Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

I will just remind new readers, as regulars already know, that I have sympathies and leanings to aspects of both the republicans and democrats, so my allegiance varies by issue. I thought President Obama gave a bravura performance in his State of the Union address. He appeared more confident than of late and clearly senses that the wind may be ebbing away from the sails of his opponents. When the cameras panned into the audience as his supporters leapt to their feet for the ritual ovations, one had the impression of large numbers of grumpy old men still seated.

On one issue Obama is right and it will become the number one political issue all across the West. Income inequality. The gap between rich and poor has grown to unprecedented levels, suggesting that there is something fundamentally adrift not with capitalism, but with the current model of it. Politicians of all persuasions will have to move this issue to the top of their in trays. It will grow and grow in importance until to be on the wrong side of it will guarantee electoral carnage. And not just in America.

Too many of the new jobs created since 2010, over two million of them apparently, are self employed and while some of these will be successful and enterprising start ups, too many are hand to mouth efforts to try and work at whatever and for however little, just to keep going. Wage growth at 1.8% cannot for long sustain economic growth of 3%.

Moreover there is the ever pressing issue of debt expansion and asset inflation in an economy operating at close to nil inflation. Too much of the economic activity is in the financial sector relative to everywhere else in the real economy, and too much of that is in London and the South East. So there is no cause to celebrate anything other than survival and every reason to press forward to find a better and fairer economic model.

As for interest rates. This saga has become a farce. Every time it is proposed to use this tool, it is put back in the box and every time the reason is given, it is the wrong one. Had interest rates been eased up earlier, sufficient to provide savers with a return and sufficient to curb asset inflation, we would not be in quite the uncertain place we are now.

From MALCOLM  BLAIR-ROBINSON

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It is right for the Prime Minister to write to Chilcot to complain about the inexcusable delays in publishing this inquiry. The public is utterly fed up with this bumbling establishment which cannot conclude, deliver or resolve anything. The difference now is that people will not put up with it any longer and nervous politicians are beginning to sense this. And rightly so.

This process of trying to discover how many lies were told to gain support for the disastrous Iraq war and by whom started before the last General Election and is not now to be published until after the next one. In any normal world this would be considered an abuse of process and a public insult. Such is the ramshackle and uncoded structure of governance which is called our unwritten constitution, these abuses are not only accepted but are standard practice.

Evidently the final delay is caused by giving those criticised in the report an opportunity to respond. That is absurd. Why should the guilty be given the chance to clean up their image?