Bliss.

Wilf has been exploring in the fields. He returned from our early morning saunter with his face and coat covered in grass seeds and other assorted vegetation. The remedy was a fretful ten minutes of detangling with a comb with Wilf fidgeting and generally letting it be known that he would rather be somewhere else - anywhere else other than on the grooming table. He has now settled down into a deep mid-morning snooze to try to forget the traumas that faced him.

Todi is looking quite blissful this morning above the ripening vines . The local grape here is the sagrantino which is small in size, with a thick skin and a slightly acid note to its sweetness. Over the last four or five years the big Italian insurance companies have bought up many of the small producers which has resulted in a marked improvement in quality and an even more marked increase in price.

I was delighted to read in the papers this morning that the senior management of EADS the aircraft manufacturer are to be fined for what was effectively insider trading. It's good to see watchdogs doing what they are supposed to. Governments around the world are keen to expand their own powers through closer supervision of banks and other financial institutions. All of this additional oversight and cost will be a waste of money as the industry is already weighed down under a raft of incoherent regulations. To put things right what is needed is for 100 or so criminal lawyers to be put onto enforcing the current laws and be paid by result - many people on Wall Street or the City might then find that there is no such thing as power without responsibility.The prosecutors might want to start with a long hard look at High Frequency Trading - or what in my day would have been known as the cardinal sin of front running.