Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 481st weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere, a little earlier than usual because of the Scottish Leaders’ Debate … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (14-10 May, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

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As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

1. Election notebook #11 by Stephen Tall on Stephen Tall.
Not much to be cheerful about here as Stephen gets to grips with Lib Dem strategy and the Tory manifesto.

2. Election notebook #10 by Stephen Tall on Stephen Tall .
A detailed look at Lib Dem strategy.

3. Conservative Edmund Limerick switches to the Lib Dems by Mark Pack on Mark Pack.
The hereditary peer is not a fan of May’s Brexit strategy.

4. If your plan for resurrecting the British centre is “Macron” you don’t have a plan by Nick Barlow on What you can get away with.
Our electoral system doesn’t lend itself to that.

5. Why the leaders’ debate last night was so depressing  by Nick Tyrone on NickTyrone.com.
Not enough differentiation for the Lib Dems.

And now to the seven 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

6. Dear Jeremy…by Hannah Ashworth  on The Liberal Queen.
An open letter from a student nurse to the health secretary.

7.  This could be the UK’s last real election. Prepare for the worst by Tom King on Never cruel nor cowardly.
A chilling but not unrealistic analysis.

8. How UKIP broke a rational political system by Richard Kemp on But what does Richard Kemp think?
How different it could have been if Labour and the Tories had not pandered to them.

9. Labour’s dead cat bounce by Matthew Green on Thinking Liberal.
Could this help the Lib Dems?

10. Theresa the misleader by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal.
Going through a Tory leaflet.

11. An anecdote about Rhodri Morgan by Peter Black on Peter Black.
Peter on the former Welsh First Minister who died this week.

12. 2017 Election campaign: On Israel and Palestine by Martin Veart on Martin’s View.
An example of how Martin is responding to the emails he’s getting which may be helpful to other candidates.

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