You can tell it’s Christmas, mainly because of the appearance Christmassy bits on this site, even though they’re new this year and completely different to every other year since the site’s inception.

Of course, it’s also clearly Christmas because of the sudden outbreak of peace, joy, and goodwill to all men. Granted, that might be difficult to spot in the overcrowded supermarkets full of harassed shoppers (not least of all me), but clearly in the good Christian churches of our nation, peace and joy have descended. Or not, as the case may be.

I always though that Christmas was the particular time of year when Christians spread messages of goodwill, love, and faith. Yet I’ve seen so little of this that I’m beginning to wonder if that’s what the Christian church stands for at all. Instead of welcoming new sheep to their flocks, the Christian message of recent years appears to have become a rather aggressive one.

This is the week when Archbishops have started insulting ordinary citizens, phone-ins are dominated by Christians bemoaning the fictitious sensitivities of ‘immigrants’, and every tabloid worth its salt wants to tell us how Christmases aren’t what they used to be.

Just today, the Archbishop of Wales has ranted about ‘atheistic fundamentalism’ leading to the ‘Winterval’ rebranding of Christmas – a perennial myth, which you’d hope learnéd church leaders would know to be false. He claims that ‘virulent, almost irrational’ attacks have been made on Christianity, leaving no room for debate – then cites the example of British Airways’ uniform policy.

He goes onto say that Christianity has a ‘message of joy and good news for everyone’, and that ‘rational debate about the tenets of the Christianity’ is an undoubtedly good thing – then mocks those who view Christianity as ‘superstitious nonsense’ – apparently, such a view is disallowed in his debate. We can only debate Christianity from a starting point that ‘God is not exclusive, he is on the side of the whole of humanity with all its variety’ – except atheists, or so it would seem. That’s not what I call a debate.

This comes in the same week as Rev Jules Gomes called Richard Dawkins and Polly Toynbee the King Kerods of our age, despite the fact that the latter is quite happy to ‘Hail the incarnate Deity’ along with the rest of us, and that neither could be fairly described as a child-killing tyrant. Clearly, the goodwill doesn’t extend to them. And yet Christian leaders frequently tell us that Christianity is supposed to be the very model of religious tolerance.

You may have seen the headline news that a third of 18-24 year-olds couldn’t say where Jesus was born. You’re unlikely to have noticed that almost two-thirds of regular church-goers were also unable to show a basic grasp of the Christmas story – a fact conveniently omitted from the Mail’s report. Perhaps the Church should get its own house in order before attacking the rest of society for its so-called secularism.

And, just to top it all off, the good Christians of the Diocese of Manchester have been grossly insulted by the council’s insistence on calling Christmas ‘Decemberval’ in a recycling promotion. Perhaps they ought to have a word with the local Christian vicar that wrote the promotion, then, rather than moaning to the Mail on Sunday about ‘political correctness gone mad’.

Yet the issue extends further than Christianity. Only this week, a Jordanian website censored a reader who chose to wish others a ‘Happy Hanukkah’, after complaints were received at the thought of wishing Jews happiness – and there was me thinking Eid was supposed to be about forgiveness.

I’ve previously made my religious views known in detail on the blog – essentially, we’re so incredibly lucky to be alive that we’d better make the most of it before we die – and so am in no position to offer Christian philosophy. But it has certainly struck me this year that the Christian church is anything but loving and welcoming to all, and is certainly not as tolerant of criticism as it often likes to claim.

I am, however, in a position to wish everyone – reader and non-readers, supporters and detractors, those who celebrate Christmas and those who don’t – health, happiness, and a truly peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of ‘9/11’. After 9/11, Jon Stewart gave a speech to open The Daily Show, a speech which I posted here back in June 2006.

Such is the power of the speech that yesterday tens of blogs linked to it on this site, providing over 130,000 extra hits, and propelling it comfortably to the top of the ‘most popular posts’ league. When a speech that is six years old can still generate this kind of response, it surely must be a great speech.

What a shame that politicians have moved so far from their people that it was left to a comedy newsreader to truly speak to the nation in the face of its greatest tragedy in many generations.

From a great gallery of photographs on Guardian Unlimited: Reverent Humour. It’s great when religion feels able to take the piss out of itself, it kinda saves the rest of us the hassle.

I know I claim not to do this sort of thing, but just wanted to point you in the direction of this website, which is essentially campaigning for the creation of accommodation for families of those receiving long-term treatment in military hospitals.

It seems a worthy cause – I have slight misgivings about supporting the specifics of a planning application in an area I’ve never so much as visited, and was mildly insulted at the insistence that prefab housing equals “builder’s huts” which could not provide a “supportive environment” – I’m sure the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of British kids who grew up in such accommodation for a good four or five decades post-war (and those who still do) would disagree.

But while I might quibble about their tone, I do see their point, and their aim seems pretty worthwhile and unobjectionable.

It seems worth your time and energy to support – as of course are similar civilian schemes like this.

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.