West end letters: Society | Antony Porter | menace | mobile phones in public | anti-social behaviour

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 4 December 2009

Get off the phone!

• SOCIETY needs to get its act together Society needs to get its act together regarding the menace of mobile phones on public transport.
The mobile phone revolution is something of a culture shock to those of an older generation taught that telephone conversations are private and personal, that talking loudly in public is bad manners, and that revealing confidential information about yourself in public is utterly stupid.
Yet all this is no commonplace.
The irony of the mobile phone is that far from improving communication, it often isolates the user from their surroundings and from other people.
Occasionally it generates anti-social behaviour, as when the user engages in blasphemous or bad language.
Sometimes this results in an individual in the centre of a bus or train and proceeding to talk loudly rather like a solo orator in a lecture hall.
I even saw a woman cradling her phone in her lap as if it were a baby.
Antony Porter, W9

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld.
Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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