I was so busy thinking about how reprehensible it was of Labour to double the tax rate for low-earners yesterday (which I blogged about last year, including this telling quote from Gordon Brown), I completely failed to notice that it was this blog’s birthday. Happy birthday, blog.

As is now traditional, anniversary day (or, in this case, the day after) is the one day of the year when we do blog stats here. So here we go.

Previous three years’ figures are in brackets, last year’s first.

• 2 (2, 2, 2): number of servers this site has been hosted on
• 2 (2, 2, 2): number of blogging applications used
• 977 (873, 588, 226): total number of posts
• 1,518 (1,350, 774, 444): total number of comments
• 1.55 (1.55, 1.32, 1.96): average number of comments per post
• 269 (259, 192, 119): number of number plates spotted (playing since May 2004 – may be time to give up)
• 96,335 (70,993, 43,016, 6,322): total unique hits (counting since May 2004)

Top seven referring websites (excluding search engines):

• 7 (6): W4MP
• 6 (5): Liberal England
• 5 (4): Bloglines
• 4 (3): BBC News
• 3 (7): Wikipedia
• 2 (2): kakuro.info
• 1 (1): LibDem Blogs

Top nine referring blogs:

• 9 (-): Love and Liberty
• 8 (-): Iain Dale
• 7 (7): A Liberal Goes A Long Way
• 6 (8): Recess Monkey
• 5 (2): Chicken Yoghurt
• 4 (6): Naked Blog
• 3 (9): Liberal Democrat Voice
• 2 (4): Peter Black
• 1 (1): Liberal England

Top ten search terms:

• 10 (7): guardian
• 9 (5): toby
• 8 (6): stephens
• 7 (4): doctor
• 6 (-): eurovision
• 5 (2): kakuro
• 4 (3): who
• 3 (-): forward
• 2 (-): clocks
• 1 (1): sudoku

As these are “all time” rankings, they do run the risk of changing less and less each year. Here then are what Google Analytics reckons are the same rankings for the last year.

Top seven referring websites (excluding search engines):

• 7: Bloglines
• 6: Peter Black
• 5: StumbleUpon
• 4: kakuro.info
• 3: Liberal Democrat Voice
• 2: LibDem Blogs
• 1: Wikipedia

Top nine referring blogs:

• 9: Quaequam Blog!
• 8: Naked Blog
• 7: Chicken Yoghurt
• 6: Adam Teladia
• 5: One Way Pendulum
• 4: Iain Dale
• 3: Liberal England
• 2: Peter Black
• 1: Liberal Democrat Voice

Top ten search terms:

• 10: hut 33
  (a post briefly higher ranked on Google thank the official site)
• 9: doctor who new companion
  (and that was about Martha, not Donna)
• 8: love don’t roam
• 7: when do the clocks go forward
• 6: toby stephens
  (I wrote one post, for goodness’ sake)
• 5: tony lit
  (remember him?)
• 4: who should i vote for president
• 3: eurovision 2007
  (and it’s nearly that time again)
• 2: clocks go forward 2008
• 1: clocks go forward

Phew! Those are probably the measurements to use in future as they’re marginally more interesting (in the way that having your smallest toe amputated is marginally more interesting than losing the fourth one).

The Channel 4 News website has an article about a new IPPR report on children’s use of teh internets (Young people ‘are being raised online’). The news story avoids much of the usual scaremongering, although it’s typical of the IPPR to suggest that because “parents need to be reassured about what they are looking at” the Government must intervene.

There’s some high class, in depth research in the report too:

The researchers found that on YouTube, a search for the term “happy slap” delivered 117 videos posted in the last week and “street fight” 312 videos.

My motivation for highlighting this story, though, is to draw attention to Channel 4 News’s own bizarre interpretation of the law online, as revealed in the final paragraph:

Unlike television programmes, internet content is not subject to any legal restrictions such as the Obscene Publications Act, Sexual Offences Act, and laws relating to race hatred, defamation and libel.

Really? I mean, really?

Some of these laws may be enforced in different ways, and some specific to other media (for example, video classification laws) may not apply, but the idea that I can state that Jon Snow eats newborn babies in order to feed his unquenchable bloodlust (important legal disclaimer: he doesn’t) and not be risking a libel action is absurd.

Of course internet content is subject to legal restrictions, although these will vary from country to country. That’s how file-sharers swapping copyrighted material have been prosecuted; that’s how a UKIP parliamentary candidate won a libel action over posts on a Yahoo! forum. To suggest that these laws don’t apply is pretty irresponsible.

*Just to be clear: I have no reason to think TV treasure Jon Snow eats babies.

Readers may be interested to know (and I’m going to plug it regardless) that since December I’ve been writing a regular weekend column for Liberal Democrat Voice.

Something for the Weekend is a light-hearted (I wouldn’t go so far as “humorous”) review of the week, and today’s post – written in Llandudno, from where I’m typing into your internets right now – is now up.

My highlight of the blogging year is back.

As I’ve plugged in previous years, Mike at Troubled Diva has been conducting an annual assessment of the last fifty years of pop music. Which Decade Is Top For Pops? reaches its sixth year this week with the first daily instalment, today featuring the single at Number Ten in the charts this week (Goldfrapp’s A&E) and its precessors from 1968, 1978, 1988 and 1998.

Head on over to Mike’s to hear today’s five tracks and to cast your votes.