There's been no time for posting for over a fortnight; I've run into two deadlines and as well as having family commitments, there's been lots to do in the garden and to the outside of the house. There's still a lot to do but a start has been made.

The good effect of the G20 summit seems to have lasted, the stock markets haven't taken fright again (yet) and there are hopeful signs (five consecutive months of people's interest in house-buying increasing). Of course, the unwelcome consequences of the demonstrations are also rumbling on with the mobile phone film 'footage' of the police attacking the demonstrators and the public.

It's becoming clear that (relatively) new technology has more of a effect in undermining established powere structures than physical demonstrations. It's as if the establishment has become hell-bent on self-destruction by indiscretion - indiscrete e-mails, indiscrete expenses claims and indiscreet behaviour in front of the camera. The individual are having devastating effects but in reality the scope of the damage is much greater than those - more like a slow motion revolution. Powerful institutions and corporations are losing their 'cloaking' ability. It's a if great stone buildings have become steel and glass all of a sudden so that the public are able to look inside and see what's going on exactly.

On the whole this seems like a good thing. It could be destructive in a wasteful sense but on balance it looks as if it's going to empower ordinary outsiders. Authority's response is likely to incline to clamping down on internet freedom and freedom of information. In the immediate future the most potent reaction will probably relate to the importance of big corporations, public and private, as employers of thousands. One manifestation of their fight back seems to be rigid discipline within the ranks and harsh measures for any who step out of line. It'll be interesting to see if the institutions turn on one another or whether they close ranks.

Another interesting question hangs over the Prime Minister's attitude towards these institutions. He's seemed like someone who never questioned the way these big institutions were run.

The future of the big corporations is clouded because some of the social forces at work are having a slightly different effect. Damien McBride, for example, has been exposed by e-mails trickling through to where they were never meant to go. But he couldn't be said to be engaged in typical corporate behaviour and nor does his political adviser role fit into any of the normal corporate castes. It looks as if some of the staff at No. 10 have been allowed until now to behave as if they worked for some sort of weird PR outfit, and it seems clear that the Prime Minister had to take some responsibility for that - as he now has.

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I've been struggling to find anything good to read lately, especially in the fiction department. I started Elmore Leonard's 'Up in Honey's Room' but although the dialogue was superb, i couldn't be bothered to wait to find out what happens. Instead I've fallen back on John Masters's 'The Deceivers', one of his Savage sequence of Indian historical novels. This one's set in the 1820s and has some interesting ideas about setting aside due process by going 'under cover' in order for a deeper justice to prevail.

I've also been reading 'Nudge' by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. This has a great idea - nudging people to use freedom to behave wisely - but nearly all the examples are American ones. I couldn't be bothered to transpose them into a UK context, so that's going back to the library unfinished, too.

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Finally, it was my birthday on Tuesday. We went to the theatre at Chichester to see 'Hay Fever'. Very enjoyable.