Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 345th 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 (15-21 September, 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. Private Eye’s 1979 item on Cyril Smith by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England .
So Channel 4 weren’t the first national media organisation to cover this.

2. A Pyrrhic Victory? by Simon Titley on Liberator’s Blog.
The economy debate was a mixed bag for social liberals, says Simon.

3. Lembit, Brent Central and Women only shortlists  by Stephen Glenn on Stephen’s Liberal Journal.
Stephen suggests a women only shortlist to stop Lembit winning the Brent Central nomination. But he was only joking.

4. More evidence that Lib Dem MPs can beat the opinion polls  by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
Jonathan highlights a poll which shows that Lib Dem MPs are most successful at engaging with people who don’t vote for them.

5. By-election woe for Lib Dems on day of Clegg’s speech by Dan Falchikov on Living on words alone.
Bad news from Woking.

6. New poll shows excellent Lib Dem chances in 8 Tory held seats by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
A chance to win back some seats and take some we have long coveted?

7. “322 votes for, 228 votes against and a large cappucino” – the best #ldconf jokes by Charlotte Henry on Digital Politico.
The lighter side of Conference…

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. Impressions of my first federal conference  by Adrian Page (Andrew’s brother) on A Scottish Liberal.
“A new member’s take on conference.” (Submitted by Andrew Brown via LibDig.)

9. Occupy Liberal Democracy Part 1: SAOs and AOs by Dave Page on Jazz Hands, Serious Business.
“During the Federal Conference AGM season, Dave Page looks at ways to get involved in the party’s many interest groups – what you can do, how and why..” ( (Submitted by Dave Page via LibDig.) (Short abuse of editorial position here – new members’ packs now have much more and better information about the party’s interest groups).

10. Exclusive: Tim Farron’s speech to Conference: the story everyone’s missed by Richard Morris on A View from Ham Common.
“A serious in-depth political analysis of every word.” (Submitted by Alex via email and another Alex via Twitter.)

11. The Liberal Democrat what do we stand for challenge 2013.6 by Alex Wilcock on Love and Liberty.
Eight more people respond to Alex’s challenge to define Liberal Democrat values.

12. A Doctor Woo metaphor for Conference by Richard Flowers on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant.
We all know how this party goes mad for the Doctor. In fact, our readers even chose the Doctor Huppert photo over a very cute one of David Laws and a Shetland pony. So what do you make of Richard’s question? I’d like to think of us more as the Sarah Jane Adventures team, to be honest.

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-345-36346.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>

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