The “Mos­quito” anti-loitering sys­tem appar­ently still exists (shows how much I visit shop­ping cen­tres), and some­how is still up for dis­cus­sion in the House of Com­mons. I don’t believe I’ve pub­licly vented my spleen on this sub­ject before, so here goes.

I’ve said before that soci­ety isn’t bro­ken, but if you’re look­ing for an exam­ple of how it some­times gets pretty close, you need look no fur­ther than the Mos­quito. For the unaware, it’s a device designed to be installed in shop­ping cen­tres and malls that emits a high-pitched whine sup­pos­edly only audi­ble to chil­dren. It’s proven quite pop­u­lar in recent years due to a rise in youth crime, or a rise in middle-class fears of kids in hood­ies — one of the two.

Let me just sum­marise that for effect: We have cre­ated tech­nol­ogy specif­i­cally to drive away our own children.

And it’s hardly some device that seeks out kids with ill inten­tions — its irri­tat­ing whine is audi­ble to any­one with good hear­ing. My son is two years old and has caused no pub­lic nui­sance bar occa­sional incon­ti­nence. He can hear your sod­ding Mos­quito. I am 25 years old, with a job and a fam­ily and a mort­gage and an inter­est in pol­i­tics. I am every­thing you want the ‘hood­ies’ to become, and I can hear your sod­ding mosquito.

You’re try­ing to scare off our chil­dren, those same peo­ple that in twenty years time will be run­ning your coun­try and pay­ing for your pen­sion. And you don’t even have enough respect to treat them like human beings capa­ble of com­mu­ni­ca­tion — you drive them out of pub­lic spaces with noise­mak­ers like you drive cats off of your lawn.

Sure, youth crime might be on the rise — I don’t have the fig­ures, so maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. And I don’t claim to have the solu­tion to that. But what­ever that solu­tion is, it does not involve the Mosquito.

Shop­ping cen­tres are not your gar­den, kids are not ani­mals, and hang­ing around in a pub­lic area is not the same as shit­ting on your lawn.

Aaand we’re done.