Credit and debit cards? I hate them. But how, these days, do you live without them? Yet that's what a growing number of people are trying to do, apparently.

Disenchantment with the appalling security record of the credit-card system is said to be driving more of us to use cash again. At least, that's the findings of research financed by the European Security Transport Association which has a vested interest as the companies which belong to it make their money out of carrying cash around.

But I can easily believe that there is a general move against card carrying. It's so fraught with perils. Every time you pay for anything with your card in a shop or store or at a filling station you wonder about the honesty of anyone who might come across the information carried on it.

If you ring up to buy theatre tickets or book an hotel room or even make a charitable donation, you have the same doubts.

Draw cash out of a cashpoint and first you have to check the machine over to make sure no-one has attached any strange information-gathering device to it, without having the faintest idea about what you're actually looking for. And then you have to block the view of anyone who might be standing nearby and tap in your PIN number while covering the keyboard with your other hand or with your wallet. Pay at a till by chip-and-PIN and you have to be similarly careful.

It's all so nerve-wracking, isn't it? And yet despite all these precautions being widely known, about seven million Britons have been victims of credit-card fraud.

What can you do about it? Technology is taking over our lives. There are some transactions you can't conduct without a mobile phone as well as a credit card. The other week, planning a visit to see Number One Son, I phoned the Premier Lodge central reservations number to book a room in London.

The voice on the other end, belonging to a robot, took me through a list of questions, some answered by tapping numbers into the telephone, others by vocal replies (which somehow it understood). There were two hurdles at which this transaction could have collapsed.

The first was when it asked me to tap in my credit-card number (which I did). And then, at the end of the exchange, it asked me to tap in my mobile phone number so it could text me confirmation of the booking and a reservation number (you no longer get a written confirmation).

I didn't have my mobile phone immediately to hand (it being reserved for emergency use only), nor do I know the number (which is taped on to the back of it). So I had to leave the robot hanging on while I found it and input it. I then switched the phone on and within a couple of minutes a text message arrived with the confirmation of booking. Transaction completed.

The point of this tale is: if I hadn't had a credit card or a mobile phone, no alternative way of booking a room was available. The call would have foundered. What do you do in such circumstances? Just turn up on the day and hope for the best?

We're being forced into increasing dependence on technology that many of us don't like and a growing number of us don't trust. Isn't it time we called a halt to so-called progress and asked a few searching questions about just how well it's working before proceeding any further?

A rubbish proposal

While it's easy to appreciate a council's frustration over children who drop litter outside schools and colleges, I can't really see that giving them £75 fixed penalty fines will solve the problem. Yet that's the proposal from Blackpool Council, which says the penalties could be applied to children as young as 11.

Presumably the theory is that when the children are fined their parents will have to cough up the cash and will then make it plain to their offspring that litter-dropping is not an option for the future. Sadly, life doesn't work that way.

There's no doubt that youngsters do make a terrible mess. The pavements and gutters around schools are usually strewn with litter, mainly food wrappings and drinks bottles and cans. Instead of fining the children, why not place the responsibility for cleaning up the local environment with the school? Look on it as part of an education for life.

If clean-up squads were formed from among all the pupils and a rota drawn up, I reckon that peer pressure would soon ensure that litter was put in the bins rather than hurled to the floor. A valuable lesson would have been learned.

Maybe life doesn't work that way either, but I reckon it's a more likely winner than slapping fines on irresponsible children that they won't have the cash to pay.

Only way forward

It's depressing that there was such an outraged response to the comments by Keighley MP Ann Cryer, above, about the long-term social problems that can be caused by partners who can't speak English being brought to Bradford from Pakistan.

How can this city, with an increasingly large Pakistani community, move on when it receives a steady influx of people who are debarred by communication difficulties from participating properly in its affairs? And how can the children of those people hope to make best use of the educational opportunities available to them unless they receive massive help with learning English in their early years at school?

Those who denounce Mrs Cryer as a scaremonger and accuse her of creating an atmosphere of fear should surely respect her views, which were expressed after a fact-finding trip to Pakistan.

And if they doubt the truth of them, they should take a stroll around the streets of Bradford with their ears open and listen to the number of Asian people, particularly women, who talk to each other and to their children in languages which aren't English.