Bar Alastair Darling

Alastair Darling has annoyed one pub landlord enough with his increase in tax on alcohol he has started a campaign which has spread virally around the blogosphere. The original details are available here. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Darling did find himself barred from every pub in the UK, it woudl be real evidence of the power of the people and the public sphere. Do pass the link on to your landlord, especially if you do know that (a) Mr Darling goes to the pub and (b) you know which one!

UPDATE: didn't realise how viral this one was on Saturday morning as I rushed a post. Yesterday The Telegraph ran a feature on it, love the Simpsons mock-up. As a colleague of mine notes by email "Surely it is a stunt, a psuedo-event, which is then sent around the Internet. In a sense it is no different from when a political party launches a poster during an election and all the media troop over to see it being unvelied and then twenty minutes later two blokes come along and paste over the next paying ad. Or when a trade union get a van with pigs and a trough to stop outside Parliament to campaign about bosses getting their snouts in the trough. They are all really non-events, they only happen if the media turn up, and the rest of us see it through the lens of a camera. Similarly i think that is exactly what the Alistair Darling thing is, but this time the media is the Internet. If we don't open that email, read that blog or or visit that website has anything really happened?" Is this the emergent power of the blogosphere as a public sphere?