Is Glasgow a safe place to live?

[GoodnessGraciousMeh]

My DD has recently moved to Glasgow for a job. She is shocked at how rough it seems, and there is a programme on iplayer which is on later tonight on player about Glasgow which was filmed recently. It's really shocking. She is living alone in a not particularly nice area and I am really worried. For people who have experience of Glasgow, please tell me your thoughts.

The TV programme, OP, was made by a Scottish filmmaker for a Scottish production company and series. Another filmmaker could make a similar film in many many towns and cities. Obviously, there are significant issues : Glasgow is a complex place.

Yes, not much kicked off on the night it rained! The filmmaker was a tad disappointed and claimed there was more of a sense of menace.

Riots are so often a hot weather thing.

I think part of the problem is the SNP government (they also control Glasgow city council) complete refusal to engage with Reform and the other right wing parties. They just keep parroting the line that Scotland is different, all tolerant and liberal, welcoming, with a huge social conscience. And most people are - just as most people in England/Wales/N Ireland are. But people here ARE voting for Reform and the rest of them and feel their views are not being heard. Glasgow has the highest number of asylum seekers per head of population than any other city in the UK and not everyone is happy with that.

From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2025/how-many-people-are-in-the-uk-asylum-system the quote at the end is "The local authorities with the highest numbers of supported asylum seekers within them were Glasgow City (3,835), followed by Birmingham (2,637), Liverpool (2,189), Hillingdon (2,133) and Manchester (1,846)." So Glasgow has a thousand more asylum seekers than Birmingham, in a city half the size. Everyone has their own take and opinion on that situation but the council/government are not even entering into any discussion about it, which fuels the fire of the racists and right wingers.

Drugs has always been an issue around the Four Corners, it was dodgy when I was a student in the 90s. 2pm in the afternoon though you'll be fine, 2am maybe not so much. Lots of homeless, but I saw just as many in Liverpool or London.

Saw this image on social media which pretty much sums it up.

I think part of the problem is the SNP government (they also control Glasgow city council) complete refusal to engage with Reform and the other right wing parties

Reform I'll grant you, however, they are lead by a man who said shortly before the SG election that he would "stick pins in my eyes" before he contemplated collaborating with the SNP, and Russell Findlay was invited to meet with the FM along with every other party leader besides Offord, and Findlay declined to do so.

So which other right wing parties were you thinking of?

I haven’t seen the documentary, just clips.

My DD and DS are both students in Glasgow living in the city centre for over a year without incident.

As well as enjoying the night life, they have jobs that require them to be walking through the city centre alone in the wee small hours, again without incident.

As far as I can see, it’s not much different from when I was a student wandering around at 3am 30 years ago.

Glasgow is a city, it has problem areas like all cities. Appropriate precautions and decision making are sensible.

I'm not talking about working with them or collaborating with them at all though. A lot of the SNP (and Green) rhetoric is very pro-immigration, progressive, not all all like those people in England/Wales (so therefore we need to be independent).

I am not anti-immigration at all but I am savvy enough to know that there are a lot of people out there who ARE anti immigration and the refusal to acknowledge that those people and those opinions exist is really dangerous. We can't just pretend them away. The Scottish government need to do a lot better at explaining why we need immigrants and addressing concerns. Rather than just going for the #nodebate approach.

Just because you did that doesn"t mean it was safe, Glasgow was the European murder capital in the 90"s, Naples was just slightly ahead I believe, and it was seriously rough in the 1970"s and into the 80"s, there was a massive change in the city centre in the early to mid 90"s compared to the early to mid 80"s, it went all European outdoor cafe culture, except in Glasgow the waitress kept a grip on the cup until you handed the money over LOL. I believe there was a wobble in the mid 2000"s when things started to get dangerous again and no idea what it is like now, but moving to a notoriously rough part of one of the most notoriously rough cities in the world was obviously not a thought through move?

What does it sum up?

Are you very young? Did you experience the Glasgow of the 1970"s and first part of the 80"s? Even Edinburgh had a serious air of menace in the early 80"s and some people think Edinburgh is "posh" LOL. Admittedly people now are much more brain dead from social media and the drugs are stronger plus people really don"t gel in public spaces any more like they used to, so yes all that combined probably is menacing if you are sober and just trying to get on a bus.

