IT seems council leader Steve Galloway has been right all along.

Despite a massive campaign, petitions and marches, it appears our younger generation just don't like York's Barbican.

The home of the UK Snooker Championship has been branded as one of York's "Demolish It Now" buildings on alternative tourist website knowhere.co.uk

The site, which encourages York's Generation X to vent their spleen at all things in the city, is particularly blunt about the ageing leisure centre.

"What were they thinking of?" said one. "It's crap," was an even more-to-the-point answer.

All of which puts the Barbican alongside other website favourites for the bulldozer's wrath such as the predictable Stonebow House and the unusual Huntington School - "so long as all teachers past and present were on the site at the same time".

The Minster was deemed the city's favourite building because if you lie beneath the east bit it apparently resembles a Star Destroyer. The youth of today.

AFTER the Diary donned its Wellington boots and put together some home-made placards to save the Heworth Village walnut trees (Diary, Nov 25), Chris Smayles, landlord of the aptly-named Walnut Tree pub, dropped us a line.

"It is with the deepest regrets that I have to inform you that I have already cut down one walnut tree and plan on cutting down a second," he said.

"This is not because I want the pub to be called The Tree or that I'm in the business of paying for a tree to be cut down just to replace it with the like, but because these trees are deemed dangerous to the public.

"I shall, of course, be replacing them with young walnut trees.

"After all, you can't have a Walnut Tree pub without a walnut tree."

Evening Press fashion correspondent Anne McIntosh MP is not one to mess with.

Following a national newspaper's rather barbed comments about her outfit for the State opening of Parliament on December 1, the Vale of York MP has hit back in fine style. "It's nice to make an effort on state occasions. Journalists certainly don't," she said.

"There are very few occasions when you can actually dress up and I feel I have to show a lead."

Anne said she was now racking her brains to find an extra special outfit for Royal Ascot.

"That will be the biggest challenge of all," she said.

Updated: 11:45 Thursday, December 02, 2004