In my previous post about Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam I quoted Salman Rushdie's surprise that Jon Stewart had given a starring role at his "Rally for Sanity" to a crooner who had previously opined that Rushdie deserved to die for deciding of his own free will to abandon Islam and criticise its texts.

Jon Stewart's Rally for Sanity yesterday featured Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens singing "Peace Train". Islam/Stevens previously showed his commitment to peace and sanity by saying that death was the appropriate punishment for Salman Rushdie's "blasphemy".

In these hard times, common decency tells us to think of those less fortunate than ourselves. As David Cameron says, in the Big Society we must all take on the responsibilities for others the state can no longer afford. You may be wondering who to give your hard-earned money to. I urge you - nay, beg you - to consider the sufferings of pundits struggling to provide the public with 1000-word opinion pieces.

Howard Jacobson could only have produced his attack on anti-Zionism in The Finkler Question as a book. I don't mean that as a novelist he was highly unlikely to write it as anything else, but that the book trade provides the last, best refuge for original and uncomfortable debates in Britain.

I took part in the Guardian's politics' programme last week and talked with my colleagues about the conferences. (You can hear it here.) One point that struck me after watching the Tories, was how short the party was of barnacled old buggers, with age and experience and an ability learned from years of hard slog to speak over the heads of the Paxmans and Humphreys and to the country. I suppose the Tories have Ken Clarke and Eric Pickles, but there are precious few others who can put down an interviewer and appeal to the voter.