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Follow the links to my Author pages on Amazon and download FREE both these linked historical novels based on real events in WWII. Promo ends tonight Pacific Time, so hurry!

Purple Killing

Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.

Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.

Hitler’s First lady

Lise Bauer is born in Africa in 1906, brought to England by her parents from where she is expelled with them in 1914, because her father is an East Prussian. They settle in America and become Americans, but return to Europe in the 1920’s. Here Lise is involved in the rise of the Nazi party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history.

The reader is drawn into the heart of both the governments in London and Berlin to find convincing portrayals of both Churchill and Hitler which offer surprising insights into the men behind their images.

The eminent surgeon and Labour peer Lord Darzi was right to say last night that obsessing over ‘creeping privatization’ of the NHS by Labour was a mistake. What matters to patients is the delivery of services and as long as they are free, it is irrelevant whether they are provided by the state or private providers. What matters is the quality of the service and its timely availability.

Labour’s trump card in the election game is the NHS, but as bridge players know, trumps are limited in number and have to be played with skill to win. Other players at the table have trumps of their own. The issue is not private providers. The issue is a service divided into compartments which do not talk to each other, hierarchical structures which create artificial barriers causing delay and a failure to integrate care and services into seamless delivery at point of need.

To this can be added two more must do changes about which we never hear because the medical professions are too powerful and the politicians too chicken. NHS doctors should not be allowed to moonlight in private practice while building up waiting lists in their hospital clinics to provide willing customers, and hospitals should be open fully for all services 24/7 and 365 days a year. It would take a big change in working practices and three eight hour shifts, but it is doable and should be done. Then we could kiss goodbye to waiting lists and targets and the huge bureaucratic industry they have spawned.

AMAZON.UK      AMAZON.COM

Follow the links to my Author pages on Amazon and download FREE both these linked historical novels based on real events in WWII. Promo ends tonight Pacific Time, so hurry!

Purple Killing

Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.

Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.

Hitler’s First lady

Lise Bauer is born in Africa in 1906, brought to England by her parents from where she is expelled with them in 1914, because her father is an East Prussian. They settle in America and become Americans, but return to Europe in the 1920’s. Here Lise is involved in the rise of the Nazi party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history.

The reader is drawn into the heart of both the governments in London and Berlin to find convincing portrayals of both Churchill and Hitler which offer surprising insights into the men behind their images.

There is a lot of excitement in the educational world today because the new league tables published are not following the previous format and are judging outcomes in a revised methodology and to new standards. The change is designed to demonstrate more reliably how well a school is providing its students with the kind of education which should be valuable in developing their lives and careers. It is no use sending our young people into a workplace which gives their jobs to better educated Poles.

Nevertheless when change like this occurs, the moment of change is uncomfortable because people tend to compare the new table with the old, when such a comparison will not work. Some schools seem to have prepared better than others and maintained a competitive standard. Others, formerly top performers like my local Academy, appear to have fallen off a cliff. Those which have done so will no doubt show up better next year. If they don’t we shall know that not all was as we were earlier led to believe. Parents will vote with their feet. That apparently is the whole idea.

AMAZON.UK      AMAZON.COM

Follow the links to my Author pages on Amazon and download FREE both these linked historical novels based on real events in WWII. Promo lasts two days only, so hurry!

Purple Killing

Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.

Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.

Hitler’s First lady

Lise Bauer is born in Africa in 1906, brought to England by her parents from where she is expelled with them in 1914, because her father is an East Prussian. They settle in America and become Americans, but return to Europe in the 1920’s. Here Lise is involved in the rise of the Nazi party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history.

GOOD READS FOR 2015

Download all five fast reading thrillers now! Offered at 90p or 90c. Or buy paperbacks from £4.99. Orders over £10 postage free.

AMAZON.COM                        AMAZON.UK

To answer that question we need to ask are the Tories winning? The answer to that is that they do not have to. Their realistic aim is not to lose. If they hold what they have, Cameron will still be Prime Minister although the make-up of his government may be different. He may have to do a deal with UKIP and the Democratic Unionists on a confidence and supply basis, or there could be just enough Lib Dems left to give him a wafer thin majority for a revived coalition.

On the other hand Labour have to advance. They have to win lots of seats. Running neck and neck with the Tories in the opinion polls is nowhere near good enough. And if they lose almost all their Scottish seats, as every opinion poll north of the border presently predicts they will, then they have to win loads of seats in England and Wales to make up for it, even to stay where they are.

And where they are is the wrong place to be. Widely regarded as a potent opposition, good at making the political weather on issues which catch public attention, it now clear to impartial observers that Milliband and Balls look a lot less like leaders of a government than Cameron and Osborne. This is not likely to change. Labour has failed to build a big narrative to inspire support and it is too late now to do so. It can only bang on and hope. But the prospect may not be hopeless.

