I DON'T entirely agree with Ron O'Keeffe "TV to blame for yobbish behaviour" (Letters, October 8).

I find it hard to comprehend that the kids who promote todays drug and gun culture would be the sort to sit down and watch programs like Corrie and Emmerdale.

I also recall growing up in the fifties and watching on TV, and at the cinema, western films where cowboys were getting scalped and Indians shot by the dozen.

There were even more violent gangster films staring Edward G Robinson and Humphrey Bogart, in which people ran illegal booze trading, and gunned down anyone who crossed them.

I believe the big change in crime in Britain came in the mid sixties when the government abolished the death penalty.

It later took corporal punishment away from schools. they also made our police force take a very softly softly approach to criminals, and now even parents aren't allowed to smack their children.

The kids know they can get away with anything, and they don't miss a trick.

Yes, TV could do better, and so could some parents, but the real culprits for today's breakdown in law and order are the successive soft' governments we have had in power since the mid 1960s.

ALEC PRICE, Chapel StreetBrinscall.