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Mark, Owen, David and all, If i remember right, the Seven-Elevens in my part of British Columbia started playing classical music in the ealy 90s -- i believe it was Mozart -- quite successfully to displace kids with nothing to do but hang out at the 'Sev'. I use the term 'displace' carefully because they still didn't have anything to do but hang around, so they just went somewhere else. Kids hanging around is never a new thing. Neither are sensationalist media bewailing and bemoaning it. The thing is, businesses like Sevs make a lot of their money off precisely this market segment. I used to deliver petrol to them in Vancouver and once when my truck broke down i was stuck in one all night. And by far the majority of customers were drunk -- either drunk adults picking up fags and junk food in their cars, or teenagers on their skateboards. This raises another critical point in the whole law and disorder in our streets debate -- much of the economic success of UK city centres is built precisely upon the activities of people who want to get out of their face. It does seem a particularly virulent type of cynical and exploitative capitalism to me -- employing Eastern European bar workers to liberate money from the wallets of people who get so off their face that the resulting cityscapes become like battlegrounds after they are chucked out of the pubs with no where to go and no way to get there. And this is successful urban redevelopment. When i was in Aberdeen it got to the point where i would avoid Union St .after nine at night because it was just too much of a zoo. Is this still about youth? Or are we all dispossed in our streets (have you been reprimanded by a CCTV camera yet?)? One of the things i love about the UK is its sense of minor anarchy -- even 'good citizens' giving the two fingers to excessive authority -- at least in comparison to how it was in Canada. Now we can be photographed giving the finger, what is it? , 350 times each time we go into the town centre. It doesn't stop the 'kids', i suppose it shouldn't stop us. At least the Mosquito raises what till now is an unseen benefit of all those years driving noisy trucks -- with my hearing loss i bet i can't hear it...... cheers rhys