Instant Opinion, the book collecting together some of the best political posts from this site, is now available in all good bookshops around the world.

Here in the UK, the book is now available from online shops including Tesco (who currently have a 5% discount, the biggest of the major retailers), Blackwells, Amazon, and sjhoward.co.uk/shop. In addition, one Amazon Marketplace seller has it for the bargain price of just £6.08.

Further afield, it is available direct from the publisher and on local versions of Amazon sites, as well as other online bookshops.

For more information about the book, as well as a free preview of it’s contents and how to buy the exclusive ebook version, click here.

Copies are also available through local bricks-and-mortar bookshops, throughout the UK and around the world.

As of a few minutes ago, Royal Mail workers are on strike.

In the wider context, Royal Mail is failing. It’s losing contracts left, right, and centre, and hence losing big money. To be able to compete with new firms now it has lost its monopoly, it needs to modernise, which includes sacking people and replacing them with machines. It’s been this way since the Industrial Revolution.

The workers aren’t happy, and so are striking. This means that Royal Mail is perceived as unreliable, more contracts are lost, and more big money is lost. Hence, more jobs need to go. What am I missing?

A little over two years ago, when Royal Mail first lost it’s monopoly, I set a test by which we would be able to judge whether the idea had been a success. It had four criteria:

1. 1. Is Royal Mail performing?
2. 2. Has Royal Mail increased prices?
3. 3. Has Royal Mail ditched rural services?
4. 4. Has Royal Mail given up completely?

By my count, it’s not performing as businesses are switching away, prices have increased, and the workers appear to be giving up completely. 3 out of 4 ain’t bad – especially when you consider that this is what I thought might happen in five years, not two.

I’ve always been an advocate for the much-maligned Teesside. It’s a great place to live, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time there over the past four years.

But now something indefensible has emerged. Back in 1995, Middlesbrough FC recorded a song promoting Teesside. Yes, really. It’s called We Are Teesside.

Frankly, a reworked classic would’ve worked better:

Oh, I do like to be beside the Teesside!
Oh, I do like to beside the Tees!

But then, anything would have worked better – or nothing, for that matter.

It’s really quite hard to know what to say about this aural assault. So I won’t say anything… Except that I think Teesside’s come a long way in the last 12 years…

Regular readers will know that my home town is Southport, a small retirement village of a town on the North West coast of England. I visit every few weeks, but often I check in on the town via the internet, to see what is causing the inevitable arguments at the time.

Southport is an affluent town whose (small ‘c’) conservatism is somewhere to the right of the residents of Ambridge even before the Macy/Craig wedding, and, as such, it’s the arena for fascinating debates that the rest of the country concluded some centuries ago.

It’s a place where the Daily Mail is taken as gospel, complaints are the local speciality, and people’s primary concern in life is the state of the town’s public toilets. It is Middle England. If Richard Littlejohn hadn’t hailed from Essex, he’d probably have come from Southport. It’s the only place I’ve come across to have held a protest against the anti-war protests.

The hot topic in Southport at the moment appears to be regarding breastfeeding in public. Not whether better provision should be given to mothers, not whether their right to breastfeed in public should be enshrined in government legislation, but whether it should be allowed at all. This has hit the local newspaper after a lady breastfeeding her baby was asked to leave McDonalds.

Contributions to the debate from the Southport Visiter (sic) website include:

Of course this woman shouldn’t be allowed to breastfeed in McDonalds.

I certainly don’t want to be sitting tucking into my Big Mac with fries while a woman serves up a fresh milkshake for her baby.

The staff at the store were totally in the right to ask her to stop. Others were eating and women should be a bit more aware of the sensitivities of others around them.

It is certainly not acceptable for women to breastfeed in public, particularly in a restaurant.

It may be the most natural thing in the world, but so is being naked, but that isn’t allowed in MacDonalds.

Woah. Even the case for the ‘Ayes’ is skewed with small-town mentality:

I would be more offended seeing mothers feed their kids with the junk in MacDonalds than seeing a mum offering her baby the most nutritious food it can get!

If topless sun bathing is the norm on the beach, then Breast feeding in public should not be an issue.

There are pages and pages of this stuff. It’s quite remarkable.

Another debate: Should a photographer be allowed to have nude portraits in his shop window? We’re talking tasteful portraits here (click here or here for samples), not hardcore porn. Yet the vitriol greeting this display would suggest otherwise:

There’s far too much sex being rammed down our throats as it is.

It is a sad day when the family portrait becomes soft porn sordid snaps.

Presumably, that was said without irony.

I don’t know of anywhere else in the country where the apparent attitudes of the majority are quite so trenchant, where achievement is so under-celebrated, or where complaining is quite so much the way of life.

But somehow, from a distance, these uniquely negative qualities give Southport something of a bizarre charm. The predictability of the vitriol, bananaism, and ultraconservatism provides a level of reliability of response that maybe isn’t present in other towns.

Southport is a town that’s stuck in the past and stuck in its ways. But it’s my town, it’s inevitably part of who I am, and I’ll always look out for it.

This post from last year, about my funeral music selections, has been consistently in the top five most popular posts on the site ever since it was first posted, and a few people have even taken it upon themselves to contribute their own selections, click here.

Now, I’ve some tracks to add to my selection.

I think I’ve decided that the, err, My Chemical Romance track might not be so suitable after all.

