Well that was an interesting night at the opera - I've never been to the ROH before and it certainly is impressive. £200M worth of impressive I'm not sure, but definitely quite something. The production, Madame Butterfly however was fantastic. Pretty good seats for £40 as well - pretty much the best available for the money.

Went to Mac's for dinner Saturday and it is totally safe to say we drank too much. Bottle count : Champagne x 1, Proseco x 2, red wine x 7 and there were only 4 of us. We definitely set the world to rights. Hari has just returned from Peru and apparently even there they are reading all about the Hutton Enquiry and seem to be better informed about it than we are.

We wondered about this a while and then pretty much reached the same conclusion. Basically poeple who don't live in the UK assume that the enquiry is in some genuine way independent and it's report will accurately identify cuplrits, expose puppet masters and make genuine reccomendations to avoid a repeat of this in the future. Those of us who live here think the following will happen:-

1) The BBC & Gilligan will get a minor bollocking. They will promise to do better. Gilligan will be sacrificed on the alter of charter renewal.

2) The Government will be largely cleared of deliberately misleading the public. There will be some vague talk about lack of transparency and poor communications. A couple of insignificant civil servants will fall on their swords. Nothing will change.

3) That's it.

It's basically a whitewash to get Tony off the hook while allowing the BBC's enemies a field day of cheap shots and that's why outside of the media itself no one cares. Murdoch and Black can smell the opportunity to make some money by attacking those with genuine standards and a genuine committment to public service. They are circling in to kill off the BBC, nauseatingly attempting to disguise their naked greed with some kind of 'public good' defence. Everyone knows it, no-one thinks it can be changed, so we just don't care.

If it wasn't so disgusting it'd be laughable.

Soundtrack for the day Spit by Kittie. Suits my mood.