Anyone who has ever read John O'Farrell's excellent and hilarious book Things Can Only Get Better will have an idea of what it can be like to join the Labour Party.

Politics for beginners is an account of one anonymous man in London who has joined the Labour Party and is blogging about his experience. Not much happens because of the inability of his local Labour Party to actually get in touch. Not that this is necessarily the local party's fault as it relies on the Labour Party's national membership unit to inform them of the new member's existence. In this case it appears to have the wrong contact details for the constituency secretary.