But how about this carefully selected section of Handel’s Sarabande as an alternative funeral introit? Starting with the quiet strings in the silence, and building up…
[audio:http://sjhoward.co.uk/audio/sarabandeselect.mp3]

Given that it’s a funeral, I guess something a little bit religious is expected… and I don’t think there is a more beautiful piece of religious music than this version of Ave Maria by the Vienna Boys Choir:
[audio:http://sjhoward.co.uk/audio/avemaria.mp3]

And then, there’s the Sarah McLachlan classic Answer:
[audio:http://sjhoward.co.uk/audio/answer.mp3]

I will be the answer
At the end of the line.

I will be there for you
While you take your time.

In the burning of uncertainty
I will be your solid ground.

I will hold the balance
If you can’t look down…

Cast me gently into morning
For the night has been unkind.

Take me to a place so Holy
That I can wash this from my mind.

I think those are beautiful words for a funeral.

I think this last went out of fashion in about 1997, but it seems to have sprung up again, and if I have to read one more thing like this or this, or have it rammed down my throat by another well-meaning friend, I might scream.

The etymology of words is rarely – in fact, almost never – acronymic.

To clear up the two above which seem to have been doing the rounds particularly virulently recently:

• ‘Chav’ is not derived from ‘Council House and Violent’, but rather the Romany word ‘chavi’, meaning ‘child’.
• ‘Fuck’ is not derived from ‘Fornication Under the Consent of the King’. Nor ‘For Use of Carnal Knowledge’ for that matter. It comes from the Middle English ‘fucken’, meaning to strike or penetrate.

And while we’re at it…

• ‘Posh’ is not derived from ‘Port Outward, Starboard Home’
• ‘Cop’ is not derived from ‘Constable On Patrol’
• ‘Tip’ is not derived from ‘To Insure Promptness’
• ‘Nylon’ is not derived from abbreviations of ‘New York’ and ‘LONdon’
• ‘News’ is not derived from ‘North, East, West, South’
• ‘Golf’ is not derived from ‘Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden’
• ‘Shit’ is not derived from ‘Ship High In Transit’

These words all have etymologies just like any other word, mostly derived from ancient or foreign languages.

There are exceptions: Radar does indeed come from ‘Radio Detection And Ranging’, and laser does derive from ‘Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation’. But these exceptions are few and far between.

Most etymology is not acronymic, and when it is, there’s usually no lengthy, contrived back-story – so if someone spouts one of these at you, please correct them, and maybe we can stop this incredibly irritating disease in its tracks.

Over 130 medical staff have written to the Metropolitan police commissioner to ask for an investigation into the leaking of hundreds of medical students’ data onto the internet.

We believe there have been serious breaches of the Data Protection Act that could potentially compromise public safety and pose specific risks of financial exploitation and harassment to medical students and junior doctors.

We are uncertain whether the circumstances surrounding this amount to criminal negligence by the Department of Health and associated agencies, but have concerns that such alleged mishandling of personal data may make it possible for unscrupulous individuals to utilise this data for criminal purposes.

We believe this may justify a criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police because of the issues outlined below. Copies of this letter have also been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Information Commissioner …

Arguably, this instance may contravene Article 8 of the Human Rights Act for the Right to Respect for Private and Family Life. A further consideration is that of identity theft for pecuniary purposes. Junior doctors present a soft target for identity theft criminals and particularly those with information technology expertise. The sensitive personal data made available could be utilised for fraudulent activities and exploit the relatively favourable credit histories of junior doctors …

We have grave concerns that the sensitive personal information made available may fall into the wrong hands and be used maliciously.

It is well recognised that determined individuals have impersonated medical professionals in the past and put patient safety at risk (Hansard – written answer 76616 – Impersonation of Doctors – 4th Nov 2002). Sensitive personal data could be utilised for Criminal Records Bureau authorisation as a means of working with vulnerable children and adults.

The worst case scenario is that child sex offenders may gain access to settings such as paediatric wards, GP surgeries and other healthcare settings because they have stolen the identity of a junior doctor or medical student.

You can read the full letter here.

Just how damaging does it have to get before Patricia Hewitt will realise she’s a complete, unmitigated failure? I don’t ever remember reading anything quite so damning signed by quite so many doctors.

Though I guess if she ends up in court over this, Mad Pat will, at least, be able to plead insanity.

It’s rare for me to post something like this, but the following is an extract from Adam and Joe’s brilliant XFM show. If you haven’t discovered it yet, now’s the time: They’ve just released a ‘best bits’ compilation from Series One of their XFM podcast. So listen, and then go and download.

As I posted a little while ago, the police have completed their Cash for Honours investigation and handed over an extensive file to the Crown Prosecution Service, suggesting that they believe they have a case for their suspects to answer.

Interestingly, the Attorney General is pencilled in for Sunday Live this week. I imagine he’ll pull out now, but if he doesn’t, that interview will be fascinating. After all, in the perverse political system we have, it will be he who has the final say over whether his mates in the Labour Party will be facing prosecution.

And perhaps today’s announcement lends more weight to The First Post’s suggestion that Mr Blair will announce his ‘departure’ on 9th May from the Downing Street lawn. That’s already a very interesting article, if only because it uses very similar lexis to Downing Street – commentators always talk of Blair’s ‘resignation’, but Downing Street usually employ the euphemism ‘departure’ – and the latter is the language used in that ‘mole’ article.

Interesting developments.