I read with growing annoyance about the decision to temporarily close the town hall in Castletown in the lunch hour due to anti-social behaviour from some school children, which took up time from both staff and police.

So, yet again, children are in charge, are they?

They will be laughing themselves silly that they have managed to disrupt the lives of others through their bad behaviour and that the adults answer is to shut up shop and hope they go away,thus depriving the taxpaying public who pay for the town hall of access to facilities which they may need to go to during their lunch hour from work.

When are we going to act sensibly and swiftly to counter this culture of anti social behaviour?

Surely banning schoolchildren from the town hall in the lunch hour, rather than all the general public, is a reasonable solution?

Or would that be ‘against their human rights and exclusionary’ in the woke world?

Frankly,I am disgusted at the lack of backbone shown by the powers that be in the town hall and more so,the police.

What about the school itself? Surely they are involved when the behaviour of their pupils outside of the school?

And lastly, where are the parents in all of this?

I would be ashamed if a child of mine was identified as causing a nuisance in a public place, but it seems that shame is a rare commodity these days, which might explain the increase in antisocial behaviour.

One thing I do know is that if it is not stamped out, it will escalate to worse behaviour.

So why can’t a policeman be around and about during the lunch hour and,if trouble does break out,

Antisocial Behaviour Orders should be issued to those causing trouble, not hiding behind closed doors which allows these nasty, badly behaved pupils to win.

Also,they will just move on to somewhere else to cause trouble, so what will happen then?

Why not just shut Castletown completely during the time these feral children are roaming the streets?

It’s ridiculous that they can hold a public institution to ransom and our acceptance of this needs to stop.

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This letter was first published in the Isle of Man Examiner of March 7.