Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 350th 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 (20-26 October, 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. By election night 11 by Dan Falchikov on Living on Words alone.
Dan’s weekly by-election preview.

2. Lib Dem opposition to nuclear power goes down the memory hole by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
A look into the past, with added labrador.

3. The strange politics of Nick Clegg’s speech on free schools  by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
Is the centralising national curriculum something liberals should favour, asks Jonathan.

4. Where do people without passports live in England?  by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
Have a guess. Where do you think? Were you right?

5. A few thoughts on Nick Clegg’s thougths on free schools  by Richard Morris on A View from Ham Common.
Taking on the orange bookers, the effectiveness of the differentiation strategy and appealing to those voters who left us.

6. Retoxifying the Tories by Richard Morris on A fiew from Ham Common.
Tories should look to themselves, not the Liberal Democrats to work out why they are seen as the nasty party again.

7. Benefits discourage work – Labour councillor by Jonathan Wallace on Jonathan Wallace.
Jonathan asks if this councillor will now support the Coalition’s moves to end the poverty trap.

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. Tristram Hunt rules himself out of ever being a minister in a coalition or minority government by Mark Thompson on Mark Thompson’s blog .
If he’s such a purist that he just can’t compromise, will he step down if Labour enter a coalition, asks Mark.

9. Something that really gets my goat by Matt J McLaren on Matt J McLaren.
Matt doesn’t normally talk to non political friends about politics – but he has on the issue of the Tories taking credit for our tax cut. Does this count as sharing with 10 friends?

10. Ineos go all in, Unite fold by Stephen Glenn on Stephen’s Liberal Journal.
A Poker analogy to describe what happened at Grangemouth

11.LGBT and Europe  by Jen Yockney on Either/And.
Jen finds them lacking in the B department

12. UEFA’s respect must be more than a slogan by Edward Lord on Edward Lord.
Russia should lose 2018 World Cup if they don’t sort themselves out

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