As a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, I was intrigued to read that buzzards and crows have been attacking human beings and stealing the fast food they were scoffing as they walked along.

I sympathise with the folk who have had their heads pecked, but I can't help thinking it serves 'em right for eating in the streets. It's a disgusting habit, and the doctors say that it's one of the biggest causes of food poisoning - because people are eating without first washing their hands. And it's not a pretty sight, is it? The baseball-cap-on-backwards brigade of louts with FCUK on their T-shirts slouching along and chewing with their mouths open. Then they throw the wrappers in the street.

The condition of public life makes you want to despair. Whatever happened to ordinary old-fashioned politeness and etiquette? In the 1930s, Evelyn Waugh said: "You used to have to travel thousands of miles to see sights to arouse your horror and disgust. Nowadays you have only to step outside your front door."

Well, if it was bad then, he should see us now. Just to walk along Holborn Viaduct as far as the Tottenham Court Road is to think you're in some sort of evil, malfunctioning zoo. They dress as if they're auditioning for the chamber of horrors.

Conversation is a series of grunts, especially banal and tedious when they reach for their mobile phones. I think I've worked out the iconography of the mobile: it's got nothing to do with communication - because you've never heard anyone say anything interesting or important on it. No, the mobile phone is an icon of self-advertisement; and "Look at me, I've got one."

There are worse things. I travelled up to York and back last week to take my mother out to lunch. Was I on the train? I've seen better behaviour on a cattle truck.

Yobs with their ugly boots up on the seat - despite the many notices asking them not to do it. Are things so bad these days that we actually have to be asked for such ordinary courtesies - like the sign on the tube trains which says: "Please give up your seat to an elderly or disabled person". How far have we sunk when we have to be reminded?

I read the newspaper to try to take my mind off the menagerie of yobs. Some comfort! Turn to page two and read: "Doctors and nurses in the hospitals and general practice surgeries are the victims of 260 violent incidents each day. There were 95,501 recorded assaults last year alone."

On the next page there was an article telling us that the Government is seriously thinking of banning glasses in pubs and replacing them with plastic cups in the attempt to curtail violent attacks. Apparently, a smashed pint glass is the weapon of choice of your boozy yob. The same week brought news that violent crime has increased and the incidence of rape is higher than ever.

What's going on? It wasn't supposed to be like this, was it? We're all meant to be more enlightened these days and thoroughly "modernised". All I can say is, with public life as squalid, tasteless and violent as it now is, give me the Dark Ages any day.

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