Bill Carmichael: I’m starting a digital detox

Since then a number of people have contacted me with bizarre examples of such smartphone behaviour, including instances of astonishing rudeness.

One reader described a family of four at a restaurant, all playing with their phones throughout the meal – even while eating their dinner.

Even better was the account of a young couple out for a candlelit supper on St Valentine’s night. Instead of holding hands across the table and gazing into each other’s eyes as you might expect, they both sat in silence, heads bowed, prodding and swiping their smartphones, pausing only to take pictures of the food to share with their online followers. Not only did they not exchange a word for the entire evening, they barely glanced at each other.

Another chap told of how he was headbutted in the chest by a woman who was so engrossed with her smartphone that she wasn’t looking where she was going. She looked up at him, snarled and then bowed her head again and barged off through the crowds, bouncing off other pedestrians like a ball in a bagatelle.

A mother admitted that the only way she could persuade her teenage children to come down from their bedrooms for the evening meal was by texting them. Simply calling up the stairs would be ignored.

But I have a story that trumps all these. Earlier this week I was travelling on a train when a baby began crying a few rows behind me. “Crying” is putting it mildly; it was more like screaming its head off and there are no sounds on earth more certain to shred the nerves.

As a father of three I’ve been there, 
done that. I know full well that when 
babies are tired, teething or unwell it can be the devil’s own job to pacify them. I imagined the poor parents going through the familiar ritual; feeding, changing, cradling and rocking – anything to stop the crying.

Finally, when I stood up to leave at my stop I glanced over to see how they were getting on. There were mum and dad, heads bowed, prodding at their smartphones, earphones firmly in place to block the awful noise the rest of the passengers were forced to endure, and doing absolutely nothing to comfort the poor child who was still screaming in a pushchair between them.

How have we managed to create a communications device that actually destroys the art of human 
communication?

Britain is in dire need of an urgent “digital detox” and that’s why today I am launching a new campaign – SWISTO.

So the next time you are in mid-conversation and some ill-mannered oaf pulls out a phone and starts prodding the screen, you should repeat in a very loud voice the campaign’s defining slogan: “Switch the Sodding Thing Off!”

Alcohol points

I’LL raise a glass if reports that David Cameron has abandoned plans for minimum alcohol pricing turn out to be true.

This nannying, ill-thought out idea would have penalised responsible drinkers – particularly those on low incomes – while doing absolutely nothing to address the problem of binge drinking.

And if your answer to every single problem is invariably to raise taxes, then you are asking the wrong question.

The real problem with alcohol in this country isn’t that it is too cheap, but that isn’t nearly cheap enough, largely thanks to already ridiculously high levels of tax.