THE ink had hardly had time to dry on last week's comment column when the kiddiwinks from hell were at it again on the railways.

In the latest attempts to brighten up their day, these mini-nutters sabotaged points at Daisyfield in Blackburn, placed a large wooden cable drum on the track at Gannow Junction in Burnley and fired an air rifle at a passenger train as it sped past the Smallshaw Industrial Estate.

The mind boggles at the ingenuity - does that word REALLY apply here? - of placing a tennis ball between points to cause a malfunction. Where do youngsters pick up these lessons in terrorism? Is there a manual being furtively smuggled round junior schools? If only they devoted as much time and energy to learning something useful.

It would appear that visits to schools and repeated warnings in the media are having no effect whatsoever. Equally futile is the grim prophecy from British Transport Police that it is only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed

This problem is not local, of course. There was a fatal sequel to a similar act of criminal lunacy on a railway line in Scotland not all that long ago and authorities throughout Britain live in fearful anticipation, especially during school holidays.

So what do we do about it once we accept, as indeed we surely must, that appealing to reason has absolutely no effect on these pocket urban guerillas. They are criminals and must be treated as such. I am tired of reading reports which include words similar to these:

'Sergeant Thomas added that the 14 juveniles (who had earlier been reported for trespassing on the railway line at Rosegrove) would be talked to with their parents and warned that maximum sentence for endangering life on the railways is life imprisonment.'

The pivotal word in that paragraph is 'warned.' How many warnings are we supposed to dish out? How many ears do those words go into and exit simultaneously, having had nothing remotely approaching a brain to impede their progress?

There have always been 'difficult' children but the anarchy endemic in our young people is rapidly approaching a frightening level. Violence has become the norm. So chucking bricks at trains, and placing obstacles on the line to cause a derailment, is viewed as a 'fun pastime.'

One can only assume that the parents of these kids, if they are still around that is, have totally abdicated their responsibilities. So looking for help in that direction is possibly as much a lost cause as appealing to the sense of those responsible for the attacks.

So, in the absence of corporal punishment, lock 'em up and throw away the key. For years. There is no place in a civilised society for people, of whatever age, who deliberately set out to kill and maim.

If you think that is going a little OTT, think of this. The next time a train is wrecked or a brick smashes through a window, IT COULD BE YOU HOO!!!

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