MAY I add to Andy Mullen's sense of disbelief (Bolton Evening News Letters, January 15), on Fred Shawcross's article.

He cites "Tom Jones' song Delilah against So Solid Crew".

The big difference between the two is when Delilah was sung it was in an era when people possessed more common sense, knowing it was just words. Today the younger believe virtually anything they see and hear. So Solid Crew have promoted truancy and guns, both are now popular.

There were probably more guns around in the 1950s and 60sm, but owned by people with a greater sense of right and wrong, guns did not change, people have. These days people, mostly the young, follow like sheep, whatever a celebrity does must be okay.

I'm often told by youngsters "it's fashion" or "you live in the past". Fashion once meant clothes, but if a celeb digs up the past it is okay. I've seen children shunned for not wearing the right clothes, girls refusing dates because the boy wore the wrong shoes. Our national game of football is now called soccer, no doubt to avoid confusion with American Football, which bears no resemblance yet fits in with this manic obsession to copy anything American "it's fashion".

Even the laws were changed to protect the guilty and punish the victim for defending themselves. The do-gooders won the battle to end discipline, respect, morals and punishment, so crime escalated, the criminal element grew and they now imposed punishment, pain, and violence as no one could touch them.

The young are now conditioned to follow "it's fashion". At least we pro-punishment brigade now know punishment works, the criminals have proved it works for them. Bolton Evening News, Friday, January 17 reviewed a playstation game "the challenges are more risque than usual, pick up prostitutes, ferry them to their hotel, help drunks collect tin cans, smash up rival hotdog stands." The game -- it is a BMX bike game, I call that disbelief. What parent would think a BMX game contained such material?

Geoff Pollitt

Towers Avenue

Bolton