Some might say that you have to be a bit of a hypocrite to find yourself surveying the Venezuelan revolution from the 19th floor rooftop bar of your hotel sipping a complimentary cocktail. Or spending Easter Sunday lying beside a swimming pool reading Derek Wall´s book Beyond Babylon. Nonsense! This really shows their complete lack of undrstanding of the dialectics of imperialism rather than an absence of moral fibre on my part.

Tomorrow, Alitalia willing, begins the flight to Milan and on to London. We get in some time on Tuesday.

This is a trip I´d heartily recommend that everyone makes. The city hasn´t been as scary as the guide books would have you believe. It´s true that beer (fizzy lager) is sold in bottles the size of thimbles and that the only bar selling reasonable sized glasses has an enormous Confederate flag. Despite all that it´s exhilarating. The politics are much less abstract here, as will become clear when I write up the interview with Katherin. One surprising thing she said was that more socialists should come here to help “ideologically” prepare people. I explained that there are lots of people on the British left who specialise in criticising other people´s achievements and a different sort of dialogue might be more productive.

Thursday is back to the class struggle on a smaller scale. We´ve got George Galloway doing a meeting on the estate as part of the election campaign and then lots of trudging around delivering stuff.