You will recall that way back in April 2006 I wrote about a rather nifty little device that helps dispel annoying anti social groups of teenagers and youths, who hang around in groups around shop doorways etc.The device is known as the "Mosquito" and works by emitting a high-frequency sound that irritates youths, but not the rest of the population.
A rather nifty and clever idea, given that all other methods that adults once used to move anti social teenagers on (eg a clip around the ear) have been banned.
Unfortunately Nanny still doesn't like it.
Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England appointed to represent the views of the country's 11 million children, wants it banned. He has started a campaign, called Buzz Off, asking for the Mosquito to be banned on grounds that it infringes the rights of young people.
Sir Albert says:
"These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving.
The use of measures such as these are simply demonising children and young people, creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and the old.
This device is a quick fix. It's not tackling the root of the problem and it's indiscriminate."
I agree.
However, until parents are forced to take responsibility for removing their anti social offspring from the streets at night and during the day, and the police start to act as police (instead of telling the public to "have a go" - just like Gary Newlove did) what else are people meant to do?
It is all very well whining about the rights of youths and teens, but what about the rights of the rest of the population when confronted with anti social teens etc?
Make the parents take responsibility for their anti social offspring, and then there will be no need for the Mosquito.
-Curfew the entire family, ie put them under semi house arrest
-Remove the family's TVs, mobile phones, DVD's, iPods etc
-Cut/stop their benefits (or fine them if they are not on benefits)
Ken,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, until the parents or 'lifestyle choice partners, or cohabiting couples' or whatever other newspeak nanny uses to describe the adults whose kids cause mayhem are brought to book no amount of gimmmicks (remember playing classical music to disberse groups of 'yoof') will work.
Also, my kids are well behaved and would be affected by this stupid device if in the area. Another idiot nanny idea that penalises everyone because of the behaviour of some.
If the mosquito is banned, then just put up a speaker and play a tasteful selection of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and the like through it.
ReplyDeleteMost adults quite like it, or at least put up with it as background noise, but a few minutes of these two old crooners is like sandpaper on raw flesh for most teenagers; they really, really do not like it at all.
Play those two, and you lose the teenagers fairly quickly. The only real downside is that lager louts get replaced with saga louts...
Ken,
ReplyDeleteI think the problems of teenagers and pre-adult persons may be running a little deeper and less obviously than people imagine.
Last week I went to visit an old pal from school days. I had not see they miss or missed when younger. Mostly the more 'popular' strains of music - classical stuff has its own specialists.
He is not in a highstreet but is located in the middle of a student area in a large city and offers a very wide choice of material. The potential for buying, enjoying and trading in against a new discovery - typical collector fare that applies not just to music outlets but to many things across the generations in the past century or so - are easily satisfied at his extensively and widely stocked emporium.
Such places, of varying standards can be found in many a town, large and small, around the country.
Or rather could be found.
They have been disappearing rapidly in the last year.
Four years ago the joy of browsing the racks in his outlet gave the business its best ever year. Now the kids, even the University students, hardly enter the place.
They expect to get their music for nothing or next to nothing electronically and the tactile joy of owning something even as basic as a rarely found CD are unknown to them. Physically searching through the racks, to find the unexpected perhaps - a pleasure of many collectors in music and book shops for decades, is far too hard for them to consider. Too much effort. Too tiring.
There were times when people would travel some distance to visit places like that. But now the younger generation, the historic core customers base, probably have no idea how to get there unless they can program a satnav. So they don't bother.
There are obviously many factors involved with this change of interest but hearing that it seems to have suddenly swept through those in higher education suggests some form of nihilism that would surely reach right through the age group. So is it any surprise that the lower end of the social chain, or those who like to see themselves in that light, have very limited objectives even compared with youth of just a decade or so ago?
How has this come about?
One thing my friend mentioned which had not really occurred to me until then is that so much of the youth culture is being managed to direct choice.
For example ever since Rock and Roll emerged, if you believe what has been written during the last 40 or 40 years, youth has had something to focus on and, notwithstanding the control of he music companies, individual acts or complete genres could break through on the basis of some sort of 'talent' or fashion. Many had quite long careers, some still going strong.
More recently the music business has been inundated with short life wonders. Is this due to lack of enduring talent or because the music industry wants it that way or because the association attention span of the consumers is much shorter than it was previously?
Or is it just that the business wants Nanny like control? It seems that, just like in high remuneration areas of sport, the 'stars' of today are being picked and hot-housed behind the scenes in order to control the market. Maybe the way this is being done is not readily made public but the resulting deception becomes obvious to even the least aware potential 'consumer' or their subconscious.
