On the 10th December last year, I took advantage of the new e-petitions feature of the Prime Minister's web site, to create a petition highlighting the problems caused by the current regime in the UK for licensing music and dance (or indeed entertainment in general).

I'm a libertarian at heart, and I believe that unless there's a good reason against it, people should be pretty much allowed to get on with their lives. Unfortunately, the Sir Humphreys managed to slip an act through parliament which made it illegal to perform music and the like in many situations which previously had been unencumbered by such nonsense. Well that plainly won't do, and neither will the fact that they ignored the previous petition.

I'm delighted to say that in such a short space of time, the petition has gathered sufficient signatures to put it in the top five. It has attracted press attention from Libby Purves of The Times, and more recently has been the subject of an article in The Stage.

I really hope it's going to do some good. The cynic in my says the jury's still out, but in the meantime, let's keep our fingers crossed.

More information can be found over at http://http//www.cronin.co.uk/licensing