Tuesday

Official start of the Conference: miraculously, made it to breakfast and the Opening Session in time – it’s raining outside – has been raining since I arrived –as bad as Manchester but at least it stays warm!
Went to Opening Ceremony out of a sense of duty rather than anything else but actually it was worth the effort. Charming address by the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (TT, as it’s known) presenting Trinidad as a highly successful and ambitious industrialised nation, benchmarking itself positively against economies such as Canada, exploiting natural resources but also – and oh, I wanted to cheer! – talking not about the importance of the’ creative industries’ but , rather, about key sectors that included music, print and performing arts! Then a stirring speech by Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary General. He talked movingly of ‘Partnerships’ not being about economics but about people – a three legged stool (‘and some of the legs are a little steadier than others!’) of public, private and civil society sectors – and a reminder, frequently repeated by other speakers, that the primary cause and objective of the Commonwealth is the elimination of poverty, without which everything else is, at best, compromised.
The next session brought probably the best speaker, certainly in terms of content: Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winner for Economics. A wry but confident speaker, he gave what must be the best exposition of how the financial collapse happened. He commented that, in organising the bail out for companies, governments never stopped to ask ‘What kind of financial system do we want post crisis?’ So now there is much talk of the sign of green shoots of recovery but it is only the companies (banks) that are really experiencing it – for ordinary people like you and me, things are still tough – in the US, 1 in 6 people willing to work are unable to find jobs. Money is still scarce. The bailout to banks was to enable them to continue lending to SMEs but, as we know and despite best efforts of Governments, they aren’t, even now. What they are doing, however, is looking for the best return on the money they have, irrespective of risk because they now know they are ‘too big to fail’, so they are investing in emerging economies, generating the same potential for false confidence and unsubstantiated risk taking, and where the necessary regulatory frameworks may not be in place, as they were not in the US pre-crash. This runs the risk of creating an investment bubble in those countries which, in time, they will be forced to face and deal with on their own as the Western bankers will simply slouch away. So once again it will be poor people that pay the price of Western indulgence. Stiglitz went on to comment on the need for fairness and trust – how interesting to hear an internationally recognised economist use those terms! What price emotional intelligence now! He talked about the mistrust between the banks themselves as being one of the key causes for the eventual crisis but he comments that nothing has changed – for example, in the States, the private sector makes loans to students; Govt guarantees those loans, making them good if the borrower defaults; yet the banks still charge for the loans as though they themselves were liable for the risk of bad loans – everyone knows it is happening but no one does anything about it. There was more.... but it’s too much for a blog – read his book !
In the evening, a reception on poolside with a fantastic steel band – impossible for anyone not to start moving, dancing – all the women dressed up to the nines, all the men in suits without ties – so that’s what ‘smart casual’ means!
At dinner, the Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Information came over and was introduced – ‘So, tell me, Anamaria – you're talking about the creative industries? how do we monetise our Carnival?’..............it was the inspiration I needed – have decided to make it the core of my speech tomorrow – thank heaven for Ministers!