Should we leave Glasgow?

[relocationconfliction]

We have 3DC, 2 DD’s and a DS. We live just on the outskirts of Glasgow, about a 8 min drive to city centre. We’re becoming very worried about the future safety of our children. Nearly daily on the news there’s stories about teenage boys stabbing each other, it seems like it’s an epidemic. There’s also a lot of stories recently about teenage girls being attacked in places such as parks etc. It’s horrible. My DS, who’s still a child but obviously will grow up, is getting into the football with his dad and supports one of the old firm teams. Even that feels dangerous. I’d never be comfortable with my children going out as teens to meet their friends as there’s just trouble everywhere. Any advice would be great. Thinking of relocating to Argyll.

I think you need to really research where you want to move to, for example, what facilities are available for teenagers and will you need to drive them everywhere.

I grew up in a really remote part of the country and there was nothing to do so we found something to do which in those days was alcohol, sadly it is now riddled with drugs.

I grew up in Edinburgh when it was the heroin capital of Europe, moved to the south of England for a bit, have lived on the edges of Glasgow for the last 20 years and have had three kids growing up here.

Yes there are sketchy bits of Glasgow as there are in any city. I wouldn't go walking down the lanes off Sauchiehall street at 2am but I wouldn't go to similar parts of Edinburgh, Birmingham, London, New York... I don't recognise the daily teenage stabbings, most of the serious violence is organised crime related. I know plenty of kids who support a specific football team and who are not involved in violence around that or are in gangs/young teams.

It depends where you are in the city but there is none of what you describe here and being in the city offers far more opportunities for children and young people than being stuck out in the sticks in the middle of nowhere. You'd also be kidding yourself if you think there are no social problems in small towns in Argyll.

I agree with PPs. I have worked in several Glasgow secondary schools and stabbings really aren’t that common, particularly among children. As a pp said, keep them busy with hobbies, they’ll make nice like-minded friends and resist any pull of gang culture, which certainly isn’t what it used to be. A bit advantage of being in the city is the wide range of activities available to kids.

Whereas I agree with lots of points here, I think it’s a bit misleading to dismiss the OP’s point that teen knife crime/violence in Glasgow and surrounds is still an issue.

Remember that within a 12 month period recently we had three teenagers stabbed to death, Corey McKrimmon, Amen Takely and Kayden Moy.

The year before that a teen was stabbed to death at High St Station, only one day after another 13 year old was left brain damaged in a completely separate attempted murder incident at the same train station.

One of the incidents took place in Ayrshire at a teen beach party but both the victim and youths charged are from EK.

That’s just the fatal attacks, a quick google search shows loads more and we are very unlikely to hear about other incidents unless they cause serious injury.

This isn’t new, when I grew up in the 80’s/90’s knife crime and gangs were a massive problem, it has improved slightly since then but any ideas that this was a ‘60’s problem’ are frankly utter nonsense.

There are still areas of Glasgow where it is dangerous for teenagers to travel into adjoining areas.

We don’t know anything about the area the OP lives, just that it’s on the periphery, for all we know her fears are justified, if someone has tried to run over her Husband for wearing a football top then it’s safe to say she’s not living somewhere like Bearsden.

The only point I would make is that sectarianism tends to be worse outside Glasgow than in it, there are not any true ‘Celtic’ or ‘Rangers’ areas anymore. Even places like Garngad or Bridgeton have had so much demographic change/gentrification that it is far from a prevailing culture now.

This isn’t the case in certain areas of Lanarkshire/Ayrshire though.

So I can understand why someone may want to move and I know many that have done so and never been happier, I guess the only advice I would have is not to jump from frying pan to fire, Glasgow undoubtedly has it’s issues but so do a lot of other places in Scotland.

Nobody's denying that violence is an issue in some parts of the city and that there are teenagers being stabbed or getting into other sorts of bother. But is the situation really bad enough to consider moving out of the city completely?

And it was gang related.

DS loved studying at Glasgow. There’s trouble in any city.
DH supports one of the R/C teams but would never ever wear football colours on the way to a match. It’s common sense really.

But that’s exactly what some were doing on this thread, many quotes above with the theme of ‘this isn’t the city I recognise’ and ‘violence/stabbings are rare’.

For every violent incident we hear about there will be scores of others that we don’t, one of the boys killed had been charged with a knife attack in another unrelated incident for example.

Remember most crime goes unreported and young males are most likely to be the victims of violent crime so I can understand why people worry.

