All one-man bands in the gig economy

Tina Brown reveals her thinking on the downturn and decides we are in a new "gig" economy. "Now that everyone has a project-to-project freelance career," she asserts in her website, The Daily Beast, "everyone is a hustler."

I like Tina's fizzing uptown style, her droll account of the perils of asking New Yorkers what they're up to these days, but this is all old hat to me. Most of my London friends are self-employed and have been for years.

I prefer to see us not as hustlers but "portfolio pros" whose income from variously purling streams is all that stands between life as we know it and eating from the dumpster (American for skip - we're still in Tina's transatlantic airspace, remember).

And jolly bracing it has been for many years now, and getting more so. Last week, I got a call from a magazine asking me for a big feature to launch a campaign, by that afternoon, if that was OK.

"How much," I barked. There was a pause. "There is no fee," the features lackey whispered. "Our budget for the next quarter has just been cut ... to zero."

I could go on about the gig economy, how you can't ever take Benylin days, or call in sick with that stagey croak, but you know that already. We're all in the same boat and paddling. Welcome to our world, Tina!

* Another reminder that passion and conviction are recession-proof: tonight is the launch of the writer Henry Porter's Convention on Modern Liberty at the Foreign Press Association - something I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more about in coming weeks.

Porter has hooked more than 100 speakers, and big-tent support from organisations as diverse as the TUC, Private Eye and the Countryside Alliance, all equally cross about this government's invasions of privacy and encroachments on liberty. There'll be scores of big meetings in London and beyond, and plenary sessions for 1,000 at the Logan Hall.

Despite the stiffy invite (which reveals Vanity Fair is also on board) Henry is adamant. "This is not a star- studded launch. This is NOT a conference. It's a call to arms."

So come on, everyone. Cry God for Henry, England and St George!

* Tony Benn has erected a plaque on the front of his Holland Park house in honour of his late wife. "Caroline deCamp Benn, Author/Teacher and Socialist, Lived and Worked Here. Died London, 2000," it says. It's in red, of course, not blue.