The Kentucky Kid

When do you say that enough is enough and give up? All of us think of it at some time. But it is those who keep focused, keep calm and carry on that win through in the end.

Such thoughts must be going through the mind of Nicky Hayden this week. Nicky is a great racer and deserved his World Championship win in 2006. This season he is, for the first time riding the Ducati but so far with not a lot of luck. In Qatar he had engine failure and a massive high side in practice - perhaps linked to a bike failure - that put him in hospital. Thankfully, although he was shaken up badly bruised and needed stitches in his chest, he had no broken bones.

In the Japanese GP last Sunday, starting in 10th place he was taken off on the first lap by local boy makes racer, Yuki Takahashi, and he took no further part in the race.

I know everyone wants Nicky to do well. He is a great guy and he has a riding style that could suit the Ducati - if he could just get the chance to put in enough laps to get to know the machine. And then to race it. My wishes may not make much difference but I do wish the Kentucky Kid the very best of luck from now on. Let everyone see how good you are. So, Nicky, keep focused, keep calm and carry on!

Too Much Tax?

One of the things in life that I have never had to worry too much about is that of being exceedingly rich. I have, towards the end of my full-time working life, found myself paying tax at 40% and this year I will pay a bit of capital gains tax. But on the whole, the highest tax rates have not concerned me in any way. Last week's imposition of a 50% rate on those earning more than £150,000 per year may be largely symbolic but it seems from newspaper reports that the very rich are not happy. They will, of course, be employing very skilled tax accountants to devise legal ways of avoiding the payments and probably will only pay a bit more than they do now. "It will drive all the innovators and entrepreneurs abroad," they tell us. "It is a tax on hard work and initiative." Is it? Michael Caine has got very excited about it and threatened to go off to the USA. What is he so worked up about? I assume that Sir Michael is relatively rich. He is 76 years old and still working because he enjoys his work. In that, good luck to him. But why is he bothered about the tax? Will he not have enough to live on? Does he feel the pain like other pensioners who have to exist on £95.00 per week - £4,940 per year; a sum that will not appear on the chancellor's chart for paying any tax at all? Calm down Michael, calm down. If things get really bad you can apply for supplementary benefits. After all, you have paid enough towards them during your working life.

It is suggested that footballers and their WAGs will pack up and leave. I will need some persuading of the truth of this. I know we will miss their entrepreneurial expertise if they did leave but in practical terms, how can they play for a Premier League club and live in Switzerland? I know that they could be paid in their "home" country via some fancy system designed to avoid tax due in Manchester or Liverpool but surely, even this government can find a means of stopping such a simple abuse?

The National Debt

Most of us do not know until we are near the end, how long we will survive on this planet. In my case, there are so many things that I want to do and some things that I still want to see before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I am still excited by scientific progress and the improvements these will bring to our quality of life, yet mankind seems driven to aiming to promoting the trivial. Technological advances are welcome but sometimes the urge to change and update seems to become obsessive. The computer provides a wonderful means for self expression, for communication and for increasing one's knowledge, but surely it is for better things than role playing in worlds of extreme virtual violence. TVs are more sophisticated than ever but the proliferation of channels and the general availability of 24 hours broadcasting has diluted the quality of programmes. There is, as the man said, a lot of rubbish on television but it is better in wide-screen and colour. And surely mobile phones are 10% useful and 90% nuisance.

But some things never change. Alistair Darling as an orator is part Nigel Mansell and part talking your weight machine and there is little chance of him raising his game to the level of merely boring. After he delivered his budget speech last week, it was several days before people had woken up to what he had actually said and had set about deciding what he meant. The indications are not good. From the start, it seemed to me to be a very ordinary budget when we needed a very extraordinary one. The usual tinkering with the price of fags and beer and a token soak the rich gesture - a move that would be of more interest if he had produced some evidence to demonstrate that some of the money would actually be collected. But what about the spending? He announced a plan to borrow buckets of money to a level which could turn Britain into a sub-prime borrower. But how does he intend to get the books balanced again? It appears that he wants us to believe that all will be well when the economy recovers with a dramatic growth over the next three years. His prophecies do not have the ring of truth. To massively increase government income we will have to pay more taxes or export goods.

