Thanks to Helen in Toronto for sending in this very effective ad, which has (understandably) been causing a bit of a stir around her neck of the woods.

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The Camp Okutta website is here, and a news article with further explanation is here. It’s a really great ad campaign.

If you’ve found something I might like, send it in! Email simon@sjhoward.co.uk, phone 0845 638 1916, fax 0845 638 1918, or use your mobile to send texts, pictures, and videos to 60300 (start the text part of your message with the word “simon”). Phone and text charges are detailed here.

As you’ll no doubt have seen some time ago, the BBC has now apologised over its report that the Queen walked out of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz, a story I also reported here. The footage the BBC played to journalists spliced together footage of her objecting to removing her crown with footage of her walking in to the portrait sitting, as you can see in this clip:

It seems extraordinary that the news on BBC One can report something as fact based on some badly edited footage of a BBC One programme. I know the BBC’s verging on Brobdingnagian these days, but when a world renowned news team can’t check out a story based on a programme for the same organisation, I think we’re in trouble. Whatever happened to ‘One BBC’?

Earlier this year, when asked to remove her crown, the Queen walked out on Annie Leibovitz. Fantastically, the moment was caught by a documentary crew, and will be shown on BBC One this autumn. And, judging by the still above, she does a pretty good icy stare before marching out.

I think showing this footage is a master stroke. The nation’s fondness for the Queen comes from her human quality, and the fact that we’ll get to see the ‘real’ Queen – warts, angry tantrums, and all – can only play in her favour.

But one thought lingers… RDF, the documentary makers who’ve caught this seemingly incredible footage, are also the team behind Wife Swap. I wonder if the Windsors and the Al-Fayeds have a matching opening in their schedules any time soon?

Edge has released a list of the Top 100 computer games of all time.

I’ve only ever played four of them. I haven’t ever heard of most of them: What the hell is “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”? Who or what are “Ico”, “Okami”, “Shenmue” and “Ikaruga”? Is there really a game called “Geometry Wars”? No, I don’t really want to know.

Give me a quiz game or a business sim over this lot any day.

Is this proof that I’m not a computer geek and all the monitor nerds will shun me forever? Or the exact opposite?

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.

Remember when Louis Walsh walked out of X Factor one week, apparently quitting the show because he just couldn’t hack it any more? He was back in place for the next Saturday, of course, but it gave the tabloids a week’s worth of sensationalism.

You’ll remember than earlier this year the tabloids got excited because he’d been sacked as a judge. And, as sure as night follows day, he’s now been reinstated. And the tabloids have something new to write about.

Apparently, Brian Friedman signed up to be a judge, despite not wanting to, er, be a judge. So what’s next? Dermot signed up despite not wanted to present, so Kate will be back? Dannii Minogue will have a massive fight with Sharon and walk out? We’ll basically revert to the old format, bit by bit?

But it’s all entertaining, and I guess The X Factor plays to the pantomime spirit that the British, and the celebrity gossip magazines in particular, love. It’s addictive viewing – and whatever they do to the format, I bet I’ll be hooked.

This morning, The Guardian reveals that Mr Brown and Sir Menzies have been having talks about Lib Dems potentially featuring in Mr Brown’s cabinet, when he announces it next Wednesday. It’s an interesting plan. It would, of course, be fantastic to see two parties working together despite their differences, for the good of the country. It would be a laudable example of rising above party politics. But I can’t see it happening, because I can’t see the advantage for the Lib Dems.

It’s clear what’s in it for Labour: A virtually guaranteed win at the next election, an appearance of true cross-party working, and some very capable ministers.

But what’s in it for the Lib Dems? They lose the power to properly attack the government, they will inevitably be blamed for blunders while Labour takes the credit for successes, and it damages any perception anyone might have had of them as a potential government in their own right. They lose the advantages of opposition, without really gaining any real influence. They would also lose a certain degree of advantage when it comes to negotiations for a coalition government following the next election, should one be necessary.

Media speculation that this might happen, however, is very clearly beneficial to both parties. It paints Mr Brown as someone willing to break with tradition and party politics in order to find the right people for the right jobs, and it paints the Lib Dems as a party taken seriously enough for it’s shadow ministers to be considered for the top jobs.

If nothing comes of the speculation, really no political damage is done to Mr Brown, but it allows the Lib Dems to harp on about turning down potential power in favour of standing up for their principles – or else, they could both deny that the talks ever took place, which would be even less damaging to Mr Brown, and of no harm or benefit to Sir Menzies – so they’d both have gained a free bit positive media coverage.

So I reckon the mutually beneficial media speculation is as far as this will go. Sir Menzies isn’t a fool, and I can’t see him agreeing to something that would move his party backwards. But he and Mr Brown are good friends, and there’s every reason to think that they might have put their heads together and hatched this plan which gives them both a bit of good PR – great for Mr Brown as he’s entering the job, and great for Sir Menzies to help quieten the mutterings about him in his own party.

I don’t see a Lib Dem in next week’s cabinet. But I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.

Yesterday, the Vatican published ‘Ten Commandments’ for Driving in a document apparently entitled Guidelines For The Pastoral Care Of The Road. Whether that’s a bad translation, or whether they genuinely think tarmac requires loving care and careful attention to its psychology and emotions is unclear to me. I’m also impressed by the number of times they’ve managed to squeeze ‘not’ into this ‘commandment’:

Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

Also keep in mind that, according to the traditional commandments, thou shalt not not not not not kill, nor shalt thou never fail not to covet the woman who may or may not be your neighbour’s wife.

Perhaps more pertinently, it’s interesting to see that the Vatican are moving with the times. Yeah, cars have been around for some 250 years or so, but that’s moving quite fast for the Vatican. After all, condoms have been around for the better part of 3,500 years – much longer than the Bible – and yet the Church has still failed to acknowledge that they help prevent the spread of STIs.

But the most startling thing about this is that it’s like something you’d have read in the Daily Mail of the nineties, when they were still hot on promoting the so-called Christian values of middle England, and hadn’t relegated religion to a weekly 2cm box containing a Bible verse, hidden amongst the letters pages. Of course, they take great pride in reporting this as the Pope issuing new guidelines for road safety, when in fact this load of garbage was created by a Pontifical Council (about as accurate as saying that a Home Office press-release gives Tony Blair’s personal views), and also claiming that one of the commandments is that ‘Thou shalt not make rude gestures’, which is just blatantly false, but clearly reads better than saying that the document advises courtesy.

Gosh, I got distracted there. I meant to say, the most startling thing is that this is essentially a press release from an increasingly media-driven Vatican – the same Vatican which has a Da Vinci Code debunker – and the same Vatican which increasingly seems to be attempting to play to a modern (small-c) conservative audience, rather than sticking to it’s traditional values of – well, stonings, wars, and murders.

I think it’s pretty from the site as a whole that I’m not the world’s greatest fan of organised religion, but when the Vatican employs a Campbell-esque strategy to woo the media to gain converts at the expense of their traditional values, then we’ve really reached a new low.

As my more astute readers will doubtless have noticed, it’s Sunday. So I thought I’d post something relevant. I haven’t done that for the past four years, and probably never will again, but that’s by-the-by.

I have just come across this new advert from the Mail on Sunday: It’s quite extraordinary. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to be advertising The News of the World, but it would seem that the Mail has finally given up on trying to be respectable, and trying to be “not as bad as” the Daily Mail.

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I don’t think I need to write any further commentary, really.