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UK Commissioner Seeks To Ban Ultrasonic Anti-Teen Device
mikesd81 points out a Times Online article that discusses the legality of the Mosquito sound device, which is used to annoy and drive off younger people with sounds that are too high-pitched for most adults to hear. We discussed how annoying this device can be a couple years ago. From Times Online:
"Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England appointed to represent the views of the country's 11 million children, has set up a campaign — called Buzz Off — that is calling for the Mosquito to be banned on grounds that it infringes the rights of young people. 'These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving,' Sir Al told the BBC. 'The use of measures such as these are simply demonizing children and young people, creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and the old.'"
You might find this piece interesting:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/britons-will-keep-on-fearing-the-worst/2008/01/13/1200159274543.html
Crime keeps decreasing in real terms, and we keep thinking it's getting worse and coming up with extreme measures to counter it.
Man, I will start taking you serious the moment my mind gets around the thought of a one-year-old Criminal.
This isn't stopping theft, it is torturing babies. The worst part? If the parents are too old to hear the sound, they. have. no. clue. what. you. are. doing. to. their. kid.
I'm assuming you don't have little ones of your own. Strike that, I'm hoping you don't have little ones of your own.
Also, on a side note, this seems very stupid from a business sense. Kids grow up to be consumers, and many companies spend massive amounts to burn brand loyalties into their young impressionable minds. How quick will that noise make a massive headache a Pavlovian response to anything related to your brand.
Seems more like they're shooting themselves in the foot, not protecting themselves.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Who needs this device? Why protect from children, specifically? Are all children criminals? Are all Arabs terrorists? You're treading on dangerous ground.
No, it's not as simple as you put it, nor is it as simple as I'll put it. The problem is that parents don't really seem to care or be able to stop this sort of thing, and schooling isn't doing the trick, either. I'm not personally familiar with the education system in the UK, but I do know that things are diminishing in North America (the US at a faster pace, as I'm told) as the trend to completely spoil children and leave them to their own devices continues to rise.
The point of any crime prevention is to keep the crime from happening to begin with (hence the name). Since the easiest, most simple and fool-proof solution to that is to keep people from actually wanting to do whatever it is they're going to do, it's best to do it that way. Beating them back with a stick, putting buzzers that operate at a certain frequency on the side of the building, or any other method is a stopgap, short-term solution to a more vast problem, and considering that it targets innocent youths as well as children and infants, along with a certain percentage of adults, I find the concept to be atrocious. If you're of the belief that all people under a certain age are irresponsible ruffians, then you're no different than the ones you're trying to "defend" yourself against. Not to mention that any youth can go out and buy earplugs, or listen to an MP3 player, and be blissfully unaware of the noise here; Plus, if what you're saying is true, then why can't they just take the time to go smash the place up and grab what they can, anyway? These things don't actively repel kids, they annoy them gradually. Like one person said, it's like getting up and going in the basement while your alarm clock is still buzzing away. Perhaps instead of treating youths with immediate distrust and apprehension (especially with something so pathetically worthless), shop owners could, I don't know, actually mind their shops like they're supposed to. That is how they make their living, right? Or do they get paid per child flogged?
Do these businesses actively practice throwing people out of their shops, too? This sounds a lot like they're trying to alienate future customers for the sake of removing a threat posed by a portion of an entire group of people... Remember, too, that you were once a youth; How virtuous were you? If you were, then how would you like being treated this way for the actions of your peers?
You need to back off and take a good look at the situation. Directly attacking an age group is insane .
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
>Crime keeps decreasing in real terms
That statement is usually based on police records, here in the UK and those are generally very low compared to reality. The reason? people just don't bother reporting most crimes because they know they'll either get no response or someone will turn up a couple of days later to take a statement. I know people who have dialled 999 when someone is being threatened with a knife and no-one has turned up. Indeed, I had a guy come at me with an axe a while back. I dialled 999 whilst backing off (fairly rapidly). They turned up 30mins later because a second caller had reported seeing the attacker drive off so they figured I was probably OK. Well, yes, sort of but by then, most witnesses had long since gone.
Last year a report came out in the UK based on interviewing people in the street to ask when was the last time they were attacked, mugged, robbed, threatened etc and the numbers that came out were 2-3 times those bandied about by the government.
That said, things are improving. In my village we have been taking part in a police/community task force and vanadalism has dropped by 70% in 6 months. We are also giving members of the public access to a police speed gun to help curb the boy racers screaming along at high speed in a narrow high street.
