Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of ‘9/11’. After 9/11, Jon Stewart gave a speech to open The Daily Show, a speech which I posted here back in June 2006.

Such is the power of the speech that yesterday tens of blogs linked to it on this site, providing over 130,000 extra hits, and propelling it comfortably to the top of the ‘most popular posts’ league. When a speech that is six years old can still generate this kind of response, it surely must be a great speech.

What a shame that politicians have moved so far from their people that it was left to a comedy newsreader to truly speak to the nation in the face of its greatest tragedy in many generations.

As I’ve alluded to in the recent past, quite a number of websites hotlink images from this one. It’s something that I once tried to discourage using complicated scripts, but then pretty much gave up. Many images on the site are, for some reason, highly rated by Google Images, which only increases the amount of hotlinking that goes on.

I was surprised today, though, to find that The Amateur Scientist had found this image on my server. I couldn’t imagine why it was on there… what post could possibly require an illustration of a herd of goats?

Then I remembered: It was this one. A fascinating anecdote, portraying the joys of political blogging when politics is dull.

Given that this purports to be a political blog, I will actually post something about politics sometime in the not too distant future, I promise… but all that seems to be going on at the moment is traditional Conservative Party dissent accompanied by traditional Conservative Party policy rehashes, in this case the idea introducing an optional volunteering scheme spun as ‘National Service’.

And Gordon Brown seems to be just plodding on in a Brownish way, apparently considering calling a snap election – of course he’s not really considering it, unless he’s more stupid than he looks, whatever the polls might say. Polls and elections are different species. Now I’m just waffling.

It’s Conference Season coming up, though, so they’ll be plenty of stuff to write then. In the meantime, go watch some stupid videos.

In a move almost as expected as Tony Blair’s, John Prescott has announced that he will resign as an MP at the next election.

It’ll be quite sad to see him go – Whilst he was a comically terrible Deputy Prime Minister, he was a colossal figure in the Labour Party, probably more important to it over the last fifteen years even than Tony Blair. Blair wouldn’t have got anywhere without Prescott, and neither would Labour.

He’s even provided much fun on these pages over the years – from his interview technique (more than once), to his non-job, to his affair (also more than once). His complete lack of PR awareness made him a bit of a figure of fun for the media, but his style meant that he could always connect with the grass roots of the Labour Party, unlike almost anyone else.

Brown’s government will dearly miss a figure like Prescott.

Iain Dale is asking people to nominate their top twenty political blogs so that he can compile a top 100 for his latest book.

These things are impossible to do, but glancing briefly through my feed reader, I reckon these are all good… but I’ve probably got them in the wrong order, missed people out, and made myself look stupid. But hey, no change there…

1. S J Howard (of course…)
2. Iain Dale’s Diary
3. Guido Fawkes
4. Nick Robinson’s Newslog
5. Downing Street Says
6. Dizzy Thinks
7. Charlie Beckett
8. James O’Malley: Living Legend
9. RecessMonkey
10. Adam Boulton
11. PM
12. NHS Blog Doc
13. Random Acts of Reality
14. Boris Johnson
15. Burning Our Money
16. Dirty Leftie
17. Paul Linford
18. Mark Mardell
19. Tim Worstall
20. Tim McLoughlin

So what are your top tips? Hop over to Mr Dale’s website and post your list. You have until 15th August. Obviously, there’s no dispute about Number 1… 😉

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.