No town in England is free of urban terrorists in the form of problem children who once had parents not much older than them. These feral kids are a national disgrace and sickening indictment on failed social and educational policies which have dogged this country for many decades.

Just across the Channel in France evidence of similar teenage malcontents -outside Paris and Lyon – is not easy to find. Next time you’re on a cross-Channel ferry just compare the behaviour of the football-strip-wearing, lager-tin brandishing, shaven heads of our youngsters with the bespectacled, earnest, well dressed French of similar age. It may be ‘anecdotal evidence’, but it’s hell of an anecdote and one that won’t go away.

Interesting then that the French, have for years, had sailing on the school curriculum.
Now a school in Wales has followed suite.

It’s time to shake off the stigma that sailing is posh and get our youngsters out on salt water, put the fear of God into them, make them wet, cold, hungry and then let them sail back home, empowered, to safety.

At least on the next ferry some of them might just get out on deck and marvel at the Channel, rather than sit on £1 -per-ride Afterburner, downing cans of ‘wife-beater’ and the rest of us might be able to get to the bar for a change.