28 September, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Most foreigners picture Scotland as a quaint storybook land filled with kilt-wearing bagpipe players. Uh, think again. According to a just-released United Nations report, Scotland is the most violent country in the developed world. Scots are three times more likely to be assaulted than Americans. And while the U.N. excludes murder in this statistic, a soon-to-be-released study by the University of California claims that Scotland has a higher murder rate than the United States, Israel, Uzbekistan, Chile and Uruguay. I wonder when this statistic will make it onto the Visit Scotland website?

So-called experts blame this staggering level of violence on the “booze and blades” culture in the western part of the country, specifically Glasgow. There are calls for stabbing to be considered a public health issue in this blood-spattered region. A consultant at Glasgow Royal Infirmary said: “People carry all sorts of weapons, some of them quite horrific, ranging from small pocket knives that they think can’t inflict a fatal injury, which is entirely wrong, up to machetes, bayonets, swords.”

CSI: Loch Ness…coming soon!

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