Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 339th 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 (11-18 August, 2013), 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. Is there any reason for Labour’s continued existence? by David Boyle on The Real Blog.
Labour has no organising ideology, says David, so when they take power, anything can happen.

2. Council by-election update by Dan Falchikov on Living on words alone.
We just missed out in Hungerford, but more people voted for us than last week.

3. Car crash Bryant by Peter Black on Peter Black.
Peter subjects Bryant’s words to closer scrutiny and finds…not a lot.

4. Just one more big push, Daily Mail, and your brains will come out by Paul Walter on Liberal Burblings.
Did they not realise they were making Liberal Democrat arguments about political reform?

5. Council by-election night by Dan Falchikov on Living on words alone .
The prequel to #2.

6.  The power of personal contact in political campaigns by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
Evidence to back up what seems obvious – if you keep in touch with folk, they’re more likely to vote for you.

7. The British Library bans Shakespeare by Carl Minns on A Liberal View from Hull.
The moral of the story – David Cameron’s web filters are not a good idea.

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]. This week, I’ve again been helped by Alex Wilcock, who blogs at Love and Liberty.

8. The liberal future: not left, not right but not centre either by Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence Justice Leak .
The second part in Andrew’s informative series on Liberalism. This week, Liberal (and Tory, and Labour) economics: not as central as you might think. AW

9. Let’s be positive about porn by Andrew Brown on The Widow’s World.
On the Daily Mail-esque motion that seems to have found its way into the wrong Party Conference. AW

10. Moussaka by Rob Parsons on A Comfortable Place .
The surprisingly recent, surprisingly nationalist yet also surprisingly French history of a famous Greek dish. Though personally I prefer alternating layers of aubergine and potato. AW (and so do I, and I often leave out the aubergine, too. What a rebel!  CL)

11. How to tweet like a Lib Dem  by Carl Minns on A liberal view from Hull.
This is hilariously accurate. How many are you guilty of? (Submitted by Neil Monnery via LibDig.)

12. Anti politics leaves us all with egg on our face by Charlotte Henry on Digital Politico.
“Our political culture has been so warped and toxic that we can barely discuss any of it anymore.” says Charlotte

This week’s bonus special comes from Louise Shaw on From one of the Jilted Generation and it’s dedicated to any of you who have been asked to cut a piece back, or expand it in accordance with our guidelines for writers. Louise writes, in the style of Just a Minute, 500 words on word count.
And that’s it for another week. Happy blogging ‘n’ reading ‘n’ nominating.

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* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings