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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Perhaps it's became summer is coming to an end, but Fleet Street's columnists appear especially grouchy today.

Take Harry Mount, of the Daily Telegraph, who takes the Queen's wearing of earplugs at the Paralympic opening ceremony as a cue to attack the absence of silence from British public life.

Piped music, leaking iPods, the beep-beep of reversing vehicles, even people slurping coffee loudly -

We silence obsessives can't hope to turn the music off; our only hope is to shut it out, as the Queen did. Lots of people in offices wear earplugs - not just at work, but during the infernally loud commute, too. I always take a pair to hotels, which, with their minimalist decor and fondness for unadorned stone, are extremely effective echo chambers.

Of course, for maximum crotchetiness one must turn to the Daily Mail, on the pages of which Julia Llewellyn Smith addresses the many and varied frustrations of dealing with a GP receptionist, most people's first point of entry to the NHS.

"I have no complaints about its fantastic doctors and nurses," "But seeing one of them in person is a process so complex it makes the discovery of the Higgs Boson look like deciphering Book One of Janet And John."

Best of all, though, is Suzanne Moore of the Guardian, who harrumphs through a long op-ed about her dislike of school uniforms - in Moore's view,

Not everyone shares her view, however.

"Since I bought my daughter's uniform she has, of course, had it on all the time, though school doesn't start until next week," Moore harrumphs. "She is expressing herself or getting at me."

That which irritates us most, of course, is always closest to home.

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