h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm in the right age bracket and have heard the alarm outside a local community centre. It's really quite an irratating sound, but I've done events on summer evenings in this place and I've found it quite intimidating and just plain sad to find a group of teenagers with nothing better to do than hang round the car park drinking and smoking.

I think not only do we need something to defter these people fromn loitering around, but we need to provide somewhere for them to hang out. Whatever happened to youth groups, drop-in centres and all those sorts of things? Or even hanging out in their own homes?

You can't really call it a community centre if the device excludes part of the community. Discriminating against any one group will not solve a problem. Imagine the outcry if they stuck up a box that was designed to disperse OAP's?

I am an ex Air Training Corps instructor, a helper with a youth club for the primary 7 / S1 age group, and a Sunday School (we prefer to call it Young Church these days) teacher. For me to get involved in helping with children of any age (for want of a better term I am using children to refer to anyone aged from 0-18 years), I have to get a detailed background check from Disclosure Scotland which takes time to organise, and is a very detailed form, requiring multiple references. I know there are people who are put off working with children because of all the checks that have to be carried out. It's a shame that the processes that we have in place to protect children, are discouraging some people from getting involved.

The youth club I help with runs on a Friday night at our church so that there's a safe space for our members without trouble, beer and fags. And no, we wouldn't shove religion down your throat, unless you were curious about what we do on a Sunday. We have an odd mix of staff, not all with a church background, but all the staff get a buzz from being involved. People who demonize teenagers are doing nothing to help their community.

That's great to hear that there's stuff in your area for teens to go to. Just so long as they think it's worthy. I know of other youth events that certain groups think is ok, but because they do, others are put off.

the sad thing about the community place near me is that it's got so many organised things in it and it doesn't have any real youth things happening. Has stuff for young kids in the summer, but not for teenagers. Owned by a church who hire out rooms to other organisations for events too.

It's true that people get put off. I dread to think how many police checks have been done on me. I know that so many youth clubs, Scouts, etc have trouble getting adults to run them. Dunno how to fix it too.

Id have to agree with the human rights attacks on these, im affected by these and even if im not spending much time it can be irritating or even painful for those who (like me) easily get headaches. I don't see how they can be legal if they are aimed at people who may not be even breaking the law. The only alternative i think that should be allowed is more simplistic - playing classical music with that only cultured teenagers would be able to stand being around it

You get headaches from those things?!?! Poor you!

Maybe the classical music could work. So much of modern music is rubbish anyway, so it could help. Gosh, I sound so old!

i am one of these ittritating teenagers but i suspect me and my friends are somewhat far away from the mentioned yobs, given that i have a classical greek gcse. I like some of the classical music so it wouldnt have that much effect on me, though i do like some of the mordern music you disdain

Well some modern music is fairly rubbish. Dunno how people listen to clubbing music!

There's a GCSE in Classical Greek!?!?! I did Latin for my first 3 years at secondary school and hated it. Never quite saw the point.

Suppose you're right in that some classical music can be listened to, so loing as it's not "lift music" or those electronic versions they play at you when you're on hold to your car insurers. But it's probably not the most fashionable music for teens.

Just goes to show you're not a typical teen.

I'd be intrigued to see whether it was stores not using them or a sudden drop off in my hearing, since within a year of that post I pretty much stopped hearing them

I could never understand why lift music is so bad, surely it can't be too hard to find some decent music for them (perhaps the fear is that if you put something too good on, people would stay in the lifts?)

Hold music is even worse, and with modern technology there is no reason why you should be able to put whatever you want on as hold music (especially a business where they are run through a computer network to distribute them first!)


Also...I think 6 years might be my slowest reply to a comment yet...

Traveller in Time with a out of sight corner near his garage
"I have some kind of mosquito repeller mounted inside the garage. It gives a 'loud' sweep from 14 to 24 Khz sounds a bit like dropping a nail on concrete.

The corner is most often dry since then, even the s do not like it anymore

Also there are less bluebottles in the greenbin in summer anymore. "

If you search for mosquito teenager, there are quite a few tests around for you to see which frequencies you can hear. I'm 35 but I've always had hypersensitive hearing, so the tests were still rather unpleasant for me and it is no wonder that I am irritated by malfunctioning electrical equipment (even when my colleagues thought I was making it up once when I told them I was in agony at a particular noise, although they did eventually allow me to sit further away from it so I was OK...)

There were calls to ban mosquito devices in 2010, so the number of them may indeed have decreased since then, even though it seems they are still legal.

I've been quite lucky recently that I've heard some good hold music, although it was slightly irritating after the phonecall to be still singing a jaunty beep beep song to myself for the rest of the day

Ooh, readers!

I'm not aware that mosquitos were ever banned, but there have been big social changes since smartphones became available. Kids don't congregate outside 7/11s any more.