Photo by Danny Carlone

At a BBQ this past weekend, a friend asked me about this new website. Isn’t it supposed to be a travel site? Why so much crime and weird shit? There are more than enough straightforward travel sites out there, I said. From household-name resources to bottom-feeding bloggers, it’s a crowded field packed with cross-pollination, cannibalization and largely uninspired cheerleading for Travel with a capital-T.

Yes, travel is meant to be a positive experience. Travel should inspire, educate and inform. Etc and so forth. But when we fail to consider a country’s underbelly, we’re either being ignorant or arrogant. Like most travelers, I endeavor to get a handle on the countries I plan to visit. For me, rah-rah-rah guidebooks and starry-eyed blog posts aren’t enough. I need to see citizens not just at their best — when many are quite naturally looking to lighten my wallet — but also at their worst. Before I go somewhere new, I want to know: Is this a drunken-violence kind of place? Is it a hidden-gun culture? How do they raise their children — like pampered little poofs or enslaved mini-adults chained to sewing machines, or somewhere in between? Is it rapey?

Here’s the perfect example of a small news story that offers a glimpse into a country’s state of mind. No, it’s not a perfect snapshot, but it says something about England’s youth culture. In short, they’re a drunken fucking mess.

Children should take part in first aid classes at the age of 11 so they can look after friends who collapse while drinking, it was claimed today. Some have been forced to cope with friends being heavily sick, getting injured or lying unconscious, according to a poll of 2,500 youngsters for the British Red Cross.

One in seven children aged 11 to 16 have witnessed an emergency due to drunkenness, with one in 10 dealing with sickness, injury or unconsciousness, including situations after drunken fights…

More than one in three (36 per cent) 14 to 16-year-olds said they get drunk most weekends, consuming an average of 11 units of alcohol – equivalent to almost a bottle of wine or eight bottles of alcopop at 5 per cent.

The poll was released to mark the new British Red Cross campaign, ‘Life. Live it’, which encourages young people to learn life-saving first aid skills.

Chris Sorek, chief executive of the charity Drinkaware, said: ‘These findings reinforce our knowledge that drinking to excess puts young people at risk.

‘This risk is heightened if they are drinking unsupervised in the company of peers who don’t feel equipped to deal with alcohol-fuelled emergencies.’

First off, when I was a teenager, we called it “drinking.” As soon as I learned to drive, I was a binge-driver. As soon as a girlfriend let me, I was a binge-fucker. Everything is a binge when you’re a teenager. But that’s besides the point.

The takeaway for travelers: In some countries, 11-year-olds try to pick your pocket and sell you trinkets. In the U.K., they’re running wild on alcopops. If you’re planning to visit England (et al) for the first time, your guidebook already told you about Big Ben, the Tate Modern and the London Eye. It hasn’t warned you about the packs of tweens who can’t handle their drink — and that’s something worth knowing.