Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

As predicted by this Blog and countless others, Lady Butler-Sloss’s position quickly became untenable and she has stood down from leading the critical inquiry into paedophiles in power. This was the right decision, taken with great dignity. One can only wonder at the thinking in the Home Office that imagined her appointment would work.

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Germany has won the World Cup and done so with considerable style and without any controversy. They arrived. They played. They triumphed. The Germans had won before as West Germany, but this was the first time since re-unification.

For those of us who grew up in the terrible violence of WWII, when a very different kind of Germany rampaged across Europe, the transformation in that country is extraordinary and also inspiring. It shows that however bad things get, better things can be found ahead. There are so many places in the world today, some in the news and some forgotten, where this notion must seem fanciful. But in Europe it is now clear at every level that it is the peaceful, confident and efficient Germany which is the power in the lead.

In contrast, the United Kingdom is going through a moment of faltering confidence. In sport nothing has gone according to hope or plan. The World Cup was a fiasco, Murray did not get close to saving his title, our cycling stars fell off their bikes in the Tour de France even while it was in England and the best that can be said of cricket is that the report is rather mixed. Trust in politics has sunk to even greater depths as among the known vices of top people organised paedophelia must now be added, the widely proclaimed economic recovery is built on house prices and debt, Scotland may walk away, and what is left of the UK may then walk away from Europe. The gap between the pay of those at the top and those at the bottom has become ridiculous and waiting times in A&E grow longer.

Yet when the UK recovers its equilibrium and regains its confidence, as it will, it will once again punch above its weight in a world full of punching. It will do this not through the dogged efficiency, high productivity and work ethic of the Germans, founded on common interest, common good and common purpose. It will do it out of the quirky individualism of its people, rich in diversity of view and objective, multi cultural and creative, who believe it is honourable to be a good loser, but when they decide together to win, which is not often, they win big.

Let us hope the Scots will stay to share in this and that the UK stays in the EU. The Germans are especially keen to keep Britain in. Without her Germany makes the EU look top heavy. That could spell trouble.

 Hitler’s First Lady

This cycle of violence, for so long the backdrop to life in Israel, produces much suffering and no resolution. It should stop. In the current contest Israel has the upper hand with a military superiority which is overwhelming. Fully backed by public opinion, the government has lost patience with Hamas and intends to pound it into impotence. The trouble is the peace which follows will not last, as an embittered and sullen Palestinian nation plots its revenge. Before long a new cycle of violence will erupt.

Hamas needs to ask itself where it is headed with its current campaign of rocket attacks. These weapons are all but useless with the iron dome counter-measures protecting Israeli cities, so the only effect is to provoke Israel’s  massive air strikes, which have killed nearly 200 Palestinians, the majority women and children.  So far Israel has not suffered a single fatality from nearly 1000 rockets fired by Hamas.

Neither side is willing to talk of a cease fire. It may be that Israel will re-occupy the Gaza Strip. Everything will be back to square one. There must be a better way to advance the notion of human relations and peaceful coexistence than this, but if there is, it is proving near impossible to find. The world must look harder.

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This blog has many times been in conflict with the Evangelical theology of the former archbishop, but Lord Carey’s change of heart over the issue is  welcome and courageous. When hope is abandoned, the illness is terminal, the pain and suffering unbearable and two doctors in agreement with the wishes of the patient, it is wholly un-Christian to force them to suffer. Lord Falconer’s Bill has enough safeguards to prevent rapacious relatives trying to advance their inheritance and murderous doctors seeking to kill their patients. It should be passed by a good majority. Let us hope Lord Carey’s Damascus style conversion will extend to others.

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This is going to get very nasty. However shocked the British nation thought it was over phone hacking and celebrity sex crimes, will be as nothing to the revulsion which will become the pervading public emotion as details begin to emerge of what public figures, churchmen, MPs, civil servants and even ministers got up to with what they called ‘small boys’.

As rumours, disclosures and accusations flow freely through today’s Sunday papers, there have been more protests at the appointment of Lady Butler-Sloss to head the government’s flagship inquiry. According to the Times on Saturday she covered up by omitting from a previous report the fact that a bishop had been abusing boys, because it would damage the Church, ‘as the press would love a bishop’.

This is precisely why this distinguished judge cannot head this inquiry. She has a record of being a loyal member of the mysterious Establishment and however many endorsements she gets from her nephew, the Home Office and Downing Street will make no difference to the fact that she has become the story and the public at large and the media will not accept her appointment. What her supporters claim she is and how she is seen are now running in different directions. For the credibility of a public figure this is fatal. She, at her age especially, does not deserve this and the Home Office is guilty of a serious blunder in putting her forward.

