I’ve just watched Brown’s first PMQs thanks to the BBC’s lovely Daily Politics vodcast / video podcast / podcast. (What are we calling them these days?)

The newspaper columnists seem to think that it was a clear Cameron victory: I disagree. I think Mr Brown held his own quite well. He wasn’t as slick, but in many ways that’s probably a good thing. I’d rather see stumblingly straight answers than answers that bear no relation to the question whatsoever. Brown certainly came closer to answering the questions than Mr Blair ever did.

Brown’s line about having been in the job for only five days wasn’t the best, but other than that, he held up pretty well. And Ming got to tell a joke, which was nice. Not a great joke, but a joke nonetheless. Not a sharp, to the point joke, but then when does he ever come across like that at PMQs?

The whole tone of the occasion was much less gladiatorial than in Mr Blair’s day. None of this “Well, if he thinks that, let me tell him…” – Well, I guess there was a bit of that with quoting each other’s front benches over ID cards, but at least Mr Brown’s responses were largely constructive.

It was interesting how much more of a presence Mr Brown commanded than Mr Cameron – and I felt that the latter looked a little more snide than usual. He needs to up his game to meet Mr Brown’s presence and gravitas. Though, interestingly, Mr Cameron is taller, which I wouldn’t have guessed. Random fact, but true.

Perhaps my favourite comment from all the coverage came, unusually, from Michael White:

…he lacks Tony Blair’s affable charm – his talent for bullshit, if you prefer…

Amen to that!

This (now quite old) report from the Guardian suggests that children as young as six are being used as suicide bombers.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) revealed that soldiers defused an explosive vest which had been placed on a six-year-old who had been told to attack Afghan army forces in the east of the country.

“They placed explosives on a six-year-old boy and told him to walk up to the Afghan police or army and push the button,” said Captain Michael Cormier, the company commander who intercepted the child, in a statement. “Fortunately, the boy did not understand and asked patrolling officers why he had this vest on.”

The vest was defused and no one was hurt.

That’s obviously terrible. I don’t think there’s any question of that. Unsurprisingly, no-one attempts to blame the child.

But if the child is 16, and as equally brainwashed as the six-year-old, we do blame them. Surely they bear no more responsibility? Both are equally indoctrinated into a clear belief that what they are doing is right. Essentially, the sixteen-year-old’s powers of reasoning have been reduced to the same as the six-year-old’s. Yet we still attach blame.

It’s really quite odd, when you give it some thought.

News breaking within the last hour that Alan Johnston has been released. What fantastic news!

Hearing him speaking on BBC World at the moment, and the just joyful reaction of the presenter and his colleagues is just marvellous.

It’s wonderful, just wonderful to see that sometimes things can come good. Tremendous.

The best news I’ve heard in a long time.

When Katrina hit New Orleans, I think most people in Britain were bemused by the insistence of some US evangelists that this was God’s punishment for all kinds of sins that happened there. Not least, I guess, because churches weren’t spared, and nor were ‘innocents’. And, of course, nobody saw too many of these evanglists going hungry to prevent scenes like this.

But now, the Bishop of Carlisle has weighed in, and announced that the floods hitting the UK last month were God’s punishment for the introduction of legislation allowing Civil Partnerships for gay couples. Yes, really:

We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate … Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want … The sexual orientation regulations are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God’s judgement, which is intended to call us to repentance.

And these idiots wonder why fewer and fewer people are going to church, and why anti-religious books are topping the charts.

The most crazy thing about this is that I’ll probably be criticised for disagreeing, as I inevitably am when I post on religious matters. A sample of some of the comments that’ve been left when I’ve posted on religious issues:

stay out of the realm of religion and morals, no good to comment on something that you little about, you just make yourself look silly

I AM sorry but i am telling you true you are not a human’s son you are a son of bitch

U bullshit SjHoward, bullshit, pig, dog, shut up ur bloody mouth, u r bastard

You’re an ignorant person and deserve to be punished.

If people post things I utterly disagree with on other sites, I either ignore them or respond to them with my own points. I don’t think anything I’ve ever written on religion has been particularly attacking or offensive.

Why are people so offended by people making points about their religions – however ignorant those points might be? Why is it that many people are unable to engage in real debate about religious issues? What do they fear from challenges to their beliefs? Surely challenging your beliefs is the best road to enlightenment in any area of life?

Can’t recommend Polly Toynbee’s column in today’s Guardian enough: If Chelsea were under water, it would be taken seriously: “Imagine if the Thames had burst its banks at Westminster, Chelsea and Fulham. It wouldn’t have been a weather story but a full-scale national emergency.” Too true.

For a long time, the Blogroll has been an important part of any blog – the place where writers link to other like-minded bloggers, or to sites they find interesting. But I’ve just done away with mine.

To have a pretty static list of sites I read is pretty pointless. It gives no idea of which ones I read every word of, it gives no idea of which particular posts I like, and no clue as to who I link to because I love them, and who I link to because I feel I should.

So I’ve replaced my traditional Blogroll with a new-fangled section called ‘Stuff I Read & Liked’. Basically, now I’ve permanently switched from Bloglines to Google Reader as my RSS reader of choice, I can mark posts I like with a single click – and then they appear on here. The most recent 15 items I’ve marked in this way appear in the sidebar, and the most recent 500 appear on a specially designed part of the site, here (always accessible from the ‘More stuff like this’ under the list in the sidebar). I’ve only just started doing this, so I’m not quite up to 500 yet!

I had previously been put off going doing this route because of the inflexibility of the ‘clip’ that Google provided, but with a little bit of lateral thinking and CSS coding, it was actually quite easy to style it and get it into a format I wanted. I think, overall, it provides a more logical and useful solution to crediting my influences.

I’d previously not been convinced by Google Reader, preferring Bloglines’ simplicity. But, finally, Google have won me over. Their product has improved immensely over the last few months, and there are now so many different ways of accessing your feeds that I hardly ever need to visit the main Google Reader interface. I’m definitely converted.

I hope that the new style Blogroll will encourage my readers to explore some of the other blogs I read, and allow you to get a better appreciation of my influences. I like it, and I hope that you do too.

I’ve just posted Why terrorists aren’t ‘evil’ over on Gazette Communities. It’s an extensively reworked and updated version of this post from 2005. Those with a copy of my book will also find a copy of the original post on pages 173 to 174. Those without the book can buy a pre-publication copy via this page, or will shortly be able to get hold of it from all good bookshops – including sjhoward.co.uk/shop. How much promotion can I fit in one tiny post?

It’s always impossible to write a reaction to attempted terror attacks, like those on London earlier this week, or even successful ones, like that at Glasgow airport yesterday. In the face of this stuff, what is there really to say?

I could reflect on the fact that Mr Brown’s first days in office have probably been more challenging than he could have imagined, I could make some point about the politics of fear, or I could even write some gushing tribute to the brave emergency service staff.

But it all seems slightly redundant. So I’m not going to comment, at least not today. You can read what Mort Karman thinks here. You can infer my opinions from my responses to the London bombings of 2005, here and here. I’m considering reworking the latter article into something updated for Gazette Communities on Monday – it suddenly seems eerily relevant.