Bus DJs Offered £100 Fine Waiver If They Can Name Their Own Song
A new scheme in Lower Wombley will distinguish antisocial noise from a legally recognised mobile nightclub.
LOWER WOMBLEY, Commuters caught playing music through their phones on buses could escape a proposed £100 fine by proving the journey was an intentional public DJ set, officials said yesterday. Nobody had requested this arrangement.
Under an experimental scheme from the Lower Wombley Ministry of Public Quiet, passengers must produce a stage name, a logo and at least one emotionally complicated backstory before inspectors reach their stop. Anyone without a coherent artistic identity will be classed as an ordinary person who accidentally opened a video.
The ministry’s chief auditor of portable atmosphere, Mavis Quindle, said the policy separates reckless speaker use from “a properly curated sonic passage between the bakery and the retail park.” A bus counts as a venue if it has seats, windows and one person staring out of them in quiet resentment.
“A bus would qualify as a venue if it had seats and quiet resentment.”
That distinction has introduced a further task. Passengers seeking a waiver must perform a 30-second remix using the bus engine, ticket machine and a nearby cough. A panel of three retired nightclub doors, kept in a filing cabinet at the town hall, will decide whether the set was deliberate. Appeals can go by carrier pigeon, provided the pigeon supplies proof of residency.
Regular travellers have taken the news badly. Clive Porridge, who was standing nearby, said he had listened to the same eight-second stretch of a song for six minutes because his phone was trapped beneath a packet of crisps. He has since been booked to headline the 7.42 service to Upper Wombley. The driver will mark each drop with the indicator.
Another passenger, now known as DJ Turnip after finding the name available, said the possible fine had led him to put a fog machine in his backpack. Inspectors later ruled this excessive. The cloud made it difficult to tell whether anyone was getting off at the next stop.
The ministry said the scheme will remain in place until every bus in Lower Wombley has either become a nightclub or passed a noise assessment by a highly qualified goose. Loud ordinary music is still loud ordinary music, it said, unless the listener can point at a passenger and say, “That is my audience.”