This morning I flew to Dublin with the European Economic and Social Committee’s President, Staffan Nilsson, to join the annual meeting of the Presidents and Secretaries-General of the national Economic and Social Councils and the EESC. The meeting is being hosted by the Irish National Economic and Social Council and is taking place in the rather splendid surroundings of St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle. The conference theme is labour market and welfare benefit reforms, and at the moment we are listening to a fascinating and very learned analysis by Dr John Sweeney, an NESC senior analyst. I  find his compararive analysis of competing and/or complementary paradigms of the labour market and social particularly pertinent and particularly the way these different paradigms affect social dialogue during the recession (the three paradigms are Keynesian, Pro-market and Social investment). He ended his presentation by highlighting a potential paradox; it can be easier to undertake positive reforms when money is scarce…

At the end of a tight, grueling, vastly expensive, exciting (including a hurricane!) and fascinating campaign, Barack Obama has won a further four years in the White House. It is an extraordinary exploit (what, in rugby parlance, would be called a win ‘against the head’). Somewhere during the campaign Charlie Cook, a veteran Washington commentator, wittily opined ‘It is becoming clear that if President Obama is re-elected, it will be despite the economy and because of his campaign. If Mitt Romney wins, it will be because of the economy and despite his campaign.’ Romney was gracious in defeat and Obama was gracious in victory. The President was also eloquent on why he and Romney had fought so hard – his victory speech was, indeed, a strong defence of US Presidential campaigns. While Obama now rolls up his sleeves and starts to work out how to try and build on the centre ground of a divided legislature (this is no bright new dawn but, rather, a murky morning), the pundits are already speculating about 2016 (currently the smart money, for what it’s worth, is apparently on Clinton v. Christie). I’d like to finish this post with the story of my friend, Hugo, of hurricane-stricken New York. Amid all the carnage and wreckage, here’s his experience; “So I tried to vote early, if not often, and I visited a lot of polling places. Since I had not received a ballot because there had been no mail in a week I checked the State on-line registry and it told me to vote at 10 Church Towers. At that polling place, they had a list of voters and a registry. They checked the list and said I wasn’t on it, so they sent me to their satellite site at 15 Church Towers. There I wasn’t on the list either, and they advised to me go to my old polling place on 9th Street, because I might still be in the registry there. At the 9th Street polling place I found out that my old polling place had been moved to Park Avenue, so there I went. At the Park Avenue polling place I wasn’t in the registry either, so I went back to 10 Church Towers and asked them politely to check if maybe I was in the registry, even though I wasn’t on the list. They checked the registry, and bingo, there I was. I left my apartment at 6 am and voted at 7:15 am, but I got a good workout.”

This morning I joined a number of colleagues and friends in the European Parliament for the launch party for Henri Malosse’s new book (co-authored with Laure Limousin), La Construction Européenne: Histoires et avenir d’une Europe des peuples. Currently President of the Employers’ Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, Henri is passionately committed to the European integration process and this book illustrates his conviction that, to paraphrase one of his observations, the European future is not just possible but vitally necessary. And in that future Henri sees a pre-eminent place and role for civil society. The most touching part of the book comes at the end, after the learned analysis and policy recommendations, where Henri dedicates a ‘postface’ to his son and, though him, to all young Europeans. The book is, he concludes, an appeal to the ‘refounding generation’.

This evening we followed our schedule of films related to our summer US coast-to-coast trip by watching The Birdman of Alcatraz. Now, for my Uncle M., in the Pyrénées, I should immediately stress that probably nowadays nobody would contest the fact that the original birdman, Robert Stroud, was a surly and nasty piece of work. But Burt Lancaster nevertheless, through sheer dramatic genius, turned his character’s dreary life into a depiction of a zen transition from violence to serenity. From our point of view, it was interesting to see how Lancaster’s character’s escape inwards, contrasted with Clint Eastward’s more plodding escape outwards.

The first review I read of the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, was implacably negative. All the rest were generally positive. So I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when we went to a jam-packed cinema this evening. An immense first positive is Javier Bardem’s portrayal of the film’s main antagonist, Raoul Silva (Tiago Rodriguez). Unlike the psycopathic baddie he played in No Country For Old Men, this time Bardem introduces a comic element into his character and it works really well (sometimes the audience found itself laughing in the midst of gruesome or sad scenes). The director, Sam Mendes, uses Bardem’s foil well to enable Daniel Craig to play Bond as an ageing and world-weary psychopath who cares nothing for his ancestral home (blown to smithereens) nor for Bardem’s defenceless lover, Severine (Silva shoots her in cold blood and Bond apparently cares only for some spilt malt whiskey). This is much closer to the character that Ian Fleming had originally created in the Bond books. Judi Dench, in her last appearance as M, appropriates Michael Caine’s ‘bloodies’ and makes them her own. After the traditional initial chase scene, the plot develops with deliberate slowness, allowing Bardem in particular to develop his character. And the Scottish scenery in which the action ends almost steals the show. Did I enjoy this? Yes. Was it a great film? No. But since when have Bond films been great? Mendes has done a good job, reintroducing the darker, original Bond and handling the transition (a new M, a new Q, an ageing Bond) to a new generation of Bond films with artful skill.

