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According to the liberal Democrats, a “scourge” is affecting the “quiet majority” of travelers in British public transport. It is the inconsiderate behavior of other passengers who watch videos and reproduce music without using headphones, inflicting their tastes of visualization and listening to everyone else.
Before the local elections next week in parts of England, the other Libs have promised to take energetic measures with these “headphones dodgers”. The fines of up to £ 1,000 are threatened. The quiet, internally boiling as influencers are babbled in Tiktok or the Rat-Aa-Tats comment of small smartphone speakers, will be rescued from the selfish minority.
At least that is the idea. In practice, the battle between the noisy and their involuntary listeners is never finishing. The recent suspension of Busking in the Leicester Square in London, “psychological torture” for nearby office workers, a judge ruled, echoes a parliamentary law in 1864 that imposed fines of up to 40 chelines in street musicians (around £ 215 in today’s money). That followed a letter signed by writers and artists, including Charles Dickens and John Everett Millais, protesting that they had been “cracked” by “drum drums, organ grinder, banjos of banjos … Bellowers of ballads.”
There is a wonderful engraving of William Hogarth from 1741 that shows this cacophony in full effect. “The enraged musician” represents a faced violinist who looks out his window with his hands together, unable to play due to the tumult of London Street’s life. To add insult to the injury, just below it comes the dish of a small child urinating against the railings of his building.
For urban romantics, the vitality of a city is measured by its ruin. If we think of New York in the seventies and eighties, a soundtrack comes to mind. The sirens cry and collide snacks. Hip-hop, punk, disc and spilled sauce from each block. The voices rise. In contrast, tranquility is suburban boredom, or perhaps even worse. “The silent majority” used to be a euphemism for the dead.
But there is a double standard here. Most urban romantics do not really want to live in the middle of the clamor they idealize. The sirens and horns sound better in Martin Scorsese’s films than in reality. Strong music is less vibrant when they are 3 am and you can’t sleep.
I am ambivalent about headphone sponsors in bus and trains. Short trips, very well; The lengths, absolutely not. But I can be hypersensitive about noise pollution. The music played by Sun Beaters On Beaches is a pet hatred, the same in concerts. Then, the sophisticated open mind that I like to be replaced by a closer character in spirit to disgust from Tunbridge Wells. Except that, unlike that legendary writer of angry cards to the newspapers, I do nothing.
In a survey in charge of the DEMS LIB, 54 percent of respondents expressed discomfort for asking someone to reject music in public transport. Sympathy. Like other quietists, I look forward with knotted stomach and tightened teeth when they face the noisy. The internal torment is positively Dostoevskyan. Hot Fury aggravates by the calculation that I am forced to do with my cowardice.
Are the response bluntly? I think no. They would only add to the prohibitive messaging that covers everyday life, the irritating environmental buzz of the officers. There are no ball games. £ 100 for garbage. See it. Tell it. Tidy.
There is a simpler remedy. The quiet majority must find their voices. They must put in bulk and tell the person to the other side of the hall observing Knives Who is the murderer. Or inform the individual playing Drake’s last song that his first things were the best. In a Judo style flip, antisocial behavior will become the catalyst of an annoying social interaction. And as the British public transport taboo breaks, conversation with strangers, the offender will silently promise to use headphones next time.