Susan wrote: < england must be a very safe place to live because everyone seems to sherk and overlook the possibilities for a horrible crime to happen.>
Sorry, Susan, it's no safer than anywhere else. The murder rate in the UK used to be one a day, now there are about 1200 a year.
Poole is joined on to Bounemouth. It seems that Bournemouth has, on average, one murder overy two weeks. Probably not quite that high - it just seems that way because we don't pay that much attention when the news reports that a body has been found in a house.
The murder victim is usually a young woman found in a house, killed by her boyfriend, or a young man stabbed outside a nightclub - there are quite a few nightclubs in Bournemouth.
Bournemouth and Poole are holiday towns, there are a lot of hotels, a University and English language schools. So there are a lot of young people. There are also a lot of retired people, and a lot of working people too, but it's the young ones who mostly get into trouble. As I'm not young, don't have a boyfriend and don't go to nightclubs, that's cut down my odds a lot. Most murderds are committed by someone the victim knows.
Admittedly in the last 5 years there have been two murders in my neighbourhood. One, when a young man got in to an elderly woman's house through an open window one evening when she was in another room, and the other when a young man attacked an elderly lady on her way home from collecting her pension money from the Post Office.
The day before yesterday there was an armed robbery at a shop a couple of miles away. Said to my husband when I heard it on the radio "There's been an armed robbery in Ringwood Road." His response "Oh.", which is what you'd expect from most people.
There are criminals who call at the homes of the elderly and pretend to be from the gas, electricity or other utility company with the intention of robbing them. I'm elderly (62), and just take sensible precautions like checking that people are who they say they are before letting them in (the gas an electric meter readers have to give me a password before they come in), and I check by phoning a number from the phone book before I let in anyone from any other company if I'm not expecting them.
Most criminals go for easy targets. We don't overlook the possibilty of a crime, just take sensible precautions, realise that violent crime isn't as common as it appears to be and get on with life. Do I worry? No, I've got better things to do.
Jean in Poole
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