I am not the Automobile Association.

Sometimes, I wonder why people come to The Slog. I suppose mostly it’s to debate, to find others who share their frustration – and in a small minority of cases, to leave deliberately obscure, smart-ass observations as a sublimation of their fear of taking some form of real action against the big battalions.

But I do recognise that that a much larger minority (and I’m not being patronising here) are genuinely confused by my unwillingness to go into the fine detail of resistance. Some readers see this as wooliness on my part, but it isn’t. The simple truth is that, the more detail one goes into, the more trolls stop by and say “You missed a bit”.

I don’t have a 500-point plan of action, and nor does anyone else. I have one guiding light – no violence – partly because that approach is habit-forming, but mainly because it isn’t necessary. Beyond that, however, so long as the action is coordinated, it’s up to individual groups how they set about making life impossible for the Establishment in their own land.

All I can offer is examples to suggest direction. The Mars company changed the Mars bar formulation back to its original, because just 12,000 vegetarians (who couldn’t eat the new one) said they’d be a pain in the arse if their view wasn’t heard. United Airlines saw their share price drop by 8.3% because an obscure rock band got pissed off about UA’s unwillingness to compensate them for damage to their equipment. Newscorp closed a whole newspaper because the advertisers withdrew their support after revelations about hacking the phone of a teenage murder victim.

There is a common lesson here – as I’ve posted before: companies who rely on sales are terrified by the prospect of those purchases being withheld on principle. Principles confuse corporates, and are unpredictable. Sales collapses destroy shareholder value….and as most senior VPs are shareholders themselves, they will do anything to avoid them – up to and including doing precisely what the consumer tells them to do. As politicians don’t sell votes – and only need them every 4-5 years – they are less open to direct pressure.

But they are nevertheless vulnerable. The best way is to start applying the pressure to big business and banking, because these people ultimately own the politicians. An excellent example is the way in which the supremely arrogant David Cameron and his creature Jeremy Hunt suddenly became ever so ‘umble when 640 MPs worried about media jobs and unemployment figures getting worse united to censure Newscorp and declare them unfit to run another TV station. The truth is that most of those legislators didn’t give a sh*t about the ethics of Murdoch’s Marauders: but they were frightened by media contractors and newspaper owner lobbying, and thus obeyed.

Somebody once said that all stings are based on fear or greed. I believe this, save only to insert an ‘and’ for the ‘or’. Coalitions with a slender majority and a truculent partner in power don’t like by-elections. Lose three in a row, and they could suddenly find themselves facing re-election in the depth of the worst recession for 83 years. They might then lose the trappings of power: thus the greed feeds the fear. It would take only one stunning effect on a by-election (thanks to blogosphere influence) to change forever the way in which popular pressure was perceived. Some of this could be achieved by technology, but just as much would be down to good old fashioned getting off the sofa and down to the constituency involved. I accept the fact that many Sloggers have a day-job. But 2 million or so unemployed young people don’t: what better way to lift their self-esteem than to feel their ability to flex political muscle?

If wannabe game-changers want any more direction than this, then I’m afraid they’re at the wrong site. I am not a political organiser. I don’t even believe that, in the early stages, change comes via the political system, for it is a closed shop. What I try to do is inform via evidence, and inspire – both via a description of what’s wrong, and a vision of what could be done so much better. People who keep on asking me to explain this in more detail need to learn that the square marked ‘search’ does exactly what it says. I’m not here to wipe everyone’s bottom.

From here on, I’m going to ignore every comment thread that can’t grasp what I’m saying in this post. I won’t spam them out or pre-moderate them, because that’s not my way – and frankly, I’ve far more important things to do. Also this is absolutely the last time I will spell this out. Those who stand still explaining to the stragglers don’t get anywhere – and that rule goes for bloggers as well as business leaders. The enemy is, at the moment, moving far more quickly and with more purpose and guile than we are. My responsibility in that context is to be at least one step ahead of them.

I thank every last one of the 8000+ readers who come here regularly to debate constructively, and point out when I have made a genuine mistake. I’m eternally grateful for half a dozen ground-breaking stories supplied by readers in 2011. And I’m very happy for people  to disagree entirely without resorting to personal abuse and four-letter diatribes. But those who arrive here to say all is hopeless, nothing will work, those who want change are naive, and their opinions are facts to which I must bow would be better off staying away. The Slog needs radiators, not drains.