What a state the country is in at the moment.

The economy, the trials and tribulations of the English football team, and so it goes on and on.

But what really gets my back up is the lack of both discipline amongst some of the younger generation and respect for people and their property as well.

All children are by no means the same and there are some lovely children about who are a credit to their parents.

However, some of their behaviour reflects basically on their homelife, how they are brought up and lack of education.

I too was by no means an angel when I was younger, but if I did wrong, I was disciplined by my parents and told if I did wrong again I would have been smacked.

This seems to have changed over recent years though and for the worse.

Children seem to hold all the cards today and parents are too frightened of them.

If they try to smack a child, all they get back is ‘I’ll report you to the social’.

What a complete and utter joke.

Due to no army involvement these days, ie, compulsory enlistment, the lack of respect for people and people’s property is not there.

This without a doubt should come back, or at least some sort of camp that youngsters have to go to learn a few simple basics in life. Or is this too simple?

I have good reason to point these out as on a regular basis I hear children’s language to one another in the street and gestures and some which I will not mention as they are a little disgusting to write about.

Mocking people with burkhas over their eyes to foreign families and throwing stones at them is also high on some youths agenda.

Why can’t they accept people from different backgrounds? Does it scare them?

Is this a way youths block things out when something different comes along? I suppose it is, so they lash out.

Over the years now, I have stood up and been counted over these tearaways and sometimes I have stooped to their level aswell with my language, but it was only to speak to them in a way they understood.

This was wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right.

If only parents corrected them more instead of throwing them out on the streets until late at night and were watching what they were getting up to and where would be a very big start (and people like me needn’t correct them).

The street in which I live in at one time used to be a lovely road.

Everyone got on with on another, helped one another and so on.

Unless things start to improve in the future, I can only see things going from bad to worse and where anarchy rules, and because of lack of proper laws, even the police will be powerless.

I hate to think what some of these children will turn out like as they get older.

You might think this is a whinge, but it goes on in many streets around the country and the council estates are getting better than some private ones.

What a poor state of society today.

No respect, no manners and not bothered either.

Name and address supplied, Colley Gate