I live (or rather, grew up) next to one of the areas that was on the programme. Easterhouse, where the little kid said "gettin stabbed disnae hurt", lol. Still go back there every week to buy weed, and it's just a state. They're knocking down all the old tenament flats in order to put up new semi-detached brick houses, trying to build a "new easterhouse" by splitting it up into communities like Lochend and Provanhall and taking away the old Easterhouse bad name.
But it just gives the gangs of the areas more definition, if you're in the wrong area you'll get jumped. We were about 16 and going round the corner to someones grans house and guys started chasing us. We ran into a takeout shop, and they wouldn't let us stay there, chucked us out, because they said basically that the shop windows would get smashed if we stayed in the shop.
I've seen such random things used as weapons, like guys chasing other guys, then stopping at the Ice-cream van, buy two cans of irn-bru, shake them up like hell, and chuck them at the guy he was chasing, MAN that looked sore!
And incidentally, the ice cream vans are around all night selling drugs.
Pretty much everyone walks about in brightly coloured tracksuits with plastic morrissons bags full of booze and multipacks of crisps, theres litter absolutely everywhere, they really should just have burnt it all down.
But no... the government built them brand new primary and high schools, and even called them Community Schools so the kids don't have to wear a uniform, as an incentive to go. Built community colleges and football pitches and parks. It's all been done pretty recently, so hard to tell if it's going to have any effect. And all the new houses are council houses, free for all the unemployed masses to move into. Lucky them!
Grael, I'm not really sure it's to do with immigrants, we've only recently had a surge of polish people in Scotland, but the majority of neds / chavs around here are white and Scottish. But I haven't really lived in an area with a lot of foreign people so can't really evaluate it properly.
I think I blame the parents, it's easy to say when it's other peoples' kids running amok, and I'd like to think I'd be more sensible / strict / caring than to let my kids turn out like that, but it's a pretty sweeping statement. Every kid makes mistakes and can get in with the wrong crowd, problem is once they've realised their mistake and tried to get out of it they've already caused themself a whole world of problems.