I recently received two invitations for celebratory events. The first marks the “40th Anniversary of the Great Al-Fatch Revolution” which brought Col. Gaddafi to power. The second rejoices in the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and H E Ambassador Fu Ying and Professor Hao Shiyuan request the pleasure of my company. Sadly, I have to be in Cornwall on both dates, but I am touched that a mere Peer with no special connections to either country should be on their lists.
What caught my imagination, however, were the venues for these revolutionary revels: the Libyan People’s Bureau will be living it up in the ballroom of the Dorchester Hotel while the Chinese “performances” will take place in the Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel, just a few doors along Park Lane.
Who says capitalism is dead?
There is something striking that in the global down turn it is the democratic west that is being bankrolled, in terms of purchases of debt guilts, by the sovereign wealth funds of less democratic regimes.
Lord Tyler: “Sadly, I have to be in Cornwall on both dates, but I am touched that a mere Peer with no special connections to either country should be on their lists.”
A mere peer would use a lower case ‘p’ to describe himself. Use of the upper case makes you sound like an aristocratic Cornwallis?
Diplomacy? How to make new friends and keep the ones you have. Lets not mix our P’s and and any Questions?
The Chinese will weather the storm largely due to their effective central planning. If something such like this could be affected in Britain, whilst maintaining personal freedom and within an entirely democratic framework, we might have done a bit better ourselves. Wasn’t Labour going for a ‘five year plan’ in 1983?
I know they had some bad ideas then (getting rid of the House of Lords) but I wouldn’t have so much minded a planned economy and withdrawal from the EU.