It has been calculated that the government will borrow nearly £700 billion over four years and some believe that the sum will exceed £800 billion. Who is going to give the government this much money? Or will they just print more? If the government spin demands that the economy grows substantially, it will grow by doing what? For more than 20 years the British economy has been dependent on financial and other services and more recently on debt backed by rapid increases in house prices. This model for our economy is, surely, dead. And so how will the new economy grow? The government waffles on about new technology without having the faintest idea what they are talking about. The country has again to start doing what it once did; that is making things for ourselves and making things which the world wants to buy. Fundamentally, we are good at doing such things; what we are bad at is efficient management. The government has given the go-ahead for the building of clean coal fired power stations. With this decision, the country is doing something we should have been doing 25 years ago; developing the means of utilising a fuel that lies in abundance under our own country. Mrs Thatcher shut down the coal mines because she hated Arthur Scargill. It was petty and wrong and now we are paying the price. Through 20 years we have wasted our own supplies of premium grade North Sea gas in order to generate electricity and wrecked the coal mines, which could have met [can meet] our electricity needs for at least another century. Now that new coal-fired power stations are being built, I hope the government will tackle the problem of re-opening the coal mines. Or will we carry on, ludicrously, importing most of our coal?

But the government has to stop spending. Suggest this and they tell us we will have fewer nurses and teachers. What we should have is less bureaucracy; less needless legislation. We do not need vast data bases; or ID cards; or constant changes to legislation that do little more than generate truck loads of paper; or massive spending on consultants; or enormously expensive aircraft carriers; or Trident submarine replacements; or grandiose projects like the ridiculous Olympic Games. The list of monster expenditures is long. The government has to get it under control and, at the same time set up a proper framework for the regulation of the banks and insurers.

The years ahead look bleak and at this moment we are sailing on a boat with no rudder.

How Many People?

Often, no matter how hard I try, I have to believe that the stupidity of man knows no bounds. The credit crunch has demonstrated yet again the existence of a herd mentality even in those who are considered or consider themselves to be quite bright. This herd mentality is most dramatic when it is coupled to a collective wish to ignore the blindingly obvious. Together these afflictions seem preferentially to attack politicians [although in recent times, financiers have suffered greatly from the same severe failings]. But with politicians, nowhere is it more obvious than in their attitudes to climate changes.

There seems little doubt now that the climate of the planet is undergoing serious and possibly permanent change, with increasing rapidity, as a direct result of the behaviour of mankind. Most politicians with intellects above George W Bush seem to have got this far. But what to do about it? Ah, that's another matter. There is much spin and sound bites and photo opportunities. But actually doing something requires foresight and courage and here there is little sign of progress. One thing, that is accepted by all, is that population control cannot be discussed. There are numerous reasons for this; many associated with political correctness and a total reluctance to oppose any religious beliefs - no matter how primitive, dogmatic or misguided. There are too many religions on this planet. There are even too many variations on the big established religions. At the core of many of these religions - and particularly those of a more extreme fundamentalist outlook - is a total rejection of any form of birth or population control. Most religions operate using texts that are old and subject to interpretation by collections of elders. Why are there no major religions that have evolved in the most recent past? Religions are almost universally forces for dogma, stagnation and mysticism. There may well be a Supreme Being who controls the totality of existence but does that mean that we can off-load all responsibility for the problems of the world using an interpretation of some ancient texts as justification?

