Welcome to the 97th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (21st-27th December), together with a hand-picked quintet, mostly courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

‘Tis the season of tradition, so let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down.

1. The strange death of the Conservative Party on Martin Land’s New Model Army blog.
The Cambridgeshire collapse of stout party.

2. A bit gay on Alex Folkes’ A Lanson Boy blog.
Yes, it’s ‘Dale-gate’ – Iain Dale’s confession of putting down a 13 year-old boy in front of his mates by taunting him for looking “a bit gay” prompted a spirited debate in the Lib Dem blogosphere.

3. Day 2914: How to Fix the Economy (gosh, that’s a brave title!) on Millennium Dome, Elephant’s Very Fluffy Diary blog.
“A thought-provoking analysis of why the economy’s gone down the toilet, and of how it might climb out again. Is he right? Only a dance-off with Vince can decide.” (So says Alex Wilcock).

4. English Democrats – since when was intimidation part of legitimate campaign strategy? on Mark Valladares’ Liberal Bureaucracy blog.
Mark has fun feeding the trolls.

5. Lib Dem love bombs on Darrell Goodliffe’s Moments of Clarity blog.
Should we be worried when the opponents of our opponents become our fair-weather friends?

6. Conservative troubles in Bedfordshire on Lib Dem Voice.
The not-at-all-amusing-no-really tale of Tory Beds-hopping.

7. RUMOUR: Tory meltdown in Bedford on Susan Gaszczak’s blog.
Not that we Lib Dems enjoy schadenfreude, of course.

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. Eight for 2008 – how did I do? on James Graham’s Quaequam Blog!
James’s end-of-the-year 20/20 hindsight.

9. I can haz Queenburger? on Will Howells’ No Geek is an Island blog.
Forget Ahmadinejad, this really is the Alternative Queen’s Speech.

10. A Friendly Tip To Christians At Christmas: Gag Your Bishops on Alex Wilcock’s Love and Liberty blog.
The Pope, a bishop and a bigot walk into a blog…

11. The Green Road to Nowhere on Tom Papworth’s Liberal Polemic blog.
“Government cannot spend the country out of recession.” No emphasis needed to be added.

12. What Does it Say about the Level of Debate on Domestic Violence in This Country… on Jennie Rigg’s The Yorksher Gob blog.
Jennie, along with more than 14 million others, loved the latest Wallace and Grommit outing.

That’s it for this week. Congratulations (or commiserations?) to the 10 Lib Dem bloggers who posted on 25th December, and happy New Year’s Eve blogging…

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