UK leaders past and present love to nudge us towards good or bad behaviour. Social scientists, though, say £100 on-the-spot fines may not prove an effective deterrent It’s a very modern phenomenon, the nuisance of people on public transport using their phones for flagrantly loud things – conference calls, TV shows, music – without headphones. I remember a time when the most annoying thing you could do with a phone was play a game with an irritating beep; a time when having a loud conversation was so verboten that comedians could get whole careers out of it. So why does Andy Burnham’s campaign , “Share the carriage, not the noise,” introducing fines of up to £100 for miscreants, feel so nostalgic? And crucially, will the fines work? Burnham is on to something, because it is insufferable. I could lose hours debating the finer points of whether it’s worse to listen to an episode of Paw Patr