Over on twitter, I received a tweet suggesting that "File-Sharing Tools Could Put Personal Health Data at Risk"- a reasonable statement of fact, possibly, although not exactly an earth-shattering one. File-sharing tools could put any kind of data "at risk" if by at risk you mean available for sharing with other people, since that's kind of the point of them. You might equally write "postage stamps could put personal health data at risk" because if you inadvertently put a postage stamp or two on a repeat prescription form you could, you know, post it to someone. By mistake.

For the last couple of months I've been discovering twitter, more so especially since starting a new job in the world of health research informatics. As well as encountering some rather odd yet friendly individuals (Hi Becky), and getting into political debates with some of my favourite actors (Hi Adam), I have found it incredibly useful.

As an almost random sample, here are ten of the twitter feeds I've been following, from which I've gained ideas, learned news or generally found out stuff I wouldn't otherwise have had access to, and which have therefore made me a much better value employee for the UHL and the Leicester Cardiovascular BRU.

Members of Unison from sterile services and medical secretaries took part together in a brief protest tonight before going in to the UHL's public meeting to ask questions about the threats to their jobs.

I'm sitting at the back of the audience for the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust annual public meeting. Martin Hindle has given an introduction and Angus Maitland is presenting a review of the UHL's last twelve months.

I'm waiting to see if he talks about the decision to contract with Capita for our payroll (which has been a complete disaster seeing thousands of staff wrongly paid) or to invite private health company Birkdale to operate on our patients at Glenfield. Birkdale's contract was suspended after orthopaedic consultants raised concerns about the quality of the operations carried out.

Unison's Health Service Group Executive AGM is over, and we're heading to Trowbridge for the Folk Festival and the start of our holiday.

I don't think I can write a full report of the meeting on my BlackBerry whilst driving down the M6 (I know, I know, I'm a diletante) but I will just comment on the most important debate: that on the question of re-opening year two of the three-year pay deal.

There was a unanimous view that the re-opener clause will almost certainly need to be triggered. There was little or no support for the idea of Unison trying to re-negotiate the first year increase.

I received the following email the other days. Despite being an elected member of UNISON's Health SGE I didn't receive it from the national office directly, but via a member in another region who forwarded it on to the excellent and useful healthactivists email list.

The email raises a couple of questions. Firstly the fact that the email, the meeting it refers to, and the draft statement presented to that meeting in UNISON's name all seems to have gone on without any oversight or control by the elected lay leadership of the union. I think members of the union will quite reasonably ask why the SGE weren't in control of this process of negotiations with the other NHS unions.

Delegates vote to agree support for motion 30 demonstrating our pride in the NHS at its 60th birthday.

The highlight of the second day of UNISON conference has undoubtedly been the NHS debate. There was an excellent fringe meeting at lunchtime organised by the cross-union activist bulletin health worker. Several of the newly-elected members of the health SGE were there, and they joined in an excellent discussion about learning the lessons from the pay ballot. There was a determined mood to the meeting and positive suggestions for rebuilding our relationships with other NHS unions in support of efforts to get the pay deal re-opened, in line with Dave Prentis' speech and his comments in this morning's papers.

Commemorations to be held nationwide.

As Leo Colston said, the past is a foreign country. But in these days of cheap international air travel, that shouldn't stop us visiting.  There's been a blogroll link for some time on 4glengate.net to the blog of Michael Walker, a former COHSE activist, which contains an archive of documents and reflections on the history and achievements of COHSE - the Confederation Of Health Service Employees. It's an impressive archive, and every health worker, every UNISON member, should spend some time reading up on it.

This morning, I've been thinking about the UNISON consultative ballot on the below-inflation-for-three-years NHS pay offer which is due to start this week. When we discussed the pay offer at UNISON health conference last month, and subsequently, according to reports from colleagues around the country, officers of UNISON and those lay members who want us to accept the offer have been at pains to stress that rejecting the offer would necessarily imply taking industrial action. Not just industrial action but sustained industrial action. I think that word is included just to pour scorn on those public sector workers who have already held a one day strike in support of their campaign for better pay, but scorn in such a situation is the chocolate pot calling the kettle black. At least, as many of my colleagues in Leicester keep telling me, the teachers are doing something.