There are so many jokers in the pack at this election than the most worthy analysis can be wide off the mark. Nobody knows how  first past the post (a ridiculous voting system in other than a two party state) will work with UKIP, the Lib Dems and the Greens all pulling votes from the two main parties. This could throw up wild card gains and losses which nobody expects.

Labour must hope it emerges from that confusion in better shape than the Tories. But to do so it has to come up with a good deal more than hysteria about the NHS.

In part yes, but yes is too simple an answer. In order to gain French support for unification of the two halves of Germany (the French were very nervous and others including the Brits were none too keen) Germany agreed to the French idea of a single currency and an EU constitution. The constitution failed to gain enough public support, but the currency went ahead. That is how the currency ended up without a government and without a treasury, with only a hesitant and uncertain central bank to underpin it. There was nobody watching what was going on behind the scenes.

First the plan for one single currency at the outset of the project was unworkable. It is just not possible to link a score of diverse economies based on differing financial, social, economic and cultural realities into one, all at once. It might have been possible to reduce down to three. A D. Euro for Germany and its associates, an F. Euro for France, Italy and Spain and an S Euro for the low GDP economies like Greece, with poor tax systems and little industry. Three is not as neat as one but a good deal neater than nineteen at the outset and twenty-one with later joiners. This would have required three central banks and it might have been possible to construct a democratic system of economic governance for each of the smaller groupings.

In the event nothing like this happened and the project went ahead on the terms we all know. These favoured Germany because it essentially provided a devaluation of the deutschmark and boosted German competitiveness as it absorbed and surmounted the problems of unification. Conversely France, Italy and Spain suffered a revaluation upwards, making their industrial output less competitive. Competitiveness was made worse by a Brussels full of regulation junkies. Meanwhile the countries with paper currencies of which tourists found a fistful was necessary to buy a coffee, were left with economies which were dysfunctional. But because they were in the Euro, they could now borrow on the market on terms they could previously only fantasize about, so they did. They went on a binge and went bust.

So whose fault was that? Was it the prolificacy of the Irish, Portuguese, Italians, Spanish and oh dear the Greeks, and their lack of discipline and rigour and in some cases a reliable revenue system, and so now they must be ground down and made to reform and pay? Or could it be that those who lent money in such volume and with such abandon knew full well what the set up was and should never have left the money tap running when any fool could disaster loomed.

Chief among those who benefitted from the euro is Europe’s new power above all others, Germany. Its rise from a divided nation supported by Europe at the end of the cold war to a united power holding Europe together today, is one of history’s most remarkable achievements. But as with the rise of any power, a price is paid by others. Germany could not have done this without the euro. So Germany has a responsibility to accept it is not blameless in this mess up. It must also accept that the social limit of economic policy has now been passed in Greece and is very close to the limit in Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Germany is very good at setting out on a great road forward but far less good at seeing when it has passed the point of excess and needs to change course. I say that as one whose blood is seventy five per cent German, so I can say it with conviction. Germany now has to cut the Greek people, not the bankers and the so called investors or the politicians, but the mass of the people, a deal which stops hunger, homelessness and unemployment and it has to do it fast.

Failure will ensure that the contagion of revolt spreads from country to country. If that happens the one which will lose the most is Germany. One line of thought is this. If Germany sanctioned the ECB authorising the Greek central bank to purchase Greek government bonds, this would ease the pressure on the new government in Athens. Owning your own debt is not the same as writing it off, but the effect is much the same and it has the advantage that the creditors get paid. If not that, then think of something else. But the time for prim declarations from Germany that thrift and obligations demand austerity and through the pain happiness will come has passed.

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Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S          Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

The Greek election outcome is as realists predicted and much worse than the bankers in Frankfurt hoped for. It also makes manifest the oldest rule of all, regularly forgotten in time of plenty by the minority to whom the majority of the plenty flows. It is this. There is a social limit to economic policy and that limit has been breached in Greece. The population have had enough. It is nothing short of a humanitarian outrage that in Greece today families are homeless and sleeping on the streets and children faint from hunger at lessons in school. Whatever Europe stands for or thinks it stands for it is not that.

Greece went bust. It was bailed out, but only ten per cent of the bail out money went into the Greek economy, the rest went to its creditors. They should have lost all for being so stupid as to fund a Greek lifestyle which was both ludicrous and unsustainable, based as it was not on revenue but on debt. Whatever the deal now struck to keep Greece in the euro, or even if none and Greece crashes out, the Greek people have now to apply themselves to building an economy based on revenue not borrowing, in which wealth is fairly shared and when all taxes are paid by everyone on the nail,  in sufficient volume to fund the state and all the obligations they demand of it.

That is the fact. The detail of how do do it is the argument. If Euroland wants Greece to stay it will have to come up with a plan which gives the country a chance and which does not involve children fainting from hunger and people sleeping on the streets.