The People's Manifesto by Mark Thomas

In 2009, Mark Thomas toured Britain with a stand up show where he asked the audience to suggest some policies they would like to see put into practise. At the end of the show each audience voted for their favourite policiy and all the favourites have been collected together to form this book: the demands of the people of Great Britain (or at least those of them who agree enough with Mark's left wing politics to make them feel it was worth going to see him). Anyway, it's considerably more democratic than anything offered by any major political party.

The lovely thing about these policies is how they range from the serious (renationalising the railways, requiring a referendum to go to war and introducing a "none of the above" box on ballot papers), to the trivial (everyone should be allowed the day off work on their birthday, Windsor to be renamed "Lower Slough" and overtaking lanes for pedestrians). Many of the the policies reflect a desire for fairness, or sometimes just a love of poetic justice, for example, people who support ID cards would not be allowed any curtains, those guilty of homophobic hate crime would have to serve their sentence in drag and and anyone who lets their dog shit in the street would have to wear it as a moustache.

Overall my favourite policy is that politicians should have to wear overalls like formula 1 drivers, covered with the logos of all the companies who pay them.