Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 423rd 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 (12-18 July, 2015), 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.  Two Lib Dem gains and a Lib Dem hold mark the start of the Farron era by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
A trio of by-election wins to celebrate.

2. Liberal Party takes only mildest disciplinary action against Cornish branch for backing UKIP by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
Apparently their policies were similar. Hmmm.

3. Nick Clegg queries Conservative election spending by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England.
But Jonathan thinks there are things he needs to consider about our own campaign.

4 Tim Farron as Lib Dem Leader: Thoughts, prayers, hopes by Nick Tyrone on NickTyrone.com.
Nick takes a look at the new leader and reckons he’s what we need at the moment.

5. The leadership contest: why I kept quiet and who I voted for by Andrew Brown on The Widow’s World.
Andrew’s big reveal.

6.Compare and contrast: Kirsty Williams and Danny Alexander on the future of the Liberal Democrats by Nick Barlow on What you can get away with.
Two very differing views, but only one is right, says Nick.

7.  Should politicians be pontificating about sin at all? by me on Caron’s Musings.
Richard Marbrow has already taken me to task about the use of the word “pontificating” so you don’t have to

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 spontaneous Mr Farron, an Andy Coulson joke and Charles Kennedy “stuck on a train” by Phil Reilly on Blimey, O’Reilly.
Former party and government media adviser Phil Reilly has started blogging. His first is an amusing story from a Conference rally.

9. Councillor Tolley by Jon Tolley on Banquet Records.com.
A fascinating story of how a record shop owner became a Liberal Democrat Councillor

10.The one downside of Tim Farron winning the leadership election by Jennie Rigg on Nothing is more important than my egomania.
Tim Farron starts throwing his weight around now he’s leader. But he hasn’t thought this one through. They could go to the pub BEFORE his speech and sit and heckle before they walk out…

11.MP Pay: Is it really too difficult to read the whole story before engaging Outrage mode by Mark Valladares on the new look and reverted to the original name Liberal Bureaucracy.
I’m so glad he has done this because I wanted to but ran out of time

12.On electing Tim Farron and where we go now by Nick Barlow on What you can get away with.
We can start by grabbing people’s attention while Labour are still squabbling amongst themselves, says Nick.

And a bit of a bonus this week – not a particularly substantive post, but be aware that Steve Webb has started blogging again.
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