Staff wearing stab vests? This has to be a joke!

‘I could hardly believe my ears. Is this what Ashford has sunk to?

You may have noticed, if you visited County Square recently, that all the security staff and cleaners are wearing bright, new yellow garments.

I askedone as they were doing their cleaning round, what was their function.

“They’re stab vests,” they told me. “We’ve been issued with them to wear, just during school holidays.”

I could hardly believe my ears. Is this what Ashford has sunk to?

The cleaner told me that teenage boys cause almost daily trouble in the gents’ lavatory, where they gather in groups, graffiti the walls and doors, making obscene comments when they go there to clean.

■Whether or not

Ashford needs a new nightclub is open to question, but, if it does, I don’t believe the old

Downtown Diner building is the right place. For once I wholeheartedly agree with the official view regarding noise and probable vandalism.

Much as I dislike the hideous Panorama building, its inhabitants don’t deserve to have their slumbers disturbed.

■Oh dear, even yet more housing is under consideration. Call me a Nimby if you like, but the continual additional plans passing to an already overgrown and under-equipped town must surely add to our problems. The vastly increased population, with, probably, an increase in disaffected youths, is surely, a recipe for trouble.

■Coli■ Bullen’s diatribe on what he considers the increasing criminality in Britain went, I thought, a little too far. He wants more prisons, stiffer sentences and a reduction in legitimate protests. The only thing he left out was a return of the death sentence. For my part, I’d rather see a return to the stricter regime that we oldsters lived with at school. The way things are, it seems that even the youngest of children rule the roost with no fear of reasonable reprisal. I have a daughter who teaches primary kids who is regularly subjected to strings of obscenities from pupils and parents. The ‘punishment’ for such behaviour is ‘exclusion’ – which is exactly what they want.