Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 386th 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 (10th-16th August, 2014), together with a hand-picked quintet, 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. Nick Clegg to lose Sheffield Hallam? You’re having a laugh by Rich Clare on A Brief History of Liberty.
“In the years 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014, twenty one councillors were elected in the Sheffield Hallam constituency. Of those twenty, nineteen were Liberal Democrats and two were Labour.”

2. Thanks @Nick_Clegg for costing me another local member – this one is as close to home as it gets by Jennie Rigg on miss_s_b.
“I really am genuinely wondering if Clegg is systematically going for properly pissing off what remaining pockets of support we have left in a perverse attempt to see how low we can go.”

3. Lord Bonkers’ Diary: An inflatable Julian Huppert by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
DRIP, a bicycle pump, a couple of SpAds, and Nick and… Julian.

4. The rapid decline in Lord Janner’s health by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
Why a Labour peer facing more than 20 allegations of historical child abuse seems likely to avoid prosecution.

5. Armchair membership isn’t for me by the pseudonymous ‘Energlyn Churchill’ on Towards the Sound of Gunfire.
“With my renewed Lib Dem membership under my belt, I can now focus on fulfilling the promise that I made to myself on becoming active again.”

6. Questions over Lib Dem fiscal policies deepen with more tax cuts floated by Mark Pack.
“Promising extra spending, or no cuts, in some areas, added to talk of tax cuts and removing the deficit means something is going to have to take a hit.”

7. Nick Clegg will win Sheffield Hallam. I don’t understand why Labour disagree? by Neil Monnery on The Rambles of Neil Monnery.
“Personally I hope Labour keep believing they can unsettle and beat Nick Clegg. If they throw the kitchen sink at an unwinnable seat then they’ll be taking resources away from other places.”

And now to the five blog-posts that come highly recommended, regardless of the number of Aggregator click-throughs they attracted. To nominate a Lib Dem blog article published in the past seven days – your own, or someone else’s, all you have to do is drop a line to [email protected]. You can also contact us via Twitter, where we’re @libdemvoice

8. The Rise of Boris and Fall of Lembit by James King on Mark Mills’ Matter of Facts blog.
“If you cast your mind back to 2004, it was in fact the Member for Montgomeryshire who looked like he might go furthest in politics.”

9. Rethinking Liberalism 7: what are the liberal blindspots? by Matthew Green on Thinking Liberal.
“… even identifying what these blindspots are is hard. Because we rarely talk about them in any depth. We seem afraid of what we might find if we do.”

10. Politics isn’t broken, but the political system is by Nick Barlow on What You Can Get Away With.
“Just tweaking the existing system and claiming it’s completely fixed isn’t enough. We need a system that reaches out to everyone, not one that imagines those it can’t reach have nothing worthwhile to say.”

11. The Evangelical Alliance’s Response to Vicky Beeching by Stephen Glenn on Stephen’s Liberal Journal.
“Rather than automatically jump to preach mode I wish that the EA, churches and others actually do listen, and also look at the texts they keep quoting with an open eye, not the way their have been translated and mistranslated down the years.”

12. Was George Lucas ever any good? by Nick Tyrone.
“Anyone who has sat through all of the Star Wars prequels and knows a little bit about cinema will be able to tell you that not only are they all terrible films, they are all extremely poorly directed.”

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

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