Column: Great that our small complaints are now starting to be focus of actual law

In France, a man was fined €150 for using a phone on loudspeaker in a train station.

Donald Trump signed an executive order bringing back plastic straws because paper ones are terrible.

There was also a news story about supermarkets getting rid of self-scan tills.

It’s like a hack stand-up comedian did his act near a Zoltar machine and it came true.

These small complaints that we all have are starting to be the focus of actual laws and it’s great.

Firstly, people using their phones on loudspeaker mode has to be one of the most wilful of all the annoying acts. The kind of people who do it definitely know what headphones and earbuds are.

I have seen people using their phone on loudspeaker while holding it to their head like a normal phone. You’re not even saving the energy of picking it up.

I blame The Apprentice. That TV show normalised using speaker phones in public. They only did that so the TV crew could record both sides of the conversation but people thought it was a sign of someone who means business and it caught on.

Paper straws, on the other hand, never caught on. I understand the worry about microplastics getting into the oceans and then, somehow, our bodies. Sadly the solution we settled on was to make the straws out of something that dissolves in water.

I’m sure the bars don’t mind because it adds an upper time limit to how long you can take to finish your drink. If you don’t get the drink done in the first five minutes, it will taste like you’re chewing cardboard.

With these small irritations being dealt with by the governments of the world, it makes me wonder what our leaders should do. I think Sir Keir Starmer should announce a ban on those tethered caps on plastic bottles. If he did that, the nation wouldn’t mind what he gets up to with his voice coach.

I’m fairly sure not using your indicator when turning left at a roundabout is already against the rules, but it isn’t policed. If we changed things so that people were getting three points on their licence for that, we’d soon be living in a better world.

I’m not sure how you could legislate to stop Lego being left on the floor at night but if there was a way to make sure we never stand on one again, I’ll be all for it.

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