Taking Labour's Bitter Pill Will Not Make Us Better

To hear Labour big guns being rolled out to speak to the press over and over again over the last two days since the pre budget report has been a lesson in how to sound if you have run out of ideas.

In the last 24 hours I have heard Alistair Darling, Jack Straw and the quite awful Ed Balls all defending the PBR on the simple basis that "the Tories would be worse". This quite pathetic defence just highlight how vaccuous Labour are now and how utterly bankrupt they are in the ideas department.

So what will the polls make of it ? I cannot see anoything other than a decline in Labour's support on the basis that the PBR was not good for most people and it actually fails to address the urgent needs of the country.

People an accept a bitter pill if it will make you better. But as the BBC reports tonight, Labour's measures will do nothing to solve the crisis in the public finances whilst everyone will be feeling the pinch.

Common sense on education ?

What a complete and genuine surprise from the government today. An announcement on schools which should be greeted by teachers, parents and learners alike.

The government, it seems, have woken up to the fact that school league tables really are no proper measure of how good a school is. It is clear to anyone who has any knowledge of the education system that league tables record only what is measurable and not what is important.

Instead of simple tables recording SATs results, the government wants schools to be graded in a similar way to that used in New York with grades given judging the "added value" that schools gives to children's results, the schools record on discipline, school attendance and a whole host of other measures.

Don't whisper it too loud but Ed Balls, the education minister, might not be as dim as he seems !

So weak ? So what ? So whitewashed by Hansard

It is, for me, an utter disgrace that Hansard, supposedly the official record of everything that is said in the House of Commons (and Lords) can actually be doctored, altered and whitewashed to protect an Minister who so out of his depth started shouting abuse across the chamber in manner so unbefitting a Minister that it must have been an embarrassment even to his Labour colleagues.

What was clear to me from watching Ed Balls reaction to David Cameron was that he was not saying "so weak" , he was clearly, in my view repeating "so what" to Mr Cameron as he pointed out that the tax burden, under Labour, is at an all time high. I'm no fan of David Cameron, but he clearly won the debate with his retort that since Mr Balls is "Minister for children, he doesn't have to behave like one".

The sad thing is though that Hansard reports Ed Balls to have said "So weak" and not "So what", despite a number of people hearing him say clearly "so what", including those in the public gallery.

You have to ask if Hansard is there to tell us what happened or if it is there to report what the government would have liked to see happen. As usual, the speaker has shown himself to be absolutely useless in this matter, but then what else do you expect from him.