Here we are again with views and comments on the weekly question time, this time with at least the feeling of more questions. We had Nick Clegg coming out more aggressively this week and a fairly consistent repeat of last weeks bout between Brown and Cameron, this time over Northern Rock. The surprise is that there were seemingly more planted questions than usual from the Labour side, and issues such as violence in gaming and Darfur. The big theme of the day, however, was inconsistency and "flip flopping", though that term was never used.

Let me first talk about the Cameron/Brown conflict, as it sets the stage for the theme. Brown for a start had just had a question planted that allowed him to reitterate, as if he doesn't say it enough, just how better the countries economy is than when the Tories were in power. From this Cameron starts to ask questions about Northern Rock and the assurances about getting taxpayers money back. Gordon states that his his intention and explains himself. I think what is interesting is that for the first time since he took over I actually was able to take him seriously. He was more self-assured at this stage and much more calm with his aggression, over all an amazing transformation.

Unfortunately this couldn't stop him from falling into bad habits, while his composure remained repeated questions at him about figures from the Tories received no acceptable answer, the usual rhetoric, and yet more questions aimed at the opposition front bench. Now don't get me wrong, I like the banter, but I am ashamed that our political system doesn't somewhat force our Prime Minister to answer what he knows honestly, but then I guess such things could never happen in practice. Instead we listen to Brown attack Cameron and the Tories over their apparent change in stance every day on the Northern Rock situation. After being accused of "dithering" and "delaying" on solutions because of the elections fiasco Brown kept up his point about the Tories supporting him to begin with and now changing their minds. This is a show of Labour's stability vs Conservative chaos he would imply.

After a couple more questions side-stepped quite unashamedly it came to Nick Clegg. With a bit more fire in his disposition he wanted to ask about the 45k families that are likely to lose their homes this year. The Lib Dems do so well at pulling the right subject out of the air because Brown always manages to stumble over himself against them, his answer simply rhetoric over low interest rates caused by low inflation caused by economic policy the Lib Dems just don't have. It would appear perhaps to the layman to be a good hit from Brown, except Nick persisted, asking if he was going to do anything to help these people or just "wring [his] hands while people lose their homes?" The persistence paid off as Brown shot himself in the foot, seemingly justifying that people are going to have their houses repossessed because they wouldn't have had them to be repossessed in the first place if Labour hadn't increased the number of home-owners. Apparently all of us home-owners should be thankful to Labour for becoming as such and not complain if his lack of controls while chancellor allowed borrowing to spiral out of control and now results in us being evicted. Quite frankly I find this an insulting stance to take.

But it's the fact he ended his answer with a subtle attack on who is wearing the trousers in the Lib Dem's, bringing up Chris Huhne's involvement in the report that highlights the Lib Dem concerns, an act which is petty at best and mindboggling at worst...and then goes on to attack Lib Dem policy as being all over the place. Well no shit shirlock, they have a new leader and policies are being redressed, that happens...if you remember, Gordon, you are trying to reverse the decisions of David Blunkett on reclassifying cannabis and seem to have changed your previous government's mind on super casino's. Pot. Kettle. Black.

The rest of the session was a mixed bag, several questions allowing Brown to repeat the rhetoric of strong economies, but some actually getting an answer for once. A commitment still to helping solve the Darfur issue and a strong defense of Hain and what he brings to the table standing out on the best side. However he also was found ignoring the stats that show rises in petrol, food and energy are higher under Labour than the tories and just stating that the questioner is wrong because "inflation is 2.1%". It seems as though acting dumb and repeating ones self is the order of the year when it comes to answering questions on the economy. Added to this his ability to ignore yet more criticisms about his government's consultations by suggesting the poor and confused wording of a consultation doesn't matter because everyone knows what the consultation is about, we saw also the worse side of the PM.

The surprise question of the day was about Manhunt 2, and with some people obviously wishing to have some secret meetings about seeing what they can do to ban these games, described in the session in quite a sensationalist manner. Gordon Brown's answer was that a review has been set up by the Children's secretary (The Byron review, if that's the right spelling) and will be concluded in March. It will be important to see what this ends up suggesting because the potential here is that this government could be trying to further drive a wedge between the media of computer games and films in the disparity about how they are judged, while further infringing on our liberties because the government is not willing to tell parents to actually take more control over their children.

On the topical side, Brown also clarified the new Organ Donation policy, and made it clear we'd be following a system like the tried and tested Spanish approach that allows families to have a veto organ donations to make sure patient wishes are followed as close as possible.

Over all Brown was clearly stronger this week, and had tactics for once. The shame is that his tactics only really made us look back at his actions so it was a bit of a shot in the dark in that respect. It did make Cameron disappear into the background however, and the leader of the opposition really didn't have much in the way of teeth this week. Clegg on the other hand weathered the first real attack against him and his party well and came out with more fire on another issue that is important to a lot of people in this country.