Malcolm Blair Robinson

An idea to stimulate economic growth without further government borrowing. Written in plain English and very easy to follow, this is the only really fresh approach out there to the intractable problems of the UK economy, and it is just beginning to be noticed in important places. Buy! Download only .99p Paperback £2.99

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Tonight there is another broadcasting set piece; an edition of BBC Question Time featuring the three main party leaders of the old parliament. Cameron, Clegg and Milliband. How they perform will be the subject of much analysis and polling, but how many votes will move from one to another is hard to tell.

What we do know is that Cameron looks a lot less secure than he did at the start of the campaign and Milliband and Clegg look stronger, especially Milliband. Aside from Nicola Sturgeon, the mega star, Ed is the big surprise to friend and foe alike in the way he and his ratings have grown as the campaign has unfolded. Lynton Crosby, the Tory guru hired from Australia is in part responsible through orchestrating a number of crass attacks on the Labour leader which backfired badly. But the Labour campaign has been better run, as has the much more limited Lib Dem effort, and Milliband has emerged as a measured and sympathetic leader with some kind of inner strength or conviction that people had not noticed before. This could be important, but as with everything in this unprecedented election, it remains impossible to say for sure.

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    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

The Tory campaign has lost its wheels. There are certain controls that good governance requires remain at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This used to include interest rates, but it is now fashionable for central banks to control these, a development which history may show to have been a mistake. But to pass a law to tie the chancellor’s hands on income tax, VAT and and national insurance is madness. Nobody can know what the next five years will bring or what political or financial emergencies may arise. It can only mean, in view of the cascade of unfunded promises already made, even more cuts for people who can cope least. And suppose in a crisis he has to act to raise one or the other of these taxes and breaks this law. What are voters supposed to do then. Dial 999?

The truth is that the Tory leadership now believes that nobody believes them (or private polling has told them as much) and so they think a law to bind them to keep their promises is needed to give them a chance on May 7th. It is a cynical move by a bunch of clueless spin doctors which  is unlikely to convince many. This is because should the chancellor wish to raise any or all of these taxes he would only have to repeal the law to do so. So the whole thing is meaningless as are all laws made by governments about government. Laws only work when the people subject to them cannot change them. That is what laws are. Dear me.

Ignoring the political implications of these latest figures, they reveal exactly what it is that is wrong with our economy. Construction and manufacturing are down as are exports; lower than expected growth is dependent on the service sector to stop it being negative and within that shopping and eating out are the drivers. Once again it is becoming clear that house price inflation has plaid a part in the windrow dressing of our allegedly fast growing economy. Perhaps most significant of all is a further fall in productivity.

This is not, and never has been, a rebalancing of the economy away from imports to exports, away from consumption to manufacturing, away from debt to investment, away from the financial sector to the real economy. In other words nothing of substance promised by the government five years ago in return for austerity has been delivered. This is no more than a makeover of the old failed economic model, with a few tweaks here and there. It is a bad model which increases the gap between rich and poor and multiplies billionaires and food banks in equal measure. It is by no rational measure outside the campaign rooms an economic recovery; it is but economic survival.

 What effect, if any, it will have on the election remains to be seen. At least we do not have too long to wait.

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. The novel 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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This blog is utterly dismayed by the demand side auction now engaging the main political parties to try and buy votes. All these rights, benefits and support for buying, without any coherent plan for a massive programme of affordable house building to rent, can only increase the shortage, inflate prices and increase the demand for taxation funded housing benefit to keep families from living on the streets.

No government of whatever party, grouping on combination, should get mixed up in the private property market. It should concentrate, as a matter of national emergency, on getting two million new houses built asap.by local authorites and housing associations to ensure a plentiful supply in all aprts of the country of decent affordable housing. This will settle the market and reduce housing costs to a proper affordable level and rebalance the economy away from borrowing and into saving.

It is quite impossible for politicians, and the Tories who think they are clever on the economy should know this, to talk of economic competence when they are feeding the very process which led to the financial crash in the first place.

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    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

The Star Wars nickname given by locals to the vast new health complex in their midst, now about to open, gives emphasis to the remarkable achievement of the South Glasgow University Hospital. This  £1 billion project, funded by the Scottish Government, is one of the largest and certainly most up to date critical healthcare complexes in Europe. It  puts to shame anything similar south of the border. Entirely for NHS patients, apparently every one of the 1000 of them has their own room with en suite. If the Scottish National party want a symbol of what they can deliver and what their values are, surely this is it.

An idea to stimulate economic growth without further government borrowing. Written in plain English and very easy to follow, this is the only really fresh approach out there to the intractable problems of the UK economy, and it is just beginning to be noticed in important places. Buy! Download only .99p Paperback £2.99

Kindle or Paperback  UK        US