Ringing the changes in the corridors of power

Date: 16/11/1995

By Geoff Meade

Where Euro MPs lead, others are sure to follow.

In the wake of a long-overdue ban on our elected representatives using mobile phones in meeting rooms and the Parliament chamber, expect a Europe-wide backlash against the scourge of modern telecommunications.

These things are taking over the world. The Commission predicts that the number of mobile phones in use across Europe will rise from a hell of a lot to an awfully large number by the end of the century.

Inevitably there are already health scares: an emergency squad of eight experts has just been set up by the Commission to investigate allegations that the mere sight of someone on a mobile phone in the middle of a restaurant can trigger a case of Ovine Uniform Teleopathy (OUT), otherwise known as mad phone disease, in normal human beings dining just a few tables away.

But the ban on MEPs using these things is more fundamental than that.

Mobile phones have been outlawed because there's nothing more disruptive in a meeting of the Flora, Fauna and Pond Life Working Group than a sudden staccato burst of mobile phone fire from the shabby jacket pocket of a Green from Guadalajara.

So the College of Quaestors, to whom we shall return in a moment, has issued its mobile phone gagging order on the straightforward ground that these infernal devices are destroying the 'dignity' of Parliamentary proceedings.

It's true. Imagine what would have happened if mobile phones had been in common use when fighting broke out in the Strasbourg hemi-cycle a few years ago. There would have been chaos if one of the participants had been forced to stop and answer a call from his research assistant in mid-wrestle. As calm returned and the then British Conservative member for Norfolk Paul Howell was guided back to his place after taking on Welsh Socialists waving banners about miners' rights, I well remember a colleague turning to me and saying: “Thank heavens a mobile phone didn't go off in the middle of that lot!”

And when environmental campaigners invaded the public gallery during some dignitary's state visit and draped slogans all over the balcony, one huissier trying to restore sanity was heard to mutter: “I just hope none of them's carrying a mobile phone.”

No, we can't have the dignity of proceedings interfered with by the miracle of mobile telephony thank you very much. Mobile phones should be added to the list of offensive weapons proscribed by law. They should be banished from all public places.

There should be designated areas of parks and pedestrian precincts where people can go to make or receive calls. In the European Parliament, there should be special booths in which members have to stand to talk on their mobile phones. They could be called phone booths and they wouldn't even have to be built. They could use the ones which already exist, but which have been rendered redundant because nobody uses static phones anymore.

Listen, if you don't buy the dignity line, how about the health implications? We all know about the thermal effects of exposure to radio-frequency energy, because the Commission says we do, but an inquiry into the athermal effects will be time-consuming and complex. I know, I've just tried to look up 'athermal' and it isn't even in the dictionary.

We will only know the real health and safety threat we face from mobile phones, says Mr Flynn, after a thorough probe involving biologists, epidemiologists, physicists, pathologists and physicians.

Meanwhile I can report that the College of Quaestors is not the first to clamp down on mad phone disease.

There is a very nice hotel on a Sicilian island which put discreet signs up in its restaurant this summer, picturing a little black phone with a big black cross through it.

Because, of all the nations in all of Europe, the Italians are the worst when it comes to mobile phones. They can't live without them. They have developed an obscene passion for them on beaches, in bars, on buses, on street corners and, for all I know, in public toilets. They do nothing but natter as they walk, eat, take a leak and even talk. Yes, they even talk on the phone while they're talking to their companions. I've watched them doing it across a dining room table. At the start of the meal, the mobile phone is carefully laid beside the place setting and if it hasn't rung within about 15 minutes, they ring someone themselves.

And in Italy you can't sunbathe with any credibility at all unless you are disturbed at least once an hour by a ringing phone. Italy is the only country in Europe where sun-tanned men and women have one white ear. It is the only country in Europe which makes bikinis with mobile phone pouches.

Dare I suggest that this ban on Euro MPs using their mobile phones in meetings only got through because the College of Quaestors does not include an Italian?

Yes I dare. And dare I suggest a remedy for addicted afficiandos of the mobile phone?

I think the College of Quaestors should allow tremble phones, which don't ring when you are rung, but wobble. The idea was adopted years ago to take the irritation out of mobile beepers and it worked a treat, particularly for one young lady who was working for one of the political groups in the European Parliament.

She complained that her hip-mounted non-beeping beep machine not only gave her a message, but also an uncomfortable massage when it went off. I advised her to put it in the breast pocket of her blouse. The naughty man from The Times then went to a nearby public phone and rang her number.

I can confirm that the system silently did its work. She got the message and there was no aural disturbance to anyone at all.

The College of Quaestors, however, would doubtless argue that the dignity of her proceedings, at least, had been destroyed.