It's difficutl to interpret David Cameron's apology. My first reaction was to be pleased; the Conservative Party have been pretty dreadful in opposition and some recognition of that is a good fresh start. Who knows, they may apologise for failing to oppose the invasion of Iraq next, or for failing to make more of a fuss about extraordinary rendition.

The media's predictable conclusion about the apology was that it was designed to embarrass Gordon Brown. The commentators couldn't say this outright because they don't know it to be true - but the implication was pretty clear. Curiously, the commentators seem to have concluded that the Prime Minister will be embarrassed, but David Cameron doesn't seem to be running any risk of being accused of opportunism for his apology.

Benjamin Disraeli is quoted as saying that those in public life shoud 'never complain, never explain'. I thought this was a helpful principle for school life when I first heard it. In a way, David Cameron has flouted that principle but Gordon Brown has continued to abide by it. I'm not sure why Disraeli worked with his 'never explain' rule but one reason might have been that, in the tumult of events, you can never truly explain; likewise, it's difficult to know what an apology truly means. Full scale admissions of culpability - 'resigning matters' in politics - are one thing but more generalised apologies for 'messing up' don't necessarily help. For example, if a political party makes mistakes (as it assuredly will), presumably a primary cause of these arises from their desire to please the voters.

This leads on to interesting ground as far as the Conservative Party's first decade in opposition is concerned. Because the New Labout project ahd stolen the Conservatives clothes and were making themselves out to be the natural party of businessmen, the Conservative Party were in quandary - if they had stayed to true to their constitutional role, they would have questioned the wisdom of Labour's fiscal, financial and spending policies more and in so doing might have moved to the left of the government - sometimes. This might have seemed absurd but the alternative certainly didn't work out as a power gambit.

The real problem with apologies is that they don't really help to get to the bottom of the matter. The Conservatives can apologise for not being a very effective opposition and everyone can hope that they might try to do better. But, if the government were to apologise, they would need to tell us precisely which policies were the wrong ones. If they can't tell exactly what went wrong, the apology is certain to have one result; it'll set us all facing in another wrong direction. For instance, the government could apologise for bribing us with so much of our own money to keep us sweet after the invasion of Iraq but in fact now wouldn't be the best time to reverse that policy.

So David Cameron's apology looks fine as far as the Opposition's THINKING goes but I'm not at all sure that it's an example for the Prime Minister to follow. Now isn't the best time to start trumpeting the virtues of thrift. Alistair Dalring and Mervyn King would probably say that it would have been a good idea earlier in the decade but not for just now.

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Thrift is going to come up in the context of the G20 preparations, too. The US wants Europeans to spend more money to try to restart the global economy. the problem with that is that some countries can't afford to pump more money into their economies because investors are becoming leary of buying thie sovereign debt. Italy, Ireland, Greece and Austria seem to be in this bracket already. The UK Treasury is presumably concerned that it might end up in this unenviable position, too, even though we're outside the Euro zone. This problem with governments not being able to persuade anyone to buy their paper looks as if it has the potential to become the tragic flaw that causes the plans to combat depression unravelling. The Euro zone Europeans who still have credit need to agree to more money for the IMF to help East Europeans and countries like Greece.

In fact, they need to stand up for Barack Obama because the Americans really seem to be thrown off balance by what's happened to them and ready to protect themselves from East Asian imports.

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I was listening to Desmond Swayne on Broadcasting House this morning and he seemed to be suggesting that we should have some kind of national event to celebrate the homecoming from Iraq. He seems to have interpreted the outcry about the abusive placards displayed at the Luton march of the Royal Anglian Regiment as some kind of vindication of the invasion.

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No walk this week but lots of digging to prepare some rough ground for an extensio to the amount of home-grown vegetable growing this summer - chiefly potatoes, runner beans and tomatoes but also sprouts for next winter. I've also had a trip to the dentist to have a tooth out. This was last Wednesday but I still feel sore.

I've read one good book - Oleg Steinhauer's 'the Vienna Assignment' - about a trustworthy East European secret agent trying to get back into the good graces of his masters in an unnamed eastern bloc country. It's set in 1967. It's like (and likened to) Alan Furst's books but the hero is less of a 'camera'and more interesting from a moral perspective.