Jordy - I am delighted to be absented from the particular coven that you perceive as having developed on here.
But I think that what you are talking about is less a series of conspiracies between Moderators and their 'friends', and more a simple example of human nature, people get together, become friends, contact each other and so on.
The notion that any Moderators somehow develop favourites who are allowed to 'get away' with posts remains a mystery to me -
No-one apart from the Editorial Team knows who the majority of Moderators are, and more importantly, no-one except the Editorial Team knows which Moderator carried out a deletion of a post or thread.
Therefore, if someone perceives that a post has gone missing, or been allowed to stand, they cannot possibly know which if any Moderators are acting to delete or retain on the site, so how anyone is supposed to know which Moderators are either favouring or discriminating against anyone else is simply imagination, it cannot be anything else.