This pledge has been successful! You can still add your name to it, because the deadline hasn't been reached yet

Yes, I will be going on the Barnet march against cuts and privatisation this Sunday, 30 January. My pledge on Real PledgeBank - not the bowdlerised Barnet council version where pledges are censored before publication - has reached the requisite 20 signatures, with days to spare.

OK, I had to nag a few friends to sign it to get the ball rolling, but I know they will be beside me there on the march. Half my fellow Barnet March pledgees are people I didn't know (although I've met a couple of them subsequently).

Here's my pledge:

Pledge “Barnetmarch”

"I will march against cuts and privatisation in Barnet on 30 January but only if 20 other local people will do the same."

Yes, of course, it's daft, but so is the whole idea of Barnet forking out £140,000 to a company called MySociety for tat such as this:

Value for Money*

MySociety websites are seen as at the cutting edge of redefining the interface between government and citizens. Their expertise and experience will support the council to achieve its corporate aims of providing better services with less money (by supporting more interactions with the council to happen online), and enabling the public and council to jointly deliver services (for example through a local Pledgebank tool).

If, like me, you would rather your money were spent on frontline services than on gimmicks trying to persuade us that something called the Big Society can replace democratically accountable public services, please join me and my fellow pledgees on the march this Sunday. More details here.

* This is an extract from a document that blogger Mr Reasonable alerted us to in this blogpost.