Archive for April, 2015

America: Race Riots

Monday, April 27th, 2015

Maybe it is an inevitable outcome of racial tension, which is as old as America itself with its origins in slavery and the aftermath of the slow progress of equal rights, that in towns like Ferguson Missouri from time to time things will flare up. But race riots in Baltimore? This does not play well for the international image of the U.S. It does not play well for the people involved either. For these protests are not about harassment by rednecks, which is bad enough, but about police brutality giving rise to loss of life. Loss of the lives of black Americans. It could not be worse.

Every so often America has to confront its racial divisions and prejudices and make amends. It then moves forward to better times, but very slowly slips back, making renewed action imperative. This time, and time for action is here again, there is something really fundamental about a civilized state being called into question: the integrity of its police forces. Americans must again join hands and move forward to a more open and enlightened interpretation of their relationships with each other. As they so often say ‘we are all Americans’. But a puzzled world is asking ‘are all Americans equal under the law?’ That is the question to which there does not seem to be a satisfactory answer. Yet.

Steamy Political Thriller

Saturday, April 25th, 2015

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 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.

KINDLE OR PAPERBACK     UK    US

Election 2015: A Tory Edge?

Saturday, April 25th, 2015

In this never ending election campaign one can only say for sure that in two weeks time it will all be over. However we may be none the wiser about who is going to govern us. At present, although very close, it begins to look as if the Tories have a slight advantage. This will not give them a majority but it is likely to make them the largest party.

The Lib Dems have already said they will talk to the largest party in terms of seats, so we could be back to the same partnership. The problem is that this projection shows that together the two coalition parties will have lost enough seats between them to be unable this time to provide a majority by joining up. Labour will be very close in seat numbers to the Tories and if added to the Scot Nats on some kind of deal they may be able just to form a majority government, but it will be tight and they may not have enough.

This leaves two obvious possibilities. A Tory Lib Dem minority coalition where all the anti-austerity pro EU parties voting together can block any cuts or bring it down, or a Labour minority government with fewer seats than the Tories but kept in power by the Scot Nats, Plaid Cymru and the DUP. It is very difficult to see how either of these kinds of set ups can provide strong coherent government over a fixed five year term.

There is one other possibility that nobody dares even think about. A Grand coalition between Labour and the Tories to sort out the voting system, the House of Lords, how power can be devolved to the regions and the workings of an English element of a UK parliament. Having done that, dissolve parliament and have a fresh election with new rules, updated structures and a voting system which can produce a winner. That is the one option which is truly in the national interest, but it is fair to make the cynical observation that while in democratic politics political parties always proclaim subservience to the national interest, it is always the interests of their own party which come first.

Browse Good Books

Friday, April 24th, 2015

    BROWSE MY BOOKS WITH THESE LINKS An image posted by the author.

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

The Economy: Ten Real Questions

Friday, April 24th, 2015

The arguments between the parties  about the economy , as the IFS pointed out yesterday, deal only in marginal handouts to entice voters and broad generalisations to hoodwink them. In the view of this blog here are ten questions which remain unanswered with clarity.

1  What are you going to cut and what effect will that have, not broad totals but specifics?

2  Are you going to borrow to invest and if so what is your target over what period?

3  How are you going to rebalance the economy away from financial services?

4  How are you going to increase manufacturing and exports?

5  How are you going to reduce imports and repatriate jobs?

6  How are you going to reduce the income gap?

7  What are you going to do about the low level of productivity in the UK?

8  What are you going to do to increase the revenue stream from taxation to the level needed to pay the running costs of the country?

9  What kind of taxation reform do you plan to a complicated and expensive system?

10  How are you going to increase the housing supply to make housing more affordable?

It is all very well to obsess about the deficit, but it is no good failing to tackle the reasons why it is there. Deal with these ten questions properly and the deficit will take care of itself.

Middle East, Ukraine: And UK?

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2015

Although the atrocities of Islamic State are never far from the news, the general level of media noise from both the Middle East and Ukraine is a good deal less than in the recent past. This is curious at one level because the situation in Eastern Ukraine remains dangerous and the Middle East has rarely been engulfed in such chaos of war and lawlessness. There is of course a general election campaign in force here and that always distorts the news. Indeed if you listen to the latest Tory onslaught, the greatest threat to the UK comes from Scotland.

There is however something much more important going on, which is historically significant and may be seen one day as a watershed moment. Britain and the US have stopped meddling where they do more harm than good, however well intentioned their activities. This may be a conscious decision because of past failures now so huge that they are beyond denial, or by default because of rising domestic pressures.

