Use weapon to beat crawlers: A new powerful weapon has been handed to our law enforcers which could help drive kerb crawlers off the streets of Teesside.
We have often highlighted the need for our residential areas to be freed up from the vice girl trade that brings punters from far and wide. It's a trade that depends on young, often drug-addicted, girls who risk beatings, rapes and death in their work.
New powers mean those who drive here to trawl our streets can be hit with hefty driving bans. So let's hit them. As hard as possible.
The problems we are trying to eradicate are quite clear. It's not about stopping prostitution, it's about giving streets and back lanes back to the residents and their children, who are under siege by the activities going on around them. It's about protecting often under-age 'working girls' who have slipped or been dragged into a lifestyle that leads to inevitable violence, potential death, certain disease. It's about cleaning up areas totally unsuited to this trade.
And it's about telling outsiders that we want to put Teesside firmly on the map - but not as a place to drive for cheap sex.
The bogeyman: The chilling image of a paedophile hiding behind a facade of schoolboy innocence brings home the monstrous potential of Internet chatrooms. As Alisdair Gillespie says today, you never know who is tapping at the other end of the keyboard.
Parents must impress on their children the dangers of making contacts via computer. They must monitor the time their youngsters spend on the Net and take an interest.
Advertising campaigns help, but adults have to take responsibility for the technology they have brought into their homes.
The Internet is a wise, intelligent, humorous, ever patient friend and tutor. Unfortunately it can also be the bogeyman. And from that beast we must protect our young.
