Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy and right hand man, flew to Scotland on a mysterious peace mission in 1941, which has never been convincingly explained, to meet unidentified politicians who wanted to end the war. The truth has been covered up for generations because to reveal it would somehow undermine the honour and constitutional fabric of the United Kingdom. Who was plotting against Churchill? What were the peace terms on offer? What happened to Hess? Was he killed in the War? Was the prisoner in Spandau a double?
There are many questions to which in the modern day one man, Saul Benedict has all the answers, because his parents were players in the drama involving Churchill, Hitler, leading politicians and an important Royal. Saul is an author and declares his intention to write a book to reveal all, but he is shot dead, apparently accidentally by a poacher. But was it an accident? Rick Coleman an investigative journalist determines to find out and in doing so to uncover the mystery.
Taking place in the modern day but with flashback chapters which gradually unfold the hidden secrets, the novel is a fast moving and compelling read based on the family knowledge of the author whose parents had connections to both Hess and Hitler and to British Intelligence.

Technically no, because it has invoked a concession which allows several payments due in a month to be bundled together and paid at the end.  So the Greek saga of crisis in its relations with  its creditors and members of the Eurozone which, like a can, has been kicked down the road for as long as most people can remember, will carry on being kicked until the end of June. What then? Another fudge and more kicking?

Sooner or later this fiasco will have to stop. Because Greece is in default, it has not paid and it cannot pay without borrowing more to pay with. The whole idea of capitalism is that people, businesses, countries, and before long even regions must be able to collapse financially and start again; a process in which over generous or greedy lenders lose big time as well as the borrowers, but which allows everyone to acknowledge that the sums are out of control, impossible to balance and cannot be reconciled. Bankers know when the end has come and stop lending, but loan sharks go on lending way past the point at which repayment is a realistic prospect. Greece’s creditors are now lending themselves money via lending to Greece, so as to conceal the losses which are there and real and which  have to be faced and written off.

Whatever the faults of the Greeks and there are many, from lousy lying governments, to full state pensions from early middle age, through to the notion that paying taxes is for fools, all of which have brought Greece to this pass. But the real cause is the Euro itself, because to suppose that one currency at one value could work for differing economies as diverse as those of Germany and Greece was to imagine that elephants, pigs and everything pink would fly on a wishful thought. They don’t and they never will.

Either Greece is kept in the Euro by writing down its debts to a manageable level, about 25% of their current total, and rebooting its economy with new printed Euros, not loans, or Greece leaves the Euro, prints its own drachmas and makes a fresh start on its own as the cheapest place in the EU for holidays, property investment, manufacturing and everything else you might want to do among an engaging people in the hot Aegean sun.