I HAVE to laugh at the furore over mobile phone masts. Whenever there's a plan for one of them to go up in a street, the residents generally go mad and warn about health risks.

Yet, the very same moaners are normally the ones who spend all their time on mobile telephones and can't do without the precious little devices.

The Bucks Free Press has reported on this kind on phone mast fury countless times over the last few years with virtually a story a week in this paper.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think these things are ugly and I would be worried if one was put outside my house.

No, the thing that gets my goat, is the NIMBYism of it all. It's all very well to protest about a phone mast in your road, but I bet some of the complainants also go berserk when their mobile doesn't get a good signal.

Mobile telephones are helpful, especially to stranded drivers, but people are just using them far too much, thus creating this extra demand for masts.

The intrusion of these phones is intolerable. You're standing in a bank when the person in front suddenly receives a call and begins an inane conversation which delays their transaction and holds up the queue.

Then there are the morons who endanger lives by not only holding a phone at the wheel of their car, but doing so as they negotiate busy junctions.

I once saw two men in a pub sitting together as they each talked on a separate mobile. I wasn't sure if they were talking to each other on their phones because was the only way they knew to communicate.

Let's face it until people decide to minimise this annoying habit, they can hardly complain about phone companies building more masts in their town.