I think not, because the unruly behaviour of children and young teenagers is quite high on the list of worries in Britain at the moment.

Only last week home secretary Jacqui Smith (that's the one who daren't go out at night except to buy a kebab) told us most 13-year-olds now drink alcohol.

The empowerment of human beings from the ages of 10 to 16 has probably been the biggest single change in society in this country in my lifetime.

It has had a huge effect on all walks of life and the cost to the national purse must have been astronomical.

Forty years ago the only way someone under 16 would have had any money at all was from something like a paper round or, if they were lucky with their parents, pocket money.

I can remember saving for months on end to reach the £2 needed to buy a new engine for my train set. It was a modern-looking (in those days) diesel. The one I really wanted, having seen it in the window of a shop in Cambridge, was a replica steam engine, but it was £3/15s and there was no hope on earth of getting that sort of money.

Consequently, I was never a prey to advertising, because my spending power didn't make it worthwhile.

If parents think they have done their children a favour by financing the almost unlimited means which many now seem to enjoy, they should look at the phenomenons of alcopops and violent computer games and think again.

Of course, you cannot protect children from the real world.

They have to grow up and the only way they do so is by encountering reality, however harsh it may be.

But it is better for them to encounter these things on their terms and when they want to, rather than having them imposed on them for commercial reasons.

Stoning a passing vehicle is perhaps not a new activity.

I daresay illiterate urchins in Victorian times may have hurled a rock at a stagecoach sometimes, but it would be nice to think we had progressed a little since then.

I noticed a few months ago the town council were going to look into methods of dealing with the numbers of under tens being found outside after 10pm.

It conjures up the image of feral children roaming the estates of Haverhill during the dark hours like something out of a mixture of Dracula and Lord Of The Flies.

That is obviously ludicrous, and one would think the problem was fairly limited, but why are there any under tens out at that time of night?

Saying 'no' to children is always a problematic area, even within relationships, let alone within society.

Broken marriages don't help, because parents then feel even more compelled to accede to requests for fear of being compared unfavourably with their ex.

Parenting skills are traditionally picked up in the home, but that may no longer be a good role model, so perhaps it is time for more parenting classes.

It's pretty hopeless trying to mould a ten-year-old in the basics of life.