CONGRATULATIONS on your front page on Monday ("Give us hope").

At last we have media recognition that not only is it necessary to deal very severely with the bad lads and lasses who are causing so much misery today but that they are actually the symptoms of the fact that something is very seriously and fundamentally wrong with the society we live in.

Punishing them, though very necessary in my view, is like treating only the symptoms of a disease and will not do any lasting good unless it is accompanied by a very thorough and searching investigation into the malaise that besets us all and, hopefully, what we can do about it.

But who could do it? A church person, a Government minister, a social scientist, a judge, a police officer, a teacher? No, not any one of them but maybe all the lot, led and, hopefully, held together by a charismatic, non-political, non-commercial, impartial genius.

I am tempted to say, "Come back Lord Baden Powell, we need you" but, of course, that isn't an answer.

Maybe it sounds like pie in the sky but I just hope for all our sakes and particularly for the younger and future generations that some leaders from all walks of life can respond, get together and find the way to sort us out.

David Leckenby,

Fenwicks Lane,

Fulford,

York.

Updated: 09:18 Thursday, October 21, 2004