IT IS no use the council changing the name of Blackburn's hell-hole Roman Road Estate in the hope of restoring its rock-bottom reputation.

Calling it "Fishmoor" instead will not wish away the nightmare of yobs making life a misery for the decent people living there. The real change that is needed is that of rooting out and throwing out the thug families causing the chaos there.

And what torture they are causing!

Tonight, we report that bus drivers are taking "emergency diversions" to avoid some places there - because otherwise they risk coming under a hail of stones and even robbery!

Nor is it just buses that are the targets of this terror. Only this month, we told of fire crews - sometimes being called out four and five times a night and even after midnight - being stoned by the gangs of out-of-control child thugs and arsonists running wild at Fishmoor. The place is already like a war zone. And now it is becoming a virtual no-go zone too.

It may be that the police are unhappy at this latest departure - they want the bus drivers to stick to their usual routes because they do not want to give the yobs the impression they have won.

And they claim that a "high-profile" operation is now under way against them on the estate. This is all very well, but what can they do with the under-age louts they catch beyond cautioning them or seeking curfew orders that will mean nothing to them or their feckless parents and would require continual supervision by the police to be effective?

Yes, let the police pour in a high-profile presence to Fishmoor - the decent people living there, by far the vast majority, deserve that level of response and perpetual maintenance of it. Let the council, too, rip down the vandalised, unwanted homes there and send in the new security guards they are introducing for problem estates.

But what is needed on top of these sticking-plaster tactics is radical and ruthless surgery - the removal of the problem families, the tearaway children and their could-not-care-less parents.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.