To return to my question yesterday as to what to do with several teenagers in the Belgian Ardennes region if its pouring with rain, a strong second answer must be to go to the Euro Space Center, near Libin, which is what we did this morning. The Center is a touching combination of proud, far-reaching ambition and achievement (Belgium has played an important role in space exploration and has certainly punched above its weight) and under-reaching commercial endeavour. There are some amusing interactive activities. The possibility of ‘walking on the moon’ kept our young men amused for about ten minutes, max., but they clearly genuinely enjoyed themselves. The various films were, from my point of view, a touching mix of Belgian and European pride. As to the European aspects, the Center is a good example of Europe’s de facto ‘multi-speed’ or ‘variable geometry’ nature: the European Space Agency has twenty (eighteen in the Center’s out-of-date presentation) member states, and two of those – Norway and Switzerland – are not EU member states…

The Belgian Ardennes region is a beautiful part of the world, but the question nevertheless arises; what do you with several teenagers if it is pouring down with rain – and I mean sheeting down? One answer is the Grottes de Han, and so that was what we visited today. Nobody was disappointed. I must have been down this massive complex of caves at least five times but each time I return I am fascinated again by the experience. The limestone into which the Lesse river has carved its way is some 360 million years old. The caves themselves are thousands of years old, whilst human beings have probably lived in the entrances to the cave system for a mere two thousand years. For a thousand or so years human beings have been throwing jewelry and lucky charms into the river where it emerges from the rocks after its subterranean journey. (I would have illustrated this post with a picture of a wonderful gold Roman necklace found in the mud at the bottom of the river but my photograph was hopelessly over-exposed.) If you have never been down the Grottes de Han be sure to go. The rock formations and stalagmites and stalactites have there own particular beauty (you can see where the makers of science fiction films such as Alien get their inspiration for wierdly semi-organic backdrops) and the mysterious disappearance of the river into a rock face is fascinating but, above all, the vast sense of time and lengthy geological processes is humbling.

To La Monnaie this evening to see Krzysztof Warlikowski’s version of Alban Berg’s Lulu. This is the third Warlikowski production we have seen at La Monnaie, following on from Medée and Macbeth. When I think back to what I wrote in my previous posts, I could see echoes, particularly the distraction of what I call recurring visual ‘gadgets’ (among them, cigarettes, Lolita-style sunglasses, ‘singers getting undressed down to their underwear’, gratuitous vulgarity, glass boxes and visual references to iconic films and characters – on this occasion, notably, Heath Ledger’s Joker). But the similarities also included courageously bold risk-taking, a lavish production and superlative singing and acting. Indeed, Warlikowski’s bold risk-taking has on this occasion paid off royally. In the first place, whilst respecting and reinforcing the plot line of Wedekind’s original, he has successfully provided a convincing new take on the story. In the second place, he has, counter-intuitively, confronted a notoriously complex work (both in terms of plot and music) with further complexity and it works, because the basic plot line is respected throughout. The whole cast acted and sung well but Barbara Hannigan, in the title role this evening, was outstanding, convincingly depicting Berg’s femme fatale as truly mad, bad and dangerous to know.

We followed our series of post-America trip films this evening with a viewing of Gus Van Sant’s 2008 biographical film, Milk. Sean Penn turns in an extraordinary performance as the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California (as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors). The film is excellent on how a suppressed, rather reactionary, East-coaster turns into a liberated, liberal and committed West coast radical and about the compromises that are necessarily made between the public and the private in political life. This must have been an extremely difficult film to get right. For a start, the story had to include a number of mandatory scenes, and it had to be careful not to veer into schmalzy sentimentality. But the cast pull the whole thing off with aplomb and the director succeeds in giving a good sense of the era as well as of the man – or the men, and women, since Milk inspired a group of devoted followers. I haven’t read Randy Schilt’s biography but the film suggests that Milk’s death was not necessarily as arbitrary as it might have seemed. Josh Brolin also turns in an excellent performance as Milk’s tortured political rival and ultimately assassin, Dan White. The script suggests that Milk could maybe have compromised a little more with White and humiliated him a little less and hints that he didn’t because he sensed that White was suppressing his own identity. The link with our recent trip was that we saw Robert Arneson’s powerful portrayal of Mayor George Moscone, also assassinated by Dan White, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the work, Arneson juxtaposed a grinning bust with a bullet-ridden base full of cultural references and hate messages.

We got up in the dark and drove out of Brussels in thick and freezing fog. At Yvoir, on the Meuse, we boarded a ten-metre motor boat. For today we spent all day on the river, taking our practical test on driving large motorboats. This is just the first step in a course we are following that will lead, we hope, to our international licences. We will also have to sit and pass theoretical tests, but today went pretty well and we are over the first hurdle at any rate. The chief challenges in Belgian inland waters are, apart from reading and understanding nautical charts and navigation signals, understanding the effects of currents and navigating into and out of locks. The counter-intuitive lesson we learned was that the slower a motorboat goes, the less control you have, since the screw at the back acts as a sort of dynamic rudder. The knack, therefore, when navigating in enclosed spaces where both control and low speed are necessary, is to give the throttle little surges when necessary so as to regain momentary control over direction. As we chugged down the river to Namur, where we had lunch, something wonderful happened. The fog and mist gradually disappeared, to be replaced by a splendid blue sky and a still-warm sun. It was still pretty cold, especially on the water, but the beautiful weather, combined with the beautiful scenery all around us, and the good humour of our fellow students, turned this into an idyllic day.