WHENEVER it occurs, bullying is a nasty and serious business. It can traumatise victims -- making their lives a misery, putting them in terror of going to school and jeopardising their education and lifetime opportunities.

It can also make life hell for parents as they suffer days of worry and frustration.

But today we see this menace taking a sinister new twist -- as the mobile phone is employed to deliver terrifying text messages, including death threats, to a teenage schoolgirl in the Ribble Valley.

After a six-month barrage of hate messages received on her mobile, 15-year-old Ribble Valley pupil Nicola Wilson is now being kept off school by her father.

But if this new form of bullying is no less real and frightening for its victims, the crucial question is: what can be done to stamp it out? -- above all, when it is reported today that it is on the increase.

It may be that it is an inevitable, unwelcome adjunct to the explosion of communications and information technology, but as the ugly phenomenon raises its head -- not just in direct text messages , but also in ones sent via internet websites to mobiles -- it is clear that a firm and swift responses are required.

To begin with, local education authorities must outlaw it in their anti-bullying codes and guidance to teachers . And parents, like Nicola's father, must fully avail themselves of the complaints procedures operated by LEAs and schools.

Similarly, they must also make full use of the services which we see that the mobile network operators have to combat malicious calls, including that of changing their numbers free of charge and reporting the problem to the police.

But the truest deterrent, surely, must be the tracing and positive punishment of offenders. And since people using the internet to send text messages to mobiles are warned that they can be traced and prosecuted for sending malicious messages, it is time technology was employed to add this sort of safeguard to the entire system.