I grew up in an area plagued with gang crime, both historic and current, I then thankfully built a life in a completely different part of greater Glasgow.

One thing that has always been apparent though is that so many people in my current area have absolutely no idea of what goes on in other areas of the city, it’s your stereotypical middle class bubble where people walk around with blinkers on and only see what they want to see.

If Glasgow is that safe then how many Bearsden parents would be happy letting their teens run around unsupervised in Drumchapel/Maryhill or Giffnock parents in Pollokshaws for example?

If the OP lives in an area where violence is a major concern and wants to move somewhere where there is much less risk of it (and there are many places in Scotland with much less risk) then who are we to tell her she’s wrong?

@Meeplemakeglasgowthat is an excellent point. People in the ‘middle class’ bubbles really don’t know what life is like in some of the more deprived parts of Glasgow. I remember when I started driving, the most direct route to uni would take me through Possilpark. My df, who was well acquainted with the different parts of the city due to working for GDC, would not allow me to drive through there in case I broke down. I had to go the long way via the motorway.
As my df wasn’t the type of parent to wrap us in cotton wool, that was quite an eye opener for me. I also wasn’t allowed to go into town on Old Firm game days.

However...this OP has a DH who walks about in an OF shirt and a DS who is clearly very into the rivalries : so not in a family that is going to stop him from going into town on Old Firm days!

Which is why OP was asked which area she was in because there are definitely bad areas(I feel extremely uncomfortable in The Calton for one) but if her area is one of the dodgy areas then that makes more sense or if her teens have become involved with a bad crowd then moving further away than Glasgow might be wise. But OP hasn’t answered the questions so it’s difficult to judge how valid her fears are and if she just needs to move towns or if moving further away might be better for her.

But no I don’t recognise the picture that she’s painting of Glasgow generally, said as someone who hasn’t felt very fond of the city centre for some years now. I generally feel safe if put out by the decline of the city centre. And A&B has some very rough areas too and very real drug problems and fewer resources. There’s obviously positives about A&B too but as others have mentioned it may increase the risks of them being exposed to peer groups where drugs are commonly used, which happens everywhere but which can be even more rife in rural areas because there’s relatively little to do for many teens and it’s harder to get around.

Some of us from the “leafier” areas are very familiar with the less salubrious areas too. I’ve worked and volunteered in many parts of Glasgow. We aren’t all going about with blinkers on.

And crime has increased in Argyll & Bute too.

https://www.helensburghadvertiser.co.uk/news/25691382.police-argyll-bute-facing-stark-crime-challenge/

https://thelochsidepress.com/2024/12/07/violent-crime-increases-in-argyll-and-bute/

It might be right for the OP to move and that’s perfectly fine and good luck to her if so but you do have to consider all aspects before making a decision about a move or the new area might not provide the solution that you’re looking for and exaggerating things doesn’t help either.

there are good bits and bad bits in every town

you can escape.

even if you move to arran or bute there is nowt for kids to do of an evening and drug problems.

Here I'm just going to clarify as you write OF to mean old firm and not only fans (which I'm afraid to my discredit was how I read it!)

LOL! Yes, Old Firm!!

Unfortunately you need to worry about your dcs wherever you live. I live in a very affluent town in SE England and a friend of my ds was stabbed by a stranger when he was standing waiting for a taxi on a cold Sunday night. As I work in a school, I also know we have serious problems with kids getting dragged into county lines gangs. I would worry about my dcs going for a night out in our home town as much as I would in Glasgow.

Not entirely sure of your point here, at no stage did I say that everyone from the middle class areas was completely unaware, congratulations for not having blinkers on but that does not disprove the general level of awareness that many in these areas have.

Also there is no-one saying that crime is non-existent in A&B or that drugs aren’t an issue, but to compare it to the level of drugs/violence and deprivation in Glasgow is a bit of a stretch to say the least.

For an example, a few years ago there was a young boy killed who came from the area I grew up in, his Mum was one year up in school from me, there were tributes written to him online by friends and family which included gang slogans/symbols, some of these people were in their 30’s/40’s.

I have also seen much the same thing happen with one of the recent deaths, I’d find it hard to believe that there are many places, if any, in A&B with that ingrained inter generational gang culture.

Or areas such as Possil/Ruchill, where people are over 12 times as likely to die from drug addiction issues compared to average, large parts are in the top 1% of most deprived areas in the country and violent crime density has been classified in the highest band possible.

