Ministry for Men? Lets start younger

But leaving it until men are men is too late. Much better would be to start much younger, with a Ministry for Teenage Boys. Now that would make some sense.

Sad to say, many teenage boys are a problem. And not just to their mothers.

There are, of course, a lot of lovely lads around. I'm sure yours are. But there's still no hiding from facts.

Teenage boys are more likely to be involved in crime, in car accidents, in under-age drinking. They are less likely to do well in exams and more likely to be unemployed. If they become fathers they, literally, leave girls holding the babies and most have no sense of responsibility. A new survey by the Social Research Council has just proved what too many teachers have know for years - that they are more likely to cause trouble in school and less likely to learn.

They are more likely to get into fights with each other. And - because their way of life isn't much fun, even for them - more likely to commit suicide.

Grim, isn't it?

As far as boys are concerned, we seem to have lost the plot.

Their nature hasn't changed. You can read writers from Jane Austen, Shakespeare, back to the Greeks and the Romans, bemoaning the problems of young men. But at least previous generations had ways of dealing with them.

Earlier societies needed a steady supply of bold and brave young men for their armies - the ultimate outlet for competitive instincts. And probably better than racing beaten-up cars down motorways. There were sports and games. The great British public school tradition was built on boys working out their aggression on the playing fields and being too shattered to cause much more trouble.

The majority of those who left school at 12 or 14, went into hard physical slog - 12-hour days in the fields, down pits, in factories - which had the same effect.

And in all those places, young boys were surrounded by the rough discipline and role models of older men,.

Now the world has changed. We've changed the way we bring up our daughters and they're thriving on it. We have a new generation of confident and capable young women. The time has come to do the same for our sons.

FOR one night only, the men of Bogota in Colombia were banned from the city centre last week. Instead, the mayor told them to stay at home and look after the children. The curfew apparently worked and thousands of women partied, went to concerts and danced in the streets.

Then the mayor of Philadelphia - recently proved to be America's fattest city - has put his citizens on a diet, with little teams of fat-busters, armed with scales and diet sheets, going out into the streets and tackling the lard.

Our mayors, of course, don't have the powers for such direct action. Pity. Otherwise we could have our own experimental days - banning all cars in the city perhaps.... or closing all fast food joints (interesting to see what effect that would have on the litter problem)... having TV-free days ...

Or, even better, banning the likes of Vanessa Feltz and Anthea Turner from our television screens. I tried to watch Celebrity Big Brother but, after two minutes, had a dreadful urge to throw a brick at the screen. Some things are too awful to contemplate - even for charity.

PETER Noble drank 13 pints of lager and two Bacardi Breezers before getting behind the wheel of his car. He swerved onto the wrong side of the road, killed three people in an on-coming car and three of his own friends in the car with him.

Why did anyone get into the car with him? Why did anyone let him drive?

When it comes to drink driving, we all have a responsibility. If people are too drunk to drive - and too drunk to realise it for themselves - then we all must do what we can to stop them driving, even if it means throwing their car keys down the drain as I saw someone, very bravely, do once.

It could save a life. In Noble's case it could have saved six lives. Next time it could be yours.

IN the North York Moors last week, I called into a shop selling walking boots, waterproofs, equipment for ramblers. The owner had all the shelves down and was spring cleaning the shop. There was nothing else to do. It was two o' clock in the afternoon and I was his first prospective customer of the day.

On a fine sunny spring day, there were only a handful of cars parked in Helmsley Market Place, normally a mini version of Piccadilly Circus. Cafs and pubs all over the moors were quiet to the point of emptiness.

Of course, the farmers are the worst affected, but the foot-and-mouth outbreak is like a heavy stone thrown into a deep pond. The resultant ripples are getting bigger and bigger and will affect a lot more people yet.

WOMEN are not buying many new clothes any more. Spending on womenswear has suffered its lowest growth for ten years.

Are you surprised?

Clothes have become tattier, yet more expensive, and it is possible to walk through entire shopping centres and see virtually nothing worth buying. And if you do buy, the chances are that seams will unravel and buttons fall off within days.

Most depressing are some of the ranges in Marks & Spencer this spring - sickly, swirly patterns in lime green and chocolate.

Such designs were pretty revolting first time round in the 1970s. They have not improved with age.

ABOUT a million years ago, in another life, I learnt to type at Teesside Poly, which at the time had only just stopped being Constantine College of Technology and was definitely the less glamorous end of further education and struggling to catch up. I remember one of their first computers arriving - so vast it almost filled a room.

Back there on Monday, I hardly recognised the place, could never have found my way around, and was impressed by the glitzy prospectus and the wealth of courses on offer. They could almost tempt me back.

Post-18 education has changed dramatically in the last 30 years and nowhere shows it more clearly than the University of Teesside.

But the one thing that hasn't changed is the way the students look - apart from the odd bit of body piercing, they are exactly the same mixture of scruffy, bizarre and geek-like as they were in my day. Same clothes too.

In a world so dramatically changed, it was quite reassuring really.