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Some of the criticism of the government on this issue is misplaced. It is the view of this blog that there is an ethical responsibility upon the State to sell assets to the public at true value, rather than speculator’s or market value. This means valuing shares at a PE ratio which will offer a yield of 3.5%. Once the yield drops below that figure it ceases to be an investment which is for the long term to provide an income; instead it becomes a speculation for potential capital gain in the short term. If the government had taken the speculator route and the inflated launch price had fallen back, ministers would have been accused of duping investors.

What is wrong, and badly wrong, in this affair is the fact that the firms who were advising the government were the same firms that were given special preferred investor rights and thus made a killing when they sold their shares shortly afterwards. Talk of Chinese walls and separate arms of the businesses not being party to this insider knowledge stretches credulity. Even if it were true the public would never accept it.

This is yet another Civil Service blunder at very senior level which shows officials thinking in a vacuum detached from public opinion and the democratic mood. It is another worry for the Establishment, now under very significant pressure.

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This goes to the heart of Establishment cover-ups. Here is an extract

‘And so it was all settled. The meeting broke up. The Prime Minister took the lift to the flat at the top of the building. The Home Secretary had his official car drive him to a secret location to complete the arrangements of the cover-up, and the Paymaster General drove himself home to his imposing, but rather heavily mortgaged, house in Chester Square, to agree with his wife the exact particulars of the fatal seizure which they were to say had occurred at the cosy dinner arranged for their friend and cabinet colleague.’

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‘And so it was all settled.  The meeting broke up.  The Prime Minister took the lift to the flat at the top of the building.  The Home Secretary had his official car drive him to a secret location to complete the arrangements of the cover-up, and the Paymaster General drove himself home to his imposing, but rather heavily mortgaged, house in Chester Square, to agree with his wife the exact particulars of the fatal seizure which they were to say had occurred at the cosy dinner arranged for their friend and cabinet colleague’

Downfall in Downing Street, originally published twenty years ago as Downfall, takes a good hard look at the secretive workings of the mysterious British Establishment, which is so easy to talk about, yet harder to define. Set in the early nineteen-nineties, the narrative has withstood the test of time and transfers very well into the current political drama, within a format which was very much ahead of mainstream at the time it first appeared.

This is a compelling read which will entertain as well as inform. I urge you to buy or download. Because it is a re-issue it is very reasonably priced. You will not be disappointed.

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Nobody doubts this eighty year old judge’s credentials or ability. Her integrity is gold standard. Her achievements are remarkable. But this is not the point.

First there has been a succession of discredited enquires lead by distinguished judges. Second this is not really just about the shocking and inexplicable phenomenon of child abuse. It is about covering up the practice of child abuse by senior establishment figures in various institutions and suppressing that evidence. It is the establishment which is under scrutiny as much as the perpetrators. To select an establishment figure to lead the enquiry is hardly wise, though perhaps difficult to avoid. To select one whose late brother is thought to be one of those who suppressed such evidence as Attorney General, hopelessly derails the enquiry even before it is off the ground.

Lady Butler-Sloss has become the story. The subject of the inquiry is too shocking to suffer this distraction. She should stand down.

Many have known or suspected for decades that very dark things happened at the heart of the Establishment and slowly now the truth is seeping out. Paedophelia at the heart of government is the most shocking of a string of an unwelcome revelations, including phone hacking, Jimmy Saville, police corruption, sexual crimes of celebrities and the earlier discoveries of MPs on the make with their expenses, which together add up to a serious loss of confidence in the integrity of authority itself.

That the Establishment can manipulate information and knowledge to protect itself and its own has been understood by a few always, and ignored by most for as long. Lies are told about political decisions (Suez, Iraq, coal mine closures etc) and when the truth emerges decades later, nobody any longer cares. Yet the idea that those we are supposed to look up to and respect and whose rewards come mainly from the public purse and the Honours system, are engaged in the covert and organised abuse of vulnerable children, taken from care homes to a guest house in a quiet suburban street to succumb to their rapacious tormentors, chills the blood. That these very people then button up their trousers and return to the limelight to ordain how the rest of us should lead our lives, is an outrage which cannot any longer be relied upon to die away.

The Establishment knows this and for the first time in generations is running really scared. Nobody can be sure who is telling the truth. Distrust will blow like an icy chill into every nook and cranny. The danger of a witch hunt, or several of them, is acute. The truth will begin to flow out into the public arena like a fowl and oozing slime. But it will take years for the full truth to become clear and it may well be that all the truth will remain hidden. What we can say for sure is that the mystique of the Establishment is now breaking up and will take at least a generation to repair. Some, and this Blog is one, may feel it is better to break it up for good.

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