Prime Minister's Questions

In this weeks PMQ's Ed Milliband mainly focused his attack on the lack of banking regulation. Whilst David Cameron claimed that Labour had done nothing to regulate the banks when in power.

However the most interesting point of this weeks PMQ was when a Labour  MP asked David Cameron what he was going to do about the rise in child poverty.

Mr Cameron responded that he was trying to reduce the national debt. At this point Speaker Bercow interrupted and told Cameron that he was going to move on to the next question as he (the Speaker) not responsible for the national debt.

It's the first time I have seen the Speaker tell off David Cameron and Cameron looked very embarrassed. 

So PMQ's this week was not a classic but Speaker Bercow telling off David Cameron made it a little more interesting.

PMQ's review

I was a little disappointed in PMQ’s  this week as I thought that Ed did well last week but he was little too cautious today. However Cameron was in full flash man mode today and even to the point that his attacks on Ed Miliband started to sound like he was laying the ground work for the general election. 

Cameron was courteous when it came to discussing Syria but that soon disappeared once Ed started talking about the standard of living in the UK going down.  Then Cameron went on the attack and again and started obsessing about Ed Balls and the deficit. From a policy point of view I hope that the UK does not arm the Syrian rebels as this happened with Afghanistan in the 1980s and look how that ended up!

As for the standard of living, where I live you just have to look around to see how these government cuts are affecting everyone and three years ago I had never heard of food banks now I see them advertised in the local shops. So PMQ’s left me feeling a little unfulfilled this week but I’m hoping Ed will do better next week.

Prime Minister's Question

Today is one of my favourite days in the political calendar as it is Prime Minister’s Question time.  These days PMQ’s have become more important than ever as I found it is when we actually find out what is this government is up to.

Last week PMQ was a little strange and I even felt a little sorry for Cameron as his backbenchers were asking him really uncomfortable questions and at times it was hard to tell the Labour MP’s from the Tory MP’s.

What I also like about PMQ’s is it’s probably the only in time the week where David Cameron has to deal with uncomfortable questions. Ed Miliband is getting better at PMQ’s and I have to admit that when he was first elected as the Labour leader I was worried.

I thought he would return the Labour party back to the Neil Kinnock days but he has proved me wrong and even Cameron seems to be little scared of him now.  Although the Tory’s seem to be obsessed with Ed Balls which is little frightening because they seem a little too desperate to get him out of his job.

I’m hoping today’s PMQ’s will be as good as last weeks and hopefully Ed Miliband will continue to pile on the pressure with questions that Cameron will probably be unable to answer (fingers crossed).

Challenges facing President Obama

President Obama has found himself in a situation that few could have predicted. Whilst, the Republicans have spent the last four and a half years looking for scandal. One of the biggest controversy since his re-election has been the allegation that the US government has been collecting private data on its citizens.

This information came to be public knowledge due The Guardian’s interview with Edward Snowden. Now what makes this story interesting from my perspective is that the most critical Republicans i.e. Lindsey Graham and John Boehner are now largely siding with the President and they are attacking Edward Snowden.

It does show that some Republicans even though they largely disagree with the President are somewhat prepared to back him on this issue. This is something that has been largely missing since President Obama first got elected.

What concerns me from the UK perspective is The Guardian’s involvement, The Guardian is my favourite newspaper and I love the way they take politicians to task. However in this case I don’t really believe that it’s investigative journalism but more to do with their desperation to penetrate the US market. I sincerely hope for their sake that this does not back fire and that they have not over reached.

As for the actual data collection, I for one do believe that it is necessary for governments around the world to collect this kind of data. However I also have the fear that this data could be misused and I certainly do not want to hear of President Obama in a Nixon kind of scandal. At this stage the President has handled controversy well by reassuring Americans that the US Government are not reading emails and listening in on their phone calls.  

As I think it important for Obama to show real leadership on this issue because IRS issue to me made him look like a little bit of a bystander. However only time will tell whether this data mining issue will be a profound moment in his presidency.