IN Liverpool an 11-year-old boy was shot and killed by a boy scarcely older than himself.

Recently in Bacup a young couple were violently attacked and left unconscious. One later died.

And recently, too, a man was stabbed to death in Darwen.

And Gary Newlove, a father who went outside to confront a gang of youths in Warrington, was left bleeding to death on the doorstep.

Seventeen children have been killed in London this year alone.

Yet out of curiosity I logged on to the Home Office Official Web Site and the first headline I saw read "Your chances of becoming a victim of crime are the lowest they have been for 25 years. Violent attacks are on the decline".

And if you believe that you will believe that Elvis is alive.

In fact statistics show that in the last 10 years violent crime has doubled and here in Lancashire it is up 140 per cent.

The number of people carrying guns and knives is frightening and as the Chief Constable of Cheshire said recently anti-social behaviour in Britain is out of control.

The penalty for carrying a knife or a gun should be draconian so as to deter people from carrying them but with our prisons full to bursting they know their chance of being sent to prison for possession of a knife or gun is minimal.

And that explains why a recent poll showed that half of those people who took part in it feel more frightened than they did a ten years ago.

I accept there are no immediate easy answers to these problems but such utter complacency from the Home Office in the face of reality I find offensive.

COUNCILLOR DAVID PEARSON, Roe Lee ward, Blackburn.