Went to a lecture by the head of Vigin Galactic a couple of weeks ago. He was energetic and the 90 minutes seemed too short for the interesting things he had to say.

Virgin was entering space in a cost-effective, commercial way. The technology was impressive, but this was matched by the focused, disciplined commercial approach being taken.

A collection of rich people had put up $200,000 each to book tickets on the space plane. The plane will be carried to 50,000 feet by a mother-plane and then released. Its rocket motor will then fire, carrying it into space.

In the end, however, I felt I had been taken in by the Vigin mythos. Some questions were asked at the end which deflated the project somewhat: how long will you be in space? 15 minutes. Which parts of the Earth will you see? Nothing but New Mexico and the central southern US. The plane can't reach orbit and it can't go anywhere useful. It will briefly escape the Earth's atmosphere, but not its gravity.

The guy hailed the plane's "shuttlecock" re-entry mechanism as a work of genius, but in fact the plane is not going all that fast on re-entry (it hasn't been in orbit, so it's not got much speed to lose) and avoiding burn-up is not much of a challenge.

All the same, getting into space on a relative shoestring will still be some achievement, and if they can make a profit, they will be able to move onto more exciting things.

I went to a premiere in Leicester Square of The Lovely Bones, back in November. Prince Charles attended. The Wurlitzer organ played the National Anthem. There was a speech by Stephen Fry at the beginning, in which he quipped about how it was about high finance and called "The Lovely Bonus".

Now the film is coming out in Cinemas - why have they been sitting on a profitable asset for three months?

Irish holiday

A holiday opposite Hungry Hill, in Ireland's Beara peninsula. A warm, wet place in late July- the summer sun and the moisture-laden winds from the Atlantic making for an alternation between grey downpour and barbecue weather. The landscape is similar to Scotland's, but when the sun comes out there is more heat.

The view is of the sheltered waters of Adrigole bay - a great place for beginner's sailing and kayaking and very beautiful also. To the left, out of the picture, is one of the open Atlantic. No more land between here and America. The lighthouse at the end of the Sheep's Head peninsula winking into the night is a signal that the sea is not to be taken lightly.

I don't know why Hungry Hill has that name. My Irish companions thought it might refer to a potential lack of agricultural fertility. It also crossed my mind that the name might have had something to do with the famine, but the famine affected much of Ireland, not just that hill or that area. By that logic, the should be hundreds of Hungry Hills and hungry valleys and plains too.

Ireland - a transitory golden age?

Ireland: So backward so recently; so modern so suddenly. My father visited in the late 1950's and the main form of transport in the part of rural Tipperary he visited was still horse and cart. I remember going there in 1990 and in a grand Georgian House close to the centre of Dublin, which had been subdivided into six flats, all had to share a single payphone in the hall. Dublin airport was full of children, testament to a high birth rate and not much to do. Ten years later the country was as rich as the UK, and is now (2008) by many measures richer. It is worrying to think that it is in a golden transition between backwardness and over-developed decadence, combining the best of the old ways - friendliness, courtesy, respect for society, with a modern economic dynamism. Someday, goes this strand of thought, the bad side of the modern world will intrude: the "me" culture, lots of divorce, contempt for society, drugs, gangs and a large angry underclass. Who will flip Ireland's burgers when the current generation is no longer grateful just for having a job? Hopefully this is too pessimistic and the country will find a way keep the best of its past while continuing to have a modern and prosperous economy.

Ten stupid things done by George W. Bush

1. Acting on the assumption that it would easy to impose democracy in Iraq;
2. Ignoring the UN and starting a war without its authorization of the use of force;
3. Scoffing at Kyoto;
4. Failing to make any serious alternative effort to tackle climate change;
5. Annoying the Russians by planning a missile defence shield which has no hope of working;
6. Annoying the Chinese by failing to negotiate on demilitarizing space;
7. Failing to make any effort to promote Arab-Israeli peace;
8. Setting up the Guantanamo Bay prison;
9. Watering down the US constitution by politicizing the appointment of prosecutors; and
10. Mismanaging the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

Options for minizing the mess in Iraq

What of the future? We are where we are and bemoaning Dubya's mistakes isn't going to fix anything. The first thing to realize is that (unless the US is prepared to flood Iraq with troops and stay there for many years) there will be no happy ending, only damage limitation. Democracy will fail in Iraq in the short term. There will be a civil war. US prestige will take a hit and Al-Qaeda and Iran will claim a victory. None of that can be avoided. What can be salvaged?

