Labour have pulled a u-turn today with the announcement from everyone's favourite housing overlord, Caroline Flint, that they are now going to try and tackle the "problem" of "studentification". This is an issue that manages to branch all of the main parties as reprehensible with even supposedly student friendly MP for Bristol West, Stephen Williams, signing an EDM to tackle "studentification" through excessive planning regulations that would see local residents able to put a stop to student housing being created, certainly affordably so.

Green taxes, apparently they will save the world. I on the other hand think that they are being mishandled and misused as a means for generating income off of people unfairly. Green taxes, at their best, are a means of penalising those that make active choices to do environmentally unfriendly things and to take money from them to actually go about solving this country's climate change issues.

At their worst, however, they are used to plug gaps in local governance finances with disregard to reality and to simply make it looks like something is being done to tackle climate change...even if it means telling supermarkets to generate more profits without a set plan on how to spend those profits on green initiatives.

As it happens David Cameron has wised up to this and becomes the only party leader so far to actually start thinking sensibly on the issue of climate change when it comes to Green Taxes, for whatever means that is.

The latest Politalks is here, remember that episode 7 and 8 will also be posted on a Tuesday due to other commitments. This week we've seen childish politics reach new highs and more than just a little bit of borrowing from others to try and get ahead in the polls. Also, more weighty content with a scathing analysis of the ever ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflict.Not work safe with transcript below.

I am sitting here feeling pretty incensed after reading the news on the BBC news website about Labour , linked initially from Paul Linford's blog. Firstly because it is typical cowardly Labour who admit one thing in their government initiated report yet make some startling admissions about the "value" that they put on certain criteria in their practice, and secondly because it has spawned an absolutely piss-poor article from the BBC.

In the end the facts are simple. Labour hold between 48 and 96 seats more than they should based on public opinion, and despite there being working examples in our own union of PR systems working, not being too complicated, not reducing turn out, and making government more representative of the people this government is going to do whatever it can to keep hold of FPTP until it gets over the hurdle of what will be a messy general election between 2009 and 2010. It's despicable, it's an example of everything that's wrong with modern "democracy" and it is authoritarian bullshit that has to end as soon as possible.

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.

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.