THANKS to the attentions of thieves, a group of autistic children in Swindon are without specialist computer equipment they have been working with at Uplands School.

The loss is doubly traumatic because, quite apart from the fact that the equipment was needed to help stimulate them into making the very best of their condition, such children abhor and are often very distressed by change in their routines.

As if this were not bad enough, it is the third burglary at the school in as many months.

There is no point in beating our breasts and bemoaning the fact that a supposedly civilised society can produce such supremely selfish people it can, it does and it clearly has.

Nor is there any point in appealing to the thieves' better nature in the hope that they will return the stolen items, because if they had a better nature they would not have set foot on the premises in the first place.

All we can do is rally round as a community and make sure we communicate any scrap of information, however trivial it may seem, to the police.