That should be a hanging offence. Once set firm, the cornflake-to-porcelain bond formed by milky sugar has been scientifically proven to be 73% stronger than HC-100 concrete reinforced with spot welds. Show it a Brillo pad and it'll just laugh in your face.

there was an incident, on my journey home last week, where someone was almost killed for asking another person to turn their overly loud music down.

It must have been unbearable if you were stood next to the audio offender. I was at least five yards away with my back turned - and my headphones on, but could still hear his thin tinny shrill spilling out. After claiming that the request to decrease the volume had been 'racist', the loud listener then went on to tell the other person, in a low controlled voice - 'I'm going to kill you'.

Fortunatley the carriage seemed to be packed with scrum sized city types who restrained the attacker and released the requester's throat from his grip.

I'll be keeping my head down and saying nothing if anyone starts noise polluting near me in future.

Apart from the actual noise, it's so incredibly annoying because it's a deliberately aggressive statement which says "I don't give a toss about you lot, I can listen to my music wherever I want, as loud as I want". If it was actually about the music, they'd listen to it on some half-decent earphones.

what exactly is a "grime" track? I presume it's an ugly din, played to annoy the oldies and the squares.
When I was a lad and pub jukeboxes had singles rather than CDs it was a popular jape amongst Liverpool scallies to play Teardrop Explodes b sides (which were usually mad and unlistenable) on heavy rotation. I seem to remember "Window Shopping For A New Crown Of Thorns" being particularly baffling for the pint-of-mild-with-rum & pep-chaser brigade whose idea of musical entertainment to accompany a pint was "Welcome Home" by Peters & Lee.
Anti-social but at least it was funny. Nowadays though I'd sooner hear Peters & Lee.

they are listening to music and not stabbing each other. It's just one of them things innit?

traditionally, show each other a little respect by not invading each other's privacy or imposing anything unasked-for in the way of loud conversation or recorded music. At least, that's what I was taught.

Upon being subjected to tuneless drivel played on a mobile phone, I recently asked a child to "kindly use headphones" rather than to pollute the carriage with tinny noises. The child must have been no more than 13 years old. Sitting next to the child was a woman I assume to have been the parent. The mother responded with aggression and contempt, indicating to all within earshot that my request was mean spirited and unreasonable. Never mind that subjecting the carriage to uninvited audible pollution might be deemed impolite, inconsiderate and downright ignorant.

Therein lies the problem. It's not the children who are at fault.

I am amazed by the number of annoying and simply irrelevant noises that accompany modern life, and the fact that few people seem to notice them. Unless you're blind there is no reason for your phone keys to make a noise, and if you were blind you wouldn't appreciate them all making the same noise. Almost every device comes with factory settings that my first task when I get my hands on it is to turn off all the noises. Like digital cameras with loud, simulated shutter release sounds. For f***'s sake, why? Does someone think it's fun?

Of course the most useless and annoying sounds of all are the following:
1) burglar alarms aka 'My car/house is equipped with a device that broadcasts to the whole neighbourhood the fact that we have just had a gust of wind in the street, which you probably knew anyway.'
2) the alarm a cash machine emits while you're doing something aka 'Yes folks, I'm using the cash machine! Look, I'm depositing £250! Would you like to steal it from me while I fumble for the deposit envelope? OK, thanks!'
3) 'The doors can be opened by pressing the illuminated button. Should the doors begin to close while you or a child are passing through them, I regret to inform you that you will be squashed across your ribcage, because your hands will be full of your personal belongings and you will be half way through the door so you won't be able to push the button to re-open the doors, and the child in front of you will start crying because the vestibule area smells of shit, and the person behind you will be agreeing with you about how stupid the doors are but won't actually help you by pressing the button, because even though they are within reach of it they too have their hands full of personal belongings. Thank you for travelling with Great Train Robbery Trains.'

..That many young people are so unused to silence that they're scared of it & so provide their own tinny soundtrack just in case a quiet moment invades their lives & causes them to think.

Obviously people traffiking is worse, as are sweatshops, the problems of Darfur, Iraqi, palenstine but yes tinny noises on the bus are annoying added to by the random breaking of drivers and people eating chicken/takeaways,peripitetic evangelisers it's almost as annoying as the person who posts next about how we should all avoid this by moving to rural yokelville and walking across peat bogs to work like they do.......

Haven't you got to sort of rise above it lest you turn into your parent? I still think people putting their feet on the seat opposite is at least as bad. And there appears to be no age bracket for that one.

Grime. Is it today's punk or the 2008 equivalent of Bill Haley and the Comets seat ripper extravaganza or is it the Stones pissing up a garage wall?? Are we grumpy old men? Well I definately am. But are all teens really as vacuous as they are being painted in some of the above posts? My son is 16 and a "B-Boy Dancer" but he and his mates seem like well adjusted kids to me. They deplore the "gangster" culture and its spin offs but like all teens eternal they love the clothes.Some things never change. Anyway back to Paul Weller's hairdo

Put an MP3 of a particularly unfashionable favourite on your mobile, sit down next to them, produce your phone and start playing *Tales From Topographic Oceans* or the second Kissing The Pink album on it. I believe they call it Back At Ya!

