Facebook madness

Has the world gone quite, quite mad? I notice from various colleagues that they and their friends are placing the most personal and intimate details about themselves on their Facebook profiles. Photographs of themselves in all manner of contorted positions and states of deshabille, photographs of their families, dates of birth, phone numbers - this is sheer folly! Leaving aside the dangers of fraud and personation, as well as the ever-increasing threat of falling victim to some deranged, gibbering 'stalker', what of the small matter of one's private life becoming public property?

And now I understand that Facebook is to make its 'data' available to search engines such as Google. Ye Gods!

London's Vanishing Cafes

Isn't it about time that Comrade Ken did something to impede the remorseless advance of faceless coffee chains such as Starbucks?http://www.classiccafes.co.uk/RIP.html

Every month seems to bring the news of another great London café being forced to shut (e.g The Tea Rooms, the Piccolo, Sidolis), to be replaced by a drearisome clone establishment. And now I hear that the fabuous New Piccadilly Restaurant of Denman St is due to close at the end of September. This is really a deplorable state of affairs. Pretty soon we will all be living in a Philip K Dick-style nightmare world with interchangeable, indistinguishable shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants.

Disrespecting 'Harry Potter'?

I read with some distress a missive in one of our free papers. The writer describes criticism of the Harry Potter books as being "disrespectful" – oh dear, where to begin?

Ignoring this use of the absurd U.S. "hip hop" argot that appears to have become de rigueur throughout our once-sovereign state, does this person believe that J.K. Rowling is somehow deserving of "respect" because of the undoubtedly huge sales of her books? I believe that Miss Jade Goody attracted millions of viewers during her appearances on the execrable 'Big Brother' – is she also worthy of "respect"? Or does s/he genuinely believe that the Harry Potter oeuvre constitutes the "greatest literature ever written"?

Can it be that our nation, mother to Shakespeare, Dickens, Milton and de Quincey, offers now the proud boast that it gave the literary world 'Muggles' and 'Hagrid'? God help us.

Queueing now 'uncool'?

Does my memory fail me ( not unheard of!) or were people in the habit of queueing for buses 20 or 30 years ago? Nowadays, there is a regular hodge-podge of shoving and jostling at the bus stop. This country was once famed for its queues! What the blazes is going on?

It seems to me that all the small civilities that made this country singular - and yes, great - are being rapidly dispensed with, on account of their being old-fashioned or 'uncool'.