Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 406th 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 (4 – 01 January, 2015), together with a hand-picked quintet, 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.  It’s so easy for Indians to get a visa to come here, right? by Mark Valladares on The View from Creeting St Peter.
The sentence “The Home Office is not minded to be generous” has to be a contender for understatement of the year.

2. 2015: Can it get any worse for the Lib Dems? by Gareth Epps on Gareth Epps..
Gareth sets out what he sees as the party’s challenges in the year ahead.

3. Liam Fox wants to kick half a million Indians and Pakisatanis off the electoral register by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
As Mark says, something for non-Conservative candidates to remind those communities.

4. How will Labour do in their top Labour-Tory targets in May? A seat by seat prediction by Nick Tyrone on NickTyrone.com.
Not well enough, according to Nick.

5. Fraser Nelson’s porkies. AKA can we have an informed debate about the economy, please?  by Stephen Tall on Stephen Tall .
Stephen points out some obvious flaws in Nelson’s logic.

6. The Politicos Guide to the 2015 election edited by Iain Dale et al. Is it worth a read? by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
I’d say so, but then I’ve written a chapter….

7. If I’m in a hospital full of sick people, and I have an appointment, presumably I might be sick…by Mark Valladares on The View from Creeting St Peter

And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended, regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. To nominate a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s, all you have to do is drop a line to [email protected]. You can also contact us via Twitter, where we’re @libdemvoice

8. Things I as a white atheist of Christian stock need to apologise for by Jennie Rigg on Nothing is more important than my egomania.

9.  The Monarchical problem by Cicero on Cicero’s Songs.
The post Elizabeth II monarchy may not be as well respected and it’s something we need to factor in to discussions on political reform says Cicero.

10. Christ the Cartoonist and the liberal power of humour by David Boyle on The Real Blog.
“Humour….is one of the primary forces of liberalism” says David, but we need to be careful about how we use it and understand what we are doing.

11.  Ceci n’est pas un blog post by Andrew Hickey on Sci-ence! Justice leak.
Andrew pulls us all up for our reactions to the Charlie Hebdo shootings.

12. A securocrat’s guide to answering questions by Nick Barlow on What you can get away with.

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

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* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social