Kurdistan for one. The US should seriously consider sponsoring an independent Kurdish state. The basics of Kurdistan are that the Kurds are the majority of the population in the area where Iraq, Iran and Turkey meet. The population of this area is estimated at 27-37 million. Turkey, Iran and former governments in Iraq do not agree on much, but one thing that united them and continues to unite Iran and Turkey is the desire to prevent Kurdish independence. Iran and Turkey fear an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq because they believe (with some justification) that the Kurdish parts of Iran and Turkey would wish to secede and join it.

In recent years the Kurds have been involved in bitter guerrilla wars with the Turkish and Iraqi governments in bids for more autonomy. If the Iraqi Kurds had ever succeeded in setting up a stable independent state and definitively throwing off rule from Baghdad, they would have had to fear invasion from Turkey. At the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi Kurds staged another uprising against a weakened Saddam Hussein. The dictator eventually managed to crush the revolt and sent millions of Kurds fleeing towards the Turkish border. The Turkish government, which was waging its own war against the Turkish Kurds, refused to admit them, and even launched raids into Iraqi Kurdish territory to try to catch bands of Turkish Kurdish guerrillas who had fled into Iraq. The West eventually succeeded in providing some succour to the Iraqi Kurds by enforcing a no-fly zone that prevented Saddam Hussein from using helicopter gunships, by dropping relief supplies and, eventually, by providing a peacekeeping force for Kurdish Iraq.

If the US proclaimed support for an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, and stationed US troops in the area to defend it from outside enemies, the Iraqi Kurds would be genuinely grateful. The Kurds may be muslims, but the Al-Qaeda message of jihad against the West would have very little traction with them. US troops would be welcomed as liberators and could be stationed in barracks almost as peacefully as they are in Germany or South Korea. Meanwhile the Kurds would get on with the happy task of building their own new country. Although the Kurds would rejoice at this outcome, and in many ways it is morally the right outcome, and it would solve America's problem in the norther third of Iraq, there are also disadvantages for the Americans.

First, it would greatly annoy Turkey, which has been a staunch US ally through the Cold War and into the present time. There is moreover a risk that effect on Turkey of an independent Kurdistan would go much further than mere annoyance. TheTurkish people's anger with the United States could cause the Islamist party to consolidate its power and take Turkey away from secularism and democracy. A further risk is that the existence of an independent Kurdish state in the northern part of the former Iraq would cause a renewed uprising by the Turkish Kurds. This would exarcerbate the feelings of dislike for the US in Turkey and the danger of the Islamists winning absolute power in Turkey.

A second problem for America with an independent Kurdistan is that Dubya proclaimed he would set up a democracy in all of Iraq, not break it up. Breaking it up would make him look like he was going back on his word, it would also look like an admission of defeat. Finally, he may not get UN recognition for a break-up. Dubya, however, has never taken much notice of the UN, so it is hard to imagine this being too much of an obstacle.

Even if America does not go down the road of supporting an independent Kurdistan, the very threat of it is a bargaining chip for the US against Iran, something the US has rarely had since the Iranian revolution. America wants Iran to stop building nuclear weapons and to stop sponsoring insurgents in Iraq. Iran does not much fear an American invasion because it can see the US has its hands full with Iraq and has no spare troops. Moreover, there is no way Dubya could get the American people to support it. The Iranians would, however, fear the Russians. If the Russians and the Americans (especially if also backed by China) together threatened Iran with force, it would be amazing how compliant the Iranians would become. Thanks to Dubya's foolish disregard for the UN when he started the Iraq war and other provocations, however, the Russians and the Chinese are annoyed with him and won't threaten Iran with the big stick. America's lack of allies means that Kurdistan is one of the few ways it can put pressure on Iran. By threatening to support Kurdish independence, the Americans may just be able to persuade the Iranians to ease off on their support for the Iraqi insurgency and/or their nuclear weapons programme. It's important to recognize, however, that the threat of Kurdish independence is not a gun to Iran's head. The Iran's Kurds make up a much smaller part of Iran than Turkey's do of Turkey.

