Urine Soaked Trousers

I was on the number 40 bus yesterday. An old man got on and using his walking stick stumbled along to the seat adjacent to me. He had visibly urine soaked trousers and the stench was truly awful. I am not proud of my immediate thoughts because they were not charitable. On looking more closely I could see that he was really well dressed with a good jacket, shirt and tie and he clearly had the mark of intelligence about him. No one wants to be like that. Certainly no one who takes the effort to put on a tie before they go out! He must have prostrate problems and the embarrassment for him of being like that must be awful, especially in a country like this where to be sick means to pay money, and in most cases money you simply do not have. But he was clearly still proud. I found it quite hard.

The IMF have told Latvia they must reform the medical system. But this is not good enough. The IMF needs to define the word reform in great detail (it is not understood here. Most politicians think it means cuts not service improvement!), they need to spell out in great detail what they mean and want and then they need to pay for and send experts to make sure that it happens. This man needs help, but I see absolutely no chance that anything that Latvia does in the coming months called ''health reform'' is going to deliver it.

The rumours are beginning to grow that one or two serious companies in Latvia may go under in the next month or so. As I try to find shops for my new shopping complex in Adazi I am seeing clearly that the screws are turning tighter. It is proving hard to convince firms to expand now, although it is certainly a good time as they can screw really great terms out of the market. It will be much harder later. Another growing rumour is that the Government is considering dropping the VAT rate. Even if they do, it will only be effective if they also do some serious confidence boosting measures.

My highlight of the week was chairing an IT security conference for the Latvian subsidiary of headtechnology from Germany. We had great day with good speakers from UK, Luxembourg, Israel and Germany and loads of new things to think about. I enjoyed the enthusiasm of the attendees and the quality of questions. Clearly the IT sector in Latvia has some very bright boys and girls in it. I enjoyed dinner too. Thank you Andris.