IN THE SAME newspaper that reports that a teenager is found handling stolen goods, another snatches an old lady's handbag from her hand, three 14-year-old girl children stab (yes, with a knife) another 14-year-old girl child, pensioners in Shakespeare Road are terrorised nightly by children and teenagers, and the list of crimes committed includes a car windscreen wantonly smashed and a charity shop wrecked and robbed, we can still get a writer in your paper who can say that "we used to call it kids being kids, but now it is known as juvenile nuisance" !

Well, as a kid being a kid, the worst I ever did was knock on doors and run away; I didn't smash car windscreens, terrorise old people, set fire to letter boxes, throw stones through peoples' windows, or any other of the crimes listed in our newspapers regularly as being committed by under-age children, who cannot of course be convicted, so get off scot-free.

Furthermore these children know that they will get off scot-free that's why they commit the crimes.

They know that society, which includes the police, teachers, clergy, parents, in fact anybody who is (or should be) in a position of authority, have chickened out of using that authority, and that "political correctness" rules.

"Political correctness" is no more than the fear of correcting or criticising anybody or anything.

We are doing no favours to our younger generation by not giving them any boundaries or rules and by allowing to grow up without a sense of shame.

Children need boundaries, they crave them in order to feel valued, and when they don't get them they have to do more and worse things to draw attention to themselves.

If their actions go unpunished, as they mostly do, and if any police presence or authority presence of every kind is withdrawn, as it mostly is these days, such children will grow up with no sense of guilt.

Society is becoming daily less safe for everybody and particularly for the frail, helpless and elderly.

Does anybody in authority care? I don't think so.

They might do something serious about it if they did, instead of being so limp-wristed and pathetic.

R M Anderson

Lancaster