Labour have brushed off suggestions of a debate between Pat Rabitte and Michael McDowell saying the Tainiste's party is too small to merit a face off with Labour.

RTÉ has written to the parties proposing a six-way leaders' debate before a live studio audience, plus two further debates - one between Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the alternative taoiseach, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, and the other between the Tánaiste and the alternative tánaiste, Pat Rabbitte.

According to Labour the PDs are a niche party that will contest only a limited number of seats while the Labour Party will contest every constituency.

"We are simply not prepared to accept that the Labour Party or its leader should be relegated to some political second division with the Progressive Democrats."

Ouch!

Fianna Fáil has dropped four points to 38 per cent while Fine Gael has increased support by one to 22 per cent and Labour has climbed two to 14 per cent.

The Progressive Democrats also climbed one to 4 per cent while Sinn Féin was unchanged at 7 per cent. Independents dropped 1 per cent to 7 per cent.

As the chinese say "May you live in interesting times!"

Labour used their 2007 conference to announce a policy for government that will put the "tax and spend" story to bed. Fears that Labour would not reduce tax or might even increase taxes were ended last night when Pat Rabbitte announced that Labour in Government will reduce the standard or Joe Bloggs rate of tax by 2%.

Harry Barrett, who is a good friend and regular reader of this blog, has set up his own blog at www.harrybarrett.blogspot.com The blog is only in warm up stage at the moment and he has just a few press releases up at the moment but the candidate for the Labour Party in Mayo is looking forward to a more formal interaction with the voters and the world wide web.