Is it just ME?

Or is the death of the quiet coach a tragedy?

WEEP (silently) for the slow death of the quiet coach. Some train companies have given them up entirely and Virgin’s East Coast service has upset first-class passengers by saying the ‘ chilled ambience’ of its expensive coaches means people don’t need them.

Presumably Virgin imagines an upmarket crowd immersed in philosophy books, and forgets all those honking executives. Companies speak of ‘flexibility’, but there is a darker reason, I suspect, for the sneaky removal of those blessed signs banning ringtones, mobile chatter, music and shouting.

Many people simply don’t obey them, and a single hard-pressed conductor can’t police them. Nor can fellow passengers, because the result is too often a shouting match.

‘It’s an important work call!’ is the very least of it. I’ve heard one lad shouting:

In the age of ‘me first!’, the idea of thinking of others in public places is slowly fading

‘mind your own business, b****!’ at a woman who objected to his bleeping video game.

Men are understandably nervous of challenging lads who might have ready fists if their machismo is challenged. It’s left to us older women to weigh in.

But it’s part of the decline of public manners: a simple awareness of other people. Old-fashioned parents used to rebuke small children for annoying strange adults.

Headteachers did it, too — awful punishments awaited students who were reported for singing loudly on the bus.

The idea that in crowded places you have to consider others is not quite dead, but is slowly atrophying.

It’s the age of ‘me first!’, of that curious mobile-phone culture that makes us feel more connected to a distant friend than to the poor devil sat right next to us, whose ears we assail — even when we’re in the quiet coach.