I WAS interested in my friend Tom Wareing's letter (Advertiser, January 12) regarding the use of obscenities in today's society.

Tom and I both, as part of our early building trade training, served on building sites where the use of obscenities was the norm and accepted in a male- only environment, although I admit Tom might have been the exception to the rule.

This practice did not, as a rule, spill out to the ears of the general public and certainly, not in my experience, to the home.

No-one ever seemed to give it a second thought.

In my school days, my teachers always taught us the reason people used bad language was because they did not have the vocabulary to express themselves forcefully without it.

This myth was quickly exploded for me when I served in the RAF and my work meant I was constantly in close contact with senior officers who were highly educated, many being the product of public schools.

I can assure you their obscenities were equal to anything I had ever heard expressed on a building site.

What I thought I would never live to hear is this type of language heard in public daily not only from young mothers shopping but also when they are with children on their way to school.

So what hope is there for the future?

When I was a young man it was common to see in the columns of the Redditch Indicator reports of people being summoned for the use of indecent language in a public place, as reported by a foot patrol police officer.

My children say to me: "What is a foot patrol constable?"

I think that says it all.

Colin Wheeler

Mount Pleasant