Panorama tonite on army agents in Northern Ireland was riveting - I remember seeing a wartime programme about SOE where an elderly man explained that the big issue about assassination was being confident beforehand that you'd identified the right person. I can't understand why the programme hasn't already created a bigger furore. This is an area where powerful people really don't like the lights to go on. It calls into question the integrity of processes at the heart of state power.

I met a number of interesting people at work today - it was a seminar at the end of a very long and complex process which we have commissioned from Cambridge University to identify the most likely future pathways on various automotive issues. I referred to it in my presentation in Cz last week.

There were a couple of ex-army people involved - one had been at the front line in bomb disposal - another had been involved in even more sensitive things. The bomb disposal guy now has a job which takes him to Russia to help out on some engineering issues with the Lada which is still made very cheaply in an enormous plant - the track is over 1km long. We talked about the Russian style of engineering - like some of the people in Cz he stressed the importance of the hammer.

One of the Cz engineering profs had said that there wasn't anything on a T34 that you couldn't repair with just a hammer. Today's engineer said that in the Lada plant you spent 20 years working with a hammer until you graduated to a grinding machine - and then you realised that the grinding machine hadn't been worth the wait.

With both the guys I discussed my new grand theory that in the Soviet Union none of the innovation had gone into spook business - they kept on turning the same old handles and following the same old strategies in trying to penetrate Uk institutions. All the innovation was in that area I mentioned a few days back converting funny money legally into real money - the process discovered by budding "new millionaires". In one sense this had made the West complacent about some areas of organisational vulnerability. I think vulnerability has increased massively in the last twenty years - in terms of the way Departments organise themselves. Quite simply the Russians lost interest in developing their act to find the new areas. What kept spookery on its toes in the UK was the terrorist threat.

The unmentionable guy and I talked a bit about the fundamental condition of deterrence on the street - one of the key ploys is to make the other lot feel nervous about putting their assets on the street. There was a time when if you knew what to look for you could assess the threat level by seeing who was doing what on the streets of Westminster. The unmarked transit vans on the streets full of armed police who would pounce on any older vehicle at random was one of the more alarming inicators. I remember seeing some Mexican tourists get the fright of their lives one evening. The first time I went to the USA on the firm we were talking about some of this stuff.

I also met the retired head of local automotive company here in Guildford - Dennis. Like Skoda it started as a bicycle firm just before 1900 and then quickly moved onto cars. Its original factory is in the centre of Guildford and is now a listed building - I think because it is a very early steel framed building. Its also where Vita goes to learn the bass guitar. I told the chap that it reminded me of one of the early Ford buildings in Detroit that I had seen with Matt in March. He now works in a Surrey county archive in Woking a couple of days a week. I hadn't heard about this place - it sounds very promising.

Everyone seems to have enjoyed this seminar - including me. One of the route maps is about developments in manufacturing that I really need to get my head round. There is a lot of good material emerging just now - the Treasury have just published a very good study on the supply and demand for scientists engineers and technologists. It was launched as part of the budget with the result that no one noticed.

As the weather improved yesteday the railway system detected the temperature and declined accordingly. It drives me wild.

Yvonne went to see La Boheme at Convent Garden with her friend Penny. I have seen it once in Guildford and the idea of that grand presentation doesnt really appeal to me.

I began to build up a better picture of where the different Wayne Shorter albums I have acquired recently fit together. Just before he joined Miles in 1964 he released three Blue Note albums in the same year - and the one I bought yesterday - Ju Ju - is part of that series. Critics think that this is the point where his compositional approach began to deepen - apparently as he was inspired by theories of creation and destruction in the universe. In the 2nd great Miles 5tet he was one of the major contributors of material and quite a few of these numbers have become standards. Miles remembers in his Autobiography thinking that WS "composes like Bird did" - of course people don't usually think of Parker as being a composer. I think Donna Lee is a masterpiece but I am still not clear whether it was written by Bird or Miles.