Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 241st 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 (25 September-1 October, 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. Rory Weal isn’t as close to the bread line as he (and Labour) made him out to be… by Neil Monnery on The Rambles of Neil Monnery.
More on Labour’s 16-year-old conference speaker.

2. Time for Tim Farron to make an unpopular speech by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
Tim Farron shouldn’t always tell people what they want to hear, says Jonathan.

3. Day 3923: Hard Labour – The Weal Truth by Richard Flowers on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant.
Millennium finds it all a bit rich.

4. Harman damages any future Lib-Lab coalitions by Chris Sams on The thoughts of a Ginger Liberal from Medway.
Chris takes apart Harriet’s speech.

5. Clegg’s Conference Call by Maelo Manning on libdemchild, aged 11.
Maelo reviews Nick’s conference speech.

6. Is Rory Weal really just the son of Baron Hardup? by Stephen Glenn on Stephen’s Liberal Journal.
“Never be afraid of who you are and don’t try and hide it,” says Stephen.

7. The Hyatt Regency Birmingham – Or the Tony Blair Hotel? by Alex Wilcock on Love and Liberty.
Hotel Inspector Wilcock reviews the Conference ’11 hotel.

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. Ashcroft’s Opinion Polls on the Lib Dems: What everyone missed by Matthew Gibson on Solution Focused Politics.
“You know what the Lib Dems aren’t doing nearly as badly in the polls if you delve deeper into them…” (Submitted by neilmonnery via LibDig.)

9. Would Tim Farron make a good Lib Dem leader? What we should look for in a leader by Matthew Gibson on Solution Focused Politics.
“Questions surrounding whether Tim Farron is positioning himself to become the next Lib Dem leader are everywhere at the moment. But the fact that people are thinking about the person to come after Clegg raises some interesting questions around what we should be looking for in a leader.” (Submitted by MatthewJ via LibDig.)

10. Ed Milliband’s little big idea by Joe Otten on The Extra Bold Blog.
“a mountain of regulation motivated by good intentions is the best and worst we can expect.”

11. Day 3922: That Milipede Moment by Richard Flowers on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant.
“Millennium Dome, Elephant is massively on form this week not just with his Doctor Who reviews but a dead-on-target evisceration of Ed Miliband’s big speech. Peer Gynt for ideas, Mr Miliband can only aspire to be the Prime Minister’s mini-me: David Cameron “is wrong to talk about Broken Britain, because I say to you Britain is broken!”” (Submitted by Alex Wilcock via email.)

12. The return of the poster boy for Lib Dem misery by Andy Strange on Strange Thoughts.
“I think my prediction that “when anyone at the BBC wants some stock footage of a Lib Dem looking miserable it will be that picture of me looking at my phone” may becoming far too true.”

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

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