Peter and Mark have arranged that video clips of Lynne and others are now accessible from a banner at the top of the diary page. A bit more from Lynne's recent e-mail to me from South Africa:

"The first week I was back from the UK, we had the BBC and Comic Relief visit Grace Sibeko's project, Kwaze Kwasa Home-based Care in Katlehong South to prepare for filming a programme on how AIDS is affecting children. I was involved in collecting film crew members from their hotel and taking them to various places to interview prospective families and preschool children (all cared for through the project). Michael Parkinson conducted the interviews the following week. Bishop David attended the filming on 13 June and welcomed everyone into the Diocese. Michael had an interview with Nelson Mandela the following day at which time certain clips of interviews conducted in Katlehong and various other places in SA would have been shown to him. The film will be shown on BBC in July and not in SA."

I had lunch with Peter Chatterton and Ticia Sibbon and we talked about this TV appearance and how we would utilise it. 11 July is Sports Relief - a fundraising event like Comic Relief Red Nose Day. The two happen alternate years. As part of Sports Relief Michael Parkinson interviewed Nelson Mandela and within that interview Grace's project involving home-based care for AIDS sufferers in a big township in the South Johannesberg is going to be featured - to illustrate the kind of thing that donations can go to.

So we decided that the draft website sitting under my picture here needed to be ready to be "launched" at the time of the broadcast. As Peter pointed out -its the kind of deadline we need. Having brought Tricia into that project is useful as she can provide more authentic and original material on SA than I can. My task is to organise the arrival of material about the music and artists - and so I immediately mailed Robin about the material on her that would best go on the site - also Gilbert Isbin the Belgian jazz guitarist who I needed to catch up with. His track on the CD is "Blossoms" which is one several people have mentioned to me that they like.

Mark very kindly offered to help me with some web authoring software if I could put a CD of the piece that he created with an improvising computer and Robin added the beats to in the post - including some IC add-ons. I found the Cubase file which included various bits and bobs ands kind of went slightly over the top with it using the D Horn. Anyway its also a chance to send him Fifths.

The other immediate action for me is to organise a local Press Notice. The Surrey Advertiser has already run an article on the CD/Highveld project just under a year ago I think. The fact that Grace visited Guildford - and we have pictures of her relaxing in my garden and then went straight back to be interviewed by Parkie ought to make a story in the week running up Sports Relief. Grace is a really interesting person and I will need to give some thought to how I can get that across in newspaper terms. Apparently one of the things that struck Lynne and Grace about England was the way that men behave around the house eg cooking etc.

Peter also gave me a VHS video, DVD and CD-ROM of material that he gathered at the lunch with Lynne and Grace. This includes some digital pictures and I will see if I can find out how to load some of these up into this diary.

Betty Melling (Bell) mailed to say that Cathy got a first in Part 2 English - which makes her a double first. I mailed back with congratulations saying that this was just the sort of thing that we ought to put on the website and could she knock out a few hundred words with other suitable stuff.

Richard Jones replied to my e-mail out of the blue suggesting a Wild Oats reunion. I am sure Paul Bell will be up for this but I wonder what Jon Cole will make of the idea. I will try it on Paul Wheeler just in case his curiosity gets the better of his reclusiveness.

The other ongoing project born out of yesterday's meeting is the CDROM. Tricia will get BBC's permission for us to use their Sports Relief material and that can be added to the interview stuff thats already on there. Tricia has the idea of using this to enlist further suport points in the UK.

I need to revive the idea of a local retail point for the CD. At the moment I am using the Tradecraft stall at Holy Trinity but I approached the SPCK Bookshop in St Mary's at the time of the last local press coverage about taking the CD. I need to warm that up - maybe even think about some kind of instore display material.

Very interested to read Robin's comments on the latest Wall Street debacle. The question of whether you could trust managers was raised in the 1940s by Burnham in his Pelican paperback - the Managerial Revolution. Burnham was a Trotskist - this was the good old days when Trotskyists could get published without there being a fuss on any sort. Top managers are in an amazingly powerful position of trust but if they are given peverse but strong incentives then you will get dysfunctional behaviour. I used to have an interest in fraud in DTI and have sacked several people for it - as with most such activities, its the first one you remember most. The Dept is actually amazingly unforgiving on this front and a colleague of mine has just bitten the dust on that score - payments to consultants was an aspect of that story but the main thing that wound the Dept up was apparent deception. In fact the law of corruption in the UK is different for public sector employees and its a criminal offence to behave in a way which a reasonable person could construe as corrupt. Despite the large numbers of lawyers in the current Government etc etc etc etc. Better not run too much of a legal risk on these pages.

This accountancy wangle is less interesting than the Enron one - its all about what counts as an asset in the sense that its utility might last for more than one accounting period. There are gebuine issues here for example with R&D - you could put research expenditure in as an asset and bring to the expenses over the period that you expect to get benefit from it - or you could take it to expenses as the money is spent. Most firms do the latter and the standard comparator on R*D spend is as a percentage of sales. Of course I don't know what the latest scam involved capitalising - you could claim that the 4000 watt music system clearly has a life of several years and should be depreciated accordingly.

The Enron wheeze was more strange and I would never dream of asking an accountant if it was OK. Essentially they were booking as revenue in the current period earnings which may not accrue for several years hence(or at all.) Both wheezes are short-termist though - manipulating the current period profit and loss by either postponing cost or bringing forward income.

I am off to Birmingham for a couple of days - in search of a strategy that will bring forward income in the current period (ha ha). In fact I decided that some essential maintenance on my house which is just being completed should be mentally capitalised as a kind of investment.