AFTER reading your headlines (LET January 20), I feel that I must write to offer my support to the 'gangs' of moshers and goths who congregate on Church Street.

To say that shoppers feel intimidated by them is a slur on their characters. Who can honestly say that they have never felt intimated by gangs of kids at their corner shop?

Groups of teenagers are always intimidating, wherever they hang around. Do the other two gangs that hang around the town centre intimidate no-one?

I am the mother of two teenage moshers and to label them a nuisance is an insult to their intelligence. My two children are highly intelligent, have excellent manners and would never intimidate anybody, let alone pensioners.

The majority of my children's 'mosher' friends do not hang around street corners at night to meet their friends as do the 'townies' and I regularly have a crowd of them at my house. They are decent, polite, respectable young people.

Give them a chance, smile at them, talk to them. They do not bite. They are normal kids having a normal teenage life.

GILLIAN COYNE (Mrs), Walton Crescent, Blackburn.