Peter Horrocks has written an interesting piece on his BBC blog defending the way the organisation has told the story of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. Unfortunately, his defence makes little sense. Some selected extracts…

Often we’re not able to give viewers any new information and that’s one of the things I spend a lot of time talking to my journalists about, to focus on facts … I know that many other TV and radio networks have been absolutely extraordinary, always talking about it in terms of sympathy and their feelings

I am incomplete agreement with Mr Horrocks here: Reportage of the facts, not of feelings, is exactly where BBC News should be focussed in this instance.

Questions have been raised over why we used a helicopter to cover the McCanns’ journey home from East Midlands airport.

An understandable question: Coverage of a car driving from one place to another has apparently little news value, and adds few new ‘facts’. So why did the BBC cover it?

The McCanns’ return was an important emotional moment in this story, and something which we felt we needed to cover for continuous news.

Eh? The BBC, which Mr Horrocks says focuses entirely on facts, and indeed is better than its rivals because of its emotional detachment from the story, felt the need to give continuous coverage to a car journey because it was an “emotional moment in this story”.

I sense a gap in the logic.

Question of the Day: Given that Kate McCann is now a suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine, and given that one of the stated aims of the fund set up to help find her is “that her abductors, as well as those who played or play any part in assisting them, are identified and brought to justice”, will the million pounds raised by Kate and Gerry now be used for prosecution lawyers?

I wish everyone who is receiving A-Level results today the very best of luck. However it turns out, don’t let anyone belittle your achievement – the media pump out ridiculous lies about the exams every year, and every year I get annoyed. Congratulations to those who get good news. Those who didn’t do as well as expected shouldn’t get too disheartened – after all, you tried your best – but you may find the Guardian’s clearing site useful, as it’s chock full of useful info and will have a live adviser to answer questions later this morning.

On another topic entirely, I’ve not been great at posting this month. Sorry about that. I’ve been in Canada for two months, and thought I did quite well on keeping up the blog – for the first six weeks… I’m back now, so normal service will resume shortly. 🙂

A fascinating article by the Beeb comparing Baden-Powell’s Scouting advice to modern advice, which is made even more amusing by the comments which wonderfully suggest that old-school Scouting adventures made “real men”. Apparently, teaching kids to jump into icy lakes to retrieve lost loved-ones instead of calling the emergency services, or indeed teaching juniors to fight bears, would solve all societal ills including, but by no means limited to, shootings, stabbings, anti-social behaviour, and the existence of David Beckham. It’s clearly a delusion of my Guardianista liberal-mindedness that the latter isn’t the greatest threat to society of modern times.

Next week: Sending kids down coal mines “separated the men from the boys, and killed off the weak, useless, criminal scroungers who are the scourge of today’s society”.

Thank goodness the modern Scouting Movement isn’t run by these people.

I’ve just published Returning Politics to the People over on Gazette Communities. Hopefully, the links are working better than last week. Regular readers will have heard it all before, albeit not in one post. Enjoy.

Yesterday, you may have seen in the mainstream media that the Labour Party has been cleared of wrongdoing in the Cash for Honours affair. It’s just not true.

The CPS didn’t clear the Labour Party. They didn’t even come close. This is just lazy reporting of something close to the truth that’s easier to understand, but fundamentally wrong. Allow me to explain.

Let’s revisit the two bare, startling, facts of the case:

1. Every single person who has ever given the Labour Party over £1,000,000 has received a knighthood or peerage.
2. Three-quarters of those giving over £50,000 in the last six years have received an honour.

It is therefore undeniable that there is a connection between party funding and peerages. The case hinged on whether the peerages were ‘sold’ as according to the letter of the law – it’s perfectly legal to grant honours as a recognition of a large donation, but not in return for a large donation, which is a quite a subtle difference.

From my perspective (and that of more intelligent people), the fact that such a huge proportion of big donors received honours clearly demonstrates that an ‘incentive’ scheme was there – donate over £1m, and you’ll get a knighthood or peerage – which would mean that the awards were in return for donations, expected by the donors, and hence criminal.

The important thing to note is this: The CPS absolutely did not say that crimes hadn’t been committed. They are not clearing the Labour Party of selling peerages. To me, as I’ve explained, it’s quite clear that peerages were sold. If you read the full text of the CPS decision (I’ve uploaded it here), they are quite clear:

Today’s decision indicates unequivocally that there is insufficient evidence to support proceedings against any individual

The fact is that a series of crimes may very well have been committed here. The CPS just doesn’t have enough evidence to pin it on one particular person. To draw from this that no criminal acts took place is as absurd as saying that Nicole Simpson wasn’t murdered because OJ was cleared.

Whether or not there’s enough evidence to convict, someone – OJ or otherwise – murdered Nicole. Just because no one individual can be prosecuted for an offence does not indicate that a crime didn’t take place – and the CPS aren’t trying to argue that it does. The Labour Party has certainly not been cleared of selling peerages.

For what it’s worth, I actually think that the investigation has served it’s purpose as it is. Had prosecutions followed, they would have been those of scapegoats and lackeys, rather than the key players in the story. But the investigation will demand reform of the honours system, which is badly needed, and so perhaps some good will come out of it in the end.

MTAS was the utter failure of a computer system which was designed to match doctors to jobs but instead merely spewed out personal data onto unprotected parts of the internet leading to criminal proceedings and an unprecedented crisis in the training of junior doctors. It was hardly the government’s finest hour, and we’re still on course for crisis on 1st August as a huge number of doctors will be unemployed.

Earlier this week, it was stealthily revealed by the Department of Health that this now defunct system cost £1.9 million. That’s the same as over 70,000 GP consultations, which I think many people may consider a better use of the money. That cost is merely for the system itself – the upset it has caused through it’s failure and the contemptible lack of contingency planning is estimated by some to run into billions of pounds.

Taxpayers’ money well spent.

The private company whose designed the MTAS computer system, using some of that £1.9m, is Methods Consulting. Just to remind you, MTAS spewed personal data onto unprotected websites, and failed to perform its basic function of matching doctors to jobs.

Guess who’s now helping to design the computer service for the National Care Records Service, a program for storing highly sensitive medical records on a national network? Methods Consulting.

Yes, the company behind the biggest data security failure ever in the NHS is now being trusted with your medical records. And, of course, with a huge amount of taxpayers’ money.

Is there any private company on Earth that would give the job of helping design a highly sensitive computer system to a company that failed to secure a previous system with so much as a basic password? It just seems an utterly moronic decision.

This company has committed one of the biggest failings of NHS data security in its history. There is no question in my mind that they should be removed from the National Care Records Service programme immediately. And why are we paying a company so much money for a system that simply didn’t work?

These are things which Alan Johnson needs to tackle now if he’s to have any chance of regaining the trust and restoring the morale of doctors in this country. I have little faith, but I sincerely hope he can restore it.

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?

Obviously, I haven’t read Mr Campbell’s book yet, but I fear that his introduction tells me everything I need to know:

What I hope this book does is help to paint a rounded picture of a man of enormous drive and vision, who was determined to use his time in power to make a difference and brought about a lot of change for the better.

If that’s the rounded version, I’d hate to see the sycophantic version.