FOR many years our newspaper, like many others, has carried a popular 'Across the Years' column featuring news from our pages from 25 to 125 years ago. It might be just as interesting to carry items which might feature on our pages many years in the future.

How about this from 75 years hence: 'Octogenarian Bill Smith is pictured having the first ride at Addingham's new skate park following the success of the long-running campaign to provide a much-needed facility for village youngsters'.

An exaggeration, perhaps, but the saga is beginning to feel as protracted as the seemingly interminable wrangle over the new national football stadium at Wembley. This week it is the turn of the police to throw a spoke in the wheels of the project.

The chosen site for the skate park is not overlooked by people's homes as the police have pointed out, but how can putting down tarmac transform the area into a magnet for anti-social behaviour? There are plenty of places in the village where young people can do things which we would rather they would refrain from, some much more hidden from view than the back of the Memorial Hall car park.

If youngsters are determined to behave anti-socially, they will find somewhere to do it. Let's face it, if they had to wait for the skate park to be built before indulging in sin most of them will have qualified for wings and harps before they get half-a-chance.

And as for the threat of child molesters, this problem can also happen anywhere in a village where children play. The children who use skateboards are more often than not older than the usual victims of sex offenders and can look after themselves. The same negative argument could be used for Silsden Road recreation field where villagers are planning to put in children's play equipment. It really is time this skate park project moved on.