WE ARE writing in response to the pensioner who wrote in last week's Journal asking "Why don't the good stop the thugs?"

It is suggested that we should get interested in sport. I am not interested in sport and neither are a lot of my friends. All we ask for is somewhere to go where we can have some fun and socialise with our friends. But this is obviously too much to ask.

Yet there is always someone complaining about the noise we make etc. As for the section saying we beat and terrorise old people, this is completely unfair. We are not terrorising anyone, if anything we are the ones being victimised. Not one night goes by without someone complaining, throwing abuse at us, or phoning the police.

Isn't it about time the public blamed themselves instead of us? There are plenty empty properties in Atherton, so why can't one of them be made in to a youth club for us?

Also, as teenagers how are we meant to control the thugs in the area. It is not our responsibility. If people stopped wasting police time by complaining about us , maybe there'd be more chance for the real thugs to be sorted out.

It is the police who are responsible for controlling the thugs not us. It is about time everyone stopped blaming us teenagers for everything and looked at the police force.

All this comes down to boredom. Give us somewhere to go and you'll be happy and so will we, if that means anything to you.

Atherton teenagers

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.