Episode Number 2 of my podcast is up!

In case you hadn't heard: I've started podcasting Lolitics, my political comedy club. There's so much material that is written especially for the night, or that has a short shelf life, and it seems like a shame for it to disappear forever. Now, finally, it can be enjoyed for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.

I'm so happy with this episode, I think you'll love it. I've got my friends Sarah Bennetto, Tiernan Douieb, Ben Partridge, Kate Smurthwaite and Adam Larter on this podcast, as well as lots of new stand-up from myself. Do drop me a line if you like it, either by email to chris@chriscoltrane.com, or by Twitter, at @chris_coltrane, I'd sincerely like to hear from you if you enjoyed it, cos praise makes it all worthwhile. ;)

Episode 1 has had almost 3,000 downloads! Thank you SO much to everyone who downloaded it. If you like it, PLEASE do give it a 5 star rating and a review on iTunes. I'd be 100% grateful. Hope you enjoy it!

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here!

Subscribe to the podcast in non-iTunes here!

Download episode 2 directly here!

BONUS EASTER EGG!
A song that we made for the podcast that appears in one of the jokes! Don't listen to this until you've listened to the show. ;)

Hello Jeff!

I've started podcasting my stand-up comedy. Sometimes I write political stuff that has a short shelf-life, and it's a shame that it only gets performed half a dozen times before it's no longer topical, so this seemed like a cool way to share it.

The first episode is the almost-complete March 26th Lolitics, my political comedy club in Camden. It has stand-up from myself, Matt Crosby, Kate Smurthwaite, Nick Revell and Sir Ian Bowler MP. It was a great night, I hope you enjoy it! From now on I'll podcast Lolitics now and again, as well as any stand-up I do that is polished enough/charmingly shambolic enough that people might want to hear it.

I think you'll like the comedy, but I'm sorry that the audio quality isn't very professional. It's all recorded on my phone, and I learned the basics of audio editing just for this. I'll try to get better, and I'd love it if you emailed me any feedback, good or bad. Also, feel free to rate it highly on iTunes. ;)

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here!

Subscribe to the podcast in non-iTunes here!

Download the first episode directly here!

You know UniLad. The website that was shut down after they posted a "joke" suggesting that men should rape women if they can't pull them, because rape conviction rates are so low that they'll probably get away with it.

UniLad took some time off to think about their actions (or more accurately, in the hope that the controversy would somehow magic itself away). And now, they're back - and hiring! According to their Twitter page:

"We're looking for banterous new writers to join our team. Give us a shout on contact@unilad.com. Cheers. #LAD"

So I've decided to apply. Do you think I'll be in with a chance? If I do hear back, I'll let you know.

=============

Oi oi lads!

Saw your tweet looking for some "banterous new writers". Let me tell you, I am WELL interested! Nothing I like more than a bit of banter between lads!! Like the other day, I was down the boozer with my boys after the game, out on the lash. My mate Barry dropped his bag on the floor, and a BOOK fell out, so we called him gay and pushed him into a bin! HA! It was well jokes, he was crying and bleeding and shit because the bin had glass in it or something. What a dickhead! We called him a "glass bastard" for the rest of the night, and then we went for a kebab and got our dicks out and did fighting. Fuckin' smashed it bruv!!

Anyway, long time fan, first time mailer. I love UniLad! I totally get your sense of humour: it's like you're making all these points about the world, like how men are better than women, and how we should do everything we can to pull them, even if it's illegal; but you don't really mean any of it. But also, you TOTALLY mean all of it! It's genius, it's exactly what I'm like. It's like this t-shirt I've got, it says "Federal Boob Inspector"! It's like FBI, yeah? But it doesn't mean FBI, it means "Federal Boob Inspector"! And I'm not really an official boob inspector, but also, I totally AM a boob inspector! I'm always looking at tits! Hey, imagine if that job actually existed!! You'd have to be all like "Here love, have you got a license for those"? HA!! Mate, it'd be mental.

See, that's the kind of banter you'd get from me! Top bants, yeah? Sick bants! Here's another one: "Here, you know girls that like dubstep? I tell you what, I'd well put a wob on them!" Haha! I meant like a wob is my penis!