How many people do we need on this planet? Tackling the growth of population is absolutely essential if we are to prevent the planet being destroyed as a habitable world. The United Nations organised a conference in Egypt in 1994 to discuss the matter in detail. The conference was sabotaged by religious bigots and issued a communique of platitudinous nonsense. And that was the end of that! Today the World population rises at the rate of about 80,000,000 per year. It requires only a little over a decade to add 1 billion to the number of people living here. Of that population, about 65% live in poverty or semi-poverty. Can this planet provide resources such that everyone can live a decent life? Before we can answer even this question, we need to decide what is a decent life. We in the affluent parts believe that a decent life involves good health, a comfortable home, more than adequate supplies of food, clothing and energy, a means of earning a decent living in order to provide the decent life as well as a surplus for general luxuries such as cars, TVs, computers, holidays, etc. The concept of basic want is unknown. If these criteria for a decent life are accepted, then we cannot ever provide for all the people on the planet unless we reduce population by 66%. But whatever our understanding of a decent life, it must allow for the fundamentals of a home, clothing, adequate food supplies and adequate health and sanitation for all the people on this planet.

But the problem goes further. The ever increasing human population makes ever increasing demands on the resources of both land and sea that are leading to the extinction of all other forms of life. Nowhere on this planet are large mammals living in the wild not under threat from man. Recently it has been noted that there have been dramatic drops in the numbers of all wild animals in the nature reserves of Kenya. This is caused by herbivores losing large areas on which they grazed,causing population falls that have had a knock-on effect on predators. Even in England many species in the wild are threatened by the activities of man. The oceans of the world are over-fished and the situation is deteriorating. World-wide on land and in the seas there are species being wiped out without anyone even noticing.

If we are to avoid a concrete and desert wasteland across the whole planet, then we have to reduce population substantially. Governments do not like population falls because such reduces their tax incomes and increases the expenditure [relatively] on an aging population. But that it is not an insoluble problem. It is just that governments do not like to have their spending curtailed. Of course, next to nothing will be done until some catastrophe strikes. Then, like the credit crunch, they will say that it could not have been predicted - but it could. Unfortunately, like the credit crunch, those who did nothing to engineer the crisis will suffer just as much or more than those who did. And then we will start all over again.

Diminishing Rivers

The weather has been rather good in the last five days. After a period of some wettish weather, we have had warm dry sunny days since last Friday. It's all part of the mix ups in our weather patterns. Although, if the experts on climate change are right, we can expect our climate to become more extreme as the Gulf Stream changes its path, many people believe that a warming of our climate will be an improvement. A report published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate tells us that the water flows in the world's major rivers have dropped over the last 50 years. Partly this is caused by climate changes but also it is because rivers are dammed and diverted and used for irrigation. The consequence is that supplies of drinking water are falling - except in the Arctic, where melting snow has boosted river flows. I still believe that the UK does not have a problem with water supplies provided that we collect and store adequate amounts. But for many parts of the world there will be big problems. As long as politicians will not face up to the fundamental problem of the ever increasing world population of human beings then we have no chance of tackling climate change or anything else.

Credit Crunch

I have just been watching the Dispatches programme on Channel 4. Will Hutton explained in layman's terms just how the financial crisis of today actually developed. It did not tell us anything that we did not know already but it did put more flesh on the skeleton and set things out chronologically. What was absolutely staggering yet again was the extent of incompetence and ignorance about what was going on. Here were these financiers - at all levels from CEO to rookie trader - gambling away on a massive scale with our money in order to make themselves absolutely grotesque amounts of money. And yet only a tiny number even suggested that the whole monstrous excess was built on piles of sand. These people, whose greed for more wealth knew no bounds believed that they were so clever that they deserved to be paid sums of money beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary people. And yet, they could not see that their collateralized debt obligations [CDOs] and bizarre financial schemes were based on valueless assets the nature of which had been lost in the swirling merry-go-round that pumped up the bubble of international debt. Orchestrated from Wall Street, at the centre of it all was the City of London, with its almost totally unregulated markets. Here the gamblers could do as they liked and the regulators not only did nothing to stop them but appeared to be totally ignorant of what was going on. How could so many so called experts just say that they did not really understand and that they thought that everything would be OK. Strings of people who were earning $1 million salaries and hardly a one ready to say "Stop!" As long as the money kept pouring into their bank accounts, the truth is that they did not care. It was quite apparent that they despised the ordinary punters on ordinary wages, who ultimately would be asked to bail them out.