Assuming the Kurdish bargaining chip did not draw co-operation from Iran, but the best course of action for America may be to allow a referendum on independence in every part of Iraq. This would probably result in Kurdistan voting for independence and the Shias and Sunnis voting to stay in Iraq. The referendum would lend legitimacy to an independent Kurdistan because the world would recognize that no American president could oppose such a clear exercise of democracy. The Turkish fallout would probably be a price worth paying. As for the rest of Iraq, the more the Sunnis and the Shias are physically separated, the less protracted will be the civil war.

The Iraq war was a mistake from the start

The Iraq war - what a mess! The Washington Post recently had a worthy article by David Ignatius urging a bi-partisan approach on the part of Dubya and Nancy Pelosi to take US policy forward. They should aim for a policy based on a lesser US role that both parties can sign up to, and that will outlast the current US administration.

Why do people in the West still have so many dreams and illusions about Iraq? Some basic home truths seem to have been missed, namely:

1. There is no democracy in Iraq. Democracy is not the same thing as holding elections. There is a certain element of mass psychology to democracy - a critical mass of people need to know it and want it and be prepared to accept the result of an election even if it is not what they voted for. If this state of mind is not there, to hold elections is to do no more than go through the motions, as is the case now in Iraq. If the coalition forces left now, Iraqi democracy wouldn't last a week, to be replaced by warring factions who would take no notice at all of the result of the last Iraqi election. The eventual winning faction would then institute an iron rule not dissimilar to Saddam Hussein's.

2. There is no solution that will combine a stable government friendly to the West with Iraqi independence and territorial integrity. The Kurds have wanted to be independent every since Iraq came into being at the end of the First World War. The last thing they want is to have to take orders from Baghdad. The Sunnnis and Shia hate each other from centuries of the Sunni minority lording it over the Shia majority. The two communities are not easy to separate geographically, so once the US leaves, they will fight it out in a very ugly way until one comes out on top. Interestingly, Al-Qaeda would probably back the Sunnis and Iran the Shias. Dubya may not have noticed, but Iran and Al-Qaeda don't much like each other.

3. There is nothing the US can do about Al-Qaeda or the Shia militias in Iraq. It's like trying to fight cancer by genetically engineering every cancer cell. The only way to stop that kind of guerilla war by force is to flood the country with millions of troops (a G.I. on very street corner) or to throw human rights out of the window and imprison or massacre large numbers of people. History is full of examples of guerrilla victories, or of insurgencies suppressed, but only with the most brutal methods. Dubya should think back to America's own history. How many troops would the British have needed to suppress the American Revolution? A very large number, because millions of Americans wanted them out. As soon as the British redcoat's back was turned, the American minuteman got out his musket and formed a militia. Every time the British took repressive measures, it made propaganda and recruits for the revolutionaries. It's all vividly depicted in the Mel Gibson's film The Patriot. Dubya should think of Fallujah in terms of Bunker Hill.

There is no good solution possible in Iraq, and there never was. It would have been far better never to have invaded. 20-20 hindsight? No. Dubya just didn't think it through properly. He knew Iraq was ethnically divided. He knew from Vietnam and various US interventions in Latin America that democracy can rarely be imposed by force. He just ignored those examples and thought it would be like Germany in 1945. He did not seem to realize that the example of Germany was very different. It was invaded by about 18 million Allied troops. He invaded Iraq with 300,000. Nearly all Germany's men of military age were dead or in prison camps. Iraq's were mostly alive and free and armed. The Germans feared that if they resisted beyond the formal surrender the Allies would do to them what the Germans had done to the Jews - massacre them. The Iraqis do not fear this from the Americans.