Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily web review. It’s Christmas Eve (so how about a smile, eh?).

Highlights
Paul Linford – My review of 2007
Paul’s annual review of the political world. Informed and insightful.

UK Poling Report – ComRes show 11 point Tory lead
The last poll of the year? (CON 41% (+1), LAB 30%(+3), LDEM 16% (-2))

Ben Rogers/CiF – Santa clues
If you believe in God, why not Santa?

Ministry of Truth – The price of penny-pinching
Emails have surfaced from within the HMRC. Cue analysis and comment from Unity.

Alex Parsons – On Militant Atheists
Atheism is split into two camps. Non-believers and God-Haters. But intolerant atheism does have a purpose.

Norfolk Blogger – Nick – if you want to make Education your priority then lets adopt the principle of having as little change as possible
Teacher and Lib Dem blogger Nich Starling, has some advice for young Mr. Clegg.

PoliticalBetting.com – Guest slot: Do governments always recover in the polls?
Guest poster Andy Cooke looks back at history to assess a government’s chances of political recovery after the mid-term blues.

Johann Hari – Charity is fine, but the real issue is trade
Only trade represents a sustainable solution to global poverty.

The latest Britblog Roundup is up at Mr Eugenides (NSFW, but you knew that already).

Elsewhere
Bruce Anderson/Independent – The main obstacle to the Tories’ success is that they sound just a bit too cheerful
Simon Titley /LDV – Opinion: What should the new leader do in his first 100 days? #6
Chicken Yoghurt – So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Love & Garbage – Tommy Sheridan and the alphabet soup of Scottish left wing politcs – an update
Peter Dunphy/LDV – Labour’s swing to puritanism
Mike Ion – The politics of Christmas
Andy Howell – Taking the Rap – For Everything!
Werner Patels – While often tricky and controversial, comments DO define blogs

Casting the net will return on January 9th. Merry Christmas [legal dept: other festivals are available] and have a Happy New Year.

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.