Click through and you will find that:
i) The story is dated July 2009;
ii) The story is published in a tabloid comic masquerading as a newspaper, called "The Mail".
iii) The article states "The figures, compiled by the Tories, are considered the most accurate and up-to-date available."
(The "Tories" are the Conservative Party who were the Opposition at the time that the article was published, 3½ years ago.)
That, my friend, is why my sources are the relevant governments.
(Edit to correct typo.)
Yeah that was my point, except I was too lazy to expound on it. We have poor media sources that give us false or even hyperbolic information, and that gets spread word-of-mouth or whatever until someone somewhere tells a guy who isn't too lazy to look it up that the UK has "three times" the violent crime as Canada.
I do think those stats (the last link I posted, which has stats compiled from a UN data source for 2010-11) are interesting to look at.