Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 294th 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 (30 September – 7 October, 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. When did the Scottish Liberal Democrats become authoritarian?  by Nicola Prigg on Nic Prigg’s Blog.
The decision to refuse the pro-independence Yes Scotland campaign a stall at the party’s Scottish conference has triggered a war of words.

2. Willie Rennie as Don Corleone  by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
The controversy continues, as the Scottish Lib Dem leader’s more-in-anger-than-in-sorrow response to activists sees him likened to ‘a Mafia padrone’.

3.  Is Liverpool becoming a banana republic? by Richard Kemp on But what does Richard Kemp think?.
The city I grew up in “is perched on the brink of a slippery slope that could lead to poor governance and even poorer services” reports our former Lib Dem mayoral candidate.

4. Michael Meadowcroft: time for liberals to start truly believing in liberalism by Stephen Tall on Stephen Tall.
Lifelong liberal Michael Meadowcroft argues it’s high time Lib Dems started getting on the front foot rather than ‘falling into the trap lovingly prepared by our enemies’.

5. On Lib Dems and leadership by Nick Barlow on What you can get away with.
Why too many talented party members don’t try and become MPs: the sheer bloody madness of life as a candidate.

6. Rubbish politics, rubbish poster by Charlotte Henry on Digital Politico.
Charlotte’s fence-sitting verdict on the Lib Dem poster depicting Ed Miliband as the bankers’ lapdog.

7.  What is the core Liberal Democrat identity? by Matthew Green  on Thinking Liberal.
The party’s perennial problem: how to build a core identity when the liberal philosophy ‘rejects, or downplays, the usual identities of class, nationality and race’.

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. Time to freshen up the Blog of the Year awards by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
Let the whither Lib Dem blogging debate commence. (Submitted by Neil Monnery via LibDig.)

9. The speech I didn’t get to make at Conference by Matt McLaren on Wisdom and Power.
Which is a real shame — read on to see why. (Submitted by Matt via LibDig.)

10. Statement on the equal marriage debate by Stephen Glenn on Liberal Democrats in Northern Ireland.
A report back from LGBT+ Liberal Democrats Northern Ireland on the Assembly vote on equal marriage. (Submitted by Stephen Glenn via LibDig.)

11. I’m starting a campaign to make the most democratic of all the party conferences…democratic by Richard Morris on A View from Ham Common.
Trying to make one-member-one-vote mean what it says. (Submitted by Neil Monnery via LibDig.)

12. West Coast rail franchise: signs that the wheels are falling off the Civil Service? by Mark Valladares on The view from Creeting St Peter
A bureaucrat gives us the inside track on how politicians have undermined public service. (Submitted by Caron via LibDig.)

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

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* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.