I love jokes about women, and gingers and the French. I've got all the Frankie Boyle DVDs and books, and I've even got all the old classic Bernard Manning live shows on VHS. He knew how to banter, didn't he? I loved how he took foreigners down a peg or two! I bet they'd be fuckin' running the place if he weren't for him. He'd talk all about how they were stupid and how they stank. But he didn't really mean it! But also, he definitely meant it. But it was okay, because it was a joke! Hang on, I've forgotten what my point was… Wait, you shouldn't analyse it too much, because then the joke stops being funny, and also because you might learn truths that you don't want to learn about yourself, and then the tears start coming again, and lads don't cry, which means thinking about jokes is for queers.

I definitely think I should write for you. Like yourselves, I have an irrational fear and hatred of women. The way I see it is, feminism has gone too far the other way, you know? Like, how's it fair that women want equal pay (thank god they are still so far from it! A 22% pay gap is nowhere near enough! I want a pay gap so big I can shove my dick in it AND my friend's dick in it! But not in a gay way), but they STILL want men to hold the door open for them? It's stupid! Either you take lower pay, or you let me slam the door in your face. You agree, right? I know you do, I can tell, cos you and me, we're both lads, right? Just having a joke about slamming a door in a woman's face! That's just what I'm like, I'll make a joke out of it because it doesn't even matter because I don't even care! You've got to smash 'em to keep 'em keen, am I right? You know I'm right, don't you? Please tell me I'm right.

I tell you what gets me, is when women have their own sexual autonomy. OH THAT MAKES ME SO MAD. I saw an advert the other day where a woman looked all sexy and the man looked like an idiot. I was like, hang on, how's that fair? If it was a bloke in the advert making a woman look stupid, everyone would say it was unfair! I said to my bird, I said "Right, I'm not buying that Cif kitchen cleaner ever again." But then she started squealing something about how capitalism and marketing exploit both the sexes, so do you know what I did? I just shoved my cock in her mouth!

NOT REALLY! What actually happened was, I just ignored her, and felt uncomfortable and confused, and I got all these sudden dull pains in my tummy that I didn't know what they meant. But if I wrote for UniLad then I'd totally say I just put my cock in the bitch's mouth to shut her up. Yeah, I'd call her a bitch! I mean, I love her and all, but it's just a joke! Cos I'm a banterous lad! It doesn't hurt anyone, does it? Because everyone's smart enough to know it's just a joke!

Well, that's what I told my bird. She said something I didn't understand about "propagating rape as acceptable" and then she walked out on me, and now I'm alone, so I really need this job. I don't even mind doing it for free. I just need to vent the anger out. You're a lad, you know how it is. We can't let 'em win, can we? We're better than them. Come on, let me write for you, and then we'll properly put women in their place. You are gonna let me write for you, yeah? Seriously. I need this.

Cheers,
Chris.

I was recently very lucky to be a part of a wonderful radio show called Letters You Never Sent, where people pen a pretend letter to someone based on a theme. The most recent episode was letters to corporations, and I had a couple of things I wanted to say to my old friends Vodafone.

The show is online here, and I'm on at 49m11s. And if you like karaoke, why not read along to my words, as I say them? I hope you enjoy it!

"Dear Vodafone,

This is a letter to a corporation. Of course, a corporation won't read this letter, because a corporation isn't a human being.

And yet, as a corporation, you are, in the eyes of the law, a legal person. You can buy and sell land, you can sue and be sued, you can own buildings and sign contracts and employ people, and you have many other rights and privileges that you would have, if you were flesh and blood.

Dear Vodafone, I wonder whether any of your board of directors have ever watched Joel Bakan's enlightening film, The Corporation, in which Bakan explains how it came to be that corporations became legal persons in the eyes of the law, through transferrable shares and limited liability, and then poses the question: if a corporation is a legal person, what kind of person is it? If we performed a psychological analysis of a corporation, what would we discover?

In his analysis, Bakan recalls corporate behaviour over the years. To name just a few examples, he mentions IBM's involvement in the holocaust, the use of child labour and slave labour in sweatshops; the fact that Coca Cola invented Fanta for Nazi Germany; the lies of adverts, and the psychological manipulation of children too young to understand otherwise; and exposing entire populations to dangerous chemicals like DDT or toxic waste, and then denying all responsibility.

His conclusions are shocking. Consider the corporation's personality traits:

- Reckless disregard for the safety of others
- Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
- Incapacity to maintain enduing relationships
- Repeated lying and conning others for profit
- Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours, and
- An incapacity to experience guilt

These are not Bakan's words. Nor are they mine. In fact, they are the formal descriptions that the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organisation use to diagnose a psychopath.

