THREE meals a day, free TV, no rates, no heating or electric accounts, laundry all done for you, and no bills at the end of the week!

Good heavens, I hear you ask, pray tell me where is this Shangri-La?

Is it an old people's retirement home, a holiday camp?

Oh, I am sorry to disappoint you folks, but this is prison!

If this is the punishment, it's no wonder it holds no fear! Why is it not the deterrent?

I bet most of the folk who go there have never had it so good.

We definitely need to rethink the entire system and we must start at the very bottom.

Those who are fit and well, but not working, could be employed doing proper hours on public duties, let's get our streets clean for one thing.

Teams could be formed and awarded an area.

Make them responsible for it, and then have competitions between the teams, if necessary, to give them some pride.

I think they'd stop folk dropping litter on the patch.

The same with the feral youngsters. Sort them into groups, take them far away into the hills, camping the hard way, and show them to look out for themselves and each other.

Maybe it could be a form of National Service, as I am sure lots of retired service people would really enjoy the task of setting these youngsters on the straight and narrow.

If you talk to 'wild' young people, you find they mainly suffer from boredom, feel angry, ignored and unloved, which leads to trouble, as there is a strong need in them to 'get even.' Every effort must be made to call a halt to those who have that 'no shame, no blame' attitude, those who don't give a damn and put two fingers up at the rest of the tax-paying population.

It won't be easy for we have gone a very, very long way down that road of anything goes.' It might be an idea to allow only those who actually pay their dues and demands to vote, then those taxpayers would have more say in how 'their' money is spent.

The welfare state was a great and worthy idea, but has now become a big sucking ulcer, being so abused as to make it an albatross round the neck of the nation and creating a section of a society that is the dependency class.

It's all very sad.