Happy New Year! And welcome to the 46th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (30th December, 2007, to 5th January, 2008), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed

In the first week of 2008, these were the best-read posts in descending order:

1. Manchester councillor defects to Tories on Lib Dem Voice.
How come it’s always the defection stories which are most clicked-on?

2. My nominations for the blog awards on Jo Anglezarke’s Jo’s Jottings blog.
Have you sent in your nominations yet for the Gender Balance Campaign’s Blog Awards?

3. Nick Clegg’s new media spokesperson on Lib Dem Voice.
Speculation on who will penetrate our new leader’s inner sanctum.

4. Faraz Bhatti – I’m not doing my job… on Jock Coat’s Jock’s Place blog.
Jock – not the greatest fan of defectors.

5. “Lib Dem” donorgate…bring it on on Jock Coat’s Jock’s Place blog.
A curt dismissal of The Times’s latest (and increasingly desperate) attempts to smear the Lib Dems.

6. The Mountain Brian Paddick Has to Climb on Jonathan Fryer’s blog.
On the plus-side: the only way is up. (And it will be.)

7. LibDemBlogs Number Crunching (2007) on Ryan Cullen’s Hapless Band of Staff and Regulars blog.
OD to your heart’s content with Ryan’s annual smorgasboard of stats.

And here’s another five well worth reading (while exercising away your festive over-indulgence):

8. Day 2559: What does Iowa Mean? on Millennium Dome, Elephant’s Very Fluffy Diary blog.
The beginner’s guide to understanding Americaland’s slightly ODD electoral system.

9. Nick Clegg on faith schools: an uncomfortable grey area for liberals on Jonny Wright’s Hug A Hoodie blog.
“I think it’s perfectly liberal to say that a religious upbringing should come from the family rather than the taxpayer” – the faith schools debate rages.

10. Liberal Democrats and Conservatives: A Love Story on Gavin Whenman’s The Whiskey Priest blog.
Should we join together to gang up on Labour for mutual advantage?

11. Why I think Nick Clegg is wrong on children’s advertising on Paul Walter’s Liberal Burblings blog.
“It is illiberal to further ban anything. But, more importantly, as a parent who has recently lived through this subject-matter, I think it is totally unnecessary and bonkers, to boot.” Paul’s sitting on the fence on this one, then.

12. My prediction for 2008: the Tories will have a bad year on James Graham’s Quaequam Blog! blog.
Will Team Cameron live down to James’s expectations?

And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging in 2008.

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