Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

This blog will refrain from passing judgment until after the C4 programme tonight, but there is a general point worth making. It is not whether rules have or have not been broken that causes public disquiet. It is the very idea that members of parliament are able to sell for personal gain the skills or connections they acquire by acting as representatives of voters at Westminster, where they are paid nearly three times the average salary as a backbencher and considerably more as a minister. Selling favours of any kind or making introductions for cash is seen as a form of soft corruption which most decent ‘hard working people who want to get on’ to use the favourite catchphrase of the hustings, deplore. So it does not matter whether they are guilty of breaking their own rules or not. The whole idea stinks.

One wonders why any genuine company would pay to hire people so naive as to fall into these fiscal honey traps set by newspapers anyway. Perhaps they don’t, which is why the traps always catch something.

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John Kerry has arrived in London to have talks with Philip Hammond in a weird atmosphere in which words like land grab and craven are used to describe the Russians.

This blog has always held the Kiev government and its supporters who toppled the previous government a year ago responsible for the chaos now engulfing Ukraine. There is no need to rehearse again the reasons why, but a trawl through old posts will act as a reminder. The difference now is that more and more western correspondents and TV crews are getting into the eastern provinces behind rebel lines and more and more interviews with suffering civilians are being broadcast which throw ever more doubt upon the integrity of the West’s posture in this crisis. On top of that we yesterday had the scathing report from the House of Lords which spoke of misreading the crisis and a lack of analytical skills at the Foreign Office.

Talk of the territorial integrity of the Ukraine is meaningless. Through its own ill advised actions, spurred on by some reckless promises from the EU which were undeliverable and should never have been made, the Ukraine is now broken up and will not be put back together. Crimea has gone, the eastern provinces are going and what is left will just have to make the best of the bad job of which it is the architect.

And as for the UK, the EU and the US, they will have to pick over the shambles of their diplomacy and learn some very useful lessons.

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. Downfall in Downing Street catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

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Both of them. The new Greek government was not ready to default and exit the euro, because it knows that while it has full backing to confront the EU over its bailout terms and the failed austerity programme, it does not have a majority to exit the eurozone. Yet. But if the demands are too steep that will change. So to buy time it gave ground.

Germany looked at the bill if Greece dropped out of the euro and also looked at the blow to its own leadership of Europe if that happened. It would be blamed for the disaster and moreover would face further huge investments to keep Italy, Spain and Portugal from following Greece out. Merkel sees this, but she has trouble with her finance minister who sees only financial rectitude and reform. So she has manged to get a deal which will push Greece to the limit of its democratic mandate. It is the fine judgement of what that limit actually is which will determine whether the battered euro edifice remains standing, or whether bit by bit it tumbles down.

Politicians do not like to talk about the fragile nature of the UK’s Economic Recovery. Yet it remains rooted in borrowing, asset inflation, housing costs which are out of control and a housing shortage which continues to grow. It is consumption based in a country which no longer makes things for shoppers to buy, so jobs are exported and things are imported. Wages are at near historic lows, requiring subsidy and support from the government, even for those in work. The list goes on and on and you know it well. If you are a politician you never talk about it because you cannot see any other way forward. If you are in the top 10% you have never had it so good. If you are young and unemployed you are close to despair.

Yet it does not have to be like this. There is another way. Dynamic Quantitative Easing. It is only 2500 words in easy read format. To turn this original paper into a booklet, the January 2015 posts of this blog have been added. This bold new idea for economic growth will empower you with a greater understanding of what is happening in our economy and how we can change things for the better.

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Germany is overplaying its hand, not for the first time in its turbulent history, and will start to pay a price. Like a calvinist pastor it lectures on the morality of sticking to agreements, paying debts and reforming wayward habits. Very good as a lecture or a sermon. But nonsense when it flies in the face of the two critical pillars of capitalism and democracy.

The foundation of capitalism is that businesses, individuals and countries can fail and go bust if they borrow more than they can manage and repay. This is an essential discipline that acts as a restraint upon borrowers and lenders since both lose in the event of failure. The pillar of democracy is that governments can agree to anything they like but if they do and its becomes such a burden upon the people that they can no longer accept it, the people will throw out the government and all its works.

Both of these things have happened in Greece.  Berlin and under its orders, Brussels, say that Greek people can vote for whatever they like but that does not change what their predecessor governments agreed to. This is a denial of democracy, because the Greek election outcome changes everything. Even if the new government could be browbeaten into accepting Germany’s terms it would return to Athens convulsed in uproar on the streets, which would lead to its overthrow and replacement with something wholly unwilling to agree to anything which would avoid default.

This blog will not dare to predict how today’s talks will end. What it can record is that Europe now has three problems in which its record is littered with ill judgement and mistakes. Russia, Greece and the Euro. None of it looks good. And there is a fourth. Britain could be on the road out.

Politicians do not like to talk about the fragile nature of the UK’s Economic Recovery. Yet it remains rooted in borrowing, asset inflation, housing costs which are out of control and a housing shortage which continues to grow. It is consumption based in a country which no longer makes things for shoppers to buy, so jobs are exported and things are imported. Wages are at near historic lows, requiring subsidy and support from the government, even for those in work. The list goes on and on and you know it well. If you are a politician you never talk about it because you cannot see any other way forward. If you are in the top 10% you have never had it so good. If you are young and unemployed you are close to despair.

Yet it does not have to be like this. There is another way. Dynamic Quantitative Easing. It is only 2500 words in easy read format. To turn this original paper into a booklet, the January 2015 posts of this blog have been added. This bold new idea for economic growth will empower you with a greater understanding of what is happening in our economy and how we can change things for the better.

Download or Paperback from .99p

BBC News – Ukraine: UK and EU ‘badly misread’ Russia

Politicians do not like to talk about the fragile nature of the UK’s Economic Recovery. Yet it remains rooted in borrowing, asset inflation, housing costs which are out of control and a housing shortage which continues to grow. It is consumption based in a country which no longer makes things for shoppers to buy, so jobs are exported and things are imported. Wages are at near historic lows, requiring subsidy and support from the government, even for those in work. The list goes on and on and you know it well. If you are a politician you never talk about it because you cannot see any other way forward. If you are in the top 10% you have never had it so good. If you are young and unemployed you are close to despair.

Yet it does not have to be like this. There is another way. Dynamic Quantitative Easing. It is only 2500 words in easy read format. To turn this original paper into a booklet, the January 2015 posts of this blog have been added. This bold new idea for economic growth will empower you with a greater understanding of what is happening in our economy and how we can change things for the better.

.99p Download now! Or paperback £2.99

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