Of course, not all corporations have to behave this way. But, dear Vodafone, I wonder how your behaviour compares?

Perhaps we could talk about January 2011, during the pro-democracy Egyptian demonstrations, when you shut off all your voice and data services at the request of the government, disconnecting Egypt from the internet, and from the world. Does colluding with tyranny sound like the action of a person who cares for the feelings and safety of others? Of someone who conforms to social norms, or can feel guilt?

Or perhaps we could discuss the Private Eye article of October 2010, which alleges that you bought a German telcoms company called Mannesmann, but routed the acquisition through a Luxembourg subsidiary. Private Eye claims that this was done specifically to avoid paying tax in the UK. If the claims are true, then you avoided a tax bill of six billion pounds. This tax avoidance was entirely legal, but utterly immoral.

How unfortunate for you that, at the same time in 2010, the government announced that, in the name of austerity, it was to cut welfare spending by seven billion pounds a year. That means that your one tax dodge could have paid for almost every cut to welfare. Alternatively, your tax dodge could have paid for us to keep open hundreds of libraries, or schools, or hospitals. In other words, when a school or library closes, it is your fault.

If you cared for your home country, for its people and its future, the idea of tax avoidance would be anathema to you. But clearly, the feelings of others are not an issue that troubles you.

I am a member of UK Uncut. We're the protesters who come into your stores, sit down in the doorway, and shut you down. We do this nationwide, all at once, to stop you from trading. We take direct action against tax dodgers like you.

Dear Vodafone, You may think I'm writing to ask you to start acting ethically. Well, you'd be wrong. I know now that, as a corporation, you do not feel guilt or empathy. You cannot be reasoned with. Instead, I'm writing to remind you that we are here, and that we will always be here. My friends around the country will never stop fighting you. The decisions of your corporation have caused international damage. We will not forgive you. We will keep protesting. And we *will* win.

Yours sincerely,
Chris Coltrane, UK Uncut, and the direct action activists of the world."

We sometimes forget that the rights and freedoms can conflict with each other.

So for example, someone's freedom of speech to call for the murder of a certain ethnic race conflicts with the freedom from fear and persecution that those people should enjoy. In those cases, we as a society have to choose which freedom is the most important: freedom of speech, or freedom from fear. We correctly believe that a person's right to a life free of violence is more important than someone else's right to call for their death, and so laws regarding hate speech are introduced to deal with the matter. No reasonable person feels that their human right to freedom of expression has been denied, because we understand that on balance, it is reasonable. Two rights conflicted, and we chose to prioritise the one that stopped people being hurt or attacked.

This idea of conflicting freedoms is essential to understanding how to defeat the arguments of right-wing libertarians, who will often claim that government interference is stopping them from living a life of freedom and liberty. For example, Rick Santorum, Republican presidential candidate and turbo-douche, claims that global warming is a myth. "It's just an excuse for more government control of your life", he says, wrongly.

It's a common argument that climate change deniers make. Government control of carbon emissions will impose on my freedom to ride my SUV, on my freedom to consume, on my freedom to pollute. But when we remember that rights conflict, we see that there is a problem with this argument. Rick Santorum's freedom to use his SUV conflicts with my freedom to breathe clean air. Rick Santorum's freedom to consume conflicts with my right to enjoy a planet with finite resources. Rick Santorum's right to pollute conflicts with my right to a healthy life.

George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian on this issue recently. He gave the example of a "Romanian lead-smelting plant I had visited in 2000, whose freedom to pollute is shortening the lives of its neighbours. Surely the plant should be regulated in order to enhance the negative freedoms – freedom from pollution, freedom from poisoning – of its neighbours".

The key is to understand the difference between positive freedom and negative freedom. Positive freedom is the freedom to fulfill your potential. This is the freedom that Santorum claims the government is stopping him from achieving. But negative freedom is the freedom to a live a life without interference from other people. In Monbiot's example, the positive freedom the lead-smelters want to enjoy, the freedom to pollute without government interference, conflicts with the negative freedoms of the Romanian people to live their life. Whenever conflicts of freedom exist, we must choose one - and in this case, anyone with a heart will choose that the freedom of people to live a healthy life trumps the freedom of a company to pollute.

Right-wing libertarians will tell you that a government of any size imposes on their liberty. But what they really mean is "A government of any size imposes on my liberty to do what I like, regardless of the consequences". And consequences matter.

