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The kids can walk away
• OK Axel Landin and friends (‘Biting back at Mosquito’, October 23), are you going to stand outside this poor gentleman’s shop every evening and sort the problem yourselves?
I doubt it, you are most probably as intimidated by these large gangs as his customers.
The Mosquito is not the answer, I agree, but it is a solution.
What is your answer that will help shopkeeper Dilip Patel tonight or tomorrow?
A message to Mr Patel, as long as the Mosquito is used when you are experiencing anti-social behaviour you are within your legal rights to use it especially as the Human Rights Charter covers government institutions and not private individuals.
I am fed up with the statement “there must be other ways”… well what are they?
A policeman on every street, maybe, but who is going to pay?
The answer the taxpayer at a rate of around £300 per police visit.
No one should have to put up with being bullied.
Good luck Mr Patel but if the council and police don’t have the resources to resolve the situation keep that Mosquito handy.
I think you may well be needing it again very soon.
But you never know, maybe Mr Landin will fly to the rescue!
Maybe the human rights brigade have not noticed that the general public and the good old shopkeeper have human rights too.
No one is forcing the kids to loiter en masse.
If they don’t like the sound of the Mosquito they can always walk away. Mr Patel, unfortunately, cannot.
Howard Stapleton
Mosquito inventor, Abercynon
Mosquito alarm – good riddance!
• WELL done to the Youth Council!
Its joint leader, Axel Landin, was quite right to expose the illegal installation of this highly discriminatory device in Regent’s Park (‘Biting back at Mosquito’, October 23).
I have always found these alarms offensive.
It paints a pitiful picture when, following a report from a member of the public, the local authority lacks the competence and efficiency to root out this impediment to community relations and only the Youth Council seemingly cares enough to take decisive action.
The shopkeeper says the young people outside his shop are not harming him.
If that is the case then he has no right to disperse them.
It is not crime to stand on the pavement, whatever age one may be. We must not let our civil liberties be eroded any further. If this man wants to ward off local people from his shop with an alarm, then he should get a proper alarm that everybody can hear.
STEVE MIRRORS
Belsize Park Gardens, NW3
Intimidating
• I AM astonished that shopkeeper Dilip Patel’s use of the Mosquito alarm is termed as a reactionary and discriminatory measure against young people (‘Biting back at Mosquito’, October 23).
I have been more than alarmed by gangs with dogs confronting me and pushing their animals towards me in Robert Street.
Intimidation appears to be their objective.
Of course, the police should be there to disperse them and I fail to understand why they have to wait for someone to be harmed.
Intimidation is extremely harmful, particularly to the older generation and, yes, the group do prevent shoppers such as myself from now entering Robert Street.
S Muskett, NW1
So smug!
• ABOUT the Robert Street shopkeeper and his Mosquito device (‘Biting back at Mosquito’, October 23), why are the Youth Council members so smug?
They “persuaded” him to remove it. Youths hang around his store and intimidate customers and the police won’t disperse them.
The device emits a sound which young people don’t like. No injury is caused by it but it, unlike the police, makes them move away.
Dilip Patel offers the area a useful service, earns a living so doing and pays tax and other levies on that wage.
What do the youth councillors contribute?
Let them engage the anti-social youths and persuade them to stop being a nuisance.
The £100,000 Camden Council spends on the sub-group would be better spent on something useful.
Alice Joseph, NW1
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