Could it be that the current wave of British youth delinquency is largely in the eye of the beholder? It certainly seems to be the cause du jour - headlines about 'Binge Britain', campaigns to stop underage drinking and stories about ex-soldiers being drafted into classrooms as teachers. Then the dark stuff: 'happy slappers' locked up for filming fatal beatings; fathers stabbed; broken bottles brandished in a club frequented by Prince William. To view all this is to visualise a Britain that makes the violent excesses of A Clockwork Orange resemble a nursery outing in Balamory.

While fictional miscreants are one thing, from Graham Greene's Brighton gangs, and the tribal clash of Quadrophenia, through to the pretty-boy warfare of West Side Story, the real deal is quite another. The question is, are we genuinely seeing the dawn of the new yobbery or is it just youth-business as usual, spotlit and overreported, for the titillated masses?

Let's be clear about one thing: genuine antisocial behaviour is not a 'youth thing', it is a 'crime thing'. It is not only the young who indulge in antisocial, homicidal or psychopathic behaviour, though they are the only ones who get grouped together.

Odd when you think about it. When older people commit crimes, we do not ring 5 Live ranting about a 'middle-aged crime wave'. Why, then, are 'teenage louts' in Blackpool automatically twinned with 'young thugs' in Luton? Moreover, what can really be so 'new' about a culture documented by Alan Parker's borstal-set Scum as early as 1979?

It seems to me that one of the bittersweet by-products of ageing is a tendency towards rosy-specs revisionism about not only one's own youthful conduct, but also the behaviour of one's entire generation. As in: 'We weren't angels, but we were never as bad as that', followed by a pause as we gaze back fondly on our young selves - lying in meadows, say, sipping Panda Pops.

In truth, all generations have had their fair share of drinking, smoking, drugging, shagging, fighting and general miscreant carryings-on. And even when not behaving in a delinquent manner, we were scaring the bejesus out of older people without realising it - by the very fact of our existence.

It's all in the framing. When my friends and I thought we were so cool in the 80s, lurking outside Tower Records with the boys with the soaped mohawks, it didn't occur to us that we probably unsettled nine out of 10 passersby. The same goes for every generation - from the Brylcreemed Teds through to the hoodies on street corners. While looking terrifying on the outside, on the inside and to each other, these youths are not scary at all.

Nor are they 'new'. Where teens are concerned - cider-sozzled degenerates, leaning against walls, holding spitting competitions are veritable design classics - they've been around forever. If you want 'new', try the relatively recent social embarrassment of fake youth - all we oldies and fogies, in our 30s and 40s, who rather pathetically consider ourselves to be 'with it', because we have pages on Facebook, own iPods, and watch Skins

The culture of fake youth sprang to mind when Children's Commissioner Albert Aynsley-Green condemned the use of 'Mosquitoes' (the dispersal machines used by shops that emit a piercing noise that only under-25s can hear). Aynsley-Green said they 'demonised' young people, 'creating a dangerous and widening divide between the young and old'.

I beg to differ; if anything, there doesn't seem to be enough of a 'young-old' divide these days. We could probably do with a Mosquito-like machine to disperse the fake youths as we flail around outside our age bracket like sightless movie zombies. Indeed, far from being the worst generation ever, it seems to me that today's young have been remarkably patient about sharing 'being young' with the old.

It may not be the young who have changed for the worse so much as the not-so-young; the fake youth generation who can't and won't let go and are probably so far beyond help now that we actually consider ourselves to be better at being young than genuine yoof, with their unfortunate complexions and happy-slapping shenanigans.

Indeed, while not to diminish genuine suffering around the country, it probably wouldn't hurt to ask a few pertinent questions. Are the new yobs really so much worse these days? Or are their worst excesses simply publicised and criticised to an unprecedented degree?

As for those of us stuck in fake youth, we may kid ourselves we are young, but we betray ourselves simply by the way we perceive and judge the 'louts' leaning against the bus shelter.

We demand the Rooney rellies, Coleen

Coleen McLoughlin, the future Mrs Wayne, is said to be banning the extended, 'fun-loving' Rooney clan from this summer's nuptials. This would be a PR travesty.

Coleen's 21st birthday party endeared her to the nation and not just because of those little buns with her face on.

With the cavorting, occasionally stumbling, guests, one girl flashing a breast at the tabloids, you could almost smell the Pernod, taste the lovebites, feel the grim determination to complete the macarena. But there was also a feeling of honesty and sweetness. As in: finally, a 'proper do', rather than just another stuffy, showbiz pose-a-thon.

Coleen must amend that guest list at once. Quite apart from anything else, everyone knows that 'embarrassing rellies' are as much a wedding staple as a tiered cake.

They came, they saw, they did some plumbing. And how we'll miss them

The number of Polish people coming into the country is fewer than the number leaving for the first time. It appears that many of them had the plan all along to make money, then go back to Poland and build their real lives.

Now, weary of the UK's high cost of living, food and lack of career opportunity, they're downing tools and returning home in droves. Well, good luck to them.

After visiting Krakow, I have long had a soft spot for the Poles. So I am pleased to see them giving immigration a certain diva-like panache. They were happy to come over here for a look-see, picking up those menial jobs few Brits seem to want to do.

Now they're just as happy to go home and I hope they are taking with them the only downside to the Polish invasion - the frighteningly good-looking girls. A minor point, you may feel, but it's unnerving when you just pop into the chemist for your vitamins and find yourself served by the Polish Rachel Weisz.

Overall though, isn't this great - a kind of flexi approach to immigration? And perhaps a long overdue wake-up call. The most depressing phrase in the English language has to be 'bloody immigrants' - the whole thing a reflection of that dreary, surly attitude infecting the country that somehow as a nation we're threatened or diminished by new arrivals.

Phooey. The fact of being an immigrant alone does not make you interesting, but their influx down the years must be a large factor in Britain remaining interesting.

Now Polish immigrants are making it clear that for them the British chapter is over. They are 'going home', but on their own terms.

It will be interesting to see whether the big immigration issue of the future will be not how to keep them out, but how to make them stay.