It’s budget day, and with the General Election just six weeks away, the big question is whether Darling will pull something out of the hat to make us all feel happier (in the short term, at least) or whether – as he’s suggested so far – it’ll be steady as she goes.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

• Jennie Rigg launches her election campaign – we wish her every success
• Conservatives – arrogant and wasting our time and money, says Mark on Liberal Bureaucracy.

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 clamour to ban mephodrone continues

Every day an average of 20-30 people die from alcohol abuse in the UK. As the Daily Mail reports, we’ve now had six deaths which, it is suspected, may be linked to Mephodrone (none of the six have been conclusively shown to be caused by Mephodrone yet, though they may well be).

I wonder which is getting more media coverage, and which one there’s a clamour to ban.

Luckily (if you were to go by tabloid coverage), no-one is dying from ecstasy any more, nor are other drugs a problem this week. Which drug young people will be taking next week remains to be seen.

Middle-East peace talks may be delayed for a year

Whilst an Israeli diplomat was yesterday expelled from the UK, over the cloning of passports then used in a murder, the middle-east news elsewhere was barely more promising.

As the Independent reports, the Israelis and Palestinians still seem as far apart as ever.

Mr Netanyahu warned that peace negotiations could be delayed another year unless the Palestinians dropped their “illogical and unreasonable” demand for a full settlement freeze