The 'knife crime capital of Europe' thing is largely an invention of the tabloids. There have been a lot of posession offences reported, but in large part this is because of more police stop&search. What's more interesting is the violent crime statistics, and the way the press gets its knife/murder capital of europe headlines by abusing them.
One way they do this is by picking numbers from different reports, and combining them in ways that don't make sense. For example: one of the Daily Record's 'murder capital' articles was based on taking the number of murders in the greater Glasgow area, and dividing it by the population of the central Glasgow area (590,000 instead of 1.2m!) and then feigning surprise when the murder rate seems to be double the European average.
They've also used changes in the very small numbers involved to generate headlines; a difference of 5 murders from one year to another doesn't sound much, but it can when the change is 25%! (straight to the front page)
While there is violence - particularly around the Old Firm football matches and when the nightclubs spill onto the streets - its not as different as the local rags would have you believe; their job is selling papers, and fearmongering does it.
I spent almost 2 years in Glasgow. I read the frightening headlines before coming there, the headlines don't match the reality. Most of the violence occurs in the East side of town and on weekends around certain clubs. Frankly, there are many times I feel less safe throughout San Francisco. Glasgow has much fewer panhandlers and your really have to try hard to get into the more dangerous parts of town, unlike SF where 2 or 3 blocks in the wrong direction can create a fairly uncomfortable situation.
There are considerable cultural differences between Glasgow and the rest of Scotland. For example, I grew up in rural Moray and had never encountered sectarianism until I moved to Edinburgh - and it's very tame here compared to the West.
Glasgow was also infamous for organised crime and territorial gang violence:
> but I never heard or saw anyone using a knife - I suspect that has changed.
Not disagreeing with you, but just wanted to say that Glasgow is the "knife crime capitol of Europe".
Here's a map showing knife crimes, and arrests. (Read the numbers for offences.) There are about 570,000 people in Glasgow.
(http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=201273553307...)