Thursday 26th January
As well as the hordes of CEOs and third-world presidents, Davos attracts an itinerant crowd of do-gooding pop stars and actors. The inevitable Bono is here, endorsing a new venture in which businesses launch products, some of whose profits are then earmarked for the fight against Aids. It is difficult to be opposed to this sort of thing, but for some reason I find it strangely enraging. I think it is something to do with the air of self-congratulation that always accompanies such acts of philanthropy. Anyway, I've never rated Bono. Years ago – it must have been 1978 – I saw U2's first ever concert in London. They were a support act to Talking Heads at the Camden Electric Ballroom. Bono was memorably awful; he made feeble efforts to bond with the audience by cadging cigarettes off them. Then he was unable to light the cigarette. To my 15-year-old eyes, this was the height of uncool. Bono was crap back then – and as far as I'm concerned, he always will be. But he is not the only irritating pop star at Davos. Tomorrow evening, Peter Gabriel will be hosting a reception on "social entrepreneurship." The emailed invite includes exhortatory quotes from the hosts. Gabriel's says: "On my passport it says musician. I would have preferred humanist."
The only celebrity I really wanted to see was Pelé. In fact, I had even contemplated trying to get my photo taken with him – which I suspect is a big no-no in Davos. Unfortunately, I had agreed to moderate a session on world trade at the same time as his event – so instead of Pelé, I had to make do with Robert Portman, the US trade representative. Actually, Portman was extremely good – fluent, in full command of the detail, and polite yet firm with his Swiss hosts, whose taste for agricultural protectionism make the French look like disciples of Hayek. The only slightly bizarre note was when one of the Swiss audience was lauding the beauties of Alpine pastures, which prompted Portman to begin singing: "The hills are alive with the sound of music." As one of Portman's aides confided to me afterwards, "I think Bob forgot that film was set in Austria, not Switzerland."
After the free trade session, it is a lunch devoted to Sino-Japanese tensions. The Chinese objections to the Japanese prime minister's visits to the Yasakuni shrine seem to me entirely reasonable – and the Japanese excuses sound increasingly bizarre. One Japanese speaker says that it is pointless removing the war criminals from the shrine, since their spirits are already intermingled with those of the other dead soldiers. Another says that the government can do nothing to change things at Yasakuni, since the shrine was privatised some time ago and is now run by an independent foundation. But then, as Robert Thomson, editor of the Times and moderator of the discussion, is about to bring it to an elegant and semi-conciliatory close, a Japanese diplomat asks to clear up some misunderstandings and reads out his government's position. This repeats the old excuse that the Japanese prime minister is only visiting the shrine in a private capacity. For good measure, he adds that the PM is planning to repeat his visit to the shrine visit later this year. The Chinese are understandably enraged by all this. But as one Chinese professor points out, it would be "stupid" to boycott Japanese-branded goods, since most of them are manufactured in China anyway.
Dinner last night was devoted to workaholism – and specifically how to liberate yourself from email and the ubiquitous Blackberry. A poll was taken of the diners to see who got the most emails a day. The winner was an Oxford professor of internet governance, who claimed around 500. Various ideas were suggested for how to deal with this kind of deluge: refuse to read all emails that are merely CCed to you; train your "assistant" to sort through your email, as he once would have sorted through the morning mail; be more self-disciplined, and do not use your Blackberry during family meals. Everybody nodded approvingly at these excellent ideas, but I could not help noticing that three of the people at my table of eight had checked their email during the dinner.
