Tony Blair received some positive publicity this week by volunteering to be a patron of a sports club in London if 100 other public figures volunteered to do the same. He used a website called PledgeBank to set this thing up. I had never heard of the site before and today decided to take a browse.

One particular pledge caught my attention: a lady called Georgina Pope has pledged to write to the Secretary of State for the Environment to put a levy on patio heaters like the one pictured. In these days when we should be reducing our carbon dioxide emissions, heating outdoor air just seems ludicrous. So I’ll happily join her in writing a letter to Margaret Beckett. You can view that pledge here, and the main website is: www.pledgebank.com. It’s also available in plenty of languages other than English.