IT’S always puzzled, and worried me, to see just how different youngsters can be even though they come from the same parts of the same towns and been taught at the same schools.

At the weekend we saw lots of pictures of smiling teenagers from all over East Lancashire who had put themselves out to raise cash for Children in Need.

They’d used their imagination, and clearly had good fun, coaxing the rest of us to part with money so that all kinds of deserving causes could benefit.

I know a lot of older folk were involved in their workplaces too but judging by the pictorial evidence it’s fair to say most of the efforts were spearheaded by people who have yet to reach their thirtieth birthday.

At the same time we had the annual awards ceremony organised by the Blackburn-based but nationally known THOMAS charity.

The ceremony gives public recognition to a number of youngsters who have pulled themselves up, often from the desperate depths of real drug or alcohol problems, to lead fulfilling lives and even help others who are now where they were. Both the above are inspiring examples of achievement.

Then, the same day, we see the upset of a primary school head because his pupils’ vegetable garden and greenhouse has been trashed, apparently by a gang of youths who have been spending their evenings carrying out acts of vandalism in the area.

The Feniscowles area of Blackburn, where this happened, is a long way from being one of East Lancashire’s deprived areas and yet, like so many such places, there is plenty of evidence of pointless damage to be seen.

The only evenings when property, gardens and community facilities seem to escape the attention and destructive urges of gangs of aimless teenagers is when the weather is too wet and windy for them to stay out.

Which leads me to wonder if those parents who find their children at home when it’s raining ever stop to ask themselves what they actually do after dark when they are roaming feral on the streets.

But then again perhaps that’s a silly question.

If they did devote any time and interest at all to that thought there wouldn’t be a problem.

Because if they really cared the likelihood is that their children would already be doing something constructive and positively achieving rather than behaving like the sort of yobs we in Britain seem to producing in ever-greater numbers.