I READ with interest, Peter Bates letter about the ill discipline of youngsters nowadays.

Although I don't agree with Peter Bates on many of the issues he writes about, I feel that he has a valid point.

However, just to blame young people would be quite wrong. We have to blame society as a whole, and, as Peter Bates mentioned in his letter, parents are equally, if not more to blame, for the unruly behaviour of school children.

You only have to look at some of the parents and grandparents who pick their children up after school, to see the mentality that they aspire to.

Many of them are festooned with what can only be described as the contents of the Iron and Bronze age, that glisten and glint as they hang and swing from gaping wounds, that they've had purposely pierced in their bodies.

And many of them speak in a language which could be best described as a mix of Pidgin English, with Anglo Saxon overtones.

They then set off home, dropping litter like pebbles, in a re-enactment of the Hansel and Gretel fairytale, so as, I would imagine, that they can find their way back the next day.

What chance do we have of instilling any discipline, when we have the infantile leading the infants!

A KING

Park Lane, Swindon