ANYONE seeking to write a pantomime in many acts could do worse than draw on the saga of the drunken young yobs plaguing Oswaldtwistle.

The police force's 'success' in slashing juvenile incidents and nuisance on the street -- Ossy's Union Road main drag -- by 71 per cent seems only to have pushed the problem into the town's Rhyddings Park where cops told the kids was the only place they could only 'hang out.'

Residents claim the park has since become a no-go area for them -- with them risking torrents of abuse, physical attack and even the sight of teenage girls urinating in public as youngsters get drunk off potent alcopops

It would appear that the problem of youngsters causing a nuisance on the streets -- generating as many as 20 complaints a night to the police -- has been made no better by confining them to the park where, among recent ideas for dealing with it, was a Police v Yoof football match to raise funds for a 'youth shelter' that would have institutionalised the youngsters presence there even more -- a plan over which fed-up residents went so ballistic that already it has been scrapped.

What should be done next is the topic of a crunch meeting of Oswaldtwistle Area Council tomorrow -- after nearly 100 residents walked out of the last one claiming they were not allowed to put their views.

But, surely, the hand-wringing, the moving-on of the problem, the debate and the appeasement are all unnecessary -- when the law already has such laid-down powers to curtail breaches of the peace, criminal damage, indecent exposure, obscene language and threatening behaviour that all that is needed is a clutch of arrests, fines and restraining orders where necessary, with evidently-indifferent parents being made to pay and account for the whereabouts and conduct of their teenage offspring.

Similarly, we see the three councillors for Blackburn's Roe Lee area calling for action over young thugs running wild in the local park -- running across bowling greens during games there and churning up the grass and even stripping off in front of elderly players.

Why should these yobs feel free to do as they like -- when all that is needed is for the police to police the parks and make use of the raft of laws of deal with this loutish behaviour?

End the pantomime. Arrest them, prosecute and punish them -- hard. It should not need public meetings or pleas by councillors to unleash action already available.