This week’s catchup comes to you in the week the Government decided there would, after all, be another runway at Heathrow. We covered that with news that Kramer and Baker are i/c for the Lib Dems, but that at least 15 others feel strongly enough about the issue to put money where their mouths are. And we ended the week with a rallying cry from Benjamin Mathis telling us to think further than opposition.

It was also the week in which self-serving ministers moved to ban the public from knowing how MPs spend public money. We wrote about that here, and were pleased to hear that Jo Swinson tabled an EDM on the subject. If you’re at all twitter-minded, the hashtag #MPexpenses is seeing a fair bit of traffic as twitizens exhort each other to contact MPs in protest.

We always try to cover things from around the country – and we welcome your submissions from the provinces to help maintain the balance. Nonetheless there was lots of news of London this week. BoJo didn’t close as many offices as perhaps he should; March 18th will be the London Lib Dem conference; the One Day Policy Conference had a lovely time at the LSE, and we heard two pieces of news about former mayoral candidate Brian Paddick: his recent nuptials and his conversion to Liberalism. There was also good news for assembly member Mike Tuffrey.

We continued out coverage of events in Gaza with pieces from both the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine and the Lib Dem Friends of Israel.

We discussed immigration – and you had a lot to say. We were reminded of how awful Tories are, and considered the ramifications of the return of Ken.

Guest authors this week included Terry Gilbert’s exhortation to remember the Tory record on civil rights, Andreas Christodoulou’s views on other people’s business and Stephen Marshall trying out democracy for a change.

A new player emerged in the world of political blogging, in the guise of LabourList. We talked about that here and here, and then marvelled at a strange trick an anonymous netizen has pulled off: syndicating the same content and making it look a lot better, plus engaging a wider audience.

If you’re looking for useful things on the internet, look no further than James Graham’s excellent Lib Dig Pig. If speech radio’s your thing then I had a word or two to say about Radio 4 schedules. If you’re an energy efficiency nut, you’ll be gladdened by David Heath’s choice in

Today is inauguration day in DC – but BO has gone quiet on the Voice, namechecked only twice – in Mark Pack’s review of the book We Think, and in media tart talking head Stephen Tall’s piece about Clegg/Obama similarities.

Each week, ALDC have a full list of council by-elections – you can find that here.

In CommentIsLinked @LDV this week,

• Henry Porter – Information Overload
• Lynne Featherstone – Politics and the Internet
• Vince Cable – confiscating savings from the poor is stupid and cruel

Happy Inauguration Day; see you in a week or so.