Friday already! And only twelve Action Weekends away from the General Election (we’re guessing)…

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• Electoral marathon

Emma Bagley is pacing (and bracing) herself for the next twelve weeks.

• Another one bites the dust

Andy Crick of Wit and Wisdom changes gear (and blog) for the campaign ahead.

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

Lib Dems win campaign for advance notice of electricity & gas price changes

Energy companies will have to inform customers before they change their prices, after the Government backed down on Liberal Democrat plans to amend the Energy Bill currently before Parliament.

Having previously rejected proposals from the Liberal Democrats, ministers today published their own amendment that would end rules allowing energy companies to wait 65 days before notifying customers of price changes.

The amendment was tabled as the Bill moves towards the end of its passage before the House of Commons. [From www.libdems.org.uk]

Blunder on DNA defence by Home Office

David Hanson, the policing minister, has been criticised for repeating a case study to MPs as part of a series of examples of why retention of DNA samples of innocent people helps solve crimes.

Proposals in the Crime and Security Bill, currently going through parliament, would see the profiles of innocent people retained on the national DNA database for up to six years.

Hanson wrote to the MPs on the Bill’s parliamentary committee with a list of five examples of where someone had their DNA taken but was not charged and were later caught for far more serious offences because samples taken from the later crime matched them on the database.

But it emerged two of the examples were the same case. [Telegraph]