For a short time yesterday, the site decreed that almost all the comments on the site were from me. This wasn’t because I’d developed a multiple personality, it was because I misplaced an exclamation mark in some of the coding behind the site, and then didn’t notice for a little while. I don’t know if anyone noticed, but this is just a quick note to apologise to those who did. All comments are now attributed correctly.

On this site, book reviews are much like buses. You wait six months for one, and then two come along at once. They both eventually get where they’re going, but not without a few uncomfortable bumps and scrapes along the way, which stop the passengers relaxing.

Today, it’s the turn of John Humphrys’ Beyond Words. This is subtitled ‘How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now’. I propose that this subtitle was not submitted by Mr Humphrys himself, thanks to two clues: Firstly, I Don’t Think He’d Approve Of Capitalisation Of The First Letter Of Every Word. In fact, he rails against it in the book. Secondly, his narrative does not address ‘how language reveals the way we live now’. Not really. A much better summary is given by the blurb: “What are the words and expressions that irk, intrigue and provoke John Humphrys?”.

At this point, I should declare an interest. John Humphrys has, over the past four years or so, had the Herculean task of waking me most mornings. His voice, as presenter of Today, has permeated its way into my semi-conscious mind hundreds of times; and when someone’s voice has woken you that often, you feel you know them, and you feel they are your friend. Therefore, provided Mr Humphrys’ book was marginally better than The Da Vinci Code, I was bound to like it.

And like it I do. It’s something of a jolly romp through modern day language. It’s entertaining, it’s engaging, and it makes some interesting points about the development of language. I would say that it follows on perfectly from his previous book, Lost for Words, but I’ve not read it, so I’ve really no idea whether it does or not. But I can say that, as a result of reading this book, I’ll be looking out for that one.

In contrast to Lynne Truss, who, apparently without irony, lamented the decline of formal English in an unnecessarily conversational grammar guide (Eats, Shoots and Leaves), John Humphrys takes a more reflective and analytical approach to changes in language. His tone is equally conversational and humour-laced, but without the continual condemnation of Truss.

Humphrys’ is a clear, easy book to read. Perhaps it’s the way his voice is imprinted on my brain, but his book reads almost as if one is in the room with him, and listening to a well-argued, highly entertaining monologue. And, unlike some authors, Humphrys is not trying to argue that misplaced apostrophes are the cause of social decline: He takes a reasoned approach to his arguments, which makes his conclusions seem all the more valid.

All-in-all, Beyond Words is a great read, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the English language.

Beyond Words by John Humphrys is available now in the sjhoward.co.uk shop.

It’s some time since I’ve done a book review – I’m rather behind. I have a feeling that I stopped writing them after realising that I was, well, bad at it. But you, the readers, seem to like them, and who am I to deny you the perverse pleasure of watching me struggle for words?

Anyway, this book, Jeremy Paxman’s latest commentary about our nation, made for a very interesting read. He essentially presents a well-argued case for retaining the monarchy, whilst recognising the manifold flaws, improbabilities, and injustices of the system. And, actually, I rather agree with his point of view – which, to some degree, makes for a less challenging and engaging read. It’s always more interesting to read things you disagree with, to force you to rethink your own point of view, but this book provided none of that for me.

Paxman uses an awful lot of history of our monarchy, and several throughout the world, to flesh out his argument, and there is obvious potential for this to become very dry and dull – a potential that, fortunately, is never fulfilled. Paxman crafts a cogent, coherent, and entertaining argument, presented with the wry, dry humour for which he has become renowned.

The real beauty of the book is in Paxman’s narrative. It would be easy for a title such as these to lose its narrative thread, but by providing a clear argument running throughout the book, Paxman manages to engage the reader and maintain their engagement, even when explaining complex historical events – albeit in a very accessible style.

Paxman provides a robustly constructed, irreverent, and entertaining guide to an institution he argues is simultaneously (and paradoxically) anachronistic, yet relevant and essential to today’s society. To a person like me – relatively poorly informed about British history – Paxman provides a great introduction and makes a clear argument for retention of the monarchy, whilst also allowing his trademark personality to shine through.

