Happy Monday morning afternoon, everyone, on the day in history when the Royal Albert Hall was opened by the Royal Victoria (1871), Dr John Pemberton brewed the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia (1886), and voters in Washington DC became eligible to vote in presidential elections (1961).

And now let’s move forward half a century, to the present day …

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:

• Wearing the crucifix – a national crisis? – Paul Walter injects some common-sense into the debate with this bishop-fisk.
• General election nearly here – at last! – And Lynne Featherstone cannot wait.

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

Labour launch 5 pledges; Lib Dems attack 13 wasted years

So Gordon has announced Labour’s five pledges for the election. Nick Clegg is unimpressed:

It is astonishing that after 13 years in charge the best Labour can come up with is a list of vacuous pledges wrapped up in management speak. Between them Labour and the Conservatives have failed to come up a with a single specific positive reason to vote for them.

“This is the old politics and the old politics is simply not good enough anymore. People want something different and the only party that will deliver real change is the Liberal Democrats.”

In the interests of political balance, we should also attack the Tories. Or rather we should let the latest batch of spoofed ads do it for us:

(Via MyDavidCameron.com).

Government have “shot themselves in foot” over drug advisory council, says Evan

The Guardian reports:

The government’s drug advisory council will make a recommendation to the home secretary on the status of the drug mephedrone, or “meow meow”, at 4pm, despite the resignation of another key adviser.

The government’s strained relationship with the scientific community came under further pressure with the resignation of Dr Polly Taylor, a consultant veterinary surgeon and long-standing member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), in a backlash over the way independent experts are treated by ministers.

Lib Dem MP Evan Harris comments:

Before the government criminalises thousands of people by banning a drug, they must take advice on drug harm and other matters from a legally constituted advisory council. The government have shot themselves in the foot. They were warned repeatedly by me and major scientific organisations that unless they pledged to allow their unpaid independent scientists the freedom and independence to give their advice without fear of reprisal by politicians they would face more resignations. Scientists are simply not prepared to be treated like Professor David Nutt was.

One more heave poster

Finally, LDV reader Jang-Ho Kwon emailed us in this poster. What it lacks in subtlety it makes up for in brevity:

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