Happy Monday morning, everyone. And, yes, January really is over: hurrah! So let’s salute the first day of February by recalling that this is the day (in 1884) when the Oxford English Dictionary was born; as were Clarke Gable (1901) and Boris Yeltsin (1931). Sadly the world lost Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; but that was 159 years ago, so hopefully everyone’s over it by now.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Six stories that won’t make Iain Dale’s Daily Dozen: Nich Starling reports.
• Cameron’s Chilling Words show Tories’ True Colours: Caron Lindsay finds “it quite scary to hear such nonsense coming from somebody who thinks he’s going to be Prime Minister in a few months.”

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

The Tories’ confusion over how the minor matter of how they would run the economy – covered here on LDV at the weekend – continues to dominate the headlines. Here’s Vince Cable’s verdict:

George Osborne and David Cameron seem to be at sixes and sevens on the crucial question of how the deficit should be addressed.

“The Liberal Democrats have been arguing for some time that there should be five tests on when and how we start to cut. This must reflect the position of the economy rather than political expediency. The public must understand that we take the deficit very seriously. But it has to be addressed in a way that doesn’t put us back into another round of recession, resulting in job losses and an even larger deficit.

“The time to cut the deficit is when the private sector is ready to take the lead in growth and job creation. We are clearly not at that point yet.”

That the Tories have found themselves in such a muddle on an issue of this importance is a severe embarrassment – expect the Lib Dems (and Labour) to make the point.

How many football clubs will survive the recession, asks Vince

The Independent reports the warning of the Lib Dems’ economic sage:

Football’s economic model is broken and many clubs are in danger of following banks and construction companies into oblivion, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, has warned.

Cable, an economist and, according to a recent poll, the most trusted politician in the country, said Crystal Palace going into administration could spark a chain reaction.

“Football is a sector of the economy that simply hasn’t faced up to the realities of the crisis, they’ve just gone on as if the world hasn’t changed,” said Cable. “It’s a combination of extraordinary financing arrangements, and players who are paid absolutely ludicrous salaries which are clearly beyond the means of all but a handful of clubs to pay on a sustainable basis.

“If the FA and the clubs have any sense they will deal with this matter now, otherwise we are going to see a major upheaval as clubs discover they simply cannot function with very high leverage [essentially borrowings against future earnings]. Interest rates are currently low, but they will almost certainly rise, and a lot of this debt will not be payable.”