Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 227th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (19-25 June, 2011), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

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

1. The SLF are not Social Democrats by Andy Mayer on Liberal Vision.
Andy explains the difference.

2. Social Liberal Forum, Liberal Vision… so many fences to sit on, so hard to choose… by Mark Valladares on The View from Creeting St Peter.
Mark says it’s time to bring the different tribes together.

3. You couldn’t make it up on ALDC’s by-election commentary.
Changing fortunes in Crewe.

4. ‘Advertise? No, people might ask us to do some work’ by Stewart Arnold on The Yorkshire Guidon.
On a novel marketing strategy.

5. Social Liberal Forum Conference on Paula Keaveney’s Lib Dem Campaigner blog.
Paula reports back.

6. Finkelstein misses the holy grail of Richard Wainwright’s liberalism by Iain Brodie Browne on Birkdale Focus.
Iain’s own take on Wainwright’s liberalism.

7. Will the last person to leave Essex please turn off the lights? on Daniel Brett’s blog.
Daniel argues for energy saving in Essex instead of a total blackout.

And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended, regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. These are normally chosen using the LibDig bookmarking website for party members, the site where you can highlight blog-posts you want to share with your fellow Lib Dems. Remember, though, you’re still more than welcome to nominate for the Golden Dozen 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 a line to [email protected].

8. Dr Evan Harris loves the NHS, Freedom, Fairness and Crisps by Lisa Harding on Welcome to Spiderplant Land.
“Blatant self promotion but the world needs to know that Evan Harris loves kettle chips and freedom.” (Submitted by lisaharding42 via LibDig.)

9. Why is Gareth Thomas the new by-word for gay hero? by Andrew Emmerson on the Yellow Bastard.
“Andrew takes the brave step of speaking out against the creation of overnight gay media “stars”.” (Submitted by MrBlueSky via LibDig.)

10. Is it me? by Richard Morris on A View from Ham Common.
“If writing the Orange Book doesn’t make you an orange Booker, then what does?” (Submitted by Richard Morris via LibDig.)

11. Is the answer to Olly Grender’s question, ‘Lib Dems are not hateful enough?’ by Richard Morris on A View from Ham Common.
“Is the real reason that there are no Liberal Democrat orientated journalists out there with their heads above the parapet, this: we don’t , as a rule, go in for writing hate fuelled bile? And that sells papers.” (Submitted by Richard Morris via LibDig.)

12. Bank shares idea gets boost from DPM on Stephen Williams MP’s blog.
“We all, in some way, have suffered from the financial crisis. It is right that we should all get some pay back when the banks are back to financial good health.”

And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading ‘n’ nominating.

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