Welcome to the 119th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (24th-30th May 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down.

1. How Britain’s Got Talent really works on Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England blog.
An outrageous allegation of TV fakery – not least because it assumes Amanda Holden can act.

2. A publishing policy change for Liberal Bureaucracy – you break it, you pay for it… on Mark Valladares’ Liberal Bureaucracy blog.
Our favourite blogging bureaucrat takes a self-denying vow of silence.

3. Lock the Bastards In: The 100-Day Lose the Deadweights Programme on Alex Wilcock’s Love and Liberty blog.
Bigging up Nick Clegg’s proposals to Take Back Power.

4. The Mystery of the Tory Euro-literature That Didn’t Arrive on Jonathan Fryer’s blog.
London Tories would rather talk about Boris than Europe, it seems. Bit of a Hobson’s choice, if you ask me.

5. So what has kept me from blogging? on Linda Jack’s Lindyloo’s Muze blog.
Another thing Europe must take the blame for.

6. The Guardian Endorses the Lib Dems – Up To A Point on Alex Wilcock’s Love and Liberty blog.
Asking the question: ‘Come the General Election, when it counts, when we’re once again the only party that stands up for most of the Guardian’s causes, will The Guardian be full of praise – or just full of it?’

7. When Lib Dem leaflets lose their edge, Lib Dems lose elections on Nich Starling’s Norfolk Blogger blog.
Nich distils the essence of a successful Focus leaflet: ‘a squeeze message, bar chart, petitions, clear headlines and themes that built momentum.’

And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. As is now traditional we’re using the LibDig widget to select some of the posts from the seven days in question which you’ve most ‘dug’. But, remember, if you want to highlight a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s – using the steam-powered method of e-mail all you have to do is drop me a line at [email protected] (providing the web-link and author, and any tagline comment you care to have published).

8. AV+??!! Eleven year old reheated Westminster leftovers will do nothing to restore trust in politics on James Graham’s Quaequam Blog!
“James makes the point I have been trying to make all day. Again. The bastard.” (Submitted by jennierigg via LibDig).

9. Tory Smears On PR on Andy Hinton’s Wouldn’t It Be Scarier blog.
“A superbly concise and persuasive defense of STV. Not being an expert on the differences between STV, AV, AV+ etc, I now feel able to go out and argue passionately in favour of STV.” (Submitted by ed.trelisnski via LibDig).

10. In Defence of Free Speech – Tackling the Extremists on Alexander J. Ryland’s Lamp of Liberty blog.
“Freedom of Speech vs. the BNP Every individual must have a guarantee that his/her rights will not be infringed; however, a truly free and liberal society in which all members of the community are able to express their opinions requires a combination of rights and responsibilities.” (Submitted by alexanderryland via LibDig).

11. We Live in a Country in which Academics, not Police and Government, protect our Civil Liberties on Nothants Liberal Youth blog.
“Our civil liberties, and those of tens and hundreds of thousands of foreign students are being protected by our academics rather than our Government. Not that anyone’s suprised. You’ll be calling me “Citizen ID#46T8HH02″ soon if Jacqui Smith has her way. It’s hard to write things like this without sounding like a tinfoil-hat wearing nutjob, and that’s what scares me.” (Submitted by a.christodoulou via LibDig).

12. A referendum on electoral reform? Yes, but let’s think it through on Neil Stockley’s blog.
‘A new momentum is building and that shouldn’t be allowed go to waste, as happened after Tony Blair broke his 1997 promise to have a referendum, and then shelved the Jenkins report. Let’s hope it doesn’t take ten more years for another opportunity to come around.’

That’s it for another week. Ish. Happy blogging.

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