SO some potential visitors to York think our city "dull" and "staid". What do they want? Badger baiting at the Bar Convent? Mud wrestling in Deans Park? If they find the place desperately "uninteresting", they can get knotted. Go on! Follow the bright lights to Bridlington! See if we care.

Perhaps we shouldn't be too harsh on the halfwits who came up with these tautological complaints (don't dull, staid and uninteresting mean the same thing?) They might have kept their opinions to themselves, if city bigwigs hadn't pressed them to spill the bile beans.

Hundreds of thousands visit York every year: most of them crowding into Coney Street on Saturday afternoon. But that's not good enough for York tourism chiefs. They had to find out why the rest of the planet is not dropping by. Insatiable bunch.

Inevitably, focus groups were assembled and grilled. The interrogators demanded: "Why is it that you fail to find historic York a compelling visitor destination?" To which they gave a half-shrug and mumbled: "S'boring".

What - the city with its own brass rubbing centre; the city that is about to stage a major exhibition on the history of cutlery - boring? Those focus group ravers have no sense of history. Or architecture. Or cutlery.

To be honest, it could have been worse. The same armchair piranhas must have made mincemeat of Immingham. And what is wrong with being staid anyway? Queen Victoria was hardly Mata Hari, but which of the girls ruled the empire?

We should be proud to be staid. American tourists don't come to York for its Las Vegas-like nightlife; Japanese visitors are not drawn here to sample the exotic fruits of our red light district. What they want is policemen in pointy helmets patrolling very old walls in the drizzle.

Tourism chiefs are not so sure. They believe the city's appeal needs "articulating and freshening up". This is rebranding talk and, sure enough, a new slogan and logo is unveiled next month. Brace yourself for: York - Because You're Worth It; It's Good To York; or, if we are overcome by honesty, York. Reassuringly Expensive.

But a new motto is not enough. If we really choose to appeal to those eccentrics who demand to be entertained on holiday, we must get some new attractions.

Perhaps as part of its super-sensitive Coppergate Riverside development, Land Securities could slap a roof on Clifford's Tower and put the whole shebang on a turntable. Flog it off to Jamie Oliver and, hey presto, York has its first revolving restaurant. Pukker.

Or how about a grotesque new exhibit for York Dungeon? We could hire those weirdly-brilliant performance artists Neil and Christine Hamilton, and install them in their own live tableau (adults only, of course). They create a sort of macabre excitement with each crazy new stunt, and I, for one, am agog to see Neil's latest media circus creation, which he this week described as "nonsense on stilts".

THE Observer hasn't become Britain's oldest newspaper by rushing into print with the latest news. This Sunday it reported that Nestl Rowntree, among other companies, was promoting email-free Fridays, fully five months after the Evening Press carried the story.

It is ridiculous how often people would today rather write an email than speak to someone face to face or on the phone. Our children will have no idea how to hold a conversation other than via text message or laptop.

So much of my own communication is now done through the computer keyboard that I am finding it difficult to write in legible longhand. Perhaps one of our colleges could step in, and, alongside evening classes in web page design and advanced computer studies, run a handwriting refresher course.