Government regulation does indeed rob corporations, rich people and selfish people of the freedom to pollute. But this same government regulation gives humans the freedom to life a full and healthy life. As a society, we must choose which of these two freedoms we wish to prioritise. If climate change is real, then the answer is clear. And if climate change isn't real? Well, as this popular cartoon shows, the answer is still clear:



Rick Santorum picture by Gage Skidmore, used under a Creative Commons license.

Today we learned that over 900 police officers in England and Wales have a criminal record.

Personally, as a fan of internet memes, I'm sad that it's not Over 9000. In fact, I think it says something rather worrying about me that I'd rather we had ten times the number of ex-criminals working in the police force, just so I could quote a meme. Perhaps I am not the crusader for justice I like to think I am.

If the papers are to be believed, this is big news. It was on the front page of a few online broadsheets, and a significant number of the people I follow on Twitter were furiously sharing the story. Having said that, my Twitter feed probably isn't very representative, as most of the people I follow protest, make a nuisance of themselves, and shoplift/murder on a regular basis. Wait, scrap that last one. Pretend you didn't read that.

I do worry that my Twitter timeline is an echo chamber of my own opinions. Every time a friend says something I agree with it reinforces the idea that my opinions are the majority's opinions, and that's hugely dangerous. But I tried following Tories for balance, and it made me so angry that I started planning a bloody and violent revolution. It's safer for everyone if I just stick to what I know.

Anyway. 900 cops have a criminal record. Now, I'm no fan of the police. I want to be a fan, I'd like to be a fan, but when they beat up my friends, murder innocent people without punishment, and let bankers and media proprietors get away with utterly ruining the country, they make it terribly difficult to like them.

But as much as it pains me to say it, I think this is a misleading figure. The BBC says that the police service in England and Wales was 143,770 strong in 2008-09, the most recent stat I can find. This means that about 0.65% of police have a criminal record. Even with the cuts, the number is probably close enough.

In the UK, 9.2 million people have a criminal record. I couldn't find a statistic just for England and Wales. I know what you're all thinking: the number of proven criminals will be too high if you're including Glasgow. This is true, and there isn't a single person in the world who would query or question that fact. But I put it to you that by also including Edinburgh, we bring the stats back down again. Not all Scots are criminals. Just literally anyone who come from Glasgow.

The population of the UK is 62,218,761. So, 14.8% of the population has a criminal record.

We should certainly expect our police force to be the highest calibre of people. Upstanding, honest, good people, with respect for society. But even so, 0.65% is a ridiculously small number, and far lower than the national average. And once again, I should be worried that this disappoints me. What I really want is for this number to be high, so I can have a go at the police. But alas, the crime figures are too small. Such a shame that more people didn't get burgled or assaulted by the police. I blame David Cameron.

"Many forces could not provide details of criminal records dating from before their staff joined the police, meaning the true figure will be significantly higher", says the article. True. But unless "significantly higher" means "thirty times higher", we can still say that the average is much lower. And that isn't even to mention that a criminal record could be something as small as shoplifting as a teenager. In fact, one of the charges mentioned "a constable convicted of burglary as a teenager". Sounds like a bad lad who came good to me!

It's a shame that the Press Association didn't mention this in their wire copy, because it meant that none of the papers which copy and pasted the PA's wire copy into their own newspapers bothered to mention it either. Check this link out, which shows that all the papers pretty much copied the PA word for word. (In fairness, at least the Guardian actually credits it to the Press Association.)

You will have your own opinion on whether the police should have even one officer with a criminal record. For me, if someone has served their time, I have no problem with them serving in the police. But in any case, don't be fooled: the numbers aren't as bad as the newspapers would have you believe. There are a great number of reasons to hate the police. The unaccountability, the protection of the privileged, the institutional corruption, the deception of undercover police, the unfairness of political policing, the blind eyes they turn to the crimes of the elite, their racism, and so much more. But, if the stats are right, their previous criminal records isn't one of them.

A far better question is the one my friend Molly asks: How many police officers should have a criminal record, but don't?

Picture by chrisjohnbeckett, from Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

There is a joke that almost every open mic comedian has a variation of in their set. Many pro comics also often open with it. It's been around since the dawn of stand-up, but never before has it been so ubiquitous.

As it happes, I really like this joke when it's done well, but so often it's just a lazy, easy way to start a set. So pervasive has the joke become that I've decided to write a set satirising it. For the past couple of months, I've been taking it to open mic nights with the deliberate intention of annoying/educating/infuriating/alienating the other comics.

