SEVEN DAYS WITH JOHN PHILPOTT

LIKE most towns and cities across Britain, Worcester now has a major problem with anti-social behaviour. Not so long ago, there were a handful of trouble spots. Now, it seems to have spread like an ugly stain right across our city and its outlying suburbs.

There is nothing new about disaffected youth. When I was young, mods pitted themselves against rockers. Before that, it was the teddy boys who struck fear and revulsion into society. And going even further back into the mists of time, big city razor gangs, such as Birmingham's notorious peaky-blinders, once terrorised whole neighbourhoods.

However, the issue today is one of scale. When Gene Vincent wannabes strutted into the coffee bar, you either avoided eye contact or drank up. True mods and rockers were always in the minority, and I daresay you could have travelled the length and breadth of Brum in 1910 and never seen a member of that infamous brotherhood whose trademark was a razor blade hidden in the peak of their cloth caps.

It's a question of numbers. Our estates are now full of aimless, unemployed and directionless youths. What little information they haphazardly absorbed at school has no real application in the modern working place - and as for a moral code, it is non-existent.

For years, the dogma of being instructed with any number of belief systems means they have actually ended up with no thoughts about anything. There is, therefore, no such concept as morality.

Thirty or 40 years ago, there was a whole range of job opportunities for school-leavers of every ability, from builder's labourer to bank manager. I was an innumerate fool lucky enough to get a job with words.

The relentless de-skilling that has taken place over the last few years has destroyed the apprenticeship system that was once at the core of our industrial life. And it is this catastrophe that is largely to blame for the epidemic of savage, mindless behaviour that we are now almost too de-sensitised to take in.

Apprenticeships will never return on the scale needed, so there is only one answer to the problem of so many young people with so much useless, misdirected energy - and that is some form of non-military national service.

The chattering classes will recoil, but just you wait and see. At some stage, this will become mainstream New Labour policy.

British waters invaded by the big bullies

AN invader from across the Atlantic is causing great concern to Worcestershire environmentalists. The unwanted visitor is the red signal crayfish and it would appear these ugly brutes are real bullies.

They're much bigger and more aggressive than our native varieties - well, they would be, they're American - and are threatening the survival of the British crayfish. So once again, the introduction of an alien species is wreaking havoc.

Have we learnt nothing from the grey squirrel, mink, zander and any number of other past disasters?

This is all very sad. As a boy, I used to catch crayfish by baiting a bottle with a piece of meat. Those not returned unharmed to the brook would be placed in my aquarium along with a few bullheads and sticklebacks I had also captured.

Those were the days. This summer, for the first time in years, I saw some "sticklers" in a park pond.

But who remembers bullheads, or perhaps knew this ugly little fish as a miller's thumb? I would like to think there are still plenty about - and haven't been elbowed out by some intrusive, giant American variety.

Take it away, Tony

A FAIR pension for a fair lifetime's work is not an unreasonable expectation in my book.

Money paid to the state in taxes provides income for people when they reach a certain age and can no longer endure the daily grind.

New Labour's now suggesting that we claim the state pension at the age of 67 instead of 65. I call that breach of contract.

Or, to put it another way, you pay money into a bank over a period of years. You decide to withdraw some cash, only to be told by some latter-day Captain Mainwaring that this will not be possible. Your savings have been spent on something or somebody else. New Labour? Hard Labour, more like.

Value of freedom

TALKING of nice little earners, the only reason why the Government is bulldozing the identity cards legislation through is because of its revenue potential.

There is no other reason.

As has been widely reported, the head of MI5, Stella Rimington, has rubbished the proposals. Of course, she probably got the idea after reading one of my columns.

However, it's not just the legalised extortion that bothers me. Everyone seems to be worried about identity fraud, yet the Government seems intent on pressing ahead. Then there's the good old British cock-up to contend with, too.

For this phenomenon is never far away. Ask that hapless woman, recently featured in the national press, who was sent to prison - by mistake - for exceeding the speed limit. And a few years ago, if you recall, I almost ended up in jail over a cycling offence.

So, dear reader, always remember this. A freedom lost will never, ever be regained.