Loud noises are bad for you, so London’s Royal Opera House set a limit at 85 decibels and spent $100,000 on noise-reducing screens and high-tech earplugs to protect staff, and set a ‘noise schedule’ to make sure musicians don’t over a day average more than 85d. Since ‘Madame Butterfly’ can hit 135d, the opera house feels someone cramped their style. Tough.

A pneumatic drill or chain saw can reach 120d, as can a bagpipe band playing with at full volume, Glasgow’s International Piping Festival director, Roddy MacLeod, says this law is unworkable. Bagpipes are Highland instruments, anyway, so Glasgow’s International Piping Festival can bury its pipe dream and everyone can go to Inverness for this.