Yesterday was a day with most of my in-laws in the East Midlands where my sister-in-law lives. She and her family have been living in Belgium for the last couple of years so this felt like a return to the way things were before. After a lunch we all went off for a walk, three couples and three children. Apparently, none of these children like country walks and I suggested that this might be because, whereas the outdoors spelled freedom when I was a child, now it represents more adult supervision. But I was told that the kids don't like walks because they can't see the point. I guess they might be more interested if the walk wasn't what to them is a well-worn local circuit.

When we returned indoors we all played 'The Game of Life' which is entertaining but has some mean rules so that you can punish another player of your choice if you land on the right squares.

Returned home happy but tired after lots of conversing.

=======================================================

I've heard from one of my work contacts and MAY have some work sometime after next weekend - but I'm not counting my chickens. I've also been elected on to a committee but while it should be interesting, I'll need to keep a lot of what goes on there under my hat rather than posting away about it.

========================================================

In the car, yesterday, we were listening to a profile about Gordon Brown. I think I would like to see him as the next Prime Minister but I go along with the 'no coronation' cry, nevertheless, as I think a debate about the next ministry would be a good thing. Gordon Brown just doesn't seem very good at 'spilling the beans' so I want to know more about the foreign policy he's going to conduct in our names and what precisely he means about devolving power away from the centre. Does that mean less power for him as prime minister? That seems unlikely.

Last Sunday's Sunday Times had an article by Simon Jenkins which gave him a roasting for mismanaging PFIs. Later last week there was news that the HM Revenue and Customs has rebated £8 billion to VAT frauds. Gordon will really have to come up with some ideas for making Government smarter. Maybe they should run a competition for a member of the public to come up with the best solution to 'carousel' VAT fraud; take a few full page ads in the press explaining what the problem is and offering a million pounds to the person who offers the best solution to combatting it.

I learned from yesterday's radio profile of Gordon Brown that Irwin Stelzer (who also writes in the Sunday Times) is a friend. This week Stelzer's column is sober but not yet downright gloomy. 'Gloomy' probably isn't in the brief of any economic commentators who write for News Corporation newspapers. Selzer doesn't seem to have anything to say about the possibility that interest rates in the US will need to keep rising just so that foreigners will want to carry on buying US Treasury bonds.

The same radio programme (I was listening carefully) also had a good quote from Neil Kinnock. He prophesied that Gordon Brown's name should come to be linked with the justice, 'Justice Brown' like 'Capability Brown'; sounds like a character from Restoration Comedy. But justice can be seen in more one way. Some leaders are fairer than others but justice is intimately bound up with power; wilely rulers understand that more justice creates more support, more obedience but very few of them really believe that it's an end in itself.

========================================================

By rights the government should be in deeper trouble than it is yet over the situation in Afghanistan. Just as the Vietnam war was altered by being the first to receive daily television coverage the situation in Afghanistan seems to be being shaped by combattants e-mailing home. Generally, the message seems to be that the situation isn't being managed as well as it should be.

Generally speaking the Defence Secretary seems to keep a low profile although he has admitted that the government weren't expecting the situation to become so difficult. As a result the generals seem to be getting unprecedented coverage. On Thursday the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, was being interviewed by John Humphries and handled the questioning very well. But he must have come pretty close to telling John Humphries that the line the questioning was taking was political and he ought to be asking a politician.

Lord Garden, defence spokesman for the Liberal democrats, and James Arbuthnot (chair of the Commons Defence Committee)for the Conservatives both benefit from a higher profile while the members of the government keep their heads down.