‘Sorry can I help you?’
A man asked me that on the Tube recently, briefly looking up from the Instagram reels and TikTok videos he was watching on his phone at full volume, with not a headphone in sight.
In his defence, it must have looked odd because rather than doomscrolling on my own phone, reading a book, or merely staring straight ahead, I was looking directly at the videos on his screen.
‘What are you doing?’ He prodded again. And, I’m not ashamed to say, I adopted my best ‘Karen’ voice and shot back ‘look mate, if you’re going to insist I hear the videos, I might as well watch them.’
Unsurprisingly, he huffed, turned his back, and, to my smug satisfaction, immediately put his headphones in.
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So yes, I am one of those people, the busybodies who move beyond British tutting and eye-rolling and try to tackle the scourge of what the Metro has coined ‘Bare Beating’, when people on public transport play music, videos, or loud speakerphone conversations.
Along with the ‘double baggers’, who have one seat for themselves and another for their rucksack, these rude commuters have made post-pandemic travel more of an ordeal than a journey.
So you might assume that I’m absolutely thrilled with news from Andy Burnham today that the government is going to crack down on those playing music and videos, with fines going up to £1,000.
You’d be wrong.
Because after reading the small print, somehow I’m not convinced I’ll be able to hang up my pass-agg script, pat myself on the back, and declare that my watch has now ended.
Frankly, I don’t think a single thing will change, despite Burnham’s vibes-based government launching another ‘small things that still matter to people’ policy that in theory should make our lives a little better every day.
In theory that’s commendable, but all the advertising campaigns in the world (the government is planning to launch a slogan of ‘share the journey not the noise’) aren’t going to mean a thing when there is no-one to enforce it.
Despite the publicity blitz, despite pledges to hit Bare Beaters in their pocket, it still seems like it will fall to nosy commuters like me to try and fix the problem.
And that comes with plenty of problems – you risk arguments, violence, or even my ego getting out of control when I tell someone to put headphones in and they do.
Firstly, let’s look beyond the headlines, and Burnham’s matey charm to find out what is, and isn’t being announced today.
Because when you read the small print, a pretty big problem emerges with the noise offenders on trains particularly.
Mostly due to the fact that, and I wish I had known this to shout in the faces of TikTok players on the Central Line – it is *already* against the law to play music on trains.
Since 2005, those who have been asked to stop playing music and refuse can be removed at the next station or face fines of up to £1,000 – essentially treated the same as fare dodgers.
But like fare dodgers, how many of us have seen a single bit of action taken against someone breaking those rules in the 20-odd years since it was introduced?
How many of us have seen anything on a British train in the past two decades to suggest that the companies that take thousands of pounds off commuters a year to offer a poor service have the resources to start handing out fines to those watching reels at full volume?
The government has said they will ‘remind’ rail passengers of this by launching the ‘share the journey not the noise’ campaign, but I imagine that quickly will just slip into our subconscious without us considering the meaning.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard the same stock phrases like ‘see it say it sorted,’ ‘please move down inside the carriage’ and ‘the next train is delayed indefinitely.’
Call me cynical, but I think ‘share the journey not the noise’ will just enter into that soundboard roster without much of an impact.
The policy that is actually new represents one of Burnham’s hobby horses, buses, where passengers will face a £100 fixed penalty notice.
But that seems to require a system of enforcement involving local authorities, bus regulators, individual operators and, of course, put-upon passengers, who will be encouraged to report any noise to staff or the British Transport Police.
Presuming, of course, you can find a member of either, increasingly a collector’s item on Britain’s overstretched public transport network.
Of course, any ‘crackdown’ is welcome, but I’ve been watching politics long enough to know that once the hubbub has died down, there’s rarely any practical change.
For now, I’ll allow myself not to get my hopes up, and continue to tell people to turn down their TikToks.
Even if they’re watching an Andy Burnham speech telling them not to.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
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