Not that I want to jinx myself here...

So, whilst scouting areas to live I had put New Cross pretty high on my list early on due to affordability. Needless to say, stories like this did not help me much: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8020498.stm

Researching crime stats I suppose is one of those things that people do when checking out an area, along with schools, council tax and the like. Lurid stab and set-alight stories do not help people when deciding whether they want to move to an area or not. The Met's crime mapping (http://maps.met.police.uk/) does not help things either - there is plenty of red and orange when SE14 is typed in.

Having lived for numerous years in some areas that some may describe as 'rough', my views of New Cross being a 'bit lively' on the nighttime differ from those people who had previously lived in some leafy suburb of Surrey. The reality seems to be that unless you are hanging around at 4am in some ill-lit back street, or are yourself engaged in some illicit activity, or have lost basic common-sense that must be employed when living in any major city, then dodgy-dealings may hopefully pass you by.