I WAS so pleased to see the letter (December 20) from Jason Murphy, although I suspect that my age and the dinosuar remains in my cupboard would preclude me from becoming a special constable, the thought of invalid carriages zooming around with flashing blue lights did, however, bring a smile to my face.

Of course that's not the only mistake he made in his letter, as the result of attending various meetings entirely at my own expense (therefore not professional) I discovered that it is an unholy alliance of CPS and the youth offending team that decides in many cases whether to take the offender to court, and going by the local offenders who seem to carry on with their anti social activities regardless, the courts are not sufficiently involved.

Mr Murphy seems to think that those of us who make most noise are listened to and therefore have an undemocratic advantage.

The simple fact is that the main defect of the Neighbourhood Partnerships is that none of the ordinary people present are listened to unless they are whistling the officers' tune, and he would have been welcome to attend and stick his undemocratic oar in whenever he liked, for what good it would have done him.

The reason for writing letters to the Echo is not to cause alarm and despondency to people who already suffer the trauma of antisocial behaviour, but to try to wake up the officers, and councillors, who are ready to swallow or manufacture misleading statistics in order to win peanut grants from central Government when real money is what is really needed.

Mr Murphy states that Bristol receives three times the cash towards running their YOT than Southampton, statistically this could be a good reason for closing ours down before we get areas as badly run down as St Paul's, although in this respect I must confess to a certain tongue-in- cheek approach as it is some time since I have been to the St Paul's area of Bristol and in any case one never knows if the egg preceded the chicken.

ALAN KEBBELL, Southampton.