Jean Calder believes that the cause of young people's delinquency is a breakdown in their family backgrounds but the causes are much deeper because thugs can just as easily come from well-heeled, loving, home environments.

A more convincing reason is that these inward-looking, selfish delinquents have somehow managed to lose any sense of belonging to a community.

They must never have encountered situations where issues relating to their wider world-wide human family are ever discussed. Perhaps nothing is ever discussed.

This hypothesis provides a hope that their deep cancer of selfishness can eventually be overcome.

We need to replace society's previous religious glue fables by much greater efforts in schools to emphasise our common heritage - the down-to-earth struggle to use our brains in exploring and harnessing nature, not wrecking it.

-Malcolm Everett, Brighton