If I ruled the world

A friend of mine brought back from Canada a contraption that blocks mobile phone reception in a radius of about ten feet. He hasn’t yet worked up the courage to use it, since he believes it to be illegal in Britain. But if I ruled the world, this device would be legalised immediately as part of my anti-noise drive. I would restore to our country the tranquillity of the pre-electronic era when I, as the holder of a first-class railway pass (my father worked on the railways), spent half my time sleeping and dreaming on trains.

First, I would invert the status quo on trains and designate a single noisy carriage, with all the other carriages being quiet ones. But since most people in quiet carriages are too busy shouting into their mobile phones to notice where they are, train tickets would be issued with a couple of slips of paper reading, “Excuse me, but would you please stop shouting into your mobile phone?” More slips would be available from the guard on request. The irritated passengers would then hand these to the irritating ones. Of course, some people would not take kindly to receiving them, and so the slips would feature, beneath the basic message, a quick summary of the penalties for assault.



In Britain we have 120 mobile phones per 100 people. That’s too many. One per 100 would be about right, and I would massage the figure downwards by introducing an intelligence test, the passing of which would entitle an individual to apply for a licence to own a mobile phone. For this you would need legislation, which would be called “the Ownership Of Mobile Phones By Morons Act.” Applicants would be required to answer questions such as, “What might be the effect on the man reading a book alongside you of hearing you say, ‘…not calling for any particular reason, just thought it’d be nice to catch up,’ then asking innumerable questions starting with the word ‘So…’?”

The noise made by trains would also be addressed. It would be explained to train operating companies that it is not necessary to equip trains with horns that can be heard five miles away, since anyone that distance from the train is unlikely to be in any danger from it. All rail operators would also be required to attend seminars on the subject of Tannoy use. We are the only country in the world to make railway announcements when there is nothing to announce, for instance “There is a good service operating on all London Underground lines.” It is equally unnecessary to point out every 90 seconds to the users of King’s Cross that rollerblading is not allowed on the station platforms.

Aviation would be generally discouraged. Just as tax laws can require a person to live in a certain domicile for a minimum period every year, so the owners of airlines would be required to live under flight paths. Regarding the third runway at Heathrow, there would be another consultation of local residents, this time being less skewed in favour of the airline industry. Whereas the first consultation asked questions such as, “Is it possible, in your opinion, that the plans for the expansion of Heathrow would meet the noise requirements of EC directive 231- 4 (a)?” the second would ask, “Do you want a third runway at Heathrow?” a question carefully avoided hitherto because the answer—as all opinion polls confirm—would be a unanimous “No.”

Many goods and services would have to be banned. Anything that bleeps, for example, and hair-trigger car alarms. The man down the road from me has an alarm on his Jaguar that can be triggered by the postman breaking wind. Manufacturers of mobile phones that have the ability to play music out loud would also be called before a select committee and asked “Why? Why does this facility exist?” And they’d better have a good answer.

A similar stringency would be applied to dog ownership, which is at its highest ever level in Britain. There are 8m dogs and, as with mobiles, many of their owners satisfy the criteria of moronism. The hallmark of the moronic dog owner is to let the animal bark outdoors for, say, eight hours continuously, then turn violent when a neighbour points out that this is annoying.

I would reintroduce the dog licence (abolished in 1987), and dog owners would be required to sign a contract whose terms would introduce them to basic norms of civilised public behaviour, including, incidentally, a few pointers as to where it is inappropriate to find large quantities of steaming shit.

In addition, dogs would be required to wear on their collars a small digital recorder, activated by the sound of a bark. This contraption—the canine equivalent of the black box—would enable the verification of a neighbour’s complaint. Breaches of these regulations would result in the removal of the dog’s bark by a simple, if fatal, surgical intervention: removal of the head. A drastic procedure of which the mobile phone abusers would be advised to take careful note.