News has just broken that John Edwards is quitting his campaign to become president of the USA. This is a very interesting move as it now leaves only Obama and Clinton as the remaining runners and people will want to know how Edwards is going to side when it comes to his previous competitors.

While I am on the theme already tonight of BBC shoddy reporting (seems to occur like buses) I also would like to highlight this article about birth rates in the UK and the contribution of immigrants to this. The BBC reports there has been a 77% increase in the birthrate of children to foreign born mothers. It is a shame that amongst all of this reporting, however, has been on the level of impact this increase has rather than why the impact is so much of a problem.

I have to ask though what the big deal is. Higher birth rate has to in turn convey some benefits to long term economy. It has long been said that younger populations help maintain a growth economy and higher birthrates are the only way to achieve this, in fact without migrants having babies we would be falling in to a predicted slump economically as our population grows older.

It was only three days ago that I discussed the recent news about electoral reform, the BBC's woefully inaccurate reporting of a document, and Michael Wills' statement to the effect of saying "we are happy to stay as we are". Now curiously there has been a separate news story surfacing today on the BBC website that pretty much breaks the same news again, but changes the way it is presented. Where has this come from?

My feelings on this remain the same, Michael Wills is a minister that doesn't bother to vote on parliamentary transparency yet has too loud a voice on this particular issue of the public/parliament relationship, and the whole statement is geared towards not implementing or properly discussing the necessary systems until after the next election. This is democracy at it's worst because the people are being denied a referendum on the issues on the basis of the current situation with the House of Lords, despite a referendum on the public's wishes not needing to be a promise to change straight away. What does the government have to lose by simply asking the people of Britain what they want, once and for all, to fully inform this debate they're supposedly so happy to have?