But what is being done to absolutely stop it happening again and also, to crush the level of obscene salaries and bonuses? No way should people earning $35,000 per year be asked to provide the resources to let these people carry on pocketing huge payments with no responsibility for the losses. Again, I ask, what is being done? Can anyone give an answer?

Electric Cars

Sometimes I think that I am over pessimistic and that I condemn politicians far too easily. After all they are only human-beings trying to do a difficult job. But then they take another step which reveals that I may have seriously misunderestimated them - as George Bush may have said. This week, we have seen the government holding a cabinet meeting in Edinburgh - no doubt at great expense to us the tax-payers - for no other reason than to offer some soft soap to Scotland in the hope that they will continue to support Scottish Labour MPs. While enjoying, no doubt, their time up there and topping up their expense accounts, two cabinet ministers, Geoff Hoon and Lord Mandelson, went off to Knockhill race track in Fife to be photographed driving an electric Mini. The purpose of this photo opportunity was to publicise the government scheme to help the environment by giving people £5,000 towards the purchase of an electric car. Of course, with so much money involved, the government needs to set criteria that make sure that the cars purchased will be suitable for real practical use. At the moment, the total number of car models available that meet the criteria is ... err, err .............. zero. This situation will probably exist for a few years. When the required cars appear, will anybody buy them, even with the subsidy? Probably, no! Even with the subsidy, the cars will be more expensive than a conventional car, the performance will be more limited, range will be limited and re-charging will require hours and hours of waiting. If that were not enough, every few years they will need a complete new set of batteries at a cost of about £5,000. And when you become fed-up with all of this, the 2nd-hand value will be very adjacent to zero. This is a classic bit of spin. Lots of publicity and nothing to follow it up. What about the Mini they drove? The body is made in the UK but all the mechanics are made in Germany. BMW have no intention of offering this electric Mini for sale in the UK any time soon.

Electric cars may, one day, be the normal form of transport but not for a long time yet. Hybrid cars look like a better option but, even here, batteries are the problem. They are big and cumbersome and have a very limited life; this problem has to be solved before electric cars will ever be more than a gimmick. There has to be a way of getting home under all circumstances without needing hours to fill up with new electricity and the hybrid car does at least overcome this problem.

Now, what about investing our money is some real UK research into tackling the problems? It could help with our new economy based on making things again.

Casey Stoner

What is it about Casey Stoner that makes everyone want to dislike the great racer. He is good; of that there is not the slightest doubt. He can ride that Ducati like no-one can and he has been World Champion. So, what is it? He always seems friendly enough in interviews but he never seems like the man you would want to invite to your party. Perhaps, I will get over it. It may be, of course, that we just resent him beating the GOAT, Valentino Rossi. Casey was a deserving winner in the opening race in Dubai and I think we will be in for a great season of racing in Moto GP.

Relegation & Resurrection

So the Hatters draw with Chesterfield and are relegated from the Football League. It is sad. Did they deserve it? Not really. The fact was that the manager and players were practically doomed from Day One of the season. Since the previous management had contrived to send the club into administration - more than once - and had indulged in some other creative financial instruments, the Football League "fined" the club -30 points at the start of the season. Without this the Hatters would have been firmly in mid-division. What is the point of such a penalty? A club that is financially strapped for cash will struggle to survive anyway and cannot buy the most expensive players to try to overcome a deficit of 30 points. What is an appropriate penalty for a club that runs out of money? Should it be helped to survive or should it be pushed quickly down the drain? Surely, if a club can raise the money to pay its bills, it should carry on as before. If it cannot, then it ceases to exist and if it is resurrected it must start again. It may be that financial irregularity demands a severe penalty. But surely, this system of point penalties is not right?

Many years ago one of the oldest clubs in the Football League, Accrington Stanley, went bust. In 1962 they folded and disappeared completely for six years. Then a group of supporters got together to re-form the club and four years later they played their first game. It was 44 years before they fought their way back into the Football League. But, now their is another cloud hanging over the club following reports of players betting against their own team in a game in which they were playing. I hope it isn't true. The supporters deserve better. There is not much reward in supporting lowly teams that struggle to survive from year to year with limited resources. But a football club is something you are born with. If you were born an Accrington supporter you will die an Accrington supporter. Now the team is in the middle of Coca Cola Div 2 and perhaps the fans could look forward to more progress next year. I wish them well.

