THE controversy over the use of a Big Brother-style device installed at a Blackbird Leys shop to deter teenagers from loitering outside made me want to plunge my hand into an industrial mincer this week.

Gangs of more than 20 youths have apparently been loitering outside the Premier Supermarket in Pegasus Road, intimidating customers, drinking, drug dealing, smoking and littering.

So, quite understandably, the shop’s owners have decided to combat this menace to their customers by installing a ‘Mosquito’.

Designed by Howard Stapleton, who actually visited the store to turn on his invention, the gadget works by emitting a high-pitched ‘buzzing’ noise that proves uncomfortable to the ears of people aged 25 and under (anyone over this age is saved this inconvenience as the ability to hear high frequencies deteriorates with age). So anyway, there’s the science bit.

What intrigued me however was the criticism this technology has aroused among human rights organisations, one of which has branded its use ‘degrading and discriminatory’.

Which, forgive me, is when I started rolling up my sleeve and looking for an abattoir, because yes, of course it is discriminatory, but then that’s because senior citizens, for instance, rarely if ever congregate outside shops or on street corners, deliberately threatening passers-by and drug dealing (admittedly, their presence at the soft-shoe section in M&S can sometimes prove unnerving, but that soon passes).

Similarly, gangs of married couples and middle-aged professionals prefer, on the whole, to save their sneering and bullying for the aisles in Waitrose instead of scoring on the street.

So if ‘discriminatory’ means it specifically targets the kind of people who do hang around outside small, community stores, ignoring the owners’ requests to move on, and often threaten some kind of violent retribution by way of response, then... well... tough!

As for the other accusation that the Mosquito is ‘degrading’, might I suggest that spitting and jeering at people and making pensioners fear for their lives is what I would term ‘degrading’.

And no, I don’t read the Daily Mail (although their weekend TV section makes it well worth the cover price), and no, I don’t have anything against Bono or Sting (other than name the last good song they wrote?).

But really, don’t get me started when it comes to debating the rights, wrongs and human rights of anyone demonstrating, what is always ludicrously labelled – as if it were a medical condition – ‘antisocial behaviour’.

Particularly so in this case, since instead of the Mosquito being left on permanently, which I grant you would be unfair, when the shop owner or police report problems, Mr Stapleton will be able to view and record the youths’ activities remotely, via CCTV from his office in Cardiff, before deciding whether to turn on the gadget.

Now frankly, what could be fairer than that?