Jennie has posted a few times now on Liberal Conspiracy about thinking along the same lines as me, and has linked to me a couple of times, so here is a return of favour under similar circumstances. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says we need at least £13,400 each to simply live and be above poverty. Jennie, on the other hand, contests this amount as ludicrously high when taking in to account the wider picture of global poverty.

In all honesty, on this subject I am torn. I agree completely with what Jennie is saying, she is spot on and the fanaticism that has gone on with poverty and these kinds of figures with the media and politicians is disconcerting. However isn't there also a place for these kinds of poverty figures in developing society?

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"

I have a bit of a backlog on news that I wish to write about, though some will probably be kept for a rainy day...but it does mean that there are a few stories here that are small enough to warrant small mention but that I'd like to talk briefly about. The issues are about just who is going to University now and the potential re-emergence of the rich/poor gap in higher education, an update on the idea of ISPs monitoring our internet usage for illegal downloading, and Labour actually making a positive announcement for once. I know, the last bit is actually scarily unreal.

Probably not safe for work, here is our third effort. As always we welcome comments on the style and content in an effort to improve! Transcript below...

Over on CentreRight Charlie Elphicke has posted a continuation of their new debate on Britain's relative decline (and not just economically, they say). In his post he talks about how we should be more rich, not touching the more ambiguous topics supposedly in distress such as crime levels and military power.

I feel Labour have kept the economic boat steady one way or another, with the counter-balance most probably being that we aren't reaching the GDP growth we're capable of. But with many less unemployed than under Tory led policies, more benefits for the poor stifling most hints of outrage at just how few people get so much of the total wage packet every year, and an economy that may not be super strong but also doesn't succumb to the mega lows of Conservative politics, one has to ask just how you should measure how "rich" a nation is in the first place.