Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-02-07 - 8:55 a.m.

Black Country country tonight. The Black Country is the hilly urban region to the west of Birmingham which has a geology which favoured the early expansion of the metals industry � maybe its where Black Sabbath come from. Stefan talked me (easily) into going there last night for Dave and the Varmints launch gig. The Robin One by Merry Hill in Dudley � about 45 mins drive from Leantown.

The Robin One is a bit of a venue � sizeable built-in house PA � maybe two or three thousand watts. Forthcoming attractions include Buffy Saint Marie, Climax Chicago Blues Band, Ten Years After, Wishbone Ash, Tony Hadley, Roy Wood�s Army, John Otway, Mick Taylor, Jan Akkerman, The Blockheads, Huey Lewis and the News, Edgar Winter, the Carl Palmer Band and (most of) the Family (especially Chapman R) which may provoke another cheesy set of reminiscences if we are not careful. The bar sells draft mild. I can see I�ll be back.

The warm-up band reminded me a bit of Steeleye Span and most of them turned up at different points in Dave and the Varmints set. D&tV are two gtrs, bs, drms and perc but they also had string bass, violin and banjo at various stages. I know � through Stefan � Mike who plays lead. He was picking a red Strat into a 65watt Fender Blues Devil � also a Taylor electro acoustic which he borrowed for the gig. I thought he played well and looked the part. Tall and fairly static. We talked a little afterwards � I asked why he didn�t use a Twin Reverb which I thought would suit his style better � he said that they are too heavy. In fact I really thought he should be using the really big Fender combo that I saw Tinsley Ellis with in Dearborn � but I couldn�t remember its name � I suppose they are even heavier.

D&tV play gothic country. So its very much in a country style but they write the songs which are quite heavily into the ironies and trials of modern life � there is one about globalisation and customer service. The iconography on the CD is slightly knowing about their country rock genre � I said I would mail Mike suggesting that this is completely unnecessary � they perform the songs as if they mean them. The connections between some of the band members seem to go back over 20 years.

The other big thing in the last day or so is the arrival from Amazon of The Hot Spot. This was a film directed by Dennis Hopper with Don Johnson starring. Jack Nitzsche did the music and he got in John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal and Miles . The drummer is Earl Palmer who I hadn�t heard of but he can do that lazy Chicago swing blues which you find on early Stones albums. I am very impressed with all of this � especially the abstraction of JLHs gtr and vocals and how that fits with the muted Miles. There are references to classic JLH tunes and of course Miles� classic film musics � Lift to the Scaffold and Jack Johnson - but there is something about the totality that goes beyond past references.

In the notes Hopper says he has known Miles since he (DH) was 17 � I suppose that must have been the early 60s. It seems Chris Blackwell had a hand in the recording.

I drove over to Meriden to get some lunch and had my first good look at the cross which is on the village green � the plaque says that it�s a list 500 years old. The interesting question is whether there�s evidence that it might go back further. Maybe I will ask in the library opposite � they are bound to know the score.

As I drove over to the Robin 1 I listened to a radio 4 programme about the role of the CIA in the Cold War. The thesis was that the CIA was bad at getting person to person intelligence relying on spyplanes satellites and signals intelligence. They consistently over-estimated the strength of the USSR. When Reagan came to power he switched focus from aiming not to lose the Cold War to aiming to win it. Hence the deployment of Cruise and Star Wars. The USSR noticed this and knowing their true lack of strength they believed that the USA was going for a first strike. Their paranoia got so bad that they took to driving around DC at night seeing whether the lights were on late in the Pentagon � too many lights meant people working late planning for war � or so they thought. This was a seriously unstable situations � the programme claimed that the KGB insider who Gordievsky who MI5 had turned was a key channel in getting away from a really risky state of affairs � well maybe.

I went to NATO HQ once in Brussels as part of the job I did after leaving the College and I took the chance to go to DC in late 1997 as part of a NATO industrial delegation for a conference in the Ronald Reagan Centre � my first visit to the USA and I thought it was brilliant . The conference was good too � it had highlighted real risks that were being ignored. Both the UK and the USA paid the price. NATO had realised that economic forces had weakened supply chains � sounds boring but this is war-winning stuff eg how the Allies won the campaigns of 1918 , what was at stake in the Battle of the Atlantic - how the Germans lost the Eastern Front etc.

The UK continued to put fuel prices up faster than the rate of inflation and this put too much pressure on a relatively poor segment of the population who used their cars a lot � doing 2 or 3 jobs. They got so pissed off that they disrupted the lean petrol supply chain � faster than anyone believed possible - and the New Labour Government got its first taste of real vulnerability. So the petrol-protestors won � simple as that.

The USA thing is probably the one that I�ll tell any grandchildren about. Trying to get the USA to understand the true nature of domestic vulnerability in the face of the inherently innovative nature of terrorist groups. For example the IRA had spotted and exploited vulnerabilities in electricity supply and also in the transport system � it cost them not much and gave a lot of grief to the UK � and made them look powerful and the Government stupid . We talked in depth to the USA about how usually the terrorists are always two steps ahead and then you catch up with them when they have found the next vulnerability

Actually the UK security services got to be a lot better than that � lots of practice � I once sat on a committee for a bit that looked at their corporate plan. One of the things that happened in the 1990s was that the security services were brought under legal management arrangements within the constitution � and so they started all this formal accountability stuff. DTI was quite well tied into all this business mainly because of the export control regime � Scott and all of that. Maybe I�ll save that for another time.

Anyway the only time the head of the security service has ever spoken to me was at one of these committees � he was the guy who was to take over from Stella Rimmington � what he said was �whatever you do don�t lose that f*cking plan.� The reason was because the plan contained target output measures for the business � real stuff at the sharp end which counted as a success � like value added � how the other lot didn�t have it all their own way.

Anyway the programme made me think about the CIA not being on the ball in the Cold War and probably getting worse after they�d thought they�d won it.

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