Take marriage for example: While it is an accepted thing that the institution of marriage is the best way in which to bring up children, under the hoped-for control of both a mother and a father, what do we have? A situation where girls, little more than children themselves, seeking to escape parental control, and with Utopian ideas of an unrestricted life on their own with children, have merely to become pregnant to obtain a house, independence and all the benefits that go with it.

Couples living together out of wedlock can also get better levels of tax relief than the married; sometimes with benefits paid to two different addresses, accepted with no degree of conscience or embarrassment (dishonest, but who can blame them?) Yet a young couple seeking to do things in what some might call the 'old fashioned, respectable way' have little or no chance of obtaining a council home, and lose out tax wise on marrying. Neither in these days of uncertainty of employment and problems with the housing market, do they have much chance of buying a house, the only choice left being to rent in the private sector, usually run down areas, where most of the problems are.

It seems that the obvious way would be to ensure that young people wishing to marry should be among the first to be allocated good homes, rather than the last; otherwise our system seems geared only to reward the indolent, the irresponsible and, in some cases, the morally lax, which further perpetuates the problems from which we are suffering.

When if ever will the power brokers wake up and start to do the things most people know should be done for those of our younger generation who deserve it?

Because they after all are our future, and deserve all the help they can get. If not, in the words of the classic by Gibbons, our 'decline and fall' can only continue.

E A LUNDY, Beeston, Leeds.