"Our lives are being manipulated by just another scam modeled on the Nanny approach. If we use technology to get everything for free we get our own back and save enough cash to buy booze and, having nowhere else to go because of the other policies that nanny has introduced, we'll hang out where we can."
Typical teenage angst re-enforced by social changes. I can't see awards for all and enforced extended education changing that much. Indeed quite the opposite.
I accept that things change over time but this seems to be such a sudden change in generic underlying interests (i.e. hobbies or lack of them) that I wonder how it has come about. Is it simply the introduction of the ipod and its like? Is Steve Jobs really an anti-christ?
How are people who have grown up unfocused and living for the instant going to respond to situations during their adult life? Live within the daily controls they can manage and let Nanny set their futures for things that don't immediately impinge on the day to day stuff?
Or, given that our current Nanny Crew are of my generation and presumably have at least some life experiences based on the same inputs, will Nanny get it so wrong about her understanding of the next generation that she loses control and we will all move into an area of huge uncertainty?
Perhaps the signs are there already. In general people are not change preferrers so that if they can find something to provide a foundation and a community they will take it. For some the base is religion, for some the base will be drugs. There are many other possibilities as well, but it seems that some of the less structured ones, like collecting 'collectibles' or things of personal interest, are vanishing rapidly. Maybe Facebook (whatever that is) replaces all the fragmented stuff that has gone before?
The problem may be that in extreme circumstances those who come to reject the fatuous nature of much of modern life (as seen on TV any night) will take extreme positions when they seek their personal salvation. The most extreme, of course, would be the feeling that the best thing they can do is destroy what they can of the society in which they grew up.
Perhaps terrorist bombs and hanging around in drunken groups or just the opposite ends of the response to the general malaise with both being destructive in their own ways?
As for the Mosquito, a few years ago I had an animal scarer that worked on a similar principle. Too many cats in the garden and various creatures crapping in the grass- not goo with young children about. My wife always claimed she could hear it. After a year or so it seemed to develop a fault so that even I could hear some noise as it switched on and off through its scare cycle.
Not sure what happened to it. It seemed to disappear one summer whilst I was away on business ...
My apologies for the length of this post. I sincerely hope that we have not reached some sort of societal 'tipping point' - but I think there is every possibility that we have. In which case neither Mosquitoes nor parents are likely to be sufficient to restore equilibrium to what we may think it was.
There is an ever increasing divide between the young and old....One only needs to look at the growth in over fifty-fives only housing schemes. Many people feel intimedated by groups of youths that hang around genrally making a PITA (pain the the arse) of themselves outside shops etc.
ReplyDeleteKen is right....We need to force parents to take responsibility for their off spring, however, the methods advocated by Ken above sound very "Nanny" to me. We need to educate children that, in life we often get a no and that with rights, come responsibility. We also need to educate people that, to get respect, first you need to give respect.
I personally think that I would like to own a mosquito myself to keep my neighbour's grandchildren out of their garden, as it seems these chavy kids were not born with much in the way of brains but, they were born with loud mouths and they want to use this "gift" to make my life a misery.
So, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, (I wonder what he's done to deserve this title?) the Children's Commissioner for England appointed to represent the views of the country's 11 million children, wants the Mosquito to be banned on grounds that it infringes the rights of young people. What about the rights of ordinary, decent folk, who are fed up with these scum plaguing their streets and neighbourhoods? I bet if this prat had to run the gauntlet every time he left his home, instead of living in his ivory tower (no doubt at the taxpayer's expense) he'd soon sing a different tune!
ReplyDelete" Remove the family's TVs, mobile phones, DVD's, iPods etc "
ReplyDeleteEr ... please Ken, no. Do that and you know what else they'd spend their time doing don't you. That's right - they'de spend it making more babies.
Lord of Atlantis said...
ReplyDelete"So, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, (I wonder what he's done to deserve this title?) ..."
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/albert_aynsleygreen/profile.html
The Mosquito is terrible. It is far too expensive.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to say I have thrown away a little project I'd started; build a variable ~ 20kHz oscillator on verro-board and connect it to an amplifying speaker.
It would have cost about a tenth and done the same job.
Happily I am living in improved circumstances these days and no longer have a requirement.
Sir Albert Aynsley-Green - wet, woolly, woosie, thoroughly feminised man. Watched him waffling on TV like a suited Dame Edna and could not believe prats like him are being given such responsibilities. He ought to team up with Rowan Williams and write poetry dedicated to admiring the wet, woolly world of pinko liberal tossers through rose-tinted glasses.
ReplyDelete