Saturday

Yesterday I spent editing a report on the Chittagong Hill Tracts (as co-chair of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission); constructing a letter to Jack Straw about security procedures in the prisons for visiting chaplains (as Patron of the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy Angulimala); writing to two British aid workers in Colombia about an announcement of a change in our policy on Colombia; helping a neighbour who married a Japanese citizen when she was awaiting the outcome of an appeal against refusal of her application for an extension of leave to remain as a student, and writing to Home Office Minister Lord West to correct a point I made in one of the debates on Wednesday. I had misinterpreted a note, while I was sitting on the bench, about correspondence between the Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill and the Home Office Minister who deals with immigration, Phil Woolas MP.

The recess will allow me to prepare for a press conference on the human rights situation in Bahrain next Wednesday, and looking ahead a bit further, a seminar on Traveller accommodation in London in City Hall at the end of the month, as well as continuing to clear the piles of paper off the floor and make sure I've dealt with them!

Ping-pong with JW yesterday 1-1, cumulative score 100-95.