RESPONDING to my earlier comments on the demise of the traditional British pub, Margo Carmichael-Grimshaw said my remark about "anti-social gangs marauding the town night and day" was a bit exaggerated (Letters, April 16).

We all speak as we find and it is academic what each person considers excessive or inconsequential, but, unfortunately, it is a regular occurrence that decent, ordinary folk are unavoidably obliged to endure anti-social behaviour.

The corridors of Blackburn's shopping precinct are a sad example, where the lone elderly are very much intimidated when confronted and jostled of gangs of six mooching about - enough to put the blight on any suggestion of promoting Blackburn as an ideal shopping centre.

The precinct manager explained that the quota was a limit of four - which does not say much for the security system or surveillance cameras.

Users of the town's library are also subjected to this anti-social behaviour - enough to prompt the necessity of notices requesting parents not to allow their children to play on the security detector rails.

Also, there is the nuisance caused by mobile phones and all-too-frequent disruptive commotion by belligerent gangs - to the extent that the harassed staff have to call the police to eject them.

This is no exaggeration. The 'silence' notice, once synonymous with the public library, would now be very much naive and obsolete.

J A MARSDEN, Scarborough Road, Blackburn.

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