Leon Alonso 
Founder
The Lib Dems’ proposed ban won’t save your commute from noise pollution. It’s up to you to be the Spartacus of your train carriage
If there was any platform on which the Lib Dems could sweep into power, it’s this: the party have proposed a ban on playing music and videos out loud on public transport. Any “headphone dodgers” (their phrase) who don’t comply would be fined a maximum of £1,000.
You or I could probably think of far worse punishments we wish would befall those who share the audio of their TikTok algorithm or their favourite Diary of a CEO episode with an entire train or tube carriage. Crush their phones under the wheels of said train or tube? Revive the medieval stocks for repeat offenders? There probably isn’t a single political policy more popular in Britain than a pitiless clampdown on all this: a YouGov poll last year found that 86% of British adults “consider using speakerphones in shared environments inappropriate”.
The only reason we’ve got this proposal is because the problem has become particularly acute in the last few years. Public transport rarely compares to a silent meditation retreat, but it also didn’t used to sound like the inside of the internet. A few possible reasons have been kicked around: a post-pandemic lapse in etiquette; the emergence of video as social media’s dominant form of content; the replacement of wired headphones with fiddly, more expensive wired ones; and a general disintegration of respect for public spaces as they become more threadbare and badly maintained.
Put aside the fact that, if Lib Dem leader Ed Davey were crowned as PM, he could easily do a tuition-fee-style switcheroo and make blasting tunes on the train mandatory. How would a phone speaker ban even be enforced? People have now got used to being able to sound-spread in public – in France, a man fined €200 for making a call at a train station on speakerphone is legally challenging his penalty. And maybe we want authorities to make sure our trains actually turn up on time (or turn up at all) before dealing with the finer points of passenger etiquette.
The solution, in truth, lies with all of us: it’s about fighting back, carriage by carriage, phone by phone. If someone’s playing something out loud, ask them, politely, not to (assuming it feels safe, of course). More often than not, they’ll stop. I’ve done it a couple of times – the offenders huffed and puffed a bit, but complied. And truly, there are few greater highs then successfully indulging your inner busybody and becoming the Spartacus of your fellow commuters. You can get creative with it too: a friend of my dad’s carries around a stock of cheap wired earphones, which he hands out, ever so politely and pleasantly, to people who seemingly don’t have their own to use.
We’re used to putting up with small annoyances in day-to-day life, especially in the UK, where stoicism comes close to a national sport. Music on the train is one of those small annoyances – something minor that’s all too easy to grin and bear. But silently enduring it is the one surefire way the practice will set in for good. Complaining to strangers on public transport might seem a thankless mission, but it’s a lot more realistic than a Lib Dem government.
If there was any platform on which the Lib Dems could sweep into power, it’s this: the party have proposed a ban on playing music and videos out loud on public transport. Any “headphone dodgers” (their phrase) who don’t comply would be fined a maximum of £1,000.
You or I could probably think of far worse punishments we wish would befall those who share the audio of their TikTok algorithm or their favourite Diary of a CEO episode with an entire train or tube carriage. Crush their phones under the wheels of said train or tube? Revive the medieval stocks for repeat offenders? There probably isn’t a single political policy more popular in Britain than a pitiless clampdown on all this: a YouGov poll last year found that 86% of British adults “consider using speakerphones in shared environments inappropriate”.
The only reason we’ve got this proposal is because the problem has become particularly acute in the last few years. Public transport rarely compares to a silent meditation retreat, but it also didn’t used to sound like the inside of the internet. A few possible reasons have been kicked around: a post-pandemic lapse in etiquette; the emergence of video as social media’s dominant form of content; the replacement of wired headphones with fiddly, more expensive wired ones; and a general disintegration of respect for public spaces as they become more threadbare and badly maintained.
Put aside the fact that, if Lib Dem leader Ed Davey were crowned as PM, he could easily do a tuition-fee-style switcheroo and make blasting tunes on the train mandatory. How would a phone speaker ban even be enforced? People have now got used to being able to sound-spread in public – in France, a man fined €200 for making a call at a train station on speakerphone is legally challenging his penalty. And maybe we want authorities to make sure our trains actually turn up on time (or turn up at all) before dealing with the finer points of passenger etiquette.
The solution, in truth, lies with all of us: it’s about fighting back, carriage by carriage, phone by phone. If someone’s playing something out loud, ask them, politely, not to (assuming it feels safe, of course). More often than not, they’ll stop. I’ve done it a couple of times – the offenders huffed and puffed a bit, but complied. And truly, there are few greater highs then successfully indulging your inner busybody and becoming the Spartacus of your fellow commuters. You can get creative with it too: a friend of my dad’s carries around a stock of cheap wired earphones, which he hands out, ever so politely and pleasantly, to people who seemingly don’t have their own to use.
We’re used to putting up with small annoyances in day-to-day life, especially in the UK, where stoicism comes close to a national sport. Music on the train is one of those small annoyances – something minor that’s all too easy to grin and bear. But silently enduring it is the one surefire way the practice will set in for good. Complaining to strangers on public transport might seem a thankless mission, but it’s a lot more realistic than a Lib Dem government.
