TOUGH work, conservation. In York at least, the battle never stops. As campaigners rally their resources to oppose major planning mistakes such as Coppergate Riverside, they struggle to challenge a myriad of smaller outrages.

So a bit of green belt is nibbled away here, an unsightly development is approved there. Heworth folk lose a piece of public land because of a council blunder. Concrete mixers move onto the ancient open space of Hob Moor to build a cycle track across it.

Residents near the old Oaken Grove School are angered by plans to build on the site; residents near St Peter's School are upset by its plans to build nearby.

And then there's that pub on Layerthorpe.

The Frog Hall is history. In both senses of the phrase. This boozer may not possess the inspiring majesty of a Minster; no Roman spittoons or Viking warrior elbow patches have been dug up in its beer cellar. The place only dates from the 1930s, after all. But the Frog has hung around through war and deprivation, through the tram era to the car era; long enough, then, for it to become a landmark of the area's social history.

Yet this is no museum piece. For the regulars who meet to drink and laugh and listen to music, it is an intrinsic part of their lives.

Not for much longer. Despite a spirited campaign to save the Frog, it has croaked. In its place will rise those temples of the contemporary age, a video store and a drive-through McDonald's.

What a vision of modern life the developers enjoy. Their bold new future for Layerthorpe has no room for an untidy, noisy, busy nightspot, where locals meet to moan and joke and relax. Instead people will glide up in their four-wheel drives to pick up a video, a burger and a bottle, before scuttling away home having barely exchanged a word with another human being.

No doubt the McDonald's will thrive. So will the video store - at least until we all go digital and can order a film through the TV without the need to get off the sofa. The demand for such in-home, insular entertainment continues to grow.

But for those who still want a social life - and judging by the Frog's healthy takings there are still plenty of them about - what are they to do? Go somewhere else, is the polite way of paraphrasing it.

The developers come from Barnsley, so they know no better. But what about the custodians of York, the people we elect to look after it on our behalf? Where are they? Too busy drawing up their public inquiry defence of Coppergate Riverside to intervene, no doubt.

LET'S hope this unpleasant Greek business is all over soon. It is every Englishman's birthright to pursue his hobby, however eccentric, without fear of persecution. I for one will not touch a kebab until Andy Jenkins and his fellow plane spotters are released from jail.

Some national media commentators are working themselves into a fury about the failure of Greece's legal system in this case. Yet they are strangely silent about British state abuse of the judiciary.

In the eyes of the Greeks, Andy and his mates were foreigners behaving suspiciously in a military area. They were arrested and have been before a court more than once. They have legal representation and have been visited by British diplomats.

Under our own emergency terrorism measures, a foreigner behaving in a similarly dodgy manner could be detained indefinitely, without trial. I know which system I think is more just.