UK leaders past and present love to nudge us towards good or bad behaviour. Social scientists, though, say £100 on-the-spot fines may not prove an effective deterrent
It’s a very modern phenomenon, the nuisance of people on public transport using their phones for flagrantly loud things – conference calls, TV shows, music – without headphones. I remember a time when the most annoying thing you could do with a phone was play a game with an irritating beep; a time when having a loud conversation was so verboten that comedians could get whole careers out of it. So why does Andy Burnham’s campaign, “Share the carriage, not the noise,” introducing fines of up to £100 for miscreants, feel so nostalgic? And crucially, will the fines work?
Burnham is on to something, because it is insufferable. I could lose hours debating the finer points of whether it’s worse to listen to an episode of Paw Patrol, a crux point in a Pretty Little Liars plot, some really mid-80s disco or a high-level discussion about marketing strategy. (In fact, there is no hierarchy; they’re all intolerable in their own special ways.)