Things I'm not buying this week.

I'm not buying that books are dead. Or that kids today are illiterate.  Or that the Kindle and e-book will destroy reading (or publishing).

I don't buy that closing libraries is a good thing. I particularly don't buy that having fewer librarians is cost effective.

I don't buy that the arts are a luxury.

I don't, as a matter of principle, buy that you should never part with a book. I part with boxes of them on a regular basis -- novels I don't love, books I know I'll never open again, and most recently, reference books from the dim dark years before Google -- Harvard Dictionary of Music, Bartlett's Quotations, Roget's Thesaurus, etc. (I kept my Brewer's Phrase and Fable and the two volume OED.)

Despite the fact that I agree that rape conviction rates are lamentably low, I don't buy that the slutwalk is a great step forward for feminism.

Nor that AC Grayling's £18,000 private university is a good thing for education. 

I don't buy the Big Society. Professional people should be paid to do professional jobs. Teachers. Librarians. Bin men. I don't want my appendix taken out by a community volunteer.

And finally, I won't be buying six inch orange suede platforms for summer, despite them being the season's Must Have. This indicates that I am officially old, but I can live with that.