So What's Going On Here?

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52360728
Are they just getting hammered and fighting the neighbours or what? No doubt more domestic assaults are occurring but enough for this rise?

[royfromaus]

?

[royfromaus]

Nearly 21,000 people aged over 51 went to A&E in England and Wales in *2019* for violence-related injuries, according to analysis by Cardiff University.

[Zacs-Master]

‘The authors of the study said although this was "difficult to explain" it was likely to reflect the "growing" levels of drinking among older people in England.
And they suggested some older binge drinkers were still behaving as they did when younger, in the 1980s and 1990s.’

But yes, it doesn’t explain exactly who’s causing the injury to whom.

Personally, seeing the type of retirement I had planned slipping away not to mention my wife working in a fairly high risk environment is fuelling my 57 year old drinking habit. Hic.

[Zacs-Master]

But just to add, that would NEVER lead to violence!!!

[ToraToraTora]

ZM: so this is not related to the lockdown just a general trend?

[royfromaus]

Does it mention the current lockdown?

[tomus42]

Young people aren't going out to the pub, fighting and ending up in A&E on a Friday/Saturday, but middle-aged folks are drinking a lot more at home, cooped up, getting into 'domestics'.

That'd be my guess.

[Zacs-Master]

I can’t tell from the figures. All I’m pointing out is that the factors I mentioned may be a cause at the moment among people of a similar age to me and MrsZ.

[Zacs-Master]

As Roy has pointed out, the research is from last year so irrelevant to the lockdown. Scrub my previous answers.

[ToraToraTora]

ok so it's just the timing that initially made me think this was lockdown related. I suppose it's rare that the news contains anything else at the moment, my bad.

[royfromaus]

Cabin fever.

[Gromit]

Those are 2019 figures, long before the lock-down.

I am always suspicious when figures suddenly leap for no explainable reason. It usually means they have made a change in how they record incidents, or they are asking if people had drunk before an incident, where they might not have asked it before.

I don’t 50-60 year olds have suddenly got more violent for no apparent reason, so I am sure it is a data collection change/anomoly.

[shoota]

Probably commensurate with a rise in the membership of AB...

[Zacs-Master]

Ha!

[TheChair]

The article says that more people over 50 have been victims of violence, but it doesn't give any indication of the ages of the perpetrators. It seems a bit of a stretch to simply assume that the perpetrators must also be over 50.