Ninety-seven days to the likely General Election. Happy birthday to Germaine Greer and Tom Selleck (both keen readers of Lib Dem Voice, I’m certain). In his State of the Union Address on this day in 2002, George W Bush first introduced us to the Axis of Evil.

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:

• Norfolk Blogger asks the pertinent question about Andrew Wakefield and his MMR scam (perpetuated and multiplied a hundred-fold by the media , let’s not forget).
• Stephen Glenn celebrates his well-deserved success. Recognise his genius, damn you!

2 Big Stories

iPad fever

As is now traditional, the world (at least the bits of it not fighting wars, starving or recovering from huge natural disasters) has gone into a bit of a frenzy over the latest gizmo from Apple.  They are “leveraging the entire Apple ecosystem”, whatever that might mean, and Stephen Fry has been struggling to contain his excitement.

As the BBC reports:

Apple did what they needed to do. They gave this form factor a reason to exist,” said Mike Gartenberg, vice-president of strategy and analysis at research firm Interpret.

“They answered the question immediately ‘Why do I want the iPad?’ And they showed why.

Thousands of jobs axed

In past recessions, unemployment has continued to rise long after the recession was technically over. Yesterday brought a timely reminder of that risk, with thousands of jobs axed. As the Guardian reports:

Global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca unveiled plans to cut another 8,000 jobs on top of the 15,000 already announced, but would not say how many will go in the UK. At the same time, the home retail group Shop Direct outlined plans to cut 1,500 jobs in Sunderland, Burnley and Newtown in mid-Wales and carmaker Toyota aims to axe up to 750 jobs at its main UK factory.