I thoroughly enjoyed On Royalty, and would happily recommend it.

On Royalty by Jeremy Paxman is available now in the sjhoward.co.uk shop.

This morning, The Guardian reveals that Mr Brown and Sir Menzies have been having talks about Lib Dems potentially featuring in Mr Brown’s cabinet, when he announces it next Wednesday. It’s an interesting plan. It would, of course, be fantastic to see two parties working together despite their differences, for the good of the country. It would be a laudable example of rising above party politics. But I can’t see it happening, because I can’t see the advantage for the Lib Dems.

It’s clear what’s in it for Labour: A virtually guaranteed win at the next election, an appearance of true cross-party working, and some very capable ministers.

But what’s in it for the Lib Dems? They lose the power to properly attack the government, they will inevitably be blamed for blunders while Labour takes the credit for successes, and it damages any perception anyone might have had of them as a potential government in their own right. They lose the advantages of opposition, without really gaining any real influence. They would also lose a certain degree of advantage when it comes to negotiations for a coalition government following the next election, should one be necessary.

Media speculation that this might happen, however, is very clearly beneficial to both parties. It paints Mr Brown as someone willing to break with tradition and party politics in order to find the right people for the right jobs, and it paints the Lib Dems as a party taken seriously enough for it’s shadow ministers to be considered for the top jobs.

If nothing comes of the speculation, really no political damage is done to Mr Brown, but it allows the Lib Dems to harp on about turning down potential power in favour of standing up for their principles – or else, they could both deny that the talks ever took place, which would be even less damaging to Mr Brown, and of no harm or benefit to Sir Menzies – so they’d both have gained a free bit positive media coverage.

So I reckon the mutually beneficial media speculation is as far as this will go. Sir Menzies isn’t a fool, and I can’t see him agreeing to something that would move his party backwards. But he and Mr Brown are good friends, and there’s every reason to think that they might have put their heads together and hatched this plan which gives them both a bit of good PR – great for Mr Brown as he’s entering the job, and great for Sir Menzies to help quieten the mutterings about him in his own party.

I don’t see a Lib Dem in next week’s cabinet. But I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.

Yesterday, the Vatican published ‘Ten Commandments’ for Driving in a document apparently entitled Guidelines For The Pastoral Care Of The Road. Whether that’s a bad translation, or whether they genuinely think tarmac requires loving care and careful attention to its psychology and emotions is unclear to me. I’m also impressed by the number of times they’ve managed to squeeze ‘not’ into this ‘commandment’:

Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

Also keep in mind that, according to the traditional commandments, thou shalt not not not not not kill, nor shalt thou never fail not to covet the woman who may or may not be your neighbour’s wife.

Perhaps more pertinently, it’s interesting to see that the Vatican are moving with the times. Yeah, cars have been around for some 250 years or so, but that’s moving quite fast for the Vatican. After all, condoms have been around for the better part of 3,500 years – much longer than the Bible – and yet the Church has still failed to acknowledge that they help prevent the spread of STIs.

But the most startling thing about this is that it’s like something you’d have read in the Daily Mail of the nineties, when they were still hot on promoting the so-called Christian values of middle England, and hadn’t relegated religion to a weekly 2cm box containing a Bible verse, hidden amongst the letters pages. Of course, they take great pride in reporting this as the Pope issuing new guidelines for road safety, when in fact this load of garbage was created by a Pontifical Council (about as accurate as saying that a Home Office press-release gives Tony Blair’s personal views), and also claiming that one of the commandments is that ‘Thou shalt not make rude gestures’, which is just blatantly false, but clearly reads better than saying that the document advises courtesy.

Gosh, I got distracted there. I meant to say, the most startling thing is that this is essentially a press release from an increasingly media-driven Vatican – the same Vatican which has a Da Vinci Code debunker – and the same Vatican which increasingly seems to be attempting to play to a modern (small-c) conservative audience, rather than sticking to it’s traditional values of – well, stonings, wars, and murders.

