I also see that a young pregnant woman has been shot dead, possibly over an argument about parking. I never wanted to live in London anyway. Now I'm not sure I even want to visit the place again :(

I'm kind of scared to tempt fate here (!) but I've lived in London for 15 years now and touch wood have not had one single violent event affect me in my everyday life, including nights out - work was a different matter, but I kind of "self-selected" by working in certain environments. It's not all bad!

Most of my friends haven't experienced bad stuff either, only one who did was a 19-year old male who went up an alley at 2am on a Friday night, drunk, for a pee and talking on his mobile, and got his wallet removed at knifepoint, and thankfully he was unharmed.

Again, without blaming the poor kid, it was kind of self-selecting. I'm NOT saying it was right!

Today I put out my composting collection, peelings and the like, and saw the locals returning with their kiddies all excited about Easter eggs and Dr Who.

I am IN NO WAY apportioning blame, but if you don't go out at night to certain places and/or get drunk then you will not be involved in 99% of the aggro Tom and other emergency services personnel encounter daily.

London's better than the small town I lived in before, someone shot at me with an airpistol there from a passing car (for the local crime of "Walking Alone While Female") and another drunk threw half a brick at me, again walking home alone from work about 10pm.

Nowhere's "safe" in my experience, and no-one DESERVES to experience unprovoked aggression, but a bit of common sense? Never hurts.

You just don't hear about people like Christopher Johnston, or Les Ince, or Keith Platt, or Lewis Singleton, to name but a few.

All stabbed to death, horrifying attacks, etc, in the not too distant past. What do they have in common? They didn't live in London. And while the attacks on them were reported, they didn't spend a day or two at the top of the BBC news frontpage.

The media has an astounding London bias.

You are all, indeed, correct. The worst experience I've had in many years was living next door to a girlfriend-beating piece of **** in Bradford. The rest of our estate were lovely people. I had to put up with noise, vandalism, trespass and a pregnant girl screaming not to be hit.

I suppose the question must be asked - as she refused to do anything about it, is that "self-selecting"?

There are scum everywhere. Guess it's a part of life. Just up to the rest of us to redress the balance!

Inadequate young men with knives and matching pit bulls - they're like characters from 'Little Britain', ripe for piss-taking, until it all goes horribly wrong.

At least when the GCS gets below 13 they are usually too rat arsed to be stabbing each other - why can't we give them a photo, face down in their own vomit, as a little souvenir from the emergency services ?

I live in Spain. The story of the woman shot over a parking space has been prominently reported here as evidence of the decline of British society.

With crime like that so widely reported, I'm shocked people even want to come to the UK for their holidays any more. It's a very, very sad situation.

:o(
It just gets worse.....poor family.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.' But this only applies to gangbusting the big boys because it gets Chief Constables their knighthoods and politicians their peerages.

Two very sad stories about three young lives wasted. What sad times we live in.

It is very tragic and awful that these things are happening.
I have to say something in defence of British society though: I lived in London for nearly 8 years and then moved back to Holland. A certain part of my city here in Holland that I have to go through everyday is quite dodgy too - people are quite often mugged, assaulted and arrested there because they are carrying knives and guns around. Unfortunately my colleague saw someone being shot not long ago in broad daylight.
It is not a problem that is only happening in Britain; it is a world-wide problem and a tragic sign of the times.
All we can do is try and hope that things will be okay and try and set a good example by not exploding when thigns don't go our way. It just feels today that we are all so tightly wound up and agressive and we need to try and diffuse it within ourselves as well.

Humans are an aggressive violent species - especially, but not only, young males. We always have been and unless/until we evolve, always will be. The sooner we stop acting in as much denial of that as the Victorians were in about sex, the better.

My solution would be to give young people who opt-in - because not all young men are aggressive, not all women of any age aren't - some reasonably safe way to express that natural aggression without taking it out on the Middle East and/or ruining their prospects for life with criminal records. Rant over!

