IT is with total disgust that I write this letter.

The cause of my nausea is the act of the theft of the bronze plaques which commemorate the war dead of Farnworth.

I must confess I do not know what the solution is to such a supreme act of disrespect. No punishment or help seems effective these days when it is fashionable to be rude and selfish, or risk being considered abnormal!

There are those who believe that the rebirth of a National Service programme would help to solve the problematic elements who dishonour the slain of the First and Second World Wars.

However, it is difficult to envisage how such a concept would be sustained without the revenue of an empire. This is just as well to those who hold that these elements are not fit to wear the uniform of a British service person.

No doubt some middle class do-gooders can concoct very persuasive reasons why the vandal perpetrates perversity upon the dead of the wars.

Such reasons usually have their origins in early childhood, like the wrong kind of nappies worn, or toast not cut into soldiers for the little darling to dip into his eggy-weggy.

Whatever reasons given to mitigate the acts of the devout deviant, there are those of us who are convinced that no mealy-mouthed explanation will do! Some of us will never fall for the high-blown verbiage or garbage as one could call it.

With all of my being, I wish that the children of our land would be taught about Winston Churchill. I wish that they would learn by heart his heroic war-time speeches, just as they are taught and learn about Shakespeare.

Churchill saved the world and embodied the courage and determination of our people.

Perhaps if the young were to learn about Churchill and of the sufferings endured by the older generations, then there could be a chance that the defacing of war cemeteries and the robbing of bronze plaques will exist no more. Gone will be the idiot who tramples upon the graves of heroes, gone will be the grotesque who weighs-in the stolen metals which bear the names of those who sacrificed themselves.

There would be a future respecting forever the golden identities that stood to be counted in the years when justice, truth and our unique character as a nation hung very much in the balance!

Gerald A Groves

Nevis Grove

Astley Bridge

Bolton