MP'S phone moan strikes a chord

12.00.00am GMT Fri 24th Nov 2006

Mobile Phone tones

Colchester MP Bob Russell has had a hectic media schedule over the past two days, taking part in 14 radio interviews and three television interviews as broadcast journalists across the country took a keen interest he had tabled at the House of Commons about what he described as the growing problem of anti-social use of mobile telephones in public places.

Liberal Democrat Mr Russell, who is Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Noise Reduction Group, has gained the support of MPs from both the Labour and Conservative Parties in his call for the Government and mobile phone companies to introduce "a code of practice setting out a phone etiquette to reduce nuisance and to regulate the use of mobile phones in public places."

Praising the work of the UK Noise Association, Mr Russell said that he had received a positive response to his criticism of the minority of mobile phone users who played loud music from some types of mobile phone and the wider annoyance caused by phone ring tones.

He also praised the invention of the mobile phone, but a detrimental downside in recent years had been "anti-social noise pollution" which often offended others in the vicinity, such as on buses and trains and in shops.

The roll call of radio stations who interviewed him during Wednesday, yesterday and today reads as follows: the Today programme on Radio 4; Radio 5 Live (twice); BBC local radio stations in Belfast, Southern Counties, Lincolnshire, Coventry, Wales, Suffolk, Essex, London, Leeds and Oxford; BBC Asian Network; LBC London; and Irish Radio (Dublin).

Mr Russell's television appearances were on London BBC News, the "Daily Politics" programme on BBC TV2, and Anglia TV's "Late Edition" political programme.