You ask a silly question...

If you didn't (or did) laugh, you'd write a resolution.

Both the Guardian Diary and Private Eye's HP Sauce page have commented on the Annual Survey of Supporters' Opinions, a questionnaire sent to Labour Party members following conference.

The Diary wrote: "Thank heaven New Labour is ... committed to encouraging freedom of expression, as illustrated by the fearless questions in the ... survey, or as the journalist Richard Heller prefers to describe them in a letter to Margaret McDonagh: "Questions written in anodyne, infantile and sycophantic language, and loaded with propaganda and special pleading...". What can he mean?

Question one, concerning the NHS, lists savings from cutting red tape and new investment before enquiring: "Do you agree that these steps will help deliver a modern and dependable NHS?" Similar enquiries concern justice, welfare, transport and so on. "It really would have been more convenient," writes Richard "to collapse all the questions into one ... Do you think that the government is wonderful; absolutely fabulous; just too marvellous for words?'" Private Eye notes that most questionnaires have made the short journey from letterbox to bin.

Commentators have failed to realise the questionnaire is in fact based on a US fundraising ploy - you ask people questions in a fake consultation, they are impressed at being asked their opinions and therefore more willing to fill in the last section - invariably a demand for money. The RSPCA issued a similar "consultation" the following week with questions like "are you opposed to cruelty to animals?" Labour Party members are not easily duped. This questionnaire brings the Labour Party into disrepute.

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