Welcome to the 128th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (26th July – 1st August 2009), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget, by the way, you can now 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. Norwich North was a triumph for Rennardism on Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England blog.
Unfortunately ‘the Tories implemented it more effectively than we did’.

2. The trouble with “Rennardism” (clue: it isn’t the leaflets) on James Graham’s Quaequam Blog!
Why we shouldn’t worry about our lack of success in recent by-elections: ‘the problem is that the party has become far too comfortable in making these little gains here and there and more or less abandoned anything like a strategic vision – for either the party or the country – altogether.’

3. Opinion: A Fresh Start is the most vacuous suicide note in history by William le Breton on Lib Dem Voice.
‘The touchstones by which I would assay policies, decisions and campaigns would be Liberal, Farsighted, Challenging, Peace loving.’

4. The secret to winning: work hard, then work harder on Costigan Quist’s Himmelgarten Cafe blog.
Costigan tells it to us straight.

5. Lib Dems’ £550k deficit, 8.5% membership drop, and other facts from the party’s annual account… by Stephen Tall on Lib Dem Voice.
You guys just love the good news stories, dontcha.

6. The Lutonian Candidate on Anders Hanson’s blog.
Some reasons not to vote for Esther Rantzen (in case you needed any assistance).

7. Labour Haemorrhaging in Waltham Forest on Jonathan Fryer’s blog.
Jonathan’s verdict on Waltham Forest: ‘a borough to watch next year, along with Haringey.’

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. Bloggers talk balls about by-elections on Neil Fawcett’s A Liberal Dose blog.
“A fantastic rant! A tour de force!” (Submitted by James Graham via LibDig).

9. A strategy to achieve fair votes on Costigan Quist’s Himmelgarten Cafe blog.
“Costigan (again) on how to embarrass Brown into putting STV on the rumoured voting reform ballot. Every senior Lib Dem person should read this…..” (Submitted by caron via LibDig).

10. Oh what a lovely war! on James Graham’s Quaequam Blog!
“James considers the legacy of the First World War.” (Submitted by lizwvia LibDig).

11. Gary McKinnon’s extradition would be a disgrace on Mark Thompson’s Mark Reckons blog.
“Mark on the terrible injustice faced by Gary McKinnon, pointing out that Labour ministers could do more to help.” (Submitted by caron via LibDig).

12. The unelectable in pursuit of the inedible on Sara Bedford’s Always win when you’re singing blog.
“Never forget that the Tories are the nasty-to-animals party.” (Submitted by jonball via LibDig).

And that’s it for another week. In fact another two weeks for me. Happy blogging in t’interim.

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