Day 3: The day I considered acting on the advice of Michael Foot in order to not turn into a toad

I have encountered a problem in writing this blog. It's not, for once, writer's block. It has nothing to do with deadlines or lack of motivation. This problem has maoral implications the like of which I have never had to think about before. The problem is this: 'How do I read the Daily Mail?' I don't mean 'How do I read the Daily Mail without losing my faith in Great Britain, the media and humanity?' I arguably lost that faith a long time ago. The question I have to consider is: 'What, physically, do I have to do to read this newspaper?'

There are two obvious possibilities: I can read it online or I could buy it from a newsagent. Clearly, the second option is not one I wish to take: that would mean giving my hard-earned cash to the hideous squad of toad-people responsible for the output of Associated Newspapers Ltd. But reading online is hardly ideal either. Every time I visit the Daily Mail website help to justify its continued existence, and this makes me feel dirty, slimy. Toad-like.

I don't have a solution as yet. Today I skimmed through the paper in a busy shop, and people like me picked up their Independents and looked at me like I was roadkill. As result I only managed to read a couple of headlines and a few paragraphs before shuffling off to weep in Costa. In future I may have to conceal the Mail inside a more respectable publication: Cute Asian Teens Monthly or Top Gear Magazine or the Guardian.

The only other option is plain old theft. If I could roll up a copy and get it out of there without anoyone seeing so that I could read it in a quiet corner before disposing of it, preferably in an industrial incinerator, I would feel much better about myself. Yes, crime might just pay in this case. As Michael Foot once said, 'Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law.'

I mention Foot because his name appeared in the Daily Mail today. Apparently, the current opposition's performance in the local government elections compares unfavourably with that of Labour during Foot's tenure in the early days of Thatcher's spell at the helm of the country. While the figures tell one story (37% of the vote for Ed Miliband's Labour, 41% for Foot's) the political climate is slightly different. Today, for example, we have what have become known as 'stealth' cuts as opposed to Thatcher's 'fuck everything up with a machete' cuts, while government think tanks realise that polarising political thought too much is dangerous for a leading party's future aspirations. But the main difference is the media. Sadly, the Daily Mail wields more political power than any other British newspaper. Holding the AV referendum on the same day as local elections was of mutual help to the Conservatives and the 'No' campaigners. The Mail urged people to vote 'No', those people saw the simple correlation between a 'No' vote and a Tory vote (invented in part by the right-wing media), and Bob's yer uncle.

I was never much of a fan of Michael Foot (just as I will never be a supporter of Ed Miliband) but when he spoke of breking the law to gain liberties, I'd like to think he meant that we should all go out and steal copies of the Daily Mail. Not so we can all write futile blogs but so that the paper doesn't fall into the hands of the impressionable, reactionary and politically naive centre-right readership whose blind voting completes the circle of stagnant goverment and overly-powerful media.

Day 2: The day I didn't go to Waitrose

So, yeah, we messed up. We didn't win and we were never likely to. But you know what, it doesn't matter. Why? Because democracy is all a load of piss. Who needs democracy when you've got an unelected head of state whose family are all (even the racist husband, even the son who talks to trees) perfect role models, paragons of human virtue and quite probably direct descendants of God himself. And, get this, their current darling, the flawless new addition to the family, is not only (to quote one happy party-goer interviewed on BBC news on the morning of the royal wedding) 'fitter than Cheryl Cole', she also DOES HER OWN SHOPPING. Fuck yes. This is what the front page of my new favourite newspaper told me today. The Duchess of Cambridge buys her Jerusalem artichokes and her cat litter in a supermarket for toffs. And we should all feel better for it.

Now there are many reasons why this story is laughable. Firstly, there's the hypocrisy. There are people across the country - including many in the 'middle England' demographic so prized by the Daily Mail - currently struggling to keep their jobs or facing wage cuts as a result of a government (made up for the most part of people who are no strangers to inherited wealth) that has seen fit to compromise equality by making knee-jerk cuts. And here we are being conned into thinking that all is rosy because a girl who has just made it big by marrying into inherited wealth can push her own shopping trolley.

Secondly, there's the hypocrisy. Again. The same newspaper that was only a few days ago telling us how pretty Kate looked having slimmed down to fit into her wedding dress is now celebrating - really, truly celebrating - the fact that she is buying a shitload of food.

Thirdly, well, it's the whole fucking circus isn't it. I had no real opinion either way on the royals before this wedding. In fact, I still have no opinion, just a physical reaction that is a strange combination of nausea and pity. The pity is for the family themselves - possibly, just possibly, some of them aren't wankers - and for the droves of people who actually felt better about themselves after staying in on a nice sunny day to watch the wedding. And maybe the pity is threefold. Maybe there is an element of self-pity here too. Maybe I wish I could have enjoyed myself, felt a part of it, smothered myself in red, white and blue jelly. But no, I hated every frigging minute of it. And I know for a fact I would have hated it even more if I had tried to enjoy it, if I had indulged in the street-parties, the plastic hats, the whole spit-roast.

What, then, have I done today in defiance of the Mail's royal sycophancy? Well, two things actually. The first, least important thing was becoming a proper, card-carrying republican. Yes, I'm off the fence. I no longer agree with the existence of the royal family.

But crucially, I didn't go to Waitrose. Oddly enough, I had actually planned to. I was going to go to Marlborough (where, incidentally, Kate went to toff school), and whenever I'm in Marlborough I always go to Waitrose, because I like their olives and thier support of local charities. But today stayed in Swindon and went to Sainsbury's. I've eaten shit fishcakes. I've given nothing to charity. I feel good about myself.

Day 1: The day I resurrected Uncle Joe Stalin via the medium of simple shadow puppetry

Today, on a popular and successful personal networking site, I made the decidedly uncontroversial and eminently justifiable claim that it would be possible for any human being to live a perfectly good moral life simply by doing the opposite of everything the Daily Mail suggests. Whilst the idea of not doing what a shit newspaper tells you may seem pretty easy to achieve (most sensible people tacitly do it all the time) the actual act of positively contradicting this particular shit newspaper is a step that may produce some interesting results. So, starting today and continuing into the forseeable future, I will do one thing every day that directly challenges the gist of Daily Mail story or article published on the given day. The first was easy enough...

As I write this, polling stations up and down the country are filling up with sad, grey bits of paper. If the opinion polls have it right, roughly sixty per cent of these sad, grey, bits of paper will have sad, grey 'X's next to the word 'No'. The Daily Mail this morning ran a headline urging us all to vote against a small but, I strongly believe, necessary step towards political reform. It is too late for me to convert anyone to the 'Yes' camp, and sadly it looks like the small amount of campaigning I have done will be in vain so I won't bore anyone with my reasons for voting in favour of AV. Instead I would like to thank the Daily Mail for inspiring me to write this blog. I see this post as the short introduction to what could easily become a lengthy and attritional operation. My first anti-Mail act - the act of voting 'Yes' in today's referendum - will, I fear, be ultimately unsuccessful. But even if everything that follows is equally unsuccessful, it may prove slightly entertaining and will almost certainly make me feel better about myself as an agent of moral reasoning.

If you are wondering where Stalin fits in with all this: he doesn't, other than the fact that I borrowed a book from the library called The Art of Hand Shadows, thinking that I could explain the nuances of AV using shadow puppetry. Yes, it was a stupid idea. It turns out that making hand shadows of former world leaders is easy. Making them talk intelligently about the drawbacks of the first-past-the-post system is damn near impossible. David Ben-Gurion is riding a camel across my bedroom wall, oblivious to the need for fairer votes. No wonder we're going to lose tonight.