Cosmopolitan vice: London's WestminsterCouncil is fighting a losing battle with phone sex. Not the `phone in for a session of heavy breathing' sort but the `phone to pick up a prostitute' type. Ever since London's vice squads cleared the centre of the city of its prostitutes, phone booths have become the point of contact. The booths are plastered with postcards advertising services for every sort of eroticism, and with as much ethnic variation as possible.

The first time I came to Britain, in the late eighties, London's phone booths were still just phone booths, and grim-looking women lurked around King's Cross Station hoping to entice a punter. The second time round, in the mid-nineties, King's Cross had been "cleaned-up", the women were gone, and you no longer had to jump over comatose junkies to get to your train.Since then London's cosmopolitanism has been laid bare in its phone booths, from `Thai girl, new in town' and `domineering Indian babe' to the `Swedish beauty' or `African Queen', complete with well specified services (often offersto whip or beat men into submission, service them on their way to work, and occasionally, "in luxury apartment"). Westminster Council, in whose jurisdiction the majority of central London's tourist spots fall, decided that this was bad for the city's image and did a deal with British Telecom to clear the booths. The idea was to deny access to the numbers advertised. Apart from the fact that new cards and new numbers arrived at a remarkable pace, a minor revolution in communication technology mobile phones has kept the business thriving.

Dome: London's pursuit of coolness continues apace. The roof of the Millennium Dome is in place. What will happen under it is anyone's guess, but according to the New Labour jingle the Dome is going to be the "most fantastic day-out in the world" which, among other things, will "blow your socks off". The PM is so pleased with it that he has decided that it should have a more permanent use than just as a millennium party marquee. This is perhaps forward planning by apragmatic politician. Because it appears that a large number of young Britons are drawn not to their capital city but to its transatlantic rival in cosmopolitan cool, New York. According to a survey published this week, almost a quarter of the sample of 25-35-year-olds want to see the new century dawn over Times Square, and a mere 14 per cent named the dome in Greenwich (not to be confused with a chain of cheap French-style restaurants) as their choice for the Millennium magic. The survey also found that almost a quarter of young Europeans named Scotland as their best party option and not one intended to go to Greenwich. Could this preference just have a little something to do with the geniality of Scottish football fans in France as compared with the English?