Occasionally I also do the set at gigs where the audience is full of fellow comedy geeks, who get the reference. One such gig was the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society last month, which I recorded. Even if you're not aware of the joke, hopefully the setup will let you in on it. If you fancy, give it a watch. And if you like it, share it around!

http://www.newint.org/blog/2011/11/10/tax-journal-conference-vodaphone/

Forgot to mention that I blogged at New Internationalist about a cheeky little UK Uncut protest we did recently. Dave Hartnett - the man who it is alleged let Vodafone off of billions of pounds of tax - was the keynote speaker at the Tax Journal Conference, a place for the 1% to learn how best to be tax efficient. We paid him a visit. Give it a read for more info, then watch the video of us giving it some activism!

In 1997, Nick Davies - the man whose relentless determination exposed so much of the phone hacking scandal - wrote a book called Dark Heart, in which he exposes child prostitution rings, drug gangs, organised inner-city violence, and UK poverty on an unfathomable scale. He paints a picture of desperation and alienation, of people driven to such depths by a society that has utterly abandoned them, a world of no opportunities, of no family, of no love.

It was written fifteen years ago. With the cuts the government are making to welfare, schools, playgrounds and all the essential life support systems the very poorest people have, the book feels every bit as relevant today.

Part of the book tells the story of Hyde Park Close, a council estate in Leeds which slowly transformed from a strong, safe, vibrant community, to a ghost town, with abandoned shops, with landlords who didn't care about the flats they converted into even smaller flats for short-term rents, with community centres and youth clubs left to fall into disrepair. Burglaries were a daily occurrence. No car would survive for an hour without being stolen or burned. Arson was a constant threat. So were muggings, and murder. Few people were employed. Even fewer had enough to survive.

The book tells some truly shocking stories: about the council man who forced women to have sex with him in exchange for being bumped up the waiting list for council houses; of the man stabbed to death in a fight, whose murder tape was traded around the estate; of the mother, forced to move herself and her two children out of the house of their abusive father, who couldn't leave the house to work, and who fell into such a deep depression that she never left her bed; the skilled carpenter who could find no work, and who couldn't feed his family on benefit money, and so slowly had to sell all his tools to keep his family alive; of the woman who tried setting up a community support group, and was thanked by being labelled a grass, with muggings, burglary and attempted arson.

Two pages near the end of the chapter jumped out at me, not only because they are deeply upsetting, but because they are so relevant to the current controversy surrounding Edwina Currie, who, despite massive evidence being presented to her from social workers, councillors and people working on the frontline with the most impoverished people, refuses to believe that there are people starving in the UK. She believes it is simply a matter of managing your money more sensibly, and finding work.

I'm sure she will never read this. Even if she did, there's no reason why it should change her mind, when actual evidence has been presented to her. But I wanted to write those two pages out, so that you can share it with other people who think it's simply a matter of saving and working. If you hear people say that poverty isn't a problem in the UK, that there aren't people starving, make them read this:

======================

"There were not many who were literally starving. People often talked about running out of food in the last few days before their giro came from Social Security, but most of them managed to make do by borrowing off friends or family. But there were a few who had no one to turn to, who would reach a point where simply they had no food and they were condemned to be hungry until the next giro appeared. They were the ones who really suffered, and they were the ones who tended to turn up on the doorstep of the Methodist church at the back of Hyde Park Close.

Some of them knocked on the caretaker's door. There was one young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, who lived in a house in Autumn Avenue which, in the eyes of anyone passing by, appeared to be derelict. It was dirty and overgrown, some of the windows were cracked and broken, guttering hung down like broken branches in a tree, there were gaps in the roof through which the darkness of the attic leaked out, there was never any light in the windows. But this young woman lived there with her brother and, from time to time, when they had nothing, she would turn up at the door by the side of the church, with a weak smile and a simple request.

"Will you give me money?" she would say.
"We can't," the caretaker used to say, honestly enough.
"Will you give me food?" she'd say.

And the look on her face meant no one could doubt that she needed it, so the caretaker would give her something to go away with. The young woman didn't come every week, but there were others. Five or six times a week, someone would knock on that door - a young boy on drugs looking for 50 pence, an adult needing £5 for an electricity token, an old man so hungry he could barely move until the caretaker gave him baked beans and lemonade.

