This has been a great few weeks in which to be a technophobe; first all those dot.com fortunes going down the chute, then Bill Gates getting the benefit of a good, newly opened can of whup-ass from the US government. And now, apparently, the mobile phones which - sometimes it feels uniquely, in the media - I have never had any time for, have been revealed by Which? magazine to be death-traps, even when accompanied by hands-free kits and phone shields.

On the contrary, these attachments can channel three times the normal dose of radiation into your poor old brain. Such exposure causes the temperature to rise, making the heart work harder and leading to headaches, sickness and dizziness. Hang on in there and brain tumours, heart and kidney problems, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's could be yours. Said Which? editor, Graeme Jacobs: "If you are worried about radiation, you shouldn't rely on a hands-free set. And if you are thinking of buying a shield, don't waste your money." The phone industry, currently enjoying a boom beyond its wildest dreams 20 years ago, expressed "surprise" on Monday night and ask for more time to consider the results; adding, rather callously, that hands-free kits had been marketed as aids to convenience rather than protection from health hazards.

I've never understood why people want mobile phones; as with quiz shows and the internet, it seems that the less we actually understand, the more determined we are to trumpet it. Sometimes it seems that the only thing people are really scared of these days is the sound of silence, because only then, free of all distraction, might we begin to question exactly where are going - which, so far as I can see, is the Tower of Babel on an awayday family ticket, not transferable, no refunds. Only then, when we are all immersed in sound and fury, signifying nothing, will our politicians finally feel safe, their own hollow utterances finally indistinguishable from the rest of the clamour.

I thought it particularly appropriate last week when it was revealed that Tony "Decent Family Values" Blair has chosen to head his next election campaign the very same man who dreamed up the notorious fcuk campaign for French Connection - to the distress of many decent, decorous British people. But when all that matters is how loud you shout, not what you say, who cares if your chief cheerleader has a mouth like a sewer?

I'm lucky; I don't have a mobile phone for the same reason I'm not "online" - that is, that I like my life a great deal as it is, I am never lonely and am very keen on preserving both my privacy and the right to do what I want, when I want. I do not want to be at someone's beck and call 24 hours a day, be they employer or friend; it would be like being a child again, like not belonging fully to yourself. Get a mobile phone and your life's not your own any more; the habit of giving them to children makes even less sense, as the parent loses their freedom and the child loses the ability to fend for itself. My friend recently bought a mobile phone for her very bright 12-year-old son, and I can't recall the number of times I've hear her speak to him crossly for interrupting our lunches and shopping trips. He's never called her in trouble, usually it's to say that he's been at his friend's house, but now he's bored, so will she come and collect him? As I say, he's very clever; if the mobile phone call was not an option, he'd get on and make himself unbored. But mobile phones make chauffeurs and clients out of all of us.

Unless you're a doctor, a taxi driver or a mountaineer, you simply don't need a mobile phone. All you're doing is, in most cases, buoying up a fragile sense of self-esteem, and trying to feel indispensable. But frankly, we are none of us irreplaceable, and that's one of the great and cheerful things about life. Only someone with severe self-worth issues would find anything frightening about this. I have never had a Filofax, either, even when I was living la vida 80s; I was always very struck that the ultimate boy-about-town of the time, Robert Elms, made a point of not having one either, but wrote things down in a little dinky Letts diary. Robert always said that the bigger the Filofax, the more not quite the thing the person wielding it was; people with very little tangible in the way of real talent or ability, with only the house of cards that make up a full deck of "contacts" to boast about.

Some 24m Britons, including 300,000 children, now have mobiles. Imminent technological advances about to bring email, internet access, video screens and computer games to them have led analysts to believe that a full half of the population will be touting them around before the year is through, while British and multi-national companies are currently fighting a multi-billion bidding war over the next round of franchises.

Many scientists are now beginning to feel that the Government has once again sidelined health issues in a bid to shake every last piece of spare change out of the pockets of business. But frightening as these new claims are, there seems to be a perfect poetic justice in them; so many of the things which we have been told by New Labour "empower" us actually weaken and enslave us.

I'm not surprised Tony Blair wants every household to be on the internet; what better way to spread your black-hearted propaganda to the weak and vulnerable? What better way to turn workers into 24-hour consumers, buying goods they neither want nor need to fill up the yawning hole in their soul where socialism used to be? And now mobile phones will turn your brain to mush and rob you of your memory; all the better to become one of Mr Tony's castrated creatures. Once again, it looks like the medium really was the message.