Nowadays, concern with pollution is definitely ‘in’. We worry about the ecology of air, water and land. And we have thousands of regulations to prevent them being contaminated by noxious substances.
But there is one kind of pollution about which the law is still remarkably tolerant – noise pollution.
You can drive an extremely noisy motor bike up and down Britain’s roads, even late at night on residential streets. You can shatter the peace of Lyme Bay by rushing around in an extremely noisy speed boat. And you can walk around, playing incredibly loud music on a ghetto blaster — without anybody official so much as lifting an eyebrow.
I suppose one could regard this as a sublime example of social tolerance.
In my experience, people in West Dorset don’t, by and large, share that view. They are inclined to regard the free rein given to noise not as a sign of laudable tolerance but as a sign that we haven’t yet legally recognised the great value of peace and quiet.
Indeed, one of the biggest items in my postbag over the years has been complaints from people whose neighbours are disturbing them.
I have to admit that my own prejudices are all on the side of the peace-lovers. I hate being surrounded by loud noise and I especially dislike it when it is somebody else’s loud noise.
But, even disregarding such personal preferences, there must surely be some limits to what anybody can reasonably be expected to tolerate by way of noise disturbance from somebody else. When the noise is enormous, and it is going on very late at night, that limit has surely been breached.
Of course, there are all sorts of delicate questions of interpretation and definition here. One person’s ordinary party is another person’s intolerably loud noise. One person’s quiet enjoyment of music is another person’s nightmare. One person’s lifestyle choice is another person’s life-destroyer.
Adjudicating between these competing and conflicting descriptions of the same events is not an easy task for the authorities.
But we shouldn’t make the best the enemy of the good – and, despite all the difficulties of definition, I think it really is reasonable to demand a degree of social responsibility when people are making noise, especially when other people are trying to sleep.
If somebody in authority steps in when such responsibility is notably absent – far from complaining about official officiousness – I would be inclined to give a cheer.