Others found their way to the home of the Methodist minister, Gary Hall, a young and thoughtful man who worked part time as the chaplain to the prisoners in Armley Jail. Several times a week, he would answer the door of his terraced house in Hyde Park, and find one of his parishioners standing there, begging for food.

He knew these people. He knew they were living to the last penny. He knew there were others who managed better to survive on what they had, but he knew equally well that there were a lot of families in his parish who really were very hard up, who were struggling to find some of the basic necessities of life. He knew because he saw them in their homes - short of food because they had run out of money, living without fuel because they had run out of tokens, the children small and wiry and skinny because habitually they ate too little. He knew because in wintertime, when their electricity tokens ran out and the cold got to them, he was called upon to bury them and supervised far more funerals than during the warmer months. He knew they suffered not only a lack of material things but also a deep lack of opportunity to do anything about it. There were many people here who would never escape and who knew that to be the fact of their lives; they felt a deep despair which occasionally erupted into aggression and crime. He knew that because they had broken into his own home along with everyone else's. He was not going to pretend: he found it very annoying to have his possessions stolen. But when he spoke to them, it was terribly clear that they really had no idea of the people they were hurting. They came from a sort of shadow world where it was normal to survive by burgling and shoplifting and twocking. And by begging.

The ones who turned up at his door were the most serious casualties from a war that had swept across most of this community. Some of those who came to him were children. They had fallen foul of an adult at home and found themselves pushed out on the street until things calmed down and they could creep back inside. Some of them were the parents of young children and it filled him with horror to think that life in his prosperous society could possibly have sunk to the point where mothers and fathers had to go begging at a priest's door to find food for their children's bellies. So he gave them what they wanted and sent them on their way with a prayer for their safety and a surge of frustration for whose who liked to pretend that there was no such thing as poverty in Britain in the 1990s."

It surprises me that people take keynote conference speeches so seriously. Personally - and forgive me if this sounds facetious - I don't understand the benefit in listening to the declarations of liars. Surely people realise that the promises they make aren't legally binding?

For example, we have no particular reason to trust Ed Miliband. He has taken over a party which for the majority of its time in power was so dedicated to spin that it was possible to write an entire book documenting their lies. We should trust Ed only when he earns that trust. And yet commentators who I respect will analyse his speech, discuss the points made, reflect on the quality and the tone, as if it were real and sincere, as if it were anything other than a fabrication that he could totally disregard if he became Prime Minister.

We know for a fact that Nick Clegg and David Cameron are liars. Owen Jones cites a small selection of the most horrific lies in the Sunday Mirror. Two examples: Cameron says he won't cut in a way that hurts those we most need to help, then sends letters to 700,000 terminally ill patients telling them their benefits may be taken away. He says the NHS will be safe, then he practically privatises it. If David Cameron pledges something which then goes on to actually happen, then it happened not because he said it, but by chance.

Endless column inches are dedicated to the whole spectrum of pundits, shovelling out their predictable opinions for money. Did Osborne succeed? Can we trust Ed's vision? All these questions are irrelevant. Stop analysing theatre as if it were news, because there is something far more interesting which is almost never discussed: who foots the bill.

An issue rarely picked up by the mainstream media, though frequently detailed by Private Eye, is which corporations sponsor events at conference. This fortnight's Eye (issue 1298, p9) informs us that the Lib Dem conference sported a meeting on the Eurozone crisis which was sponsored by CitiGroup (who needed a $1bn bailout after the subprime collapse); that the Tory conference has a security lecture sponsored by BAE Systems, and a meeting to tackle youth binge drinking sponsored by SAB Miller (makers of Fosters, Peroni and Grolsch); and that Labour hosted a discussion on competition in public services, sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, who "helped draw up the last Labour government's PFI and contracting out plans and seems to be promoting more of the same".

To me, this is infinitely more interesting than a single word on this page of commentators analysing George Osborne's speech. An article on who bankrolls our political parties is an article on who owns our democracy, on who can buy influence and laws. I can hardly think of a more important story.

And yet, year on year, it receives almost no mainstream media coverage. You will have your own theories as to why this is. All I know is this: that the media's silence comes at a great cost to society, and that party activists should ask themselves some very serious questions about whether they can have more influence on their party's policies than a global, multi-billion dollar FTSE 100 company.

Rid yourself of sponsorship. Yes, you'll lose some money. Perhaps you can make it back up by turning your party into a party that people will want to pay to be part of. Just a thought.