C4AJoh wrote:It's totally fucking scary man, we're all gonna start becoming so cautious about where we go because you just don't know what some crazy fucker's gonna do. My nana always talks about when she was young and people could go to the shop's with there front door open and not have to worry, look at the world now, people can't go out for a drink with mates on a Saturday without the threat of some arsehole stabbing them, you can't go anywhere these days, you turn on the news and there always seems to be items about some young kid shot,stabbed,attacked,rapped and it just get's you down. I can't see anyone ever being safe. It's a shame and there's nothing we can really do about it.
The idea that the country is turning into some ultra-dangerous hell-hole is an illusion. A convincing one, but an illusion nonetheless. Every time something crazy happens people take that, roll it up with other smaller events, and present it as the unstoppable decay of British society into crime and violence. It's the natural operation of the human mind to look for patterns where there are none. What actually happens is in certain areas crime is higher than average, in other places it is lower than average, but the average itself pretty much doesn't vary a great deal.
It's like after 11/9 (the correct way round), people who worked in tall buildings were suddenly scared to go to work. Even people travelling on trains (including Cam's friend) became paranoid and on edge, as though they could be one of the unsuspecting people attacked in a public place without warning, when in fact they were in no danger whatsoever. It's all about perception.
It is pretty worrying that an apparently well-regarded man could suddenly snap and do this, but it is extremely rare in this country. I remember after the shootings in Dunblane in 96 were a guy walked into a school and shot 16 kids and a teacher. I went to school in Perth which is less than 30 miles away. It wasn't part of a wave of violence sweeping the area, it was just a terrible and isolated tragedy. But they seriously upped the security in schools around Scotland, despite the lack of any actual increase in danger, simply because of the perception that going to school was suddenly more dangerous than before.