called 'nations', but I would personally think that 'country' probably isn't the correct term to use for England or Scotland.'

Here's where the claim comes from:

Scotland worst for violence - UN

The figure for Scotland dwarfs that of other developed nations such as Japan, where people are 30 times less likely to be attacked.

The study, based on telephone interviews conducted between 1991 and 2000, said 3% of people in Scotland had suffered an assault, while the figure for England and Wales was second highest at 2.8%.

Both Australia and New Zealand had the next highest proportion of assaults among their population at 2.4%, exactly double the level reported for the United States.

Jan Van Dijk, head of analysis at the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, said Scotland had seen "a clear and upward trend" in the number of assaults since 1996 when the proportion was 1.9%.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4257966.stm

[TheBaldyMan]

25. I disagree: England, Scotland and Wales are all countries, NI is a special case

on edit : I concede that the 'passport' definition of the countries are as you say but ...

I think it would be very hard indeed to find an Englishman who didn't consider England a country. Similarly with Scotland and Wales. The UK is a sovereign state but the historical and cultural background in all three seem to make it plain that they are not separate regions of a single country.

It is not the usual state of affairs but compared to the Spain or Germany where individual countries were federated into a central state there are parallels. Similarly with the EU, it is possible to be part of a greater union but still retain a specific nationality.

I'd like to think that that was one of the good things about being British. You always had a dual-nationality even though you had one passport. There are probably a lot of Catalonians and Castilians who feel the same way about their national identity.

I am an ex-patriate scot living in England and most of my friends and neighbors are english. This isn't a contradiction it is an accommodation that we britons have made over the last 300 years since the Act of Union.

I would say that nation and country are terms that are completely interchangeable in this context without any contradiction, this ambiguity is not something that makes me uncomfortable in fact I'd say it was symbolic of being british.

[bobbieinok]

34. thanks for the link

[Nye Bevan]

56. That reminds me of a joke

When we were an empire, we were ruled by an emperor.
Then we were a kingdom and we were ruled by a king.
Next we became a country and we were ruled by Margaret Thatcher.

Neil Kinnock got into a lot of trouble for telling that one.

[Bruichladdich]

22. Scotland wasn't violent at all

Since Scotland Act in 1998 Scotland has a Parliament
but its united with the british Parliament somehow.

They decided not to separate completely.

I tramped as a woman alone through Scotland last year, only with a tent and my backpack, and found it safe like nowhere else.

Men or boys might get easily involved in little fights, because they are very proud and stubborn, but thats not the worst thing to be I guess. I liked the people very much and never saw a scuffle or anything else that scared me. Except the demo against the G8 in Juli.

I loved to be there. Where else in the "developed world" can you leave your tent unattended in the woods, where else leave people their houses open when they leave it?

If I were free to go, I would love to live in Scotland - at least in summer :-)

[TheBaldyMan]

27. it is nice out in the sticks, I'll admit.

welcome to DU Bruichladdich, :hi:

[Bruichladdich]

53. Thank you

where exactly have you been?

I loved the area around Inverness and the Isle of Skye, especially Dunvegan and its beautiful bay.

[TheBaldyMan]

59. I am scottish, born and bred, the grimy, industrial bit inbetween the

Forth and the Clyde. I have been on holiday over a lot of the highlands and islands myself. Last place I visited was the Perthshire & Tayside areas about 5 years back.

I have lived in England for about 20 years now but still have an impenetrable accent.

[Bruichladdich]

61. I never recognised any accent :-)

because english is not my mother-language ( as you may have noticed..)

But understanding becomes difficult, when people switch to gaelic after some beer :-)

I will discover Scotland next year again and I am looking forward to that trip.
What I liked most was the quiet nature, and on the other hand the crowded pubs with live-music.

And the whisky :-) is unique.

What really impressed me, was the Memorial at Eilean Donan Castle, the Clan MacRae Roll of honour, with all the listed death soldiers, saying:

" We are the dead, short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow, loved and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders fields..."

Is there anything left to say about war?

[Aristus]

66. I loved my time in Scotland. I found the people to be reserved, polite

and friendly. And VERY patriotic about Scotland! Not patriotic in the American bash-your-face-in-if-you-don't-love-America-God-the flag-USA!-USA!-USA! kind of way, but very quiet and firm. Scots have a lot to be proud of, including the way they keep their country so green and lovely, in spite of what I'm sure are aggressive industrial interests.

