Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-03-20 - 4:48 p.m.

I managed to download some of the pics NYC from the Olympus to my PC and into Word � much easier than I thought it might be.

After most of the day with KPMG � who are trying to define the Automotive College in numbers, I drove from Birmingham down the M6 and M1 and then across to Bedford to the A1 then south to the Comet Hotel at Hatfield for a meeting of the Automotive College dropping in and out of the news programmes and listening to Alicia Keyes. It was one of those great sunsets as I crossed the River Ouse and began to climb south up over the chalk hills to my destination with the sky turning pink.

Peter Chatterton had already arrived and so I threw my stuff into the room and went to the bar to chat to him mainly about the site and especially about getting material up about 10 Shortstories and Four 5ths and also about the Lullabyes project. Alan Coombes was there who is MD-ing a big concert in this part of the world to raise money for flood-proof buildings for rural Mozambique. Read about it on www.kwase-kwaza.org.

It transpired that Keith, one of the AC members, has a daughter who has a choral scholarship to Newnham, which means that she sings in the Hoggwarts choir. Keith goes to the Baptist church just round the corner from the White Hart which is the oldest non-conformist church in London with a main road site. This prompted Peter to recollect that for 25 years he played in a band led by a vicar who ended up at St George�s Bloomsbury � a Hawksmoor church also near the White Hart. I told him he could say that he used to play in a band which regularly rehearsed in the church where Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath!

On the journey I picked up the Times and in the Business Section there is a really good article by the Economics Editor Anatole Kaletsky � I have heard him lecture and I have a lot of time for his ideas � not something I say about many economists. He starts by quoting the poem by Yeats which Joni Mitchell sings on Travelogue. As AK puts it, �The UN meltdown reveals the extraordinary levels of incompetence and misjudgement in major Western Governments. This puts in doubt the assumption of competent decision-making, monetary and fiscal crisis management. Who can feel confident after this fiasco that the world will return to the steady growth of the 1990s when major economies were skilfully managed and there was improving global co-operation on economic and financial stability and trade?�

AK suggests that the US will withdraw troops from Germany and this will further depress the weak German economy � the largest in Europe. The US will boycott the French and German aerospace industries � the effect in terms of the US retaliation will be all the greater the less successful the Iraqi venture is as they will need someone to blame and take it out on. The UK is the country with the biggest stake in globalisation (after the US � as measured in the gross aggregate Foreign Direct Investment inwards and outwards) and will suffer accordingly not least because Germany is the UK�s largest export market. If a bad war forces Blair to resign, his successor � probably Brown � will be in a similarly weak position to Major after Thatcher � harried by the extreme wings of his party.

Peter C had a more positive perspective � he said that the whole Iraqi Crisis had re-engaged people in the UK in politics and that a greater global awareness was apparent. I said that this echoed the views of Noam Chomsky � also in the news section of www.kwase-kwaza.org.

Simon Jenkins in today�s Times is also good value especially on the triumph of Bin Laden who SJ thinks history will rate as �a stateless psychopath potent beyond all imaginings.�

He has traumatised US collective psychology and devasted their economy bankrupting companies and made them suspend the basic law of habeaus corpus. He is behind the psychological transference of US hostility from himself to Saddam Hussein which has the split the West and permanently weakened Europe. Bin Laden has always hated Saddam and so now he gets the double hit of having the US get rid of him on his behalf in a way which further radicalises Islam and inflates his cause. SJ concludes �It is a poor comment on the civilised West in the 21st century that its chief means of retaliation against terrorism is a declaration of war on whole peoples.�

Also an interesting review by Michael Portillo of Bernard Ingham�s new book about political spin. He ends by reflecting what a heavy price Tony Blair has paid for his earlier spin excesses when he tried to persuade audiences worldwide of his current sincerity in pursuing the course he has followed in this diplomatic crisis. Its probably the combination of his physical condition � overcome by the energy of his rhetoric � especially yesterday � that has finally persuaded people that he wasn�t faking it.

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