Mostly Eastern Europeans in the area, i doubt very much if the portugese are involved, I think this will be all over europe now with the gates of eastern europe being open.

It can be worrying can't it - recent incidents I read about only yesterday included

- a 75 yr old woman killed with an axe,

- a mother jailed for aiding and abetting the rape of her own under-age daughter,

- a senior policeman reporting a decrease in crime overall but an increase in violent crime over the last 12 months,

but the difference is that these were all reported in yesterday's edition of my daily local paper for a rural seaside area of Scotland. I hope that this doesn't put tourists coming to visit because it's also an area were

- few of us bother locking our front doors,

- my neighbour habitually leaves the keys in his car because it saves having to look for them around the house,

- I keep 3 bikes in an unlocked shed because we lost the key years ago,

We also have a great many young people who come over from eastern Europe every year (and have done for some years) to work here for the soft fruit picking season without any problems or asociated crime wave - it's the local kids that attract complaints about their behaviour because of the way they ride their bikes on the pavements and without lights and sometimes share a bottle of cider between about 6 of them in the war memorial gardens :-)

The way events are reported in the media bears no relationship to the actual risks and I don't think anybody should be panicked into assuming that there is rising risk of being attacked in the street in either rural Scotland or the Algarve. Or to jump to conclusions about who is committing what crime there is - the police have charged the son of the murdered woman above emphasising the point that statistically we are more at risk from fellow family members than strangers from eastern Europe.

SM

Nice post SM,
we see post across the forums, bombs in Spain/Turkey/north Africa or earthquakes in Greece/turkey/Italy, crimes in the Algarve/Cyprus and many others, the British press loves[when they cant bash the government or royal family]to sensationalise the events if they were to compare them to the British isles [apart from earth quakes which we do have but no one notices] they would be insignificant

wizard

Sorry i was not randomly picking out Eastern Europeans, my cousin lives in the algarve, indeed her own house was ransacked, along with a few more in the area, there was an attempted bank robbery, when the police came they themselves expressed concerns about the amount of eastern europeans causing crime. In these small towns in the Algarve the police quickly identify problem groups, and usually move them on, usually to another town. As you say they come to Scotland to work, unfortunately many travel around looking for easy pickings and its usually the tourist in any country that is the target. i do think that wherever you are in the world now including Britain you have to be on your guard.

Blaming East Europeans without firm evidence of who is actually committing the crimes behind your rather inflammatory statements is rather silly. It's a bit like saying the only people that get drunk and act stupidly on the streets of the countries of the Mediterranean are British people.

Well Magster lets face it, thats why lots of us UK residents are given a bad name when on holiday due to this happening, wonder why? we are all tarred with the same brush as idiots who cant hold their alcohol & hell bent on causing trouble. Jayjan

As i said before, the police in the area suggested who was responsible I didnt.