[The Truffle]

11. Scotland isn't an independent nation.

Who at the UN compiled this, anyway?

[Sammy Pepys]

29. It's got a devolved government though...

..which is probably enough to qualify.

[JVS]

12. Scottish Soccer Hooligan Weekly Should do a 2 hour celebration special

[htuttle]

14. Och! Easy with bellywashers and dirks, me bairns!

[Bruichladdich]

52. May be violence is because of "nemo me impune lacessit"

but sorry, no, I am afraid I don't speak gaelic ;-)

and yes, I agree with nemo me impune lacessit ;-)

[JVS]

15. Tha damned scots ruined scotland!

[Cha]

18. I love their

accents!

[NorthernSpy]

20. the Scots are a stigmatized population...

The presumed defects of their culture and selves have been endlessly harped on for centuries. In fact, the scornful treatment of the Scots language (as distinct from Gaelic) and its speakers mirrors almost exactly the treatment of "Black English" or "Ebonics" in the United States.

Let's never forget the ethnic cleansing that was visited upon Scotland. The clearances expelled so much of the population that it is something of a miracle that the Scots survived as a people at all.

[bobbieinok]

21. many of those 'cleared' settled in colonial America

[Bruichladdich]

24. Yes, imprisoned where send for hard labor by the english n/t

[supernova]

26. Yeah, a bunch of Scots and Scots-Irish came to NC

to settle..

[BlueIris]

28. Yep.

The scapegoating of Scotland is nothing new, although I find it gruesomely amusing how obvious said scapegoating is as scapegoating in this current climate. War? What war? Scotland's the region "in trouble"!

[Taxloss]

37. The clearance were terrible, but no attempt was made to wipe out the Scots as a race.

Nothing like it. We've had numerous Scottish PMs and monarchs. The empire was heavily staffed by Scots. The notion that the English tried to wipe out the Scots is absurd.

[Ignacio Upton]

43. That idea of conquering them was more during the Middle Ages

But the Act of Union was the equivalent of an abusive, shotgun marriage. However, Scotsmen have had influence over England both before and after the Act of Union. The Stuart dynasty was Scottish, and came to power with James I (James VI in Scotland) because after Elizabeth I died there were no protestant heirs to the throne that they could turn to. Many Scottish were also involved in the rise of industrial Britain (Adam Smith was Scottish, not English) and unfortunately Glasgow madea ton of money off of the slave trade. Interestingly though, Scottish influence on American history (especially the Ulster Scots, or Scots-Irish) is HUGE.

BTW, I am of Scottish descent. :)

[Taxloss]

46. Well, I'm English, so hand over that farm, buster.

(Joke.)

The Scots gave as good as they got in the Middle Ages. They made it as far south as York in the first half of the 1300s.

On edit: And to split hairs, conquest yes, genocide no. Organised concepts of genocide are really quite a recent innovation.

[Ignacio Upton]

57. I'm also part English

So I guess I'd have to hand over that farm to myself.:crazy:

...But I wonder what I should do with my Norwegian, German, and Austrian-Czech sides since they would get shafted.

[TheBaldyMan]

60. check out what happened after Culloden, there was ethnic cleansing

but most of it was perpetrated by loyalist scots on jacobite scots.

[NorthernSpy]

72. Don't put words in my mouth. I said "ethnic cleansing", not "genocide"...

I spoke of the suppression of Scottish culture, and the expulsion of the people from their homeland: such things are legitimately termed "ethnic cleansing". I never claimed that there was a concerted effort to exterminate the "Scottish race", in the sense of what the Germans tried to do to the Herero in South West Africa (to give just one example).

You need to read more carefully before replying.

[Jed Dilligan]

31. And mostly without guns, too

It's the poverty, stupid!

Gun crime comes from police carrying guns.

[1932]

32. In Scotland, something like 90% of land is owned by less than 20 families.

Scotland has land and resource distribution polarization that is worse than a lot of former colonies in the developing world, and the consequence is poverty that causes social problems like violence, IMHO.

