Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

David Cameron is the only credible Prime Minister at Westminster and looks and sounds the part on the media and across the world stage. He does, however, appear to be in some trouble with his MP’s who are now panicked at the prospect of Scotland leaving the Union. Even if the Scots do vote NO, there is still Clacton looming. Tory grandees are saying that the prime minister who broke up the Union, if this happens, will be gone by Christmas. Well, we shall see. Nothing ever goes according to plan these days in politics; often because the plans are badly laid.

Alex Salmond wanted a two question referendum with devo max as an option. There seems little doubt that this would have been the overwhelming choice and Scotland would have remained in the Union for certain. But Cameron refused, demanding one in or out question, clear and final. He then agreed to the Salmond plan giving the Yes option to the separatists. He could have had the question framed as ‘Do you want Scotland to stay in the United Kingdom?’ Yes for Union, No for separation. Yes is positive. No is negative.

So some angry MPs will feel, if Scotland walks out on Thursday next, that it is all Cameron’s fault and they may be right. As this blog has said before, Salmond’s independence model with the monarchy and the pound retained, in a currency union rather than a political union, is not true independence but a kind of devo max. The No campaign are now, many say in panic, offering devo-max as well. So both Yes and No are heading for the same place in practice, but with a slightly different format. The canny Salmond wins either way.

Cameron has, on the other hand shown a dangerous lack of judgement. Coming on top of Coulson, Libya, the defeat in the intended bombing of Syria and the simplistic approach to the Ukraine crisis, this leaves him damaged. He is still afloat but has taken on a good deal of water. One more hit, Clacton for instance, and he could sink.

The NATO summit in Wales, together with President Obama’s upcoming address to the nation, mark the end of one era and the start of another. After the end of the Cold War we had a spell of America the only superpower. This period could have been used to build unshakeable bridges between East and West and draw Russia into its proper place in Europe, but it was not done. Then came post 9/11, which was a mixture of revenge, a mistaken belief that democracy was a cure for everything, and the imposition of it by force. This was a period of almost complete diplomatic failure, but it was a period where politics, albeit muddled and mistaken, drove military necessity.

The failure by the West to correctly assess the Russian fears which drive its intentions, has now led to breakdown. To build sound diplomacy you first have to see problems through the prism of the other side’s vision. If you do not do that you will do yourself more harm than good. The West is now harming itself by its sanctions on Russia in ways which it cannot afford. Germany France and Italy, whose economies are the economic heart of Euroland are now flatlining or in recession. It remains as important for the West to find a way of settling differences with Russia as it is for Russia herself. Indeed Russia could turn east and build an economic and military alliance with China, if issues are not resolved.It is not yet too late but it soon will be.

Meanwhile the period where politics drove military necessity is over. We are now into the old familiar format where military needs and fears drive politics. NATO has drawn red lines and is upping its preparedness. Russia is doing something similar. NATO is overwhelmingly the more powerful, but, and Putin hinted at this just the other day, Russia is a nuclear mega power and can destroy both the United States and the whole of Europe in the course of a single morning. But it would not itself see the end of that very day either. We know the drill. There will be a period of dusting down systems and targeting programmes. This is very disappointing.

The much criticised Obama saw this coming. Hence his reluctance to commit himself. By boosting the confidence of eastern NATO members with assurances of support if attacked and by calibrating the response to the blood thirsty ISIL to be conditional upon the regional players running the ground action, is way of creating an atmosphere of greater diplomatic calm because everybody knows what the intentions are, especially the Russians. Obama believes there is then a prospect of a deal with Putin which will not put the clock back to where it was, but will open a future of cooperation based on mutual self interest , if not on friendship.

Because in the end defeating ISIL will require a combination of some kind of federated Iraq and a shrunken Syria, which gives the moderate Sunnis, by far the majority, an autonomous region, or state within a group or confederation. To achieve that will require not only the support of the pro western gulf states, some of whom face both ways, but also Iran and above all Russia. Once again Obama knows this but he is just about the only American politician who does.

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com

Read the article in Mirror On Line.   This is a vital public interest issue which every parent should consider. If you are outside the UK it is still worth a read.

The news that Ashya King and his parents are being allowed to fly to the very treatment in Prague they sought all along, is heart warming news. The Southampton General not only dismissed this suggestion when it was advanced to them, but then, having threatened the parents whose only fault was their desire to do the best for their child, triggered an international manhunt to try to prevent it, resulting in the child being taken from his parents, who in turn were thrown into gaol. It is one of the most outrageous individual episodes in the whole history of the NHS.

It is the view of this blog that this hospital should be in Special Measures for three good reasons. It has revealed a shocking inadequacy in its ability to maintain a constructive dialogue with parents of a desperately ill child, which it had a clear duty of care to the child so to do.  It has shown a failure of clinical judgement in its dogmatic opposition to proton beam therapy, finally overruled by the Court. It has demonstrated a lack of integrity and sense of proportion in its hysterical response to the King’s flight from its clutches.

Various enquires are now being set up and rightly so; the revelations of what happened behind the scenes are only just beginning and the conduct of the authorities and the the alleged facts they were given to trigger their responses are now being scrutinized as they should be. This story is far from over but the harassment of the family is.

The whole country is behind them and wishing them well.

