IN today's fast moving world young people don't have easy lives.

Divorce rates are soaring and the disruption caused by broken marriages leaves its mark on a high percentage of children.

If parents are together and working the chances are they are away from home for longer hours than their own parents were. Children are pretty well left to fend for themselves - child care by mobile phone and text message might not be too far fetched a description of what happens in some households.

If parents are unemployed youngsters will face all kinds problems as the gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots' gets wider and wider.

At the same time truancy is becoming a bigger and bigger problem for schools facing staffing crises.

With this backdrop it is hardly surprising that the major scourges of drugs and crime are hitting our young people harder than ever before.

On TV we see video footage of boys and girls who have not even reached their teens holding up shops and driving stolen cars at high speed on motorways.

Vandalism of parks, the public transport system and our public buildings happens on a daily basis across East Lancashire and sadly the culprits are often young people with time on their hands but no constructive focus for their lives.

Many people are however trying to help our young by giving up their own time voluntarily to run youth clubs and the like.

How appalling then that a group of youngsters in an area like Huncoat have been left high and dry because the county council has decided the building that their youth club operated from was "unsuitable" after, they claim, just two visits from a Youth Service official in 11 years.

The young people and their parents have written to the Prime Minister saying: "At the youth club we play games and do competitions and it's great. It will be boring now. Please help us."

In many areas youth workers are struggling to work out how to coax young people into youth clubs, the value of which is widely recognised.

How shortsighted to kill a healthy one purely because of building problems. It is vital that it is allowed to continue.