Some of them are, certainly, but some of them manage to persuade government to introduce or amend legislation in a sensible way. Abi and some of her colleagues, for example, managed to get the last Housing and Regeneration Bill amended to provide stronger consumer rights for tenants of private landlords. The peer they went to see was able to stand up and say "look, all of the main housing research charities and organisations, the people who actually know about this stuff, agree that this is what should be done", and the government accepted the argument and amended the bill accordingly.

It's certainly a problem when someone like David Geffen invites Peter Mandelson over to his luxury yacht for a chat about copyright protection, because you then have a single person, not even a British citizen, having undue influence over the legislative process.

But for the most part, lobbying is really just people who have an opinion (often a highly informed and evidence-based opinion) presenting their case in an organised way. There's nothing stopping any of us writing to a peer or MP (although only our constituency MP is obliged to respond). At what point does it start being (evil) lobbying?