Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 217th 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 (10-16 April, 2011), 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. More on Clegg and Gillian Duffy – she had Labour staffers on Charlotte Henry’s Virtually Naked.
That Labour deploys its supporters to gain publicity I understand; that (parts of) the media fell for it is baffling.

2. Why “the secret AV escape clause” won’t work on Mark Thompson’s blog.
Mark invokes ‘Vox populi, vox Dei’ to explain why a ‘Yes’ vote would over-ride any possible Tory tricks to hang on to FPTP.

3. Cleggmania to punchbag – How Clegg inadvertently set this up himself by Matthew Gibson on Solution Focused Politics.
One reading of how the wheels fell off the Cleggmania bandwagon.

4. Sad and pathetic on Carl Minns’ Thoughts from Hull.
Labour activists in Hull try their hardest to prove to the public politicans don’t listen.

5. Ministers address London Lib Dem Conference – but where was Lembit? on Charlotte Henry’s Virtually Naked.
Nick, Vince and Lynne all present and correct — but where was the other needs-a-first-name-only Lib Dem?

6. Election time – out come the Lies (updated) on Councillor Gavin James’s blog.
It’s election time — so, yes, it’s time for more leaflet wars!

7. I don’t believe it! Yes to AV get it right…. on Dan Falchikov’s Living on words alone.
Three good reasons to say Yes… and to believe it.

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. The Liberal Democrat future: Two contrasting strategies from Liverpool on Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England.
‘A Liverpudlian riposte to Warren Bradley.’ (Submitted by oneexwidow via LibDig.)

9. The advertising industry moves forward on Body Confidence on Lynne Featherstone’s blog.
‘Good news from the Minister for Equalities.’ (Submitted by Mark Pack via LibDig.)

10. Supporting the NUS Scotland LGBT mental health campaign is important – DO IT! on Andrew Reeves’ Running Blog.
‘Andrew showing another reason to be very, very proud of our party and our leader in Scotland Tavish Scott for understanding and supporting NUS’s LGBT mental health campaign.’ (Submitted by Caron Lindsay via LibDig.)

11. Political opportunism is always wrong… on iRadar’s blog.
‘Excellent post highlighting the rather illiberal campaigning approach of Lib Dem candidate Dawn Gee in Derby who claims that the fact her opponent has a 27 year old conviction for drug dealing should disqualify him from office. Radar sets her straight.’ (Submitted by Mark Thompson via LibDig.)

12. Only Liberal Democrats out of main 4 parties commit to equal marriage on Caron Lindsay’s Caron’s Musings.
‘Whilst the Tories don’t even mention it and Labour and the SNP cop-out, Lib Dems make their position clear.’ (Submitted by MrBlueSky via LibDig.)

And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading ‘n’ nominating (when you’ll be back in the safe blogging hands once again of my Voice colleague, Helen Duffett).

Featured? Add this to your blog post!

<a href="https://www.libdemvoice.org/top-of-the-blogs-the-lib-dem-golden-dozen-217-23844.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>