These are far from the only areas with these classifications and issues in the city, nowhere in A&B comes remotely close.

So whereas I’m sure your volunteering is appreciated I’d be interested in where exactly you think I’m exaggerating the issues in a city where over half of all children live in the 20% most deprived areas of the country, 45% of all city areas in the most deprived 20% and 29% of all people live in the most deprived 10%?

I’m sure the link between poverty, drugs and violence won’t be a surprise to anyone.

For instance last year Glasgow had 29% of all murder victims in Scotland, yet only has 12% of the population.

A crime rate 52% higher than the national average and a rate of violent crime that makes you 55% more likely to be a victim in Glasgow than elsewhere.

It’s also estimated that if you moved from a low-deprivation area elsewhere in Scotland to a high-deprivation Glasgow one that you’re risk of being a violent crime victim would snowball by 1200%.

All of this was government/police data incidentally, so if you still feel I’m exaggerating feel free to have a look yourself, might also be worthwhile noting that the overwhelming majority of crime isn’t reported though and that young males are least likely to report, so it’s safe to assume the picture is worse for them than most others.

None of what you say is wrong. But you also point out that middle class Glaswegians are cushioned enough to be vanishingly unlikely to end up in areas such as Ruchill.

Reading between the lines, the OP doesn't live in Ruchill / Pollok or Drumchapel.(illustrative examples).

Funnily enough I am reading a Denzil Meyrick book right now, set in Argyll (fictional location but sounds like Kintyre and Machrihanish) . There are smart asides about sectarianism and Glasgow crime but the crimes themselves happen in a location seeped in alcoholism, drugs, misogyny, and rural despair and boredom.

I have feet in both camps having lived in Glasgow and Helensburgh. When I went back to Helensburgh recently it was so clearly run down compared to its affluent recent past.

Most towns have declined over the past 15 years so have no reason to doubt Helensburgh isn’t what our was.

Not entirely sure Helensburgh can be counted as an isolated rural town though, especially given it’s transport links (40 min train to Glasgow) mean it is far from economically isolated.

I didn't say it was, but Helensburgh was mentioned upthread.

When it is dangerous for young males to walk through adjoining areas that isn’t a ‘cushion’, it’s similar to a gated compound.

One of the big selling points for Bishopbriggs for example is how close it is to town.

Yet how many parents would be comfortable letting a group of teen boys walk there?

Unfortunately I would say teenagers are more likely to be exposed to drug and alcohol problems in some of the areas in Argyll and Bute as there is often so little going on for teenagers/ younger people. (I've lived in, and like, both areas).

Glasgow has so many things going on that it is easier for teenagers to be occupied and entertained and develop their hobbies and interests and this is usually a protective factor.

Unless they are massive fans of walking, outdoor activities, nature, photography perhaps.

I moved from Glasgow to Argyll, but not for the reasons you cite. I just didn’t like the feeling of being so “urbanised” e.g. you live in the city, you socialise in the city, you shop in the city etc. I am very outdoorsy and most weekends were spent travelling to mountains and lochs anyway.

i don’t have children, but I have friends in my small village with children. It is an entirely different way of bringing up children and you need to be prepared to drive A LOT. For example, Scouts is 40min away, not ten. There is no gymnastics or street dance or whatever- choices are smaller. But the outdoors and the village lifestyle is such a huge benefit.

I remember reading the SALSUS (Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance use study) a while ago that pretty much confirmed this.

Rural kids were more likely to drink regularly than urban counterparts but the urban kids were more likely to fall into addiction.

Cannabis use I believe was at similar levels but Class A drugs were more prevalent in the cities.

Think the main takeaway was that affluence in cities was an indicator of less regular alcohol use but wasn’t in rural areas, think this is mostly because of fewer activities as you say.

As far as violence goes though a child/teen living in a deprived area of Glasgow is 12 times more likely to be hospitalised through violence than a rural teen, as this was the OP’s main concern it’s hard to argue that a rural lifestyle would diminish that fear.

Plenty it seems considering how many groups of teens I see hanging around Bishopbriggs town centre, having just moved here from Milngavie. Not much need for walking to the town now that they have their bloody bus passes. Thats in actual Bishopbriggs though. People sometimes call areas that are next to Bishopbriggs, “Bishopbriggs” but they aren’t. I’d likely to be much more wary in those areas though. I went to Balornock recent to go to a butcher’s recently. The contrast is huge in some parts between actual Bishopbriggs and Balornock for one. It is incredibly depressing.