I AM in complete agreement with your editorial comment about the soft sentences given to vandals etc.

One of the main troubles today, is that we don't have the familiar sight of policemen patrolling the streets. Is it because they are apparently doing nothing in the eyes of the managementites who seem to run a lot of our public services today?

Milton in his sonnet on "His Blindness" wrote "They also serve who only stand and wait". When I was doing National Service we often had to do guard duty, and a lot of the time nothing happened when we patrolled the camp. But if anything did, then we were to call out the guard. And it is not to say that the police can be on every street corner, but one wonders whether if there were more of them about, the yob that threw the firework hand grenade through the pensioner's letterbox, might have been caught red-handed.

As for sentencing, I feel that there must be an end to the flashing of chequebooks and magistrates fares, and for the yobs and others to be given six of the best. The birch needs to be restored. It used to be applied in the Isle of Man, before some psychological fanatic got it abolished.

Philip H Haworth

Mornington Road

Bolton