Glasgow "goths and neds"

I belong to Glasgow ( photos) - 27 Nov 2007 - NZ Herald: Travel News and Information from New Zealand and around the World

A New Zealand reporter gets an interesting view of Glasgow and local divisions from talking to local teens:

The younger folk, teens still at school and wishing they weren't, loiter about on the sidewalks down by the River Clyde. There are two distinct groups; the neds (non-educated delinquents) and emo-following goths.

A goth, explains Fiona, 16, wears skinny-legged black jeans, T-shirts of bright colours and heavy black boots. Hair must be dyed jet black, bleached blonde or coloured pink. The neds have short undyed hair, wear baggy, low-slung jeans, hoodies and sports shoes. Neds are apparently doomed to trades whereas goths will likely attend Glasgow University when they finish school. These smoking, swearing youths are the city's future engineers, doctors and economists.

Stately George Square, in the city's heart, is another loitering place for goths and neds. It's fronted by the grandiose City Chambers built - no expense spared - in 1880, in the days when Glasgow was the trading, shipbuilding and textile hub of the Empire. ...

The riverside goths say architecture is one of the things they love about their city, along with its cheerful accommodation of drinking and carousing. Chances are, in a decade, these dishevelled youths will have finished university and will be designing more impress-ive examples of Glas-wegian engineering and the neds will be muscling-up on build-ing sites rather than slouching about in hoodies.