Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

After the chaos and confusion, threats and danger faced on land and sea in treks of hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles, who amongst the refugees could have imagined the cheers and applause which local people would greet those who finally made it by train to Munich. No dogs and lines of police, but smiling faces, candy and toys for children, order and a system to clothe, feed and house, and process for asylum. Austria too had opened its borders to let the multitude pass. This was all in sharp contrast to the chaos and harshness of Hungary’s performance, which has blackened its image across the world.

But Germany’s star is shining. It has done everything it can think of to atone for the horrors of WWII but it suffered a setback to its image because it chose to replace financial common sense with obduracy over Greece. Once again the question was posed about the hard heart that pulsed the blood of the German race. But all that is suddenly forgotten in the cheers and smiles of Munich as its people threw out their arms to welcome the exhausted thousands whom others had chosen to harass and shun.

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Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S          Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

The government is not doing well over migrants and asylum seekers. There is a widespread view both within the Tory party and the country at large that Cameron’s leadership on the issue is poor. He is fighting opprobrium in the EU for doing too little, public opinion is building against him, but he has his backbenches crammed with MPs under pressure from constituents to say no.

There is emerging a strategy, though the government lacks the courage (or the unity?) to articulate it. It is to keep the EU at arms length, maintain the Calais ring of steel and concentrate humanitarian aid on the camps surrounding Syria and in Syria itself. Here the aid poured in from the UK exceeds all the rest of the EU put together. This is a strong position. Cameron has now said he will take many thousands more asylum seekers from these camps. They hold millions, so tens of thousands would be required to make a real difference. We are also hearing noises about obtaining parliamentary approval (not needed constitutionally but desirable politically) for bombing IS in Syria. This suggests Syria is to be the focus. There is some sense in that. There is also the naval presence off the coast of Libya which has saved many thousands of lives and hints of a small number of specialist troops to go to Libya and help that country to seal its borders. Since there are several organisations claiming to be the government, none of which amounts to one and which vary from well meaning but ineffectual to bandits who are hostile, this last idea is pie in the sky.

The difficulty with all of this is that it sidesteps the multitudes in transit across Europe causing chaos by their numbers and discord among EU members about the best way forward. The government appears heartless and self satisfied and detached from very real suffering now pouring across TV screens on rolling news and special programmes. However these people got there and why is no longer the point. They are there, they are not going to go away and everyone has to join in and help. Including Britain.

Yvette Cooper evidently launched a spirited attack upon rival Jeremy Corbyn’s economic plans during a hustings debate, but she seems to have got her wires crossed over Quantitative Easing. If you want to find out how it should work you can download a lucid explanation from the links below.

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           

There is almost no more vivid illustration of the complete failure of government to look after the interests of the nation than the record over replacing our nuclear power stations. We need about twenty if we are to remain a functioning modern society with reliable power and the first, already years behind schedule because of government (mostly New Labour) dithering, is now further delayed. At one time these power stations were state owned and run and Britain led the world in their design and technology. Now they are privately owned but because we have lost the skills to build new ones and no private corporation has the resources anyway, we have had to give the contract to the French EDF. This is owned by the French government. It has not yet come up with all the money it needs, but hopes to conclude a deal for finance soon with the Chinese government.

So here we are in the brave new world of privatisation with our first nuclear power station behind schedule, being built by the French government and financed by the Chinese government. Where is the private in that? How did we get here? Surely it is better for our own government, meaning us, to own our stuff than foreign governments?

Make of this what you will. What this blog makes of it is not suitable for publication.

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.

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.

KINDLE OR PAPERBACK     UK    US

I find I am having trouble recognising my country. Today is the seventy-sixth anniversary of the outbreak of WWII. On that day Great Britain put its very existence on the line in order to challenge the inherent evil which had gripped Nazi Germany. Later we were attacked by Japan. In the end we came through victorious, though at enormous cost.  But we paid willingly because we knew we were right. Now, a lifetime later, we are wrong. The picture of the Turkish soldier gently cradling the body of a dead three year old child is heart rending. It is shocking. And it is shaming because we have said no to him and his family. If we had said yes there might have been a system that took care of them better than the murderous traffickers into whose despicable clutches our foreign policy has driven them.

We have a moral responsibility for the mayhem now unfolding and well we know it. For Downing Street to talk in terms of cash aid to countries in meltdown is all very good, but no use to a three year old tossed into an angry sea. Whatever  oily excuses the smooth talking Cameron puts forward and however angry the underclass bearing the weight of his cuts becomes, he has no excuse for his shameful policy which even shocks the Germans. It is his duty to take a lead, back sensible quotas of fair sharing across the EU, and open our gates to the desperate.

It may very well be that the ultra right Thatcherite tendency which howls from the backbenches of his party frightens him more than the world opprobrium beginning to surround his person. The Tories may wallow in the notion that they are the nasty party. We must not let them turn our homeland into a nasty country.

There is now unfolding the greatest diaspora since the end of WWII involving traumatised multidudes in flight from their collapsing countries who arrive on the borders of what they suppose to be humanity and safety. They are greeted by chaos confusion and bitter wrangling among an organisation allegedly united in its defence of freedom and human rights. This is a crisis for these people, but it is also a crisis for the EU. First it failed over the euro; it fails again at the fundamentals of what it stands for. It is not difficult to set up reception centres at all the points of entry funded and manned by the EU and then to share among more than a score of countries those deserving of asylum. Yet it seems beyond everyone to do this.

Germany alone is showing it is up to the challenge and willing to help on the scale required. Merkel has restored her country’s reputation, tarnished by its harsh attitude to Greece. Britain’s position is awkward. To walk away and refuse to take a proper quota of the needy, in need because of the interventionist policies of the West which wrecked the order of governance across the region, is especially bad when Britain was the lead player for Europe in those interventions. The problem is that years of austerity have caused so many cutbacks and shrinkages in public services that ordinary people are deeply suspicious, even hostile, to a further influx of refugees from overseas, however worthy the cause.

Time for Cameron to show leadership and do what is right. He is always talking about doing what is right. Now is his chance.

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.