For the sins of your fathers, you, though guiltless, must suffer."

Do Something

Within the next thirteen months, we in the UK must have a general election. About 2,000 candidates will ask us to vote for them so that we can elect a party with enough seats to be able to form a government to run this country. Each party will produce a manifesto of wishful thinking and half-truths and will indulge in a festival of spin. If I refuse to vote for any of them on the grounds that no party gives the impression that it could run a chip shop, I will be accused of being apathetic. I am not apathetic. I am just bloody angry. I want to see some signs that there is a group of people who will tell us what they intend to do and how they will govern. There is a handful of politicians who I believe have something to offer - I would include Kenneth Clark, Vince Cable and David Davies and perhaps a few others. But not enough to form a government.

I did not set out to make this site a constant catalogue of moans against the political process but it seems to turn out that way. I have made it clear that the government of Blair/Brown is, in my view, the worst in my life time. Even going back further than that I doubt if there was any government worse. When I have the time, I will type out the catalogue of its failures. This government is the final dying entrails of Thatcherism.

I disliked Margaret Thatcher with a passionate intensity but at least she believed in something. But today, I feel that the whole of Westminster is populated with careless, second-rate politicians who are just potential violinists; people desperately learning to play the fiddle and form an orchestra, so that, like Nero, they can demonstrate their art while the city and empire collapse around them. We have an economic mess the like of which we have not seen in a century and these stupid people hit the front pages of newspapers because [a] they made up pathetic childish stories about opposition politicians and [b] they stand up demanding apologies and letters from the prime minister. Our idols have feet of clay? This lot are of clay from head to toe.

In the name of God, stop behaving like spoilt 5 year olds, get out of the play-pen and do something about the ghastly mess we are in.

What did we do to deserve them?

Water

Sometimes I feel very depressed. Technically, this is not clinical depression; it is merely a feeling of despair and inadequacy as I take note of events taking place from day to day. My depression is exacerbated by what seems an all pervading attitude to any problem that either nothing can be done or that there is only one possible solution - and that is not likely to be a pleasant experience.

Let me consider water supplies.

Mrs Thatcher - one of our great prime ministers, at least, she is if you think that wrecking the country is an indication of greatness - decided that we needed to privatise the water industry so that the efficiencies of private management would transform our water supply system to a wondrous enterprise for the 21st century. Most of the old water companies passed into foreign ownership, not, as you might have expected, to improve the quality of our Victorian systems. No, the primary reason for such foreign investment was that certain people thought that they could make a lot of money. And they did. But following recent dry summers and winters and hose pipe bans, etc., government decided that something had to be done about water leaks from the ancient mains. Losses were over 30% in many places and Thames Water alone was losing 1 billion litres every day through the apparently porous pipes. At the same time, as a result of our equally porous borders Britain, and particularly England, has had a rapidly increasing population with ever greater demands for water. There is now great pressure to do something serious to stop the leaks. Some companies have made progress and much less water is leaking away now than was the case 10 years ago. In some cases the reductions have been achieved by the simple expedience of reducing the water pressure - less water pressure means less leakage. These foreign companies are not particularly interested in whether we have adequate water supplies or not and it is cheaper and more profitable to do nothing.

Now we are being told that we have a terrible future ahead caused by global warming which will severely restrict our water supplies. In some parts of the world this is true - and will be as long as no-one makes any efforts to control population growth. In Britain, the thing that will restrict our water supplies is lack of storage. I cannot remember any really major water storage schemes in the south east - or anywhere else, for that matter - in the last 30 years. No doubt this summer we will have some great storms and many areas will be severely flooded. Think of the south west and the Severn valley as well as parts of Yorkshire. The water will subside and all the water will drain down into the rivers and, ultimately, the sea. We must address this. Every year we will have limitations in supply - in some cases quite severe - because we have had a bit of dry weather and we have inadequate storage.

