Turn up the Mosquito and Manilow. And better still, lock the young up

Despite high-pitched sirens and curfews, still they are seen in public. I have a modest proposal to tackle the youthwave


o George Monbiot
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 June 2010 20.30 BST


They have proved to be an effective means of dealing with the epidemic of youth on our streets. But now that acoustic dispersal devices are likely to be banned, how will we tackle one of this country's most distressing and pervasive crimes: being young in a public place?

Acoustic deterrence was, until recently, used only to repel rats, mice and cockroaches. But thanks to an invention by the former British Aerospace engineer Howard Stapleton it is now just as effective at discouraging human vermin. The Mosquito youth dispersal device, manufactured by Compound Security Systems, produces a loud, high-pitched whine that can be heard strongly only by children and teenagers, and not at all by people over 25. It allows councils to keep children out of public places, making them safe for law-abiding citizens. It enables shopkeepers to determine who should and should not be permitted to use the streets. It ensures that society is not subjected, among other intrusions, to the unpleasant and distressing noises that youths are inclined to make.

A survey by the Guardian shows that 25% of local authorities in the UK use or have used these machines in their attempts to discourage the youthwave. Altogether 3,500 Mosquitos have been sold here, far more than in any other country. The product's success is one of many signs of the enlightened attitudes to the menace of childhood that distinguish the United Kingdom from less civilised parts of the world. But last week the bleeding hearts in the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly unanimously recommended that acoustic deterrents be banned from public places, on the preposterous grounds that they discriminate against young people and deny their right to free assembly.

In a blatant attempt at emotional blackmail, the council's parliament contends that, as well as causing distress to teenagers – whether wearing hooded tops or not – these devices cause "dramatic reactions" in many younger children, particularly babies, who often "cry or shout out and cover their ears, to the surprise of their parents, who, unaware of the noise, do not know why". Nor, it says, do we yet know what impact high-frequency noise has on unborn children.

Really, who cares?

This is just the sort of Eurotrash we have come to expect from the fat cats of Strasbourg. Happily their decision is not binding, but it can be only a matter of time before the pressure on our legislators – especially high-pitched whining from do-gooders such as the Children's Rights Alliance for England – becomes intolerable, and they cave in to the forces of political correctness.

What this will mean is that the police, councils and owners of property will be deprived of an essential weapon in the fight against youth. Youth statistics might be improving, but there are still far too many occasions on which young people venture out of their homes, sometimes in concert. It is true that the police have specific, if limited, powers to deal with individual cases. Admittedly the United Kingdom has one of the world's most enlightened policies on the age of criminal responsibility. Children can be tried and imprisoned here at the age of 10. This is four years younger than in China, whose government is notoriously soft on crime, and six years younger than in the pinko, wet-blanket state of Texas. Admittedly, we have more child prisoners than any other country in Europe, and behaviour laws – asbos, extrajudicial fines, house arrest for excluded children, £5,000 fines for the parents of antisocial toddlers – that dictatorships can only dream of.

But while these measures offer society some protection against actual offences, they do nothing to address the general issue of young people in our midst. Worse, they attempt to draw a distinction between criminals and teenagers. As everyone over the age of 40 knows, this distinction is a false one. Now that the Mosquito is likely to be excluded from the armoury, now that police officers may no longer respond to the incidence of youth with a simple cuff round the ear, or a falling down the stairs or out of a police station window, how will Britain deal with this menace?

The authorities have been seeking creative solutions, but none meets the challenge we face. Some councils have imported an idea pioneered in New Zealand and Australia whose purpose is to disperse teenagers from public places: playing the songs of Barry Manilow over their loudspeaker systems. The problem with the Manilow method is that it is too blunt an instrument, as it disperses everyone except the hard of hearing.

Youth curfews, introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and dispersal orders, brought into effect by the Antisocial Behaviour Act 2003, go some of the way towards tackling the problem, but they require the active involvement of the police, and apply only where and when they have been implemented. There is as yet no universal provision against those who insist, often in active collaboration with others, on being young people in public view.

I have a modest proposal for dealing with this problem. While forestalling sterner measures that might otherwise be deployed to address the troubling existence of youth, it enables good citizens to go about their lives at liberty. It also prevents young people from getting into trouble and ending up in the worst situation of all: the horror and humiliation of prison, where their golden years are blighted and they fall into the clutches of people ready to exploit them.

