SIR Al Aynsley-Green, Children’s Commissioner for England, is so typical of those unelected and overpaid officials who do not live in the real world and are untouched by the kind of problems about which they preach to the rest of us (“How about helping the young in our country” Mailbag February 28).

We would all agree that Mosquitos, all-night curfews and no-go areas are not ideal solutions to the problems which face our young people.

However, most of us live in a world in which problems are here and now and cannot wait for the ideal solutions to which he refers.

He proposes more youth clubs, more police on the beat; so obvious. “If young people cause trouble let the police deal with them.” What naivety!

The police do not, or cannot, deal with them or there would not be the scale of concern that there now is.

In the 60s I produced a thesis on recreational facilities in Huddersfield, at the time the best or near best in the country. But all that was destroyed. It now grieves me, and I am sure many, many others to see, all over, groups of teenagers assembled together in the cold and wet because they have nowhere secure to “be with their mates”.

Our country treats its young people very badly, in its lack of provision of youth services, in the “culture” we present to them, in our lack of discipline and guidance, in its glorification of all that is seamy and unseemly in the arts and the media.

Let Sir Al put forward positive proposals, with demands from local and national government for the necessary finance, instead of pontificating.

Let him start to change the atmosphere to one in which boys and girls, teenagers and young people are respected and valued.

Then we will listen.

T Howard Firth

Salendine Nook