Gordon Brown has responded to the absolutely DEVASTATING result in Crewe and Nantwich by claiming that he is "listening", a desperate sense of language that almost pleads with the electorate to trust him going forward in to the future...and rightly so. He should be pleading, he should be begging, in fact he should be display a whole host of traits that are both simultaneously apologetic to the electorate that he and his government have betrayed so badly in the last 6 months and non-conducive to him remaining the leader of this country.

Steve Webb, Lib Dem MP, has recently said online that online campaiging such as e-petitions offers a great way to get people involved in campaigning. I completely agree, I think that the more avenues open to people to easily show their disgust, horror, disapproval or disenfranchisement with policy the better. However one area that I don't agree any of this works is E-Petitions.

When do you use RPI to measure inflation and when do you use CPI? The answer is quite simply "whenever we feel like it!". In a response earlier this month to a petition to change the student loan interest rate from being linked to RPI to CPI to reflect the government's inflation figures, the Prime Minister's office has stated it has no intention to change a thing...in line with the general policy of taking in to account public opinion through the site.

Finally in this trilogy of posts on the issue of poor and sometimes frightening governance by Labour, and in this case to a degree parliament as a governing body, I cover the now well trodden subject of MPs and just how much power the government should be giving them. In particular this post is spurred on by the recent news about bugging MPs, but stems from the wording of anti-terror legislation on several counts, the debacle over police pay and partly how the idea of electoral reform has been dealt with.

Let's first look at the most recent furore, that of bugging MPs...

A bit late this week but here none the less. This week's PMQs really needed to be better than recent ones if any of the politicians taking part were to come off looking like mature adults, and thankfully this week saw an upturn in the standard of what was debated. Gone was the issue of Northern Rock (thank god) and the big scandals for both big parties meant that no-one was going to go on the party-political offensive regarding untrustworthy MPs. With this we were left with key subjects, crime, military and housing

I'm trying something new here, not sure if it's going to work as well as intended but here it is. Read more for the transcript of this movie.

I felt, watching this weeks PMQ's, like I was in the twilight zone. Indeed I think that anyone that had come in to the chamber late may have thought they had travelled a week back in time as the subject was once again Northern rock, the prose? Tories accusing Labour of selling out the tax payer, Labour accusing Tories of flip flopping. All in all it was almost painful to see Cameron and Brown duke it out over the same issue, it is almost as if David Cameron is desperate to win over Brown on this subject and will keep coming at him until he does. Unfortunately for him Brown is on usual form, though I wouldn't say "good" form, and ultimately ends up frustrating us all.

Cameron was clearly the winner this week, though he desperately needs to find another subject from now on, and Clegg slumped in the face of his own baffling announcement. But Brown is back to usual form, that being of a trudging human shaped record player that plays broken media and is reluctant to go get repaired...drastic change is needed for this man.

I personally think that the BBC is spot on for saying that they want to do more to promote politics and trust in the political system of the UK in the future, but also that in turn it make themselves look stupid for having not done more in the past on the subject. There have also been comments around saying that the move was a bribe, effectively, and this is an interesting if not slightly irrelevant angle.

From this has arisen some discussion about why the BBC need to do this, questioning just why people are disengaged with politics. Some say that it's because there is no mystery any more, and that it's too open, too ugly. Other's say that the media's closeness just shows up how clandestine politics can still be. Personally I have to say let's face it, it's not the openness or mystery of politics that stops people from engaging. I doubt the people sitting around post war were going and voting still because of the allure of the mystery behind Westminster, and I severely doubt people aren't getting involved now because things are seemingly more transparent.

On the Today program on Radio 4 Gordon Brown was interviewed on a series of issues: the NHS, Northern Rock, national borrowing, national crisis's and his state in the job. All in all it was a painful listen, with a Prime Minister that had clearly gone into an interview situation somehow wishing to dictate the agenda and continually finding himself on the back foot and defending himself on pretty much every decision he's made...most of the time without necessity.