I propose that from school age onwards young people should, for the good of themselves and society, be kept in a safe, secure environment, under supervision and out of situations that might tempt them into trouble. Each would be given a small room, simple but comfortable, which in some cases they might share with another. They would be permitted one hour of exercise a day in a purpose-built yard offering appropriate facilities.

Besides schooling, occupations would be designed to keep them busy and happy, and prevent them from engaging in the kind of group activities the citizens of this country deplore. These pastimes might include assembling bags of the kind used for postal deliveries. They would also be offered the opportunity to pursue vocational qualifications, particularly in the sub-surface fossil fuel extraction and smoke duct-cleansing industries.

This firm but fair treatment programme will consolidate the policies introduced in a piecemeal and incoherent fashion by the last government, reverse the disastrous social experiment of the past 100 years that unleashed the youthwave on to our streets, and make devices such as the Mosquito redundant, useful as they are in the current legislative vacuum. It will ensure that the youth class ceases to blight the lives of law-abiding owners of property.

Juvenile citizens would be restrained from engaging with society until they have learned to shoulder the burden of respect and responsibility this entails. By this means we will rear the young people we all want to see: happy, well-adjusted, out of sight and out of mind.

Turn up the Mosquito and Manilow. And better still, lock the young up | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Quote:

It was nearing dusk in a benighted small town in the south of France (yes, they have them there, too), and I wished my education had included instruction in taking and driving away. There were all these cars, just standing there, parked, yet I could not get out. There was a vandalised bus shelter – no buses on Sundays, precious few the rest of the time; a ruined public phone, and not an advert for a taxi or mini-cab in sight. There was no choice but to brave the leering men and the smoke in the bar/tabac to ask how to get back to Marseille (half an hour's drive away). The barman called someone, who called someone else's brother, who called someone else, who eventually turned up in a taxi and transported me for a fat fee to the airport, from where I took the metro. I have visited many grim towns and banlieues like these, and one feature they had in common was the difficulty of getting to and from them on public transport. If there was a bus or train, it was at the wrong time of day to get to college or work and back. Whole deprived populations were isolated – "excluded" in the buzzword of the Chirac presidency – and mostly they remain so. This hidden "other side" of France is often held up by British campaigners, when someone dares suggest that people might be encouraged to move to find work – as Iain Duncan Smith has just done. Or when it is proposed, as one north London council recently did, that having a job might be treated as a plus, rather than a minus, for those applying for council accommodation. I have argued both in the past, only to be told in affronted tones that the result would be ghettos of the workless and islands peopled by les exclus. To which I would respond: is the present situation here so very different? Even in this city that never sleeps, where new arrivals seem to get a job when they are barely off the train, there are vast estates occupied by people who not only make scant contribution to the above-ground economy, but rarely venture beyond the bounds of their postcode. The line between these estates and areas where the majority have jobs might be invisible, but it is as impervious as the most fortified national frontier. And one reason – not the only one, I grant; education also bears a big responsibility – is the disincentive that exists for those in council housing to improve their situation by working. IDS is not wrong about this. Moving, even to find work, means losing one of the most valuable benefits Britain's social state has to offer: cheap housing with lifetime tenure. Eight out of 10 tenants have been in their home more than 10 years; almost no one can afford to move out. The generosity – yes, I mean that – of housing benefit adds another distortion. The Chancellor's move to cap this was met with indignation from lobbyists, forecasting evictions and families on the street or forced to find cheaper or smaller premises. But I am amazed the Government did not make more of the sums someone has to earn to compensate for housing benefit, even at its capped levels. Perhaps George Osborne had been warned that a millionaire frontbench could look heartless. To replace even the new maximum-allowable rent of £400 a week for a family house and afford to live, you would need a pre-tax income of around £50,000 a year, around twice the average pay. It's not unreasonable and it's not inhumane to expect benefit claimants to weigh the size, location, running costs etc of their accommodation against incomings. That's not unreasonable and it's not inhumane; it's real life as every tax-payer has to live it...

Mary Dejevsky: We're blind to our British 'banlieues' - Mary Dejevsky, Commentators - The Independent

I thought this was interesting because of the first paragraph. Those guys in the bar didn't know her and they clearly went to great trouble to help her out when she was in a bind (pay no attention to the "fat fee" - French taxis outside the big cities are always horrendously expensive, he was charging her standard prices), but they way she tells it you'd think they'd mugged her.

Just seemed like a handy illustration of the modern inability to tell the difference between one's own insecurities and actual crime.

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.

Do I need a time machine to visit such a bar/tabac?

If not, why not?