The result is that in the Mid East the various Arab powers are now beginning to act upon the threats that in many ways they have themselves fomented and now have to control; Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are all active and it will be these three who will in the end resolve the schisms and faultlines in the various interpretations of Islam which, like Christianity in the past, are the source of conflict and forms of genocide. The surviving Assad regime has confirmed its protection of Christians where it is in a position to enforce it. America, Britain and some other European countries are continuing with air strikes on IS targets, but it is all relatively low key. Whilst the continuing suffering is a bad thing the fact that the region itself is now in the driving seat to solve its problems is a very good thing and that is the way it should be.

In Ukraine it is Germany, supported by France, but with the Russian speaking Merkel very much in the lead, where the initiatives to resolve the Ukraine crisis are being organised. Progress is being made. It looks as if the East will get most of the autonomy it wants and certainly Russia will never give up Crimea, not least because the vast majority of crimeans would not let them. Kiev will eventually see a settlement that leaves it with authority over a good less territory than when it started the crisis, but it will still be able to build a prosperous state on what remains. It should reflect on its reckless policies which have led it to where it is and debarred it from where it wanted to go.

Whether Russia will be brought back towards Europe or whether Russians have decided that they want to rebuild a less dependent state is not yet clear. A lot will depend on the chemistry between Putin and Merkel. What is clear is that Russia will be more assertive, but that does not have to mean she will not be constructive. Some things will depend on who is the next US President.

As for the UK now cowering under the dark cloud of a Scottish takeover (what piffle) a home truth needs to be confronted. By threatening to leave Europe and by fomenting false disharmony between Scotland and England, the UK has begun to look rather a shaky enterprise. No wonder we are already more or less excluded from all the discussions and ignored when we are included. Everyone will deny it, but that is how it is.

Political Thriller: Download or Paperback

Tuesday, April 21st, 2015

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 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.

KINDLE OR PAPERBACK     UK    US

Major Speech Row

Tuesday, April 21st, 2015

That really was an awful speech. Scotland is a separate country with a separate heritage and social values, which are more inclusive and left wing than further south. Scotland is the home of the original Labour party, whose first MP was Scottish. In the last hundred years five prime ministers have been of Scottish origin. Six if you include Cameron. Scotland has always played an important role in UK politics, but the Tory party has never really been a driving force in Scotland. Its high water mark was in 1955, when 36 MPs and 50% of the votes. Over the following years the numbers shrank until a wipeout in 1997. Since then just one seat. One of the drivers of the independence argument was the fact that Scots were governed by a party for which almost nobody any longer voted.

This nasty rhetoric about ‘clear and present danger’ is ludicrous and will put off many inclusive Conservatives who can think for themselves. Moreover the biggest threat to the Union comes from a majority in England voting to leave the EU. If that happened Scotland for sure would vote to leave the UK and apply to join the EU. What has Sir John Major to say about that?

Browse My Books

Tuesday, April 21st, 2015

    BROWSE MY BOOKS WITH THESE LINKS An image posted by the author.

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

Demonizing The SNP: A Major Intervention

Tuesday, April 21st, 2015

This blog has a lot of respect for John Major. Described by Denis Thatcher as a ‘ghastly’ Prime Minister, his wife’s choice as her successor undoubtedly disappointed her. But he had a very difficult hand to play which included Black Wednesday, loads of negative equity and a Tory party split so badly down the EU faultline that he had to withdraw the whip from a gang of rebellious backbenchers and resign himself as Tory leader. He was only re-elected because he did a deal with Heseltine to share power. He then led the Tories into the biggest defeat in their history from which they have still not recovered. So he carries baggage for sure.

His intervention today with yet more frighteners about the SNP is a mistake. The endless Tory barrage about the dangers of the SNP is not only misconstrued but is also undermining the Union itself. Why should the Scots want to stay in a Union which constantly insults them? The threat to a Tory victory, which seems ever more remote, comes not from Nicola Sturgeon (the more seats she takes from Labour north of the border, the better for the Tories overall) but from UKIP and to some extent the Lib Dems in Conservative/Labour marginals. Much more attention should be paid to that theatre of operations rather than obsessing about Scotland.

Meanwhile Sturgeon is now acclaimed as the star and because of all the  publicity she receives on Tory airtime, her party may well end up calling the tune. The problem for the Tories is that huge numbers of UK voters think that would be a very good thing.