[bobbieinok]

36. WOW that's an absolutely incredible statistic

[havocmom]

41. Any info on the unemployment rate?

Thinkin it is probably a less than robust economy with that sort of ownership desparity. (with accent on DESPAIR)

[Ignacio Upton]

44. Just curious, what about England?

England also had/still has nobility as a symbolic relic. I'm wondering how much land is still owned by aristocrats in England.

[TheBaldyMan]

64. Check out this story from the Sunday Times in the UK

Earlier in 2006 a British TV company Channel 4 made a programme to see if they could find out who owned Britain. The results were difficult to obtain in ENgland and Wales because of the system of land being registered when it is sold, it turns out that nearly half of the land in England and Wales (they share the same legal system) is not registered, probably because it has been endowed or inherited.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1974693,00.html">Sunday Times,Jan 8th 2006,Finding out who really owns Britain isn't easy

http://libcom.org/news/article.php/land-ownership-right-roam-uk-10032006">Historical background from UK anarchist website Libcom this article goes into the subject in more depth than the Sun. Times article.

[donsu]

35. however, they have some damned good women fiction writers

nt

[catmandu57]

39. I'd repatriate if I could

Being only one generation removed, my grandmother emmigrated to the plains of northern Colorado, marrying granddad, himself a scot. I can understand the issue having a terrible temper at times, ready to knock heads quickly. It couldn't be any worse than here.

[Taxloss]

42. Here's a BBC story about the UN report:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4257966.stm

(Warning: Mildly icky photo.)

Scotland has been named the most violent country in the developed world by a United Nations report.

The study found that, excluding murder, Scots were almost three times as likely to be assaulted as Americans.

Victims of crime in 21 countries were interviewed by the UN, but senior Scots police officers criticised the study.

The survey concluded that 2,000 Scots were attacked every week. That figure is 10 times the number recorded in official police figures.

So the police have challenged the notion, but then they would, as it suggests they're not doing their jobs.

It's interesting that the report says the Scots are "almost three times as likely to be assaulted as Americans" - why not compared to the English? Or, say, the Belgians> Is the USA really that much of a byword for violence, or is that anti-Americanism? It jarred with me.

[marions ghost]

47. just impossible

for Scotland to be more violent than America. Just impossible.

Last night in my town on Halloween the cops were happy because only one person was shot as opposed to the usual 3-6. Killings are normal here, part of the daily routine. The local nightly news might as well be called the nightly murder and robbery report. I doubt that is true in Scotland.

[Taxloss]

48. The violence figure excludes murder, apparently.

So presumably if we didn't have firearms legislation, the murder rate would be a lot higher and the "violence" rate would be lower.

In other words, guns kill people.

[marions ghost]

51. OH for God's sake

THAT'S the catch???? The murder rate isn't included? :wtf:

What a ridiculous study. You can't separate murder & gun violence from violence.

It sounds like Scotland has some problems which are perhaps similar to ours involving young males and gangs, but still a better place to be overall.

[enfield collector]

54. guns don't kill people, violent people kill people.

[Taxloss]

55. Violent people with guns kill people.

Without the guns, they just get badly hurt. Or at least that appears to be the message of these figures.

[hedgehog]

49. Does Scotland have an "honor" culture?

My theory is that gun ownership in this country is a reflection of "honor culture" among various groups. By honor culture, I mean a culture in which males are raised with the notion that they must always have a chip on their shoulder. Any sign of disrespect must be met with violence. It also includes the notion that the male is responsible as an individual to protect his family and property rather than relying on the police. I think sub-groups with an honor culture can be found in almost every ethnic group in the country, so I am not blaming any particular group. I have to admit, I think it is stronger in the South and West than in the Northeast and Midwest.

[elehhhhna]

62. President Butch DID break that Scot cop's leg. Must

count for something.

[porphyrian]

63. Based on football hooliganism, maybe? - n/t

[Marie26]

65. Anyone see "Trainspotters"?

They've got us beat, I think.

[Strelnikov_]

67. "Begbie Didn't Do Drugs Either, He Just Did People."

"That what he got off on: his own sensory addiction."

[Marie26]

70. Wow, you could understand the dialogue?

Congrats. :thumbsup: They were a nasty bunch, and if it's any indication of what Scotland's like, it's not a place I'd much like to visit.