Regular readers may remember that I have written before about receiving unwanted and misdirected telephone calls. Particularly annoying were frequent appeals for "Sharon" from so many young men that I might be excused for thinking that Sharon was guilty of playing the field, or "putting herself about a bit". After several weeks of receiving such calls, I brought them to an end by advising an eager young male caller: "Sorry, mate, she moved to Cheltenham, yesterday."

More troublesome are those callers suffering from acute "finger-trouble", who ask, without polite preamble, "Is that Ebor Trucks?".

Not only troublesome, but also sinister, are the mysterious calls with which many are now being plagued. When answered, the caller fails to respond, all you get is silence, not even heavy breathing. What some might describe as "funny phone calls". Then there are those calls that start off with a beeping fax signal, but no message emerges from the machine. And whenever we dial 1471 to find out who has made the call we are told by a familiar BT voice: "The caller withheld their number".

Unnerving, you might think, especially for a woman living alone, who might think she was being stalked by phone. But no, apparently, it is just "power-dialling", a new form of communications technology at work: a remote computer phoning scores of subscribers simultaneously, but only the first few to answer being connected. It's "nothing to do with BT", but just some company trying to sell insurance, making offers of investment opportunities, timeshare properties, or book club bargains.

Communications technology has certainly made great advances, but is it really the sort of progress we want, or is it what Germans might call, "Schlimmbesserung" - a so-called improvement that makes things worse? But I've heard that you can stop the calls by ringing 0845 070 0707.

Still on the subject of "Schlimmbesserung": an acquaintance, who I shall call Ermintrude because she is a bit of a silly old moo, told me that she had received a call from her bank's 'fraud squad'. The investigator informed her that someone had used her credit card to buy goods totalling about £3,000.

Ermintrude was adamant that her card had never been out of her possession for more than the time it takes for it to be swiped (no pun intended), nor had she entrusted the card details to anyone other than the reputable retailers and restaurateurs.

Fortunately, she is well insured against such eventualities. That's all very well for her, but the apparent ease with which criminals are able to fraudulently use other people's credit card details is a loophole that needs to be plugged. If that's not done then the alternative is to go back to using cheques, or even paying by cash; something Ermintrude would never do while it is not entirely safe for elderly ladies to walk city streets carrying large sums of money.

It was good news about the US spy plane crew being released. President Bush will think that it was his tough Texan dialogue and not Colin Powell's diplomatic "regret" that caused the Chinese to climb down; the inscrutable President Jiang and 1.25 billion Chinese will have saved face and 24 American families will be celebrating.

Had the roles been reversed, I wonder if a Chinese spy plane pilot would have landed on US territory, or simply ditched into the drink and hoped for rescue.

The US pilot's skilful airmanship indicated a natural desire for self-preservation over his nation's security, an indulgence that cannot always be taken in the spying game.