I think seeing it terms of nations is missing the nub of it. To a considerable extent it's a matter of the broken down parts of the big cities.

Not exclusively, because there are related things that happen in the small towns as well, largely because there's a kind of copy-cat process going on. And it can be very nasty. But it's a matter of a certain type of young people out in the sticks copying what they know happens in the cities, rather than the other way round.

But mostly out of the cities it's still quiet enough. You can go through your whole life without seeing any serious trouble.

Ireland, outside Dublin and Belfast is country of small towns. England has a pretty fair spread of cities. That makes a difference when it comes to national generalisations.

I think it is possible to make not wholly misleading generalisations about national differences between the various countries on the mainland of Europe and on the offshore islands. So perhaps it's true to say that the English do tend to be - well, according to taste you can call it more reserved, or less friendly, or a bit stand-offish, or less intrusive than some of their neighbours. "They're good neighbours - you'd never know they were there" is a common way to talk here, and it wouldn't be in a lot of places.

But I doubt if that has much relationship to the kind of street yobbery we've been talking about here.