On Monday, we sallied forth into the cut and thrust of the Westminster Summer Party circuit. Our destination - the Globalisation Institute, whch held its summer reception in a rather grand London house. As Alex Singleton, Director General of GI wrote on the widely read and influential Globalisation Institute Blog:

"Last night we hosted a summer drinks party along with the Shadow DFID Team at the former home of Prime Minister Gladstone, now the Foreign Press Association in London. Guests included friends and supporters of the Institute, representatives from organisations like Oxfam, CAFOD and Christian Aid, the Prime Minister’s Office, journalists like the FT’s World Trade Editor Alan Beattie, Danny Krueger of the Daily Telegraph, and so on. Andrew Mitchell MP (Shadow International Development Secretary) gave an informative and excellent speech putting the case for a Pan-African Trading Area. The speech is available here."

"The Globalisation Institute is a think tank founded in 2005 with the aim of examining how globalisation can be harnessed to work for the world's poorest.

We are philosophically ‘liberal’, regarding the Manchester School anti-Corn Law campaigners like Richard Cobden and John Bright as our key intellectual influences. We were officially launched at a reception at Soho House in June 2005 with speeches by Bill Emmott, Editor of the Economist, and Alan Beattie, World Trade Editor of the Financial Times.

We believe that globalisation is a force for good. Only by integrating the poorest into the world economy can we put an end to the poverty that still blights much of world today."

We at MBC have been fortunate to have played a role in the identification and development of policy on the economically liberal wing of UK politics, for almost two decades. It is this involvement that brings a clarity and intellectual depth to our business dealings, that many of our competitors in consultancy can sometimes lack.

Of course it shouldn't need to be said, but neverthess: the Globalisation Institute is an independent charity free from political and business allegiance

copyright Globalisation Institute 2006.

We at MBC have been very privileged to be both witness and participant in the broad policy debate on the centre and economically liberal right of British politics for almost twenty years now. From the inception of the Social Market Foundation in 1989 and the individual membership of Damian Merciar, through to his contribution in a non party aligned capacity, to both the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs - the leading intellectual forums of their kind in Europe, we have participated in the debate on the future of our regulated and former monopoly State industries.

We have witnessed and worked in these industries in their privatised and liberalised form, and witnessed the benefits derived from this liberalisation. We have argued for greater accountability of funding for Government sponsorship of "safe" sectors, such as aviation and sponsored medical research. We have helped promote and articulate the case for free trade in Damian's personal involvement in the new and influential think tank, the Globalisation Institute.

We have argued the case for decreasing regulation as the benefits of competition develop a sector's market - most obviously witnessed in the mobile telecoms arena, an area that didn't exist twenty years ago, and one that flourished on the back of a liberalised fixed telecoms market. Who would have thought that not too long ago the Post Office was responsible for telephony in the UK?

Whilst it may be the new hegemony, its safety is not guaranteed. The rise of micro-management, the interventionist instincts of the present Government and particularly the indication that a future Government under Gordon Brown would make things worse - all these are cause for concern.

There is a simple clarity to non-interventionist commercial policy; our business benefits both immediately and in the longer term. The strictures of price transparency and free competition open our activities to the vagaries of customer loyalty, and the requirement to foster this loyalty. Whilst it is very stimulating to discuss Hayekian principles of Economic Liberalism, and the canon of Liberal Greats stretching from John Stuart Mill to Buchanan, it is more profound to contemplate them in practise, amidst the greater prosperity of personal choice.

To say that Endemol's baby, "Big Brother" is a run away success would be an understatement. It is a phantasmagoria of horrors - psychological bullying; cloying desperate peer approval; titillation and possibly most of all - vicariousness. There but for the grace of God go I...

And yet, of course, this is precisely its obsessiveness: no matter how high our IQ's, we are gripped - at least for the highlights show. We twist around so that we can hear one housemate bitch and snipe about another. We find ourselves bizarrely concerned about how privacy can be maintained for bathroom functions ('are they supposed to hide behind that screen?!')

Of course, all this is a far cry away from George Orwell's quasi apocalyptic vision, as expressed with slightly more eloquence in "1984". The origin of the phrase foresaw the constant surveillance that has inveigled its way into our life - installed, we are to believe for our own good. Our own protection. Seriously oblivious to the fact that we have now subconsciously modified the way we present ourselves.

This is not a mistake - this is not an exaggeration: we can see the motorist scan the road ahead as he approaches the lights...what will happen if I run them? Is there a CCTV to capture me? The moral of the story here is not the avoidance of surveillance, but the ignorance of the fact that you’re likely to run into the other guy coming the opposite way, with precisely the same intent...

This fantastic image was shot by Gautier Deblonde, whilst on board one of the Cape Farewell Arctic voyages. These aim to sail into the Arctic on The Noorderlicht, through routes that are now navigable, when once in the not too distant past, they were icebound (see gautierdeblonde.com and capefarewell.com).

A close friend said to me that this looks like Heaven, whereas in actual fact it may be closer to its environmental opposite...

Whilst not quite the consensus view yet, many climate scientists now say that we are on the cusp of the "Tipping Point" - the position where the acceleration and impact of climate change through Greenhouse Gas Emissions becomes irreversible. This in itself is an almost inconceivable position: how can the simple way we live, day in day out, affect all our future generations? Unfortunately I'm not a good enough philosopher to present the rationale behind the mental blindspot that we almost all suffer from, but please believe me, it's there... A clearer and more readily understandable example of this blindspot is illustrated by air travel. I assure you that since my first overhearing of this visionless psychological hole, I have tried to apply it every time I flown. The concept is simple: next time you are on a plane, try - I mean really try - to comprehend where you are.

Just as we were saying, before our server connnection rudely interupted, today's multimedia is definitely a mixed blessing. Though of course it is simply the way of the world - at 2:00 am we're not so sure!
 
The flip side to this of course, is that thankfully the days where simply by being able to write meant that you occupied an elite, towering over essentially indentured labour - are long gone. Try explaining this to a typical modern 13 year old; if you don't have your own blog on MySpace, then you're nobody...
 
It is estimated that though the readership is still limited, the writers and readers of modern day Court Reports (where the Courts in question are those of mass communication and big business) are influential beyond their numbers. Again, one could say that we have a vested interest in this being the case.

Though in usage before he made it more powerfully famous, it was Douglas Hurd whose parting diplomatic mantra was to seek to "punch above your weight". The web makes us all Heavyweights.