We re coming to the season when unaccountable feral youngsters decide they can break the law at will in the knowledge that the police will do little, if anything, about it. We had one of this year s first sorry examples at the weekend. A large group of yo

We're coming to the season when unaccountable feral youngsters decide they can break the law at will in the knowledge that the police will do little, if anything, about it.

We had one of this year's first sorry examples at the weekend.

A large group of young twerps demonstrated in grunts and words of one syllable their complete disinterest in the damage their trespassing may have caused to a farmer's land.

And the same piece of TV news footage showed police monitoring the situation, talking to the knuckle dragging trespassers as they were leaving, but doing nothing to protect the landowner from the invasion.

This happened on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, near Thetford; but let's not forget that Fenland is ideal for such activities and with the warmer weather now here we should not be surprised if our landowners are subjected to similar acts of wanton trespass and vandalism. After all, it has happened here before.

I refer, as you will have guessed, to raves - those strangely loud and offensive events in which young people try to prove to the rest of the world (and probably to themselves) that they don't need to be part of the establishment to have good time activities, except that they 'plunder' an expensive chunk of that establishment to do it.

I am aware that the police are trying to identify and prosecute some of those who surrounded and sat on a police car. But they should do more than get angry because these miscreants turned their anger on the officers, accusing them of interfering.

The fact is the police did not interfere anywhere near enough. There should have been enough of them there to sort out the problem as soon as it was reported, thus minimising damage to the farmer's land. This limp, laissez-faire approach will only encourage these outsiders - and put our already beleaguered farmers at even more risk.

I note that 2006 was a record year for the sale of ties. More ties were sold in the UK last year than for many years.

I know this is a completely useless statistic, but it struck me as odd and out of kilter with sartorial trends.

If we are all buying so many ties why is it that fewer and fewer of us are wearing them and more and more of us look so scruffy?