Protect young from joblessness

• I WAS quietly perusing the papers in Kentish Town last week when the newspaper was grabbed away from me.
This happened twice despite me asking the culprit to desist. He was an elderly man bent on mischief and not some delinquent.
On being reproved by the librarian, he lied too.
As Maddie Morgan noted in her letter (Let’s ditch all the bigotry against our young people, January 7), youngsters get a bad press.
Some are undoubtedly criminal, but that element is minuscule. The press tends to concentrate on the negative aspect in news coverage.
Just before Christmas children from Haverstock School in Chalk Farm collected food and delivered parcels to elderly folk living nearby.
They do this each year and their efforts are praiseworthy.
Not all older people are models for the young in a positive sense.
Most are and are valued in their families and community. Those in the public sector have got on with their jobs in this freezing weather keeping services going. As, too, have those in commercial employment whose taxes fund the services.
A priority for government in 2010 must be to protect school-leavers from unemployment, even by creating work by subsidising employers to take them on.
SKIP MURPHY
Prince of Wales Road, NW1