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"

The EU treaty was last night sent a step further towards being accepted by British parliament as the Labour party successfully managed to vote out the possibility of a referendum on the document. As the debate showed there is a lot of hostility towards referendums as a way of making decisions, contrasted with the moral dilemma of breaking a promise to the country. The following are a few of my thoughts and I have to say watching the debate sharpened my mind on the issue and was very worthwhile for me personally...

However it must be said, if referendums are supposedly no good because of lack of information, lack of clarity over why a decision has gone the way it has and because the act of debate is supposedly so essential to democracy in Britain, why have three line whips been used in this vote meaning that this great debate held yesterday is effectively nullified by party lines, and why has the time allotted to the debate been insufficient to actually fully debate the issue and thus leaving even our MPs only partially informed when they come to make their decision?

Despite this event now seemingly sapping my life from my very body I for some reason decide to persevere in watching it. I shall keep it, and thus the pain, brief...though an issue was raised during the event around referendums and I shall be visiting that subject tomorrow. But for today, my god...it might not have been the worse PMQs but it was close.

We're back after the break in Parliament, and is it only me that feels that it was nice to not have one? Perhaps not. Let's see where this goes, I'm going to predict that Northern Rock is going to be the subject of the day for the Lib Dems, but perhaps the Tories will attack on something else, perhaps the DNA disc stuff they've spoke up about today? We'll see...

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...

It's official, I'm bored of PMQs. I am now going to join the ranks of people that condemn it to being pointless theatrics, the PM doesn't answer enough questions, there is too much emphasis on back biting, real issues of the day don't get light because of the format and time limit and constituency MPs asking their questions are seemingly unable to find the middle ground between "congratulate us" questions and "condemn them" questions.

It's time to change the format, and it's time for Gordon Brown to split the PMQs back in half. He could do this quite easily without being accused of changing the system to suit his own personal needs if handled right, the main barrier in the way of changing the format as it stands. But how should the new two sessions operate?

The next episode of Politalks is now here, with thanks to Gavin Whenman who will for the foreseeable future be partnering me on the project. Video below is probably NSFW!

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 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.

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.