It is a sorry state of affairs when an organisation working to keep youngsters away from crime and steer them into positive pursuits has to go cap in hand to the Home Secretary to help it stay in business because its local authority cannot afford to. Yet that is the situation in which the YMCA finds itself over its youth clubs at Idle and various other projects it runs in other parts of the district.

The argument it is putting forward to Jack Straw is a sound one. It points out that work done to prevent youngsters ending up in expensive care or custody is in line with national priorities.

The club runs sessions on Monday to Thursday nights, some of them attracting as many as 60 young people. It keeps them off the street and offers them worthwhile activities. If the clubs have to close because of cuts in Council funding, those children will be at a loose end. As different suburbs and villages around Bradford have discovered only too well, children at a loose end can sometimes make a nuisance of themselves. And some of them can move on from mere mischief to petty crime.

The YMCA's project teaching parenting skills is also surely one which must have its crime-prevention merits recognised by Mr Straw. Inadequate parenting is recognised as being to blame for many juvenile problems.

We wish City Bradford YMCA well in its bid for a sympathetic hearing from the Home Secretary and hope that he can be persuaded of the merits of projects that deserve to be kept in business.

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