FORGET the season of goodwill. For some low-life around the area, Christmas is a time for ill will to all men --#151; especially anybody elderly, vulnerable or bearing cash.

Radcliffe Rotary Club's Santa's Sleigh is stoned in Radcliffe, and Rotary's festive takings in Tyldesley are stolen at gunpoint.

A 92-year-old Bury woman dies a week after thieves burgle her home, and a disabled grandmother returns home from her brother's funeral to find her home ransacked and presents stolen.

It doesn't take Three Wise Men to work out why the scum who make a "living" out of taking other's property have a beano at Christmas. All the present-buying and visible cash mean that most of us have goods worth stealing.

It's also a time when we feel more generous to others, less prepared to believe that some people are simply evil and will not even recognise the damage that they so casually cause to their victims.

Sadly, the only answer to is be on our guard against crime, especially at Christmas. Secure our homes when we're out, ensure we have valuables safe when we're shopping, and be aware of the possibility of crime under most circumstances.

It feels a much harder concept to accept when we're generally feeling kinder to our fellow man, but it is, unfortunately, necessary at crime-ridden Christmas.

The only way that society itself can fight back properly is to press for realistic sentencing for such professionally uncaring thugs.

And to give them a penal "present" to deter them from ever blighting people's lives again.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.