A READER wrote to tell me off for being "opinionated". But my dear, the editor pays me to express an opinion each week. You don't have to agree with me.

Besides, isn't it better to be confronted with opinions with which you disagree, rather than with those you share? If we all agreed about everything, whatever would we find to talk about? But out of respect for your offended sensibilities, this week I promise to express no opinion, but only to ask a few questions. Readers themselves can supply the answers.

Why is that highly-paid journalists on TV and radio cannot speak the English language? Three times last week I heard distinguished correspondents say: "I was sat". Why do they say: "It begs the question" when it only "asks" the question? (Asking a question is a simple thing. But to beg the question is quite different: it assumes part of the answer for which it pretends to ask: for example, if I say "Have you stopped beating your wife?" That's begging the question: it assumes that you were beating your wife in the first place.)

Why does everything that comes on TV have to be accompanied by a blast of pop music - even the football results, even a cricket commentary? Why are all the TV companies so unoriginal and clich-ridden that they have to use the same boring and clapped-out introductions, full of hackneyed theme tunes and whirling captions at the start of the news? Wouldn't it be original and a refreshing change if the presenter would simply come on screen and say: "Here is the news"? Why is everything new said to be "unveiled"? I can understand "unveiled" in the cases of nuns and plaques - but surely not of stretches of motorway and government policies. Have presenters lost the rational use of words such as "announced" and "revealed"?

Yesterday, I heard a discussion on the wireless featuring mainly Labour and LibDem politicians. They were all for banning smoking in public places and getting a ban on foxhunting through by Christmas. Why is it that those who bang on so much about "liberation" are the same people who are always wanting to restrict our freedom? Why is "elitism" a dirty word? Would people really prefer mediocrity?

How can the Government claim that crime has decreased when violent crime against the person - surely the most serious form of crime - has tripled over the last ten years? Why, when it comes to discussing the Christian faith in the media are commentators allowed to make any sort of sceptical and blasphemous remarks they choose; but when Islam is being talked about, there is only extreme respect approaching hushed reverence?

Why do they refer to the barrage of filthy noise that emerges from every radio and TV station, it seems almost without relief, as "music"? Don't they know that "music" means such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Elgar and Shostakovich? How dare anyone refer to the crap in the Saatchi collection and at Tate Modern as "art"?

Is it true that a "celebrity" is someone you've never heard of? Will that do, dear reader, as a column less "opinionated"?

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.