Piped Music in Parks?

We live in a crazy world. We now have piped music in Waterstones and M&S. and last time I went into the city library there was a radio playing.

The theory seems to be that people today don't feel comfortable unless they are surrounded by recorded music. As the music played is stuff I never want to listen to it just emphasises that I'm an outsider. But even when years ago Waterstones played piped music that I actually listen to myself by choice, I hated hearing it in a shop. I actually wrote a letter of complaint to Waterstones. There were three reasons: 1) I want to listen to my kind of music when I'm in the right frame of mind, 2) Why should other people who may dislike my music as much as I hate theirs be forced to listen? and 3) one day I reckoned someone will start to put on stuff I hate - and sure enough they're doing it now.

I wonder when they will start installing it in parks. I would lay a small bet that the Director of Parks and Woodland has already started looking into it. Within a year or two Graves Park, Whitely Woods and Blacka will have speakers wired through the woodland. So much better than all that annoying old fashioned bird song. And if that seems absurd, well once it seemed absurd to me that anyone could think of putting piped music in a library.

And the justification for this will be that it is "inclusive". Those people who can't exist without a constant racket of electric background noise are being 'excluded' from our public spaces!

God help us!