The trauma of Ashya King and the enthusiasm with which public authorities we trust have demonised his parents without any real cause is shocking, but it is also a symptom of something which has crept like an evening mist over the integrity of our country. What would once have happened and what should now happen is this:

FIRST

The Secretary of State for Health should start the process to put the Paediatric Department of Southampton General Hospital into Special Measures while inspectors discover why it appears that:

1 The hospital created a general alarm when it must or ought to have known very well that, as turned out to be the case, Ashya’s parents would never have put him at risk

2 Were complicit in allowing the police to invoke a criminal statute of child neglect and cruelty, when it knew this to be untrue

3 Issued generally misleading information to other public officials as to the true facts of the case

SECOND

The IPCC should investigate the Hampshire Constabulary for invoking the issue of an International Arrest Warrant for a crime which it knew, and has admitted to knowing, had not taken place.

None of this will happen because until there is a major scandal nobody cares about the smaller stuff. The Kings are just one family in focus but soon the focus will shift and none will answer for their ordeal. Every official organ involved, all part of and paid for by, the State will close ranks and cover backs.

It took over one thousand deaths of frail patients at Stafford to trigger any sort of enquiry; it took Jimmy Saville’s industrial scale abuse to trigger even an awareness that something was going on and then too late; Rotherham, Rochdale, phone hacking, food banks (food banks in Britain??), the list is long and will grow longer. But something is stirring within the beating heart of a nation which can do better. How that will manifest itself politically is hard yet to define. We will know more after Scotland votes, because until then we cannot be sure what the shape of the nation will be.

I am astonished to discover that Ashya is still a Ward of Court and that somehow the traumatised Kings have to brief lawyers in Marbella to appear to argue their case in a hearing in the High Court in London on Monday, otherwise it will be the arguments of the Southampton General, in which the Kings have lost all confidence, which will prevail. I tried yesterday to obtain a coherent explanation out of the Portsmouth City Council, who are the drivers of this legal action in their child protection role. I was confronted by flustered officials who were clearly under stress, not one of whom could give any explanation of what was happening and kept referring me to someone else.

Petitions have been handed in to Downing Street, money is pouring into to charities raising funds to help this family, the Secretary of State for Health is sending a top cancer specialist to help the Kings make the right choices for Ashya, the clinic in Prague stands ready, the whole country is watching. There is no child on earth who at this moment has more goodwill and attention, yet someone somewhere believes his interests can only be served by decisions being taken in an adversarial court process by a judge in London, when the entire family is in Spain.

To add to the burden of these parents after all they have had to endure, with Ashya effectively a prisoner in a hospital room in Marbella, is utterly absurd; indeed it is worse. It is cruel. And it has to stop. To continue it under the guise of child protection is an abuse of process. Moreover it exposes this whole saga to the grave suspicion that it was never about this child’s welfare which, if the Southampton Genera had stopped for one moment to think through rationally, it would have known was never at real risk.  No, it was about the ego of doctors, who do not like being challenged.

The authorities have set in train a process which has run amok. The obligation to protect children is not, and never has been, a licence to abuse parents.

There is now a real momentum in the Yes campaign, which crosses political divides and families. It is a momentum of hope and adventure in a spirit of can do. This ought to be countered in the No campaign by a celebration of Scotland’s golden age of influence prosperity and freedom since it has been in the Union. But it isn’t. Instead the No campaign is bogged down in its opening chapter, which is negative and risk averse. This was right for the start but wrong  for the end. This may cost No the victory everyone thought was in the bag.

If it does and Yes wins, the effect on Scotland politically will be a lot less than the impact on England. In Scotland Alex Salmond will remain in power and whatever form of currency deal he manages to negotiate will leave Scotland with little more autonomy economically than it now has anyway. Even if he loses his next election, Labour will win and Labour is the traditional party of Scotland.

But south of the border the whole political map will change. Without Labour’s forty plus MP’s the chances of a Milliband outright win in 2015 become odds on against. The more likely is a Camaron win or a Cameron/Farage coalition. Not only will leftist Edinburgh be under the thumb of right wing London, but the chances of a vote to leave the EU going Yes increase significantly. This would mean a detachment from Scotland and a detachment from Europe putting England back to where it was a the time of Elizabeth I.

September is going to be very interesting. In October comes Clacton. By Christmas the United Kingdom could not only face breaking apart, but also an English political revolution which would open the way to a UKIP breakthrough in 2015.

But remember politics is politics and none of it may happen. Nobody appears to know whether Scotland would have the right to elect MPs to Westminster in 2015 to sit until Independence was ratified in 2016, or whether they will be excluded. Constitutionally the 2015 Parliament should include Scotland and be dissolved in 2016 with new elections as a parliament for the remaining UK. But as Britain does not have a formal constitution and as the situation would be without precedent, it is likely we will use the tried and tested formula of making something up.

There is something seriously wrong with the culture of the Paediatric Dept. of Southampton General Hospital. According to the BBC News Website the hospital yesterday said in a statement:

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust had said Ashya’s chances of recovery with regular treatment were “very good”, but stressed there was “no benefit to him of proton radiotherapy over standard radiotherapy”.

This is not true. Yes both therapies are equally effective at dealing with the cancer, but ordinary radiotherapy can affect healthy brain tissue adjacent to the cancer site with potential permanent impairment of brain function. Proton beams are precisely targeted to only the affected area and are without the potential damaging side effects. This information is all over the internet and the TV news, with graphics to demonstrate, together with case histories of lives saved.

What planet is this hospital on?

Each of these books is different and not part of a sequence, but all of them have the common ability to draw you into the story and keep you turning the pages from start to finish. Click on any the images for my page on Amazon UK and here for Amazon.com