Here I am, at Gatwick Airport en route to the 19th Economic Forum in Krynica (southern Poland).

This is a sort of ‘economic Davos of central/eastern Europe’, a major and invariably well attended gathering. The main website is here.

My own modest role in and amongst so many Good and Great is to talk at an NGO(!) panel discussion about John O’Sullivan’s terrific book The President, The Pope and the Prime Minister (President Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher), the three leaders who together changed the world after narrowly surviving assassination attempts.

John conveys well the alarming state the world had got into in the 1970s, with uncertainty of US leadership, collectivist etatist economics and rising terrorism and communist expansionism all coming together in a horrible ‘malaise’ of pessimism.

Sounds just a bit familiar, alas?

This site may not get updated as often as usual while I am on manoeuvres, so be patient.

If you get bored, have a go at Skype if you have not signed up yet. I recently decided to join at last, bought a cheap UBS telephone from Amazon to plug into my PC, found my luxuriously travelling friend Varun Sharma was on-line, and pressed Call to see what would happen. 

Varun replied clear as a bell from charming New Zealand. Cor.

Any readers wanting a free natter as and when I return to UK? Try cgcskype1.