Put it this way, it was safe in the city centre at night. As safe as a city can be that is.
I must have walked home barefoot 100 times over the course of a couple of years and never had any issue. Not once. Never even stood on glass.

Yes there may be some naivety of youth or not noticing threats due to booze but still never felt threatened or at risk or noticed groups of creepy men staring at me or following me.

You absolutely cannot walk outside down union street at even 11pm now as a solo woman. I actually did it about a year ago not realising how much it had changed thinking it would be fine as it was 11pm and everyone would be out hitting the bars. But the only people around were a group of, presumably, migrant men, who followed me shouting obscenities until I dipped into a bar.

It was safe back then, in COMPARISON to what it’s like now. No city is entirely safe. But even the feel has completely changed now.

And it used to have double the murder rate of London, per capita. Reg McKay had a good quote on Glasgow kids who would happily wander the streets of their home city at 3am without a care after a nightclub getting scared when they move to London because they feel the size of the place and the unfamiliarity of all the different areas, he said Glasgow was actually more dangerous, awash with people carrying weapons. That observation was from a number of years ago of course.

Never even stood on glass? We must be in parallel Glasgows LOL. I don"t know when "back then" means but if you go back through the decades Glasgow was not "safe", not by any measure, the problems you describe though are a recent phenomenon and it is due to a cultural shift that has taken place in the UK.

No I’m in my 50s!! 🤣 Was going out to nightclubs in the late 80s, early 90s. There were running battles between young teams in the street in front of my house. They were only interested in battering each other though. I really didn’t feel personally unsafe though. Might be just that I’ve not lived there for years but parts of the city centre at 10pm now feel scary.

Byres Road is not particularly safe at night, you need to stay aware of what is going on around you.

I'm about 20 miles from city centre and it's just so unrecognisable to the city of 10yrs ago.
Heartbreaking that the SNP gvnmt have allowed this to happen to us.

a notoriously rough part of one of the most notoriously rough cities in the world

Enough with the hyperbole. There is not one British city mentioned on the cities with the highest murder rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate

And the image I posted - the people who are making the biggest stooshie about immigrants taking their jobs are the NEDs who don't have a job because they are unemployable.

Ok, but the nightclubs had metal detectors at the entrance in the 90"s, and I remember two English guys I knew being shocked that the cinema they went to in Glasgow had bouncers in the main entrance! The joke used to be that if the doormen at the Barrowlands searched you and you didn"t have a weapon they would give you one before you went in! Great city but we have to be careful not to get the rose tinted glasses on? My impression of the city centre at night in the 80"s was that you needed to have the street radar switched on, that changed in the mid 90"s a good bit and it felt less intense, for me anyway.

Yes, because Glasgow was a trouble-free metropolitan paradise prior to 2018

What about if the immigrant has a fake degree? That was definitely a thing for a while. What we need is less degrees and debt to get them and more practical vocational training for young people who already live here.

Yes when I was a student in the 90s there was a metal detector at the door of the student union because knife crime was such an issue. The city council did loads of work around knives, had an amnesty and the situation improved.

@AuntieBiotics

The Scottish government need to do a lot better at explaining why we need immigrants and addressing concerns

I absolutely agree with you on this point, however, you can still do this without in any way legitimising Reform and the sort of people who joke about melting down ethnic minorities in order to fill in potholes.

Fine, if a portion of the electorate want to vote for utterly repulsive charlatans, that's up to them, but you don't need to validate the politics of parties who are still a relative lunatic fringe by treating them with respect, on the contrary, they should be ostracised, denigrated, and a light held up to them at every juncture possible.

It also does not help that in the UK we have an entirely compliant media which both promotes and trumpets Reform-type messaging at every opportunity, leading to the perception that it's far more popular and mainstream than it is in reality.

They used to do a full body search on one of the Glasgow Uni Union doors in the 90"s, the other Union had literally DOZENS of bouncers on at weekends, totally crazy.

Yip hard agree. I honestly wonder if some folk have eyes or if they are just so determined to be seen as “non Reform” they ignore all the social problems that are happening around us.

I think the tone of the thread is that Glasgow has become less safe for women? The notion that Glasgow in general could ever be "safe" is mildly ridiculous though TBH.