SO Nottingham has a generation of uber-chavs.

Bravo! Deputy head teacher Ralph Surman has had the guts to publicly declare what most decent hard-working folk have known for a long time.

And before every young person erupts in anger, I'm sure Mr Surman wasn't branding all 16 to 24-year-olds a waster. Just those NEETS (not in education, employment or training), who are sad no-hopers, doing nothing productive with their lives, have no work ethic, no social skills and cause higher crime rates.

You only need to open the Evening Post, any day, and you can read perfect examples of Nottingham's finest. That's because they've been raised with no respect for themselves or others.

You know the sort... they don't give a toss about their children and would rather spend the day getting ratted in Wetherspoons than go down the JobCentre or show their kids how to use a knife and fork or read and write.

The PC brigade can bleat on all they like about lack of opportunities, deprived backgrounds and low incomes but that doesn't have to condemn you to a life of uber-chavviness if you have a caring, loving parent with morals.

Mr Surman says uber-chavs are almost impossible to educate and damned annoyingly, they're costing the taxpayer a fortune.

They can't be helped because they don't want help. Why should they look for a job when they can doss around all day in their sportswear and big hooped earrings and make a killing out of child benefit by breeding loads of kids and having their rent paid by the state?

Mr Surman, national executive member of the Association of Teacher and Lecturers, is talking common sense but I take issue with him on one point: that these young people have been brought up by single mums in the 1980s and are now adults with kids of their own.

At this point, it's worth acknowledging that many single mums do a fantastic job bringing up their kids and making sure they grow up into decent human beings.

Why demonise single mums when some of these uber-chavs have two parents, little more than kids themselves? Don't let those good-for-nothing lazy fathers off the hook.

Mr Surman's attack on modern parenting comes at a time when we're seeing rising levels of obesity in children because their mothers don't know how to cook beyond chicken nuggets and chips, and send them to school on a packet of crisps and a can of pop for breakfast.

No matter what the Government, health organisations, councils and schools do to make life better with breakfast clubs, free fruit for infants and healthy school dinners, there will still be women like the one I heard in Beeston telling her little boy to "shut up and eat your sausage roll" as she sat on the bench in The Square having a fag and talking to her mates.

It makes you despair.