Most people deplore bad behaviour in public and gratuitous breaches of etiquette and manners on trains and buses. Few would disagree with comments made yesterday by the shadow transport secretary, Richard Holden, that ‘inconsiderate and obnoxious behaviour blights the lives of the travelling public’. Yet many, contrariwise, would disagree with his proposal to remedy this scourge, namely for ‘swift justice for those who make people’s lives a misery’ through on-the-spot fines.

Under Holden’s plan to tackle the modern malaise of passengers having to ‘endure somebody else’s choice of crap music blasted through a speaker’, he wants to restore a railway bylaw – one that has fallen into abeyance – forbidding passengers from playing sounds ‘using any instrument or equipment’ which is to the annoy

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