query posts plugin not limited recent posts on single page

I am using the Query Posts plug-in on my site but am having trouble figuring out a setting for once I am past my initial loops and have moved on to a post page.

So I have two separate loops and pages that store them. One for my blog posts and one for more news and events. When on either one of those pages I am using the query posts plugin to show the most recent posts within each of those areas… ‘blog or news’

I am separating those using tags. So on the blog page all I am doing to limit the recent posts in the sidebar is showing the last five post with the tag ‘blog’ or ‘news’.

Once I click on an actual post and it displays a single post layout then the sidebar are showing recent post is putting them back together instead of sticking to the ‘news’ or ‘blog’ tag that is in the widget.

Am I missing some sort of default fall back? I am confused as to how to set the widget up.

How does the ‘paged’ setting work for this plug-in? Is there a way in which I can ask it to check the single post tag type and then operate the recent posts plug-in by having it limit to that tag type again while still having the main looped page work properly?

Any help is appreciated. Let me know if I can help with any clarification.