How saddened I was to read your headline 'Mini menaces in crackdown.' Why is there such a driven desire to demonise the youth of today? Do people forget that they once were young?
Like the impatient driver behind the learner driver, we must stop and remember that we too have been there and it was not always a comfortable place to be.
All too often we complain that young people are sitting on their backsides playing computer games, growing obese and not enjoying taking those all too important risks that will equip them in life.
Yet, here you are? Who are you? Now deciding that all young people who hang out are 'menaces' giving the innocent youths of our town a curfew...just when I thought that was for the criminal justice to decide.
I wish that those who had decided upon these draconian measures had been at Lydney Town Hall on Sunday February 21 to see such a talented group of youth performing to a packed audience; thank goodness for Lydney School of Music for their belief in tomorrow's generation,.
I remember when we laughed at the saying 'children should be seen and not heard,' now it appears that we want our children to be invisible.
If we want our children to 'engage' to 'own' their tomorrow and be responsible adults we need to let them out, to be free and not only do we need to trust them; they need to trust us.
– Mel Smith (mother of three), Lydney.