REGARDING the Chapelfields riots, I have also noticed that bus shelters along Blossom Street are usually filled with teenagers with nowhere to go on an evening.

I saw a different side of life when I looked at the history of an uncle in Doncaster half a century ago. Thorne Colliery had built the houses for the coal miners, but also ran the entire show. There were miners' welfare sports clubs, tombola, tea parties, brass bands, the lot.

It's a bit sad that three generations later they got Maggie Thatcher and mass starvation.

Today we are overloaded with outreach workers and co-ordinators but it seems to be left to the Salvation Army to pick up the pieces of the forgotten generations.

Allan Denney,

Catesby House,

Holgate Road,

York.

Updated: 11:03 Wednesday, October 27, 2004