Welcome to the 93rd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (23rd-29th November), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

There’s no doubt which tragic story has been dominating Lib Dem blogs this last week: the untimely death of Neil Trafford, a friend and colleague to many in the party throughout the country.

1. Neil Trafford passes away on Lib Dem Voice.
“Neil was hugely popular with those he worked with, and with good reason, as he was both cheerful and effective in great measure. He will be very much missed and our thoughts are with his family.”

2. Neil Trafford on Anders Hanson’s blog.
“Neil was one of those amazing people who was not only a really committed Liberal Democrat and a phenomenal campaigner, but was also great fun to be with, was very outgoing and sociable and had a real normal life outside of the party.”

3. Neil Trafford on James Graham’s Quaequam Blog!
“The party has lost a star, but I’m also aware that a lot of people have also lost a close friend. My thoughts are with them.”

4. Kirsty Williams AM: why I want to lead the Welsh Liberal Democrats on Lib Dem Voice.
Kirsty’s pitch for the party’s top job in Wales; her rival Jenny Randerson’s alternative is here.

5. Neil Trafford RIP on Jonathan Wallace’s blog.
“It is a great tragedy that such a young and talented person has been taken from us. … A great guy. Neil, you will be greatly missed.”

6. By-election candidate selection continued… on Mark Valladares’ Liberal Bureaucracy blog.
Mark presents a radical criterion for selecting our by-election PPCs: “the ability to represent the constituency in question.”

7. Neil Trafford: a sad loss on Cllr Steve Cooke’s blog.
“There are a surfeit of flattering and positive adjectives that anyone describing Neil would find themselves using: his death is a great loss to us all.”

And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. And 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. Second Life? Death would be more fun on ‘Costigan Quist’s’ Himmelgarten Café blog.
“suggestions that virtual worlds are the future where we’ll all live and love are just crap, sold by cunning PR people to gullible journalists.” (Submitted by alix via LibDig)

9. Election Day – Victory on Fiona Whelan’s Hardwick Campaign Blog.
Congratulations! to Cllr Whelan on taking a seat from the Tories on Cambridgeshire County Council.

10. Law must change says former Met Police Chief on Gavin Whenman’s Gaily Gigest blog.
“What Ian Blair should have said.” (Submitted by willhowells via LibDig).

11. Ian Blair Is Blinkered To the Last; Tories Deplore Mrs Thatcher on Alex Wilcock’s Love and Liberty blog.
“…so it makes it rather hypocritical that when the public interest defence was removed from the Official Secrets Act in 1989, when they weren’t in lovely, lovely power, they voted to retain it. 1989? Who could possibly have been in Government then?” (Submitted by Joe Otten via LibDig).

12. Checking the Contents of Your Blog’s Underpants on Charlotte Gore’s blog.
For the record, Lib Dem Voice is (apparently) 80% male.

That’s it for this week. Happy blogging.

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