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For all those people who claim that alternate weekly residual waste collection has given rise in Oxford to a plague of rats and who believe they can demonstrate that by pointing to the 5% increase in the number of callouts to the council's pest control department in the second half of the year (despite a 20% drop in the first half of the year) comes less comforting news from elsewhere in the country:

BBC NEWS | England | Shropshire | Rat complaints double in a year:

Mr Rodgers says other areas have experienced the same problem

Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council received 118 calls in 2006 and they have had 255 so far in 2007.

Rat-catcher Geoff Rodgers said the animals love decking, water features and bird seed but he believes climate change is also a factor.

"We've seen a marked increase this year in the amount of calls this autumn but this area is no different to other areas in the country," he said.

He added: "They've all experienced the same problem. It's just something that we have got to work with and bear in mind.

"With climate change these creatures adapt to it like they adapt to other things."

In an article intended to solicit opinions under the heading "Should the Government attempt to curb house prices?" The Telegraph yesterday posed some very pertinent questions about the potential effects of government tinkering with house prices. Amongst all the various responses online at least - that it's all down to immigration, freeing up planning to release more land (presumably except anywhere near where the author lives), hitting second homes, buy to lets and so on - not one mentions the real solution - Land Value Tax.

But the questions they ask need to be answered by Land Value Taxers, particularly "Single Taxers" such as myself - those who propose eliminating all other taxes as far as possible and collecting the entire value of economic land as the sole revenue source for government (or, as I would prefer, for distribution as a Citizen's Income following the elimination of the state!). For what we propose would indeed reduce house prices and so put at risk what many home-owners and property investors see as their rightful wealth.

We have to offer responses as to why first, it's not their rightful wealth, that they have done nothing to earn the uplift in values they have enjoyed, and second, that the wealth itself is a chimera and their "loss" can be compensated for.

Anyone with an eye on the property market knows the issues as set out:

First time buyers are being forced into record levels of debt to get on the proper ladder, new figures have shown, with houses now less affordable than ever.

According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the average house buyer needed to borrow 3.37 times their income in May - the highest figure recorded.

Rising interest rates, continuing house price increases and an average stamp duty bill of £1,458 are all combining to price first time buyers out of the market. They now account for just 35 per cent of all mortgages taken out by people buying a home.

But I want specifically to address the questions they ask:

Should the Government attempt to make homes more affordable or should the market be left to its own devices?

Land does not and cannot operate as a properly free market. Unless you can find a way of creating unlimited amounts of it, and all locations have equal access to all other locations, locations are effective monopolies.

Is it reasonable for young people to expect to be able to buy their own home? Do homeowners who have benefitted from the boom deserve their windfall?

Should the Government ease planning restrictions to increase supply of new homes? Should stamp duty thresholds be altered to give first time buyers an easier route into the market? Should there be restrictions on second homes or buy-to-let mortgages?

Or do young people simply have to make the best of a bad situation? Should they live at home longer, as young people do on the continent? Should we accept that it is no longer feasible for us to be a nation of homeowners? How would you feel if the Government took action which reduced the value of your home?

Okay, so it's that time of year and the arguments are going on about whether A levels have got easier or harder since I/we/whoever did them.

However, in the discussion about whether to change the system, it doesn't matter whether they are easier or harder, they are simply not, it would appear, "fit for purpose" to use a favourite government phrase. Not "fit for purpose" in the sense that it is getting extremely difficult to differentiate between those with high grades and those with really high grades.

It shouldn't matter whether those high grades are being achieved because people are working harder, being better educated, meriting higher scores, or because the assessment is less rigourous allowing more people to pass them more easily. The fact that there is a tighter bunching of grades (and also partly because there are a whole load more higher education establishments now vying for the same pool of students), means that there needs to be a new way of defining the achievements, the rounded academic ability and potential that different institutions, employers and others will need and how to assess them.

Better I say to make a break in such a case; don't pretend that whatever develops is the same qualification as I did twenty odd years ago. It's no value judgement to say it needs replacing though.

Even back then, I was royally screwed by demands that I choose just three complimentary subjects. I started off wanting to study Physics (see my other comments on sciences today) but wanted to combine it with languages, so I chose English, German, Physics and Maths (pure maths was outside the "options" so you could take it as a fourth in those days when even the best generally only did three A levels). There was an outcry and I was soon - well it took half a school year or one quarter of my A level education - talked round to English, Latin and History because they were more consistent - even though I hadn't even done History amongst my twelve O levels (but had A grades in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and a B in Further Maths AO Level) because I didn't particularly enjoy it though I am rediscovering its enticements now thanks to folk like David Starkey, Niall Ferguson and Adam Hart-Davies. A Baccalaureate type mix and match qualification would no doubt have suited this polymath much better.

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A bit pissed off today. In one broadcast & newspaper article Michael Gove has done more to spread the word about Community Land Trusts than my own dear Lib Dems have managed in the nearly two years we've had them as a key plank of our housing policy.

But good on him - I've been trying to speak to Michael Gove about CLTs since March last year or whenever it was Cameron promised to build more homes so long as they were "beautiful". He explained it pretty well. And if Cameron can get his people on board with them Oxfordshire CLT Limited could begin the New Year in bullish fashion with all the county's MPs onside.