Keep the noise down

By Sean Coughlan
BBC News Magazine

Annoyed by kids playing music through their mobiles on public transport? Or infuriated by piped music in waiting rooms? Parliament is considering laws to keep the noise down.

There's something particularly annoying about having to listen to someone else's music.

It's a kind of musical trespassing. Even though you're in your own seat on the train, you have to share it with the music from the selfish kid with the fancy mobile phone four rows back.

He's not wearing earphones and he wants to share the bass and hiss of his favourite music with everyone else - and if it winds them up, even better.

Or how about piped music insinuating its way around a hospital waiting room? Or a television barking away in the reception area?

'Intolerable'

Anyone irked by the intrusion of unwanted noise might want to lend an ear to a Bill coming before the House of Lords on Friday.

The Piped Music and Showing of Television Programmes Bill, being put forward by Lord Beaumont, aims to outlaw piped music on public transport and in hospitals.

And it also proposes that anyone listening to music on longer journeys on public transport must use headphones.

The Bill also calls for the prohibition of television programmes in the public areas of hospitals - such as waiting rooms.

"It's intolerable for people to be expected to endure noise pollution when they don't have any way of avoiding it," he says.

His opposition to televisions and piped music in hospital waiting areas is because it makes people more stressed than relaxed - which he says is a "health hazard".

The Green party's only peer is focusing on unwanted noise on public transport and in hospitals - but he sees it in the wider context of inconsiderate behaviour.

Mobile menace

For instance, he applauds the introduction of train carriages where mobile phone use is banned, so that passengers are spared listening to other people's full-volume personal phone conversations.

"People have become more inconsiderate. They used to only behave that way if they were drunk. Now they feel it's their right to impose on everyone else the intimate details of their lives."

Even though it's an unintended consequence, Lord Beaumont's proposals for making people use headphones to listen to music on public transport could tackle an emerging noise problem.

A new generation of mobile phones are also portable music players - a combination that can create a noise nuisance far more prolonged than the annoyingly unfunny ringtone.

This specific problem was highlighted by a number of readers e-mailing in to a recent BBC News Magazine story about confrontational, anti-social behaviour.

However, the current wording of the Bill only applies to longer journeys - and wouldn't benefit the short-haul bus users being subjected to music emanating from these new phones.

Mutilates music

Transport for London says this type of noise nuisance is a persistent, low-level source of complaints from passengers - but that it's a social problem rather than a public transport issue.

"The bus police would tell them to turn it down," says a spokesperson, but otherwise he concedes that "there will be people who are nowhere near as considerate as they should be".

Lord Beaumont's proposals tap into a wider sensitivity to unwanted noise in overcrowded lives - whether it's piped music in lifts, televisions blaring in pubs or televisions appearing on trains.

And the peer can expect the support of Pipedown, the Campaign for Freedom from Piped Music.

This organisation says that such background music "cripples conversation and mutilates real music" and that it wants to give a voice to "millions of people who hate piped music but at present often feel totally powerless to do anything about it".