On a day when many of our local government workers decided to go on strike for more pay, I note that someone from our local Socialist Party has decided to fly post the phone box outside Bar Rendezvous with a couple of politically inspiring advertisements for what would otherwise be one of their regular meetings at 7.30pm on Thursdays at the William Morris Community Centre in Greenleaf Rd. Lucky for whoever booked the hall that the revolution starts on the 24 July 2008.

I have to say in fairness to them, I do not know any of these people personally, and they may all be as sane as you and I. Nevertheless, as professional as their website looks and as important the issues that concern them, the Capital 'S' Socialists of Walthamstow seem to me to be a bit odd. They seem as relevant to me as a group of enthusiasts at a steam railway preservation society or maybe a Napoleonic re-enactment society. At my most charitable, they seem to have a bit of an image problem.

Their website, with its emphasis on the forms of communication of industrial protests long gone and lost - the antique banners, newspaper selling and wild eyed shouting into bull-horns, remind me of the 1970s, when such means of persuasion had already been long out of date.

I am not saying that all these efforts are a waste, but I do have vague memories from the last century of political jokes and insults about committed groups of lefties pretending to themselves they were the vanguard of the masses. The nickname I most liked in those days was 'Space Cadets'. Would You Like to Know More?