PEACE AND QUIET - BUT STILL NO SLEEP

An early night, after two pints and a meal of vegetable scraps. Great stuff. Went to bed with a book during Jonathan Ross show. Why is he not getting the big names? Paul McCartney was on Steve Wright earlier in the week. You would have thought he would be on the Ross show. Read a book instead and then started thinking about the world, in particular the current role of Russia under Putin. The New Statesman has a wonderful piece by Bridget Kendall on Putin, and there's a list of the journalists killed during the past few years. Yet we are still cosying up to this man. A very dangerous move. I think that the 9/11 tragedy along with the Afghanistan and Iraq tragedies have allowed the world's leaders to believe they're doing the right thing but in reality they have taken their eyes off the global ball. Am I alone in believing the world is now a far more dangerous place than ever it was during the Cold War? A friend of mine tried to go into the security business in Russia a few years ago after selling another unrelated business. He was invited to a meeting in a cellar club. They all sat down at a large round table. "Guns on table," barked their host. My friend took a long time, culminating in a rather personal search, convincing them that he did not travel the world doing business with a gun in each pocket.