The sad thing is that the swarms of chav/pikey kids that hang around until all hours playing loud music, vandalising, swearing, taking drink/drugs (and these are typically kids between 12 and 16) know they are untouchable. They all know their rights and care not for their responsabilities. When the police do pick some up and take them home, the parents tell the police to f-off for interfering and turf their ferel kids back out on the streets for round 2 to keep them out their hair.
That said, it *is* a minority of kids - there are maybe 10-20 trouble makers out of perhaps 1000 kids but anything that breaks up this troublesome clump gets my vote although they then usually just find somewhere else to cause problems.
In my opinion, the biggest problem here is the (European) Human Rights Act being abused. Kids can do whatever they want with no real danger of any punishment. Even repeat offenders get away with it time after time. I know someone who had their car smashed by the neighbours 15yo kid but they have no hope of financial recompense and the kid has no itention of coughing up and knows he doesn't have to. His parents aren't legally obliged to and don't have the money anyway. They also say he is out of control and have no way to make him do a job to raise the money. Parents aren't allowed to lock them in their rooms or do anything other than give them a talking to and in many cases the parents just don't care.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The point, though, is this: The owner of the shop whose windows are being trashed isn't in a position to change society. He installs the device to move the problem on.
Politicians, parents and teachers are the ones who can solve this, but our politics (and parenting and schools) are totally disfunctional at the moment. No one wants to talk about what the problems are and what solutions might actually work, be tested and proven. Instead it's essentially a one party system with everyone trying to be "tough on this" and "longer prison sentences for that".
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
It is an issue that the parents let there kids run feral. Except for actually paying attention to the kids in being involved in their lives they let them run out side and learn the world with others with the same type of parents. The kids learn to fend for themselves when they get confident enough to start attacking adults and other children then there is really nothing that will stop them or change their ways. If you want to know what humans were like before society just watch the children in any major american city, and you will see humans in action in their non socialized selves. No fear of the police or any one but at the same time afraid of everything, everyone and everything is a threat, the strong is the one who survives so everyone must be the strongest.
It is no longer Kids will be kids, kids and gangs especially are not as much a criminal element like the gangsters of the 1930's they are a pack of wild humans, they don't do crimes because of things like money and power (in a society scale) they do it for Survival, Dominance, or Acceptance amongst their group. In my mind these kids (and adults too) are wild animals who happen to be human species.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Oh please I knew from reading the title that this article would congeal comments of "Wah! Bad parents!". Have you ever stopped to think why the parents are so bad?
I had this debate a few days ago with a 72 year old man. I'm only 21 for the record. We were discussing a group of school children who were maybe 12 or 13 on the bus sitting down while this man and another old woman were standing. The point that I hit is how can you blame the parents when we are all the cause for their failing. Let me explain, most of us are working longer hours, kids are in daycare/school/babysitter, your mortgage just keeps growing, tax and inflation woes worrying you, savings disappearing, credit card debt and other factors. Most people with an ounce of sense or ability to earn money aren't having kids. Almost all the kids are coming out of the lowest common denominator multiplied by itself, not all, but by far the great majority. We are creating our own problem and unfortunately economics is to blame. This isn't just happening on the village level it's happening en masse in most established, post-industrial countries. We have a problem where parents can't be parents. This is the cause and unless either the middle/upper class couples start having children again or life becomes less stressful it's not going to get any better.It goes deeper than that though. I remember the key cause for generation and legal conflict from teenagers when I was one was boredom. I wasn't your generic geek who hid from everyone else at school during my teenage years, that is not to say I didn't have a horrible time at school it is just to say I associated with people most geeks would avoid. Most of us are living in suburbs or satellite towns, these are horrible breeding grounds for boredom. Kids are dead bored, the fact there is nothing to do nearby except mill with friends is the resultant of this. People get violent and abusive, both to themselves and others, when they are bored. Never underestimate the power of environmental factors on people.You argument of children's world being one of survival of the fittest is looking through the Fox News camera. You're being overly dramatic and probably ignorant of your own upbringing. Childhood is a microcosm of the larger society around them, if you wonder why they fight so much and have pecking orders and whatnot it is because the rest of us live in such an environment as well. Kids forming groups, gangs or whatever derogatory slang you want to use are merely living out the wider societies states and nations metaphors to a scale. If you want to point the finger at someone state with yourself and why you continue to live in such an inhumane, yet intrinsically human manor.
Furthermore, in support of your argument, the UK news is consistently riddled with stories where adults who have approached such groups have been kicked to shit, or more recently to death.
...because it sells more papers.
...because society loves violence.
Why is the news riddled with such stories?
Why does it sell more papers?
What you really need over there is a another really juicy sex scandal to get your mind off things and give to time to reflect on the fact that real violent crime rates have dropped every year for the past 13 years.