From Kafka to Ritz

Moscow

nightmare.

It now costs £500 to £1,000 a room a night. I stayed in the Russia Hotel Moscow two years ago and I remember it with a shudder of horror.

It was demolished the week after I left and a new swish Ritz has emerged from the rubble. Mine was a Kafkaesque experience. My room was number 4288.  From the reception it was a walk of about half a mile, through dozens of doors that would open only when shoulder charged. The furniture was in a state of imminent collapse. The staff was the most sullen and snarlingly uncooperative I have ever encountered. They were multilingual but with limited vocabulary. Their responses to all questions was either, ‘No ‘or ‘Impossible.’ The food did not come up the standard of wartime WRVS run British Restaurants. The Hotel had one great advantage with unparalleled superb views over Red Square, St Basil’s cathedral and the Kremlin.

It got worse because I had a problem with a wrongly dated visa. The British Embassy advised me not to argue or try to negotiate a new date. They said if you go to the airport tomorrow, they will send you back to Moscow where you will find close to impossible to find anywhere to stay because your visa will be out of date, and, anyway, it will cost an arm and a leg. Their advice was, ' Get a plane today out of Russia to anywhere. Happily the Russian BA representative was the acceptable face of Russia and I was grateful to escape a day early but much relieved.

The visit was a very disturbing one. It was the Health Committee of the Council of Europe looking at the new scourge of drugs and Aids that’s hit the Russian Federation since the Iron Curtain came down. It included a visit to vast hospital crammed with children born with Aids.

The Federation is at last coming out of denial and admitting the vast scale of their drugs and aids crisis.

                      

Gordon the new broom

There was a palpable air of relief and excitement at tonight’s first meeting of the parliamentary labour party addressed by Prime Minister Brown.

His speech was pedestrian and repetitive but the message is one the battered Labour MPs and Peers wanted to hear. After 15 years leading the polls, it’s morale sapping to be behind the Tories. He emphasised the winability of the next General Election is we strengthen our organisation and convince voters that we represents their aspirations and understand their concerns.

There were a range of questions. As the meeting is generally confidential I can tell you only about my own. Another Welsh member spoke disparagingly about the Red-Green Alliance in Wales. I spoke in favour and said that the AMs should make the decision and we should support them. The second part of question was a request to re-think the mission to Helmand. It is a three year campaign that has achieved nothing in reconstruction or poppy eradication but has cost the UK £millions and seen 57 brave soldiers die in vain in a mission impossible.

To his great credit Gordon did not try to slap me down as Tony Blair would have done. He said that we must discuss the war in Helmand and the decision on the Red-Green coalition in Wales.

What a breath of fresh air. Things can only get better.

Walls of prejudice

This morning I welcomed a group of students from Chicago.

As always they were bright questioning fine ambassadors for their country. The questions were on the Bush/ Blair Alliance and our laws on disability.

It was pleasure to congratulate America on leading the world with their Americans with Disability law that has broken down the walls of prejudice.

We have followed. The progressive laws and the miracle of hi tech has liberated people with disabilities into a full world of achievements. Disability is no barriers to roaming the broad praise of knowledge and social interaction on the web. There has never been a better time to be disabled.