It’s probably slightly prejudiced of me, the way I expect to be stabbed everywhere I go in London. You get these free papers like ‘The Londonpaper’, or ‘London Lite’ thrust in your face every time you walk near a tube station, something to distract you from the daily grind. Reading through (I think they’re some sort of A-level project) you get a bleak picture of stabbings in the supermarket, muggings gone wrong or cyclists under trucks - in jaunty language and no more than 200 words. It’s not like they have papers to sell, so they must be telling me the truth in a fair and balanced way.

I was thinking, though, about the change from a really small place (Bangor) to a really big place (London) - there was one murder in six years whilst I lived in Bangor, with its heady population of around 20,000 (including students, making it the fourth smallest city in the country without…). If you translate that to London someone can expect to be killed every five days, which is considerably lower than the official figures, it seems - 127 people murdered in 2006/7, making it about once every three days…interesting. Perhaps I shall be asking for a stab vest for Christmas.

Tags: this'n'that

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