Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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.

Visit Website

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.

Visit Website

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.

Visit Website