Leafy shadows, quiet corners, steaming coffee mugs to wrap your chapped winter hands around – we’re all for French Concessions. Nevertheless, we can’t help thinking free entry for the French at Mao is a step too far. Whatever happened to liberté, égalité, fraternité? Did we miss the roar of them being driven off into the sunset by motorcycle sidecar? (And, in any event, what’s the test on the door? A rendition of La Marseillaise to the nearest yangrou chuan seller? Whether you can make a convincing case for Carla Bruni being even hotter now she's got the power?)

And yet Mao isn't the only place to do favors for friends. Muse runs discount deals for hotel and bar staff, O'Malleys hosts networking nights at which citizens of a given country get a free shot (useful tips: “dubbel” is Swedish for double, Watsons does a cheap blonde hair dye). There’s also a Filipino happy hour at I Love Shanghai on Mondays, airline industry workers get special deals at Zapata’s the following night, and ladies drink for free all week, all over town. And there’s been a spate of late of fancy-dress-if-you-fancy-a-free-drink events. Quite why any venue would think offering a forum for uniformed French air hostesses to get drunk made any kind of business sense, is beyond us.

Perhaps it’s just the fact that we’re left out that hurts – we’ve redrawn the Venn diagram a thousand times, but can’t make a single one of the above circles intersect with the one labeled Cheap-Native-English-Speaking-Male-Journalists. It’s time to take action – no longer shall our voices remain unheard. Altogether now:

Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!