England has a total surface area of 130,410 sq km and if we assume an average rainfall of 50 cm, then the total rainfall is some 65 billion cubic metres per year. Of this about 5 billion cubic metres is used by private citizens and industry [including nearly 20% loss]; ie about 7.6%. My estimate of rainfall was low, even in a globally warmed England. High ground and parts of west facing land have much more than 50cm in rainfall. I have ignored Wales and Scotland which are both wetter than England. So, the reality is that we use probably less than 5% of the rain that falls on England. We need to collect more of it and arrange an effective distribution system to move water from wet regions to dry ones - primarily the SE. This could be achieved by repairing and extending the existing canal system. It is nonsense to suggest that we have too little water. Down here in Crawley, the water supply system is much as it was 30 years ago and population has almost doubled. Building more storage reservoirs would also help wild life. It is suggested that increasing water supplies increases the need for treatment. In practice it will not. The primary purpose of my suggestion is to guarantee supplies. If population and standard of living rise then more water will be required anyway. It should be an essential of any new building development - domestic or industrial - that systems are included to better utilise water - particularly by making use of surface water which currently goes straight to drain. Britain's water consumption per head is about average for Europe but much less than, for example, Spain and [surprisingly] Ireland.

Of course, all of this would be much easier if all the water companies were in public ownership. But that is obviously a ludicrous idea.

Good Luck To The Hatters

Football is a funny old game as many a pundit has told us over the years but this last week-end showed us at least two extreme meanings of funny. Most of the time football exists only in a private fantasy land where nothing makes sense. For years now it has seemed that an essential requirement for any club keen to climb the Premier League and make it on the international stage has been having an exceedingly rich owner with so much money he could not find enough ways of spending his wealth or one who was prepared to spend much of his lesser fortune to be part of the fantasy land. Then there is Newcastle United. Newcastle United is a basket case, that much is clear. In the last twelve years they have changed owners, gone through a succession of managers who have either resigned in desperation or have been sacked. They had Dalglish, then Gullit and then Sir Bobby Robson. He had nearly 5 years in charge before he had a bad start to a season [2004] and he was sacked. By then the club was being managed by executives and there was much friction between manager, players and owners. Robson complained about over-paid young players, selected by others, who were paid buckets of money before they ever proved their value. Then it was Graeme Souness but he was no good and went following bad results and players fighting on the pitch. Then Sam Allardyce was brought in. But he didn't suit either, even though he had got the best results since Keegan and Bobby Robson. So he was sacked and then we had Keegan Pt 3. But he had to work with a Director of Football, Dennis Wise, who stayed in London but was in charge of buying players. And there were other directors to hinder Kevin Keegan.. So he resigned and is now suing the club. So they brought in Kinnear. He is in hospital for heart surgery - or possibly brain surgery - was he mad to come here and stay? Now its The Messiah, Shearer, to the end of the season at £100,000 per game and the club is deep in the relegation zone. It is amazing that anyone can consider this madhouse as anything other than that. They like their football on Tyneside but I think that they need to go over en-mass to support any club other than Newcastle United.

Then there is Luton Town, The Hatters, the club supported by Eric Morecombe, who yesterday won the Johnson Paint Trophy for clubs of Championship Div I and Div II. Luton, residing 11 points adrift at the bottom of Div II, managed to overcome Scunthorpe who are in 6th place in Div I and looking for promotion. Many commentators are saying that this was probably the best game of football yet seen at the new Wembley Stadium and a great advert for all football. Luton are struggling in their division not because they are particularly bad at playing football. No, it is because they were penalised 30 points at the beginning of the season for going into administration and getting into some shady dealing with transfers. None of this has anything to do with the present owners and management, who, with staggering understanding of reality quite alien to professional football, have cut the wage bill from £5m to £1.5m; got rid of over-paid under-performing players and brought in a lot of young talent - players who are prepared to work for less money to make their careers. The club spirit is good and 35,000 supporters went from Luton to Wembley - not far, I grant you - in order to support the club and boost the coffers. So now they have more money and the Paint Pot trophy. The manager says that they need to win six of the last seven league games if they are to avoid demotion from the football league. A tall order but I wish them the best of luck. They sound like a club that deserves some luck

