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.

So the first part of my thoughts goes to Environmentally charged changes in the budget, potentially one of the biggest political areas in the budget that turned out to be more than a damp squib.

All in all I don't think that the budget we witnessed today was especially ground breaking. Commentators have already said about how most of it was expected and about the tone, my only interest is what the effects mean for people in the long run. Personally I don't think it is as bad as it could have been but it's certainly not favourable, certainly some of the "positives" are barely positives at all in more historical context and it's not within me to congratulate people for offering piecemeal as if it is a huge concession.

Can I just say... HALLELUJAH! If there is a god then they have obviously heard our collective prayers because today's PMQs was far beyond head and shoulders above the rest of the recent events

The reason for this seems to be partly down to a slight reduction in the heckling, but in reality I believe it to be because of as much as half the amount of planted Labour questions, real issues being discussed, and perhaps through a lack of pressure a Prime Minister that actually answered questions better without the constant need to attack "the party opposite"

Unfortunately the bill I have previously asked people to support didn't get a simple hearing on Friday as the timings involved meant that the debate has been delayed. This isn't a bad thing of course, it just means a bit of a wait for the verdict from the MPs interested, the debate continues on the 14th (this coming Friday). So, of course, I urge people to continue to support this trial especially given that we can see from Hansard just how a minority of people seem to be opposed to any positive move for utterly petty reasoning.

So I was talking with a friend tonight and started to brainstorm about how I would deal with the issues of smoking, drinking and over-eating and the burden the pose to the NHS. It's not old news that some are attempting to weasel out of treating the sick and so I wondered in this climate how you could perhaps work a fair system.

Yes, it's true! The Tories are ignoring the statistical evidence in front of them and state they will tax dwindling sales of alcopops as well as strong beer and cider, you know the stuff that generally only find in your traditional local pub, and are going to use that barely existent amount of money to try and drop the price on alcohol that kids really drink. Lager.

So the minimum wage is going up, and it is doing so by 3.8% after last being rose in October 2007. This is a rise not far off the fluctuating RPI rate since October and it is something I support in principle. Is it the fairest thing to do though?

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.