Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 266th 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 (18-24 March, 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. Oh What A Lovely Budget. Apparently. by Richard Flowers on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant.
A Very Fluffy Fisking of Nick Clegg’s latest email to party members.

2. The Budget: I was wrong on Mark Pack’s blog.
The 50p rate did go after all.

3. Resignations, resignations. by Chris Smith on Greenwich Liberal.
Chris argues that Lib Dem policies are worth fighting for, not resigning for.

4. Don’t be an April fool on ALDC’s by-election commentary.
Get your council candidate nominations in before the deadline.

5. Dear Nick – Remember this? by Lisa Harding on Spiderplant Land.
The corduroy jacket or the NHS march..?

6. Congratulations Alison Hopkins – excellent win in Dollis Hill on Mark Pack’s blog.

7. Liberal Democrats must be prepared to walk out of the Coalition by Richard Clare on A Brief History of Liberty.
If the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 didn’t exist…

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. Vince Cable, the man, the myth, the legend by Lisa Harding on Spiderplant Land.
“Unashamed self plug because everyone needs a bit of Vince love once in a while and reminding why he is so god :-)” (Submitted by lisaharding42 via LibDig.)

9. A solution to the perception of the Lib Dems as a new nasty party: Time to get back to basics by Matthew Gibson on Solution Focused Politics.
“Call a bad idea a bad idea and say we won’t support it. Call a Tory idea a Tory idea, even if it is a popular one. Our values are our values, even when they are not popular. Be proud of what is a real Lib Dem achievement and people might start listening again.” (Submitted by MatthewJ via LibDig.)

10. My Bob and the “Granny Tax” by Caron Lindsay on Caron’s Musings.
“Take it from someone who knows what the ‘real’ impact of the so called Granny Tax will be. Caron points out the hyperbolic shambles that has been some of the reaction.” (Submitted by lisaharding42 via LibDig.)

11. Were the Liberal Democrats used to ‘send a message’? by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
“The Conference Accreditation row has now been reborn as the result of a BBC documentary about security in Birmingham. Jonathan feels cheated, and I can see why.” (Submitted by Caron via LibDig.)

12. Lib Dem Conference accreditation – and the BBC on Gareth Epps’ blog.
“Gareth is rightly angry at a BBC documentary showing the security arrangements behind last year’s conference, with no reference to the fact that they’d infringed civil liberties, and this party let them, to do it.” (Submitted by Caron via LibDig.)

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

Featured? Add this to your blog post!

<a href="https://www.libdemvoice.org/top-of-the-blogs-the-lib-dem-golden-dozen-266-27804.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>