OPENING up the Cellar Bar in Blackburn's King Street to teenage Goths and Moshers sounds like a good idea. Such groups of young people need somewhere to congregate on Saturday afternoons and the new meeting place has the advantage of being out of the elements and only a short distance from the town centre and Church Street.

During the past week we have had a lot of negative feedback from teenagers and their parents about our comments last Monday but we stand by our original view - backed by the shopping centre management and Chamber of Trade - that any group of young people blocking a street by sheer weight of numbers becomes intimidating to some shoppers because it is difficult to walk through. We did NOT suggest that Goths and Moshers were physically threatening or violent or cast slurs on their peaceful culture.

The crucial point is that Church Street has been redeveloped as a pedestrian boulevard where people can amble and pass the time of day.

But when numbers get so big that shoppers cannot get past, something has to be done about the obstruction.

Now that an innovative solution seems to have been found to this problem perhaps attention can been paid to the longer-standing problem of other teenagers congregating inside the shopping centre.

They also frequently need moving on.