If I Am Not Very Much Mistaken

I am not one of the greatest of enthusiasts for F1 GP car racing. I am much more a lover of bikes. But the new F1 season looks like it could be one of the most interesting for several years. As I write the start of Race 2 the Malaysian GP is only a few hours away and I am sure that everyone in the UK will want Jenson Button to make it race win No. 2. The win in Australia was real Roy of the Rovers stuff and it is good to see Jenson Button finally able to show his abilities in a good car. After all that has happened, we have to have sympathy with Honda who have spent about $1 billion on F1 with little to show for it. They have even provided the first $100 million for this season and got no credit as Braun became a new team with a Mercedes engine.

I have just been watching an on-line video of Murray Walker who has been the man in F1 for....... well, almost for ever really. His schoolboy enthusiasm has never diminished and he is always a gentleman. That is something to say in this day and age. Listening to him chatting it seems incredible that he is in his 86th year. Unlike most of us the tone of his voice has hardly changed over the years and he certainly does not sound like an old man. Long may he be with us.

And Good Luck to Jenson in Malaya.

Protesting Is Not What It Was

One thing that struck me in the days before and during the G20 summit was the poor quality of the protesters - not as human-beings but as knowledgeable idealists. The TV companies tried talking to various groups on the streets but most seemed very vague about the reasons for their protests. They gave the impression inevitably that they were from Rent-a-Mob. There were some protesting about closing post offices, some unhappy about climate change, some jealous of anybody with money, some were simple anarchists and so on. They had a jamboree outside of the Bank of England and they smashed the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland but did they get any message across to anybody? Few seemed to have got near the ExCel Centre and by Thursday many had gone home. It was very unimpressive.

Were we as bad as this in the sixties? I think not. We were idealists, possibly misguided but we did have clear objectives when we demonstrated. The only time I remember trouble with the police was when we mounted a protest outside the Locarno Ballroom in Bradford at a time when the management of that establishment stuck up a sign on the doors that said simply "No Blacks" It seems unimaginable now but we did get their policy changed very quickly.

Pictures from an Exhibition Centre

So G20 in London has come and gone and for the next week or so will appear as a great triumph for Gordon Brown. But what has been achieved? The communique, as expected, tells us that everyone will work together in many ways to sort out the problems of the World. Well, we knew that anyway. No one was going to refuse to help in sorting out problems that affect us all, rich and poor. In spite of President Sarkozy's histrionics, no one was going to walk out without looking an idiot. But is there any substance to it. On the whole, I think that the world's leaders have achieved more than I anticipated, provided that they now get on with the various tasks that they have set themselves. Otherwise. there will have been no point in coming to the UK, spending £50 million of our money for the school photograph and numerous snapshots of "Me with President Obama". Putting the system right in the short term is one thing but will they really eliminate the tax haven bolt holes for hedge funds, over-paid financiers and crooks?

But why was it decided to hold this conference in the Excel Centre? A previously anonymous conference centre with fewer attractions than a wet February in Great Yarmouth, it is a windswept monstrosity on the north bank of the Thames, down the East India Dock Road, east of Poplar, in Canning Town. It has the architectural sophistication of an abandoned communist supermarket with surroundings designed primarily, it appears, to use up a surplus of concrete and to collect litter from the whole of East London. From a security point of view, it has advantages, of course, in that the area is usually empty of all life forms. In addition, in these times of collapsing international trade, there is a first rate reminder of the effects of trade disappearing completely in the shape of rows of stationary, unused, dockside cranes. There is also an excellent view of The Dome in Greenwich - another tribute to government mismanagement. Best of all, alongside the ExCell Centre, there are berths on the dockside for the yachts of any visiting billionaire -oligarchs. Hmmm! Perhaps the venue has a lot going for it after all, when so obviously money, gambling, greed and excess have become more important than artistic merit, sophistication and morals.

We will see.