Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 185th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (29th August – 4th September, 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can 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. Guido Fawkes: proving that rights don’t necessarily come with responsibilities on Mark Valladares’ Liberal Bureaucracy.
With rights come responsibilities, argues Mark, but “Paul [Staines] doesn’t really believe in that”.

2. Clinton Cards – homophobic or just plain lazy? on Andrew Reeves’ Running blog.
On the lack of civil partnership cards: “in this day and age it shows a major High Street chain very much stuck in the past.”

3. Lib Dem election result better than polls by Iain Brodie Browne on Brikdale Focus.
The Lib Dems have made three net gains since the general election.

4. A cold, cold heart on Paul Walter’s Liberal Burblings.
“I never thought I’d end up defending William Hague!”

5. A Memory of Cyril Smith on Caron Lindsay’s Musings.
“He wasn’t afraid to be himself and stand up for what he believed in.”

6. “Nick Clegg and his fellow senior Liberal Democrats have been given a timely boost” on Mark Pack’s blog.
Lib Dem Voice hits the Pink ‘Un.

7. William Hague denies inappropriate relationship with special adviser on Paul Walter’s Liberal Burblings.
Laments the smeary innuendos of five newspapers and one blogger.

And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended, regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. These are normally chosen using the LibDig bookmarking website for party members, the site where you can highlight blog-posts you want to share with your fellow Lib Dems. Remember, though, you’re still more than welcome to nominate for the Golden Dozen 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].

8. What is liberalism? on David Allen Green’s (aka Jack of Kent’s) blog.
‘Jack of Kent on how he defines liberalism. Feel free to join the discussion on the comments thread….’ (Submitted by Niklas Smith via LibDig.)

9. Open letter to John Prescott on Olga Ivannikova’s blog.
‘A letter to Prescott on his campaign against 111 service’ (Submitted by Olga via LibDig).

10. Outdoor nursery’s future threatened by hand washing rules on Caron Lindsay’s Musings.
‘Caron points out that Health and Safety is restricting our children to an internal lifestyle when they cannot learn from the great outdoors (even supervised) as we all did as kids.’ (Submitted by Stephen Glenn via LibDig.)

11. Why my heart goes out to the dignified Hagues on Sara Bedford’s Always win when you’re singing blog.
‘Sara sensitively and eloquently describes the stresses of trying to conceive and empathises with the Hagues in one of the best pieces of writing I’ve seen about this.’ (Submitted by caron via LibDig.)

12. Sickening Republican Slight to Pride on Stephen Glenn’s Linlithgow Journal.
‘Stephen tells us about homophobia Northern Ireland style.’ (Submitted by caron via LibDig.)

And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading ‘n’ nominating.

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