HUGE increase in youth crime, what did you expect? Ninety per cent of youths are well-mannered, budding young citizens, products of controlling, proud parents.

But there are others that run amuck with the system. They do not fear the law, parents or teachers, knowing their rights but exercise none of their responsibilities.

Efforts to curb pockets of unacceptable abuse, the powers to be took away all discipline. Wrong.

Abolishing the cane in the schools, parents banned from smacking and courts handing out back of the hand slaps as a deterrent. Wrong.

Everyone understands the reasons but it has not worked, unfortunately they are now little thugs capable of inflicting pain and suffering. In larger cities, police are at their wits end trying to control disrespectable youths with criminal intent.

They prey on the old and terrorise families, with moral abandonment. Change our approach or suffer the consequences.

MEANDER Valley Councillor Tanya King’s assertion that the Meander Area Residents’ and Ratepayers’ Association (MARRA) is “very closely aligned with the Greens” is not true. Furthermore it’s insulting for her to say, “I’ve never seen anyone associated with those groups do anything to benefit the community”.

Cr King has clearly not spent much time in Meander. Her statement was a lame attempt to defend the process by a Prospect-centric council that saw the Meander School, a public asset, pass from community hands into those of an apostolic religious organisation. The residents and ratepayers, most of whom do not support Teen Challenge, have a right to be upset and to pursue all means to redress the injustice of the council’s decision.

CLIMATE change is real, it is happening right now. I know you are thinking that this is a lame old newspaper letter from a teenage girl but it is serious; the world is in trouble right now.

William Hague has quoted “We have to face the reality of climate change. It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today”. Get on your computer/laptop, tablet, phone whatever, go into YouTube and type “Before the flood!” it goes for an hour-and-a-half.

Yes, that is a long time but if it could change 23 students’ minds it should hopefully change yours. The fossil fuels of Australia and the rest of the world are damaging our ecosystem as you're reading this article. Not described enough?

Well, the heat from the fossil fuels being burnt is floating in the air all the way to all of the colder places on Earth like Antarctica. For instance over the past five years half of the ice has melted.

YOUR correspondent, H.Wilkinson, of Exeter, asks for further examples of abuse of the English language.

Well, yes, I can think of some, and these are sometimes committed by The Examiner journalists. A common error is to use a past participle as past tense, as in "Bill Smith "swum" the English Channel."

Another is in the use of "loathe" (detest) and "loath" (unwilling) as though they had the same meaning. Perhaps our schools should bring back " parsing and analysis".