A lot.

Action items for today:

1. Last night
2. Digital economy bill outrage
3. Boys are MENTAL

Last night, I went to see comedian slash activist slash smug man Mark Thomas present his people's manifesto at the National Theatre. He's been touring the country compiling audience suggestions for a real manifesto - and the results have been fairly funny. Last night we decided (among other ideas) that a) if it pisses with rain on a Bank Holiday, it will be considered a rollover and b) people who complain that there are too many immigrants will be banned from restaurants serving anything other than British food. We also voted in favour of invading Jersey, on the basis that they have around one billion UK tax pounds there, and that a maximum wage should be announced. I'd thought about that previously, and had concluded that no one could reasonably argue that they need to earn more than £250,000 a year. Mark Thomas had spoken to a Marxist accountant, who said that you could never cap it at a set figure, but rather at a multiple of the national average wage - say, ten times. Coincidentally, our national average wage is £25k, so I was pretty much on the money with that one. And, as the Marxist accountant pointed out, if you wanted to raise your own income above £250,000, the only way to do it would be to raise the national average wage. Brilliant.

Other suggestions that got my vote were the idea that all models for fashion/photography/film/TV should have to be selected at random from the electoral roll, and that all 4x4 vehicles should be required to drive at least 50% of every journey they make 'off road'. Everyone seemed to agree without question that drugs should be legalised, a Tobin tax should be introduced asap, and that newspaper retractions should be printed in the same font size and on the same page as the offending article.

It was an interesting night, not really realistic (sadly), but still good to get your thinking cap on and think about how you would change things if you had the power - and thus realise how powerless we all actually feel. There was a painful irony when Mark announced they were fielding a candidate in Bristol West to represent these issues and there was a woop of delight from the audience - four weeks today, there will be hundreds of candidates standing all over the UK, and they're all supposed to represent us. We shouldn't be wooping - we should be taking it for granted. But no one feels represented and everyone's furious...

...which leads me nicely on to the OUTRAGE that is the Digital Economy Bill, which a nasty group of Labour and Tory MPs shimmied through Parliament late last night. Apologies to any people with their finger on the pulse, but this is a deeply complex issue, where the wording of the Bill has been revised three times, based on the objections of any sane person who cares anything for the internet and freedom of speech, but it's finally been pushed through in a deeply suspect fashion, meaning that the secretary of state for business can now legally order the blocking of "a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright", an absurd catch-all definition that could easily be applied to hundreds of sites, including the vital Wikileaks resource (which I last linked to when they published the BNP membership lists in 2008) and even Google. The web community is fuming with Labour, furious with Mandelson and livid with the Tories (see the comments here for a taster) - the only party who has consistently argued that examination of the Bill be held off until after the election is the LibDems. Either way, this is two fingers up at democracy and a fatal stabbing for freedom of expression, and it's mighty depressing.

Finally, on to boys - and a shift from the usual 'bad things come in threes' to a slightly tweaked 'odd things come in threes'. I was emailing a random German guy, and we were all set to fix a date to meet, but then he sent me a very curious email, which I couldn't quite understand. It had, for example, included the phrase 'Why do I have to think of a ferret and a bathtub, now?!' I wrote back asking him what he had meant by certain things and he said it was time to surrender, that it had been an attempt to be dadaistic. Riiiiiight. I asked him to clarify further, and he said 'Sorry for playing this the pathetic way, but I needed to find out how you'd respond. Afraid, I'm not up to your personality.' Hmmmm. So he's dumping me before he's even met me. He was too short anyway. And it wouldn't have been that remarkable, but I was simultaneously emailing a guy who reluctantly revealed yesterday that he makes missiles. Missiles. Apparently he'd met people who work for British Tobacco who are appalled and people from the liberal left who think it's fine. I said I thought it was pretty disgusting to spend your nine to five designing weapons that kill innocent people, but then I also think working for a bank is pretty questionable, and I've been doing that for three years. It pays the rent. He said,
"Well, obviously I don't think that weapons are great or that blowing people up is really cool, but then I don't think what I do is disgusting or inherently immoral either. If I did think that way then I wouldn't do it. Personally I think I would have more of a problem with someone who continues to do something which they feel to be morally wrong just to pay the rent rather than someone who makes moral judgements which I disagree with (up to a point obviously)." I think he is trying to say that he'd rather I worked for a bank and loved it than worked for a bank and hated it. I can't see how if you a) think that weapons are not great and b) think that blowing people up is really uncool, you can c) think that designing weapons is not inherently immoral. I haven't replied yet, but I'll keep you posted. And then this afternoon, there was the guy who sent me a photo of his erect penis, while I was sitting at my desk booking aeroplane tickets for my boss. Insania.