Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily web review. As always, please feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments section. Today’s links are taking a trip down memory lane, so for your pleasure, we have provided musical accompaniment…

Flying in style
The Tories have enjoyed a great deal of political capital from the financial turmoil that has engulfed Number Ten. A boost in the polls, thanks to Brown’s election miscalculation and constant bad news for Labour, has saved David Cameron from the backbench knives that were being sharpened ahead of last summer’s Conservative Conference. However, many political observers had noted a reticence among the Tory front-bench to really turn the knife. One wondered if they themselves had skeletons in the cupboard…

From Yesterday’s Guardian:

The Electoral Commission has tonight confirmed it has received a complaint about 80 Conservative MPs. …the Tories may have failed to declare correctly cash given to them by “patrons clubs“ and other so-called “unincorporated associations“.
[...]
In a separate move, a complaint about the Conservative party allegedly under-reporting the value of flights taken by members of the shadow cabinet has also been lodged with the Electoral Commission.

The Labour MP Ian Lucas asked the commission to investigate “the systematic undervaluing of flights donated to members of the shadow cabinet, including the Rt Hon David Cameron“.

Oh, how irregular? The jet belonged to one Lord Ashcroft, and Mr. Cameron is accused of using it during his leadership campaign. However, Slippery Dave declared it as first-class travel only; vastly undervaluing the fact that he had actually loaned a private jet (ah leadership campaigns – anyone else getting a sense of deja vu?)

Indeed, if we go waaaaay back in time to October 2007 – yes, I know, we were only kids – we find that a few blogs ran the story in some *fascinating* detail. Enjoy.

Ministry of Truth – Something whiffy this way comes
Political Penguin – Flying with Con Air
Tom Watson – Flying lion Ltd
westmonster – Con Air

Reactions to the more recent story have begun appearing on the radar:
The Willow Man – Conservative Leader and Vice Chairman Resign

*hint: this where you call me a party hack*

Elsewhere
Steven Pinker/NYT Mag. – The Moral Instinct [essay]
Jo Swinson MP – Campaign for Gender Balance Awards: best blog post?
Clairwil – Benefit Reform
Indigo Jo Blogs – Segregation and apartheid … in the UK?
tygerland.net – Could the cooling of the U.S. economy effect the developing world?
The Daily (Maybe) – What do you call the Third World?
Mark Mardell’s Euroblog – Rallying with the Serbian nationalists
Michael Boyle/CiF – A spectacular mess
Dave Hill’s Big Britain – Seethers’ Corner [photo]
Liberal Burblings – ePolitix verdict: Clegg beating Cameron at PMQs
Norfolk Blogger – Sometimes things happen to make me think unliberal thoughts

If you would like your blog or site to be considered as source material for future reviews, drop me an email at aaronh [at] liberalconspiracy [dot] org with the relevant url. I can then enter it into my RSS reader and monitor it for suitable content to be included. Likewise, if you have a specific article/post you feel deserves a little more traffic, get in touch.

About the author
Aaron Murin-Heath is a regular contributor. He is a writer based in Newark-on-Trent and Tallinn, Estonia. He is both socially and economically liberal. Aaron blogs at tygerland.net.
· Other posts by Aaron Murin-Heath

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