You're only someone when someone else is protesting against you. One of the peripheral pleasures of conference season is checking out all the demos, protests, sleep-ins and megaphone bearers kept at a safe distance outside the heavily-policed cordon sanitaire.
Stop the War, Keep Hunting, Ban Tobacco, Save the NHS, Do/Don't Build a New Football stadium outside Brighton - I've seen 'em all.
But a campaign to ban "lads' mags" was a new one to me.
Around a dozen women gathered outside the G-Mex centre this afternoon as the Labour conference got under way. Accompanied by one inflatable sex doll, they were calling for Nuts, Zoo, Loaded and the like to be moved to the top shelf, as a first step at the very least.
"I don't want to have sex with animals!" one woman screamed at me as I somewhat sheepishly (pardon the pun) accepted an outstretched leaflet.
Things gradually became clearer. Apparently this month's edition of Maxim asserts that "A lot of women fantasise about rape and animals". A host of other offensive quotes from recent mags from this summer's crop of lads' mag offerings were given as evidence that they were degrading to women.
More details from this blog.
