Welcome to the 129th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (2nd August – 8th 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. Screwing Up by Mark Oaten: Where’s the dignity? on Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England blog.
Jonathan wonders about the timing of Mark Oaten’s memoirs.

2. Totnes open primary is campaigning, not democracy on Costigan Quist’s Himmelgarten Cafe blog.
‘The key thing here isn’t the decision, it’s the sense of ownership you hope voters will feel. The theory is the punters will feel a stronger psychological attachment to the winner from having been involved in electing him or her and so are more likely to put their cross in the right box when it comes to the real poll.’

3. South West Lib Dem strongholds ‘under seige’. Darrell Goodliffe blogs at Moments of Clarity, on the Lib Dems’ dilemma: ‘battling to hold onto traditional strongholds while fighting to make advances against a weakened Labour Party.’

4. Doctor Who and the Silurians by Alex Wilcock blogs at Love and Liberty on the story that turned him into a Liberal.

5. Jo Swinson’s misguided maternalism by Tom Papworth on Liberal Vision.
‘One should not respond to perceived offence by banning the offender from expressing themselves.’

6. And people wonder why decent people think twice about a career in politics on Anders Hanson’s blog.
On some of the negative reactions to John Barrett standing down as MP at the next General Election.

7. Fear and loathing in Edinburgh West Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England blog.
SNP blogger alleges ructions within Edinburgh Lib Dems.

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 a line to [email protected] (providing the web-link and author, and any tagline comment you care to have published).

8. As English as haggis, as heroic as Richard I on Costigan Quist’s Himmelgarten Cafe blog.
“Costigan turns a scrap over who invented Haggis (who really wants to take credit for that, anyway?) into an exposition ofnationalism’s fatal flaws.” (Submitted by caron via LibDig).

9. Putting my proverbials where my mouth is from Wit and Wisdom.
‘A narrative for the LibDems: “Vote LibDem to get it right first time”.’ (Submitted by lizw via LibDig).

10. Violent crime, The Mail and Harriet Harman on Rob Parsons’ A Comfortable Place blog.
“Tough call for the Daily Mail: criticise Harriet Harman or criticise levels of violent crime. Guess which they chose…” (Submitted by Mark Pack via LibDig).

11. Obama and Pelosi: Blue Dogs are Barking on Alexander Ryland’s Lamp of Liberty blog.
“Why Obama needs to change gears and Nancy Pelosi must be brought into the real world. “His Hopiness” must change.” (Submitted by alexanderryland via LibDig).

12. Salford seat declared marginal on Steve Middleton’s blog.
(Submitted by actual via LibDig).

And that’s it for another week. In fact I’m on holiday from now until the next Golden Dozen. But I’m taking you all you bloggers with me on my handset, so no let-up for you lot! Happy blogging until then.

Featured? Add this to your blog post!

<a href="https://www.libdemvoice.org/top-of-the-blogs-the-golden-dozen-129-15868.html"><img src="https://www.libdemvoice.org/images/golden-dozen.png" width="200" height="57" alt="Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice" title="Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice" /></a>