Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 261st 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 (12-18 February, 2012), 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. Strong Lib Dem By-Election win Worcester Park on Colin Hall’s Blogspot .
Celebrating his friend Roger Roberts’ election last Thursday.

2. Dear the “Liberal Left” by Jock Coats on Jock’s OXFr33? Blog.
Labour is not a viable alternative for real liberals, argues Jock.

3. New Lib Dem group – Liberal Reform – launched on Nick Thornsby’s Blog.
Nick hopes the group will help to keep the Liberal Democrats at the radical edge of British politics.

4. The battle for ideas in the Liberal Democrats by Matthew Green on Thinking Liberal.
The Liberal Democrats are growing more like the old SDP than the old Liberals, says Matthew.

5. Those new Liberal Democrat groups explained by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
…with a little help from Monty Python… “Splitters!”

6. Do Liberal Democrats understand the art of survival? by Peter Black AM.
“Are Liberal Democrats more naive than their colleagues in other parties? Or is it just that they have had less luck..?”

7. The Liberal Democrats: a re-energised electoral force? by Simon Goldie on Comment Takes Time.
Is the recent poll uptick a trend or an outlier?

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. Things To Remember About Labour #3 by Alex Wilcock on Love and Liberty.
“”Labour opposed every single move towards Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender equality before they were for it.” An unusually pithy sentence for Alex ;)” (Submitted by stephenftall via LibDig.)

9. The current underlying tension of the Lib Dem Blogosphere *FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT* by Neil Monnery on The Rambles of Neil Monnery.
“I think what I’m trying to say is that hostile attacks on other factions – or individuals – within the party just doesn’t seem right. Agree/disagree with them whatever but if you don’t have anything nice then don’t say anything at all if you vehemently disagree with them so much.” (Submitted by MatthewJ via LibDig.)

10. The cost of making the Coalition work and the value of our unity: Who should lead the heart of the party? by Matthew Gibson on Solutuion Focused Politics.
If we are not careful, the value of showing that Coalitions can work will destroy the value of unity. (Submitted by Matthew J via LibDig.)

11. Is Northern Ireland’s adoption policy discriminatory? by Stephen Glenn on LGBT Lib Dems Northern Ireland.
“Stephen Glenn looks at the dichotomy in Northern Irish adoption law where anyone single can adopt irrespective of sexuality, yet anyone in a civil partnership can’t.” (Submitted by Stephen Glenn via LibDig.)

12. Liberal Democrats should oppose this latest threat to privacy by Peter Black AM.
“Peter Black writes about the revived plan to have details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online stored in a series of vast databases on the pretext that it is necessary to counter terrorism.” (Submitted by gary.mark.fuller via LibDig.)

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

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