You are correct of course, due to our 'alpha male' group living style during our earlier stages of evolution therefore everyone wants to be the alpha male, meaning that violence can frequently come into play.

May I ask (out of curiousity, I have heard many different answers and am therefore interested) what you would suggest as a method for the expression of natural aggression?

but still....poor victorians.......

I don't know really, because in order to have the "right" answer I guess I'd have to know far more about psychology etc than my own amateur observations.

However, I have noticed that involvement in unarmed combat, such as boxing, martial arts etc has turned around lives for some of the young men I've known personally who've been on a one-way trip to a life of fights and prison, and who were destroying their own lives as well as their family's, and their targets.

It gives them a healthy way to express aggression and a healthy respect for the art of fighting, IMO. I know opinions do vary widely on that one!

So maybe something like that made very widely available, free of charge, perhaps as an optional lesson in schools even, with a choice of other PE type stuff, for the kids who want it? Instead of being, as it is at the moment, an extra only for the parents who can afford it.

I suppose, to go out on a limb for a moment, if schools offered options of: combat, team sports, and something like yoga/pilates for the VERY non-physical, non-aggressive kids, no-one would be left out or forced to do something they hated, or were depressingly bad at.

And the kind of kids who normally skip PE and/or have health issues would actually have something really light-weight they could enjoy (I speak as someone who was one of those kids!).

Also, it has become a cliche but teaching young people how to manage their anger (BAAM do great courses in this, really revelatory on what makes people blow their top) and at the same time having a zero-tolerance policy on bullying in schools....?

My POV on things like this is, I don't have to be a plumber to know there's water coming out my ceiling, and likewise I don't have to have the exact answer before I can try to identify the problem - if that makes sense!

Such a tragic waste. I hope the boy is rather was not a pupil at one of the schools I work with, however he probably was. I work with the schools in the most "challenging" circumstances in London and I just wish we could stop them killing each other but nothing we try does. It is heartbreaking to know another young life has been wasted and another family destroyed. Hard to stay motivated too when it feels as if you are banging your head on a brick wall. Tragically the all want respect and all believe it will not happen to them.

In addition black boys and white working class boys take very little notice of white women who try to persuade them that guns and knifes are a bad idea. I wish we could find someone who can convince them. A recent metal detectin sweep on one of our schools uncovered 5 flick knives, 2 bread knives and a machete in one year group! The girls just think we are mad to work to pay mortgages when we could have a baby and be given one. Anyone ever think there are at least two parallel worlds in London?

"In addition black boys and white working class boys take very little notice of white women who try to persuade them that guns and knifes are a bad idea"

I know, but you can't really blame them for that - it must be like when some billionaire rock star tries to tell people struggling with their rent that really should donate £80 to some pet charity, because it's not much money! Whenever I hear that kind of rubbish, I think, come on - like, "your life is so different to mine, WTF do you know about my day-to-day survival?!"

People who are perceived to have easier, softer lives never make good leaders when you're up against the sharp end of personal danger, personal difficulty, that they have never faced in their lives.

IMO it's a failure on the part of the men who have moved through and beyond that world, that they cannot spare the time and energy to go back and show the kids a better way.

And as for the girls having the babies in their teens, while lots of professional women leave it too late, I wonder what Darwin would make of that....?

Darwin would probably predict that in 1000 years, average IQ will be lower, as all the professional women will have given birth to children with Downs Syndrome, while there are millions of babies born to less intelligent women????

That's been my equally depressing conclusion for several years now, but thanks for confirming it! Not sure whether to jump of a cliff, or leg it to the sperm bank....

Tonights News At Ten showed an interview with a couple of the dead boys friends. They had strange "Tags" like Bendz or something, and spoke with a wierd accent, considering they were born here , why do they think they have to speak like that? I have colleagues and relatives whose parents come from the West Indies and they speak better english than me! I believe that the so called Rap stars have a lot to answer for.