What was that unlistenable stuff Peel used to play?? Carcass or something, that'll get rid of em.

I would suggest lush melodic orchestrations are effectively the complete opposite of Grime. So bang on a Mantovani toon - Stranger in Paradise would be apt and watch the problem melt away in a lush soundscape.

Or not.

I thought that this was strictly a London 'ting until two shellsuited lasses in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, sat next to me on the station platform and proceeded to bombard me with tinny mobile-phone hip hop one afternoon.

Feeling mischievous I opted to hit back by using my own mobile to blast out something they'd find repugnant - Kris Kirstofferson, I believe it was. It worked like a charm. They rolled their eyes and skulked off (probably to kick a bin over, eat a battered sausage and/or get pregnant), while I savoured the sweet taste of revenge.

Try it next time you're on a night bus (NB I can't be held responsible if you get stabbed).

It's not about the music (which i find unlistenable, but they probably don't like George Jones)- it is about being fucking irritating. The only sensible responses are ignoring it completely (since getting a reaction is what they're after), or visiting unimaginable violence upon them. Since the latter wold get you in all sorts of trouble the only option is the former. How about saying, in perfect RP, "Groovy track dude" as you get off the buss?

In answer to David's questions:

Is the current vogue for playing "grime" tracks on the bus via the tinny speaker of your mobile phone the most annoying, anti-social, pointless of all? quite possibly, but wankers driving through town with REALLY LOUD music playing are pretty annoying too, though admittedly you're exposed to it for a shorter period of time

Is it worse that tying your dustbin lid to your front door? no because this is a direct attack you can't avoid and which should be met with an appropriately aggressive response - boiling oil?

Tying firecrackers to cats' tails? clearly not as this is a sadistic attach on a poor animal, though clearly tying a firecracker to THEIR tails may be a suitable response

Frying an ant with a magnifying glass?ditto

Wearing jeans so big that the crotch dangles between your knees? no, because they look hilarious.

Talking in patois even though you come from Virginia Water? ditto

Leaving cereal bowls all over the house? err, whose house is it?

Someone should start a petition.

Or call the local constabulary. It's only a small step from using the loudspeaker on your phone to stabbing smart arse Guardian readers whilst they sleep with the au pair. Are kids still listening to Grime? Pfft, I moved onto Gunk minutes ago.

...he got pissed off long ago with all the 'laaaads' going to the park and then just sitting in and around their cars, playing shite at ear-blistering volumes.

So he got some Shostakovich, cranked up the volume and switched his hearing aid off....

So is this the authentic "sound of young Islington", David?

this makes me want to destroy my television... it beggars belief.

an inverse correlation between the volume of music being emitted from a car, and the quality of said music. That is to say, the louder the music, the more shite it is. I never hear Nick Drake or side two of Bowie's "Low" blasting out of the cars screeching round our bus station on a Saturday evening, it's always some hippety hoppety shite.

it's more thumpy-thump than hippety-hoppety...

....playing bagpipes (Hardland by Martyn Bennett, perhaps) or melodeon (The Compleat Dancing Master by Ashley Hutchings and John Kirkpatrick) at full tilt, it'll probably be me. At least it's not REM, so don't walk over the cars to get to me......
Anti-social? Public bloody service, mate!
And, for a small fee, I will travel the length and breadth of the public transport system doing same, to put these hobbledehoy ne'er-do-wells into place.

The loud, senseless and often out-of-context repetition of daft TV catchphrases can be really irritating. Until, wazzed off by hearing "Am I bovvered" for the squillionth time, I realised that I can just tune it out and pass it by. Which I can't do when someone farts on the tube. That's anti-social.

My daughter has recently been an Air Hostess, sorry Cabin Crew, with a well known airline. In training they are taught the importance of not holding on to intestinal gases when they expand at altitude. Thus be very very careful of offending your trolley dollies. When they bend over to enquire as the well being of the passenger in front of you, a well aimed silent but deadly is more than likely heading your way.

...that there is something particularly anti-social about playing music over a phone on public transport. Similarly, the kids round my way have come across an ingenious way of annoying me and my household. We have a yard that is surrounded by a big brick wall with a metal gate in it. If you are visiting us, you must ring a door bell outside the gate and one of us will come and let you in. So what do the youth do? That's right, they steal the door bell. The replacement will last no longer than a fortnight. One of the biggest annoyances about this is that it makes deliveries to the house almost impossible (I have yet to find a courier that understands the instructions 'please phone this number when you arrive'). In a funny way, I have a grudging respect for the people doing this as they seem to have stumbled on a way of extracting maximum annoyance from me at minimum effort to themselves. The next door bell will come with a layer of epoxy glue around it (apart from the button of course).

Oversize basketball shirts, tinny music leaking from headphones, feet on seats, loud mobile phone conversations, underwear showing from low-rider jeans,football shirts as evening attire, swearing for no reasons, Boyz in the Hood in Somerset, wearing stupid hats.

Sheesh, I thought it was just me getting old.

"Every generation thinks that the next one will be the end of it all" - McNulty, The Wire

In urinals. Hate seeing that (clearly I had a cleaning job when I was a student and it's never left me).