I think it’s pretty from the site as a whole that I’m not the world’s greatest fan of organised religion, but when the Vatican employs a Campbell-esque strategy to woo the media to gain converts at the expense of their traditional values, then we’ve really reached a new low.

A week ago today, Alastair Campbell gave a comprehensive and well-argued defence of Tony Blair’s speech about the modern media.

Whilst I don’t agree with Mr Campbell, much of what he says in his post is interesting, and I’d strongly urge you to read the whole thing. But I just wanted to pull out this little bit:

The PM went through some of the many changes that we put in place when I was at Number 10 to try to improve things. On the record briefings, Freedom of Information, TB’s monthly press conferences … Nick Robinson made a very revealing comment about this a while back … The trouble was, he said, that TB was so good at them they became boring. In other words, unless the elected politician was screwing up, saying something hugely controversial, or fitting into the media’s preordained agenda, they can cut to some pimply youth in Downing Street telling you what the politician actually meant.

You’ll note that Alastair Campbell thinks Blair was good because he wasn’t controversial. He thinks that the fact that Mr Blair never says anything to offend anyone is a good thing. It’s an interesting point of view.

If your aim in life is to get elected and stay elected – power for power’s sake – then never doing anything to offend anyone is clearly the best way forward. If you want to get elected because you have real beliefs, and you want to change the country for the better, then you’re going to have to tread on some toes.

Undoubtedly, Tony Blair has trodden on toes. But wouldn’t he be a much better PM if he engaged with the issues, and argued for his point of view, rather than saying nothing controversial, not engaging with the argument, and just using a huge Parliamentary majority to perform his wishes whilst never offending anyone?

Is it not better to engage the electorate and convince them of your argument, rather than merely placating them? Sure, you’ll alienate sections of the population, but you’ll have a loyal following of those who believe in your cause, and who support you because they believe you’re doing the right thing, rather than supporting you because you ‘don’t seem too bad’.

It might be the bigger political risk, but surely it’s the more noble course – and certainly not indicative of ‘screwing up’.

The greatest politicians are, almost without exception, divisive in their time – either in their country or their party. Thatcher and Churchill are probably the greatest Prime Ministers of the 20th Century, yet both were controversial in their own way. They certainly offended people – and it changed the country (arguably) for the better.

Have we really come to a situation where the hunger for power is such that our politicians want it for its own sake? Have we really come so far from political idealism? I fear so, but dearly hope not.

I’ve just posted HIV: A justifiable cause du jour? on Gazette Communities. You’ll note that it bears some resemblance to this post from last year, which I felt was still very relevant, and could do with another airing. Next week’s contribution will be entirely fresh.

As my more astute readers will doubtless have noticed, it’s Sunday. So I thought I’d post something relevant. I haven’t done that for the past four years, and probably never will again, but that’s by-the-by.

I have just come across this new advert from the Mail on Sunday: It’s quite extraordinary. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to be advertising The News of the World, but it would seem that the Mail has finally given up on trying to be respectable, and trying to be “not as bad as” the Daily Mail.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/mailonsunday2.flv” title=”Mail on Sunday Advert” ratio=”16:9″ picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/mailpic.JPG” /]

I don’t think I need to write any further commentary, really.

I know it’s wrong to laugh at this, really I do. I know it’s cruel, bad Karma, and just downright mean. But it’s also incredibly funny.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/skynewsflood.flv” title=”Stranded (Sky News)” picture=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/altfloodshot.PNG” ratio=”14:9″ /]

My favourite quotes from the dippy reporter, who is clearly engaging mouth before brain:

Can you reverse?

Yeah, she’s climbing on the roof for nothing.

…six feet of water that she could be stuck in…

Do you think you’d be able to see her if she was in six feet of water?

And then the multi-angle split-screen… it’s fab!

If you’re worried about the poor lady, the Sky News website says she was rescued shortly afterwards by someone in a 4×4.

I’ve just posted Why I’m proud to study on Teesside on Gazette Communities.