Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

BROWSE MY BOOKS WITH THESE LINKS

Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

Malcolm Blair-Robinson UK

Clearly it makes sense for the NHS to work at weekends. In fact this blog has advocated a quite different system where hospitals run a three shift 24 hour pattern which never closes. There is no reason why routine operations and care cannot take place on a round the clock basis, eliminating waiting lists and delays, together with the ludicrous and expensive bureaucracy required to administer all these lists and targets.

Among the reforms needed to make real progress is one of the medical profession involving doctors and consultants, the way they are organised and the way they see themselves, their hierarchy and some of their eighteenth century traditions. Above all moonlighting into lucrative private practice fed by customers delayed by the NHS is a no go. So is the self employed status of GPs. But I am moving ahead of current events I know. Unfortunately until events catch up the NHS will continue to lurch from one problem to the next.

QE in various forms is now very much part of the economic conversation, especially in connection with a fresh approach to financial issues by the new leadership of the Labour party. Dynamic Quantitative Easing remains under government, not bank, control and targets specific investment projects without borrowing, interest or repayments. It can reboot the economy, boost manufacturing and exports and enable sustained growth of real national wealth shared by all, rather than just asset inflation which is the downside of ordinary QE. If you want to find out more you can enjoy a lucid explanation of the original idea from the link below.

Download .99p  Paperback £2.99

There is no way an industrial country can allow itself to go out of steel production. The fact that we are presently a debt driven economy obsessed with shopping and house ownership does not alter the fact that we cannot go on that way. We have to restore a very large part of our industrial capacity so that we can re-balance our economy and restore prosperity to the majority. The Tories talk of doing this, but follow policies which can never deliver it. Neither will the markets.

To get industry going again two things have to happen. There are loads of other musts, but without these two fundamentals there is no way forward. The first is that the value of sterling has to come down and the second is that industry must have access to cheaper energy. As a follow on to my 2009 book 2010 A Blueprint For Change, with the subtitle Bold Ideas For Voters, I am well advanced on Dynamic Socialism subtitled Bold Ideas For Labour. This will offer a fundamentally new economic model tailored to the times in which we find ourselves. Watch this space.

BROWSE MY BOOKS WITH THESE LINKS

Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

Malcolm Blair-Robinson UK

The report that a member of the BBC’s Question Time audience was reduced to tears because of the effect of the cut in tax credits is distressing. It is also something of a political embarrassment.

This blog has commented often about the ridiculous situation where low wages and excessive rents are subsidised by benefits so as to support the private sector, without which businesses would have to pay higher wages and landlords would have to charge no more than tenants could afford. Unfortunately it is not that simple. To stop the rent subsidies you would have to control rents at affordable levels, give long term security of tenure by law and consequently crash house prices. Even Osborne dare not go there.

But on the face of it tax credits looked easy. Cut them, but increase the minimum wage to compensate. Simple. Well not quite. It turns out that most beneficiaries of tax credits are not on the minimum wage. They are families under pressure who are hard working but still cannot make ends meet. They are going to be very hard hit. Many, if not most, voted Tory because it was now the party of hard working people who want to get on. Tears will flow in rivers. As Boris has said this is a political disaster. The wound of betrayal will be raw for years. Even till 2020.

QE in various forms is now very much part of the economic conversation, especially in connection with a fresh approach to financial issues by the new leadership of the Labour party. Dynamic Quantitative Easing remains under government, not bank, control and targets specific investment projects without borrowing, interest or repayments. It can reboot the economy, boost manufacturing and exports and enable sustained growth of real national wealth shared by all, rather than just asset inflation which is the downside of ordinary QE. If you want to find out more you can enjoy a lucid explanation of the original idea from the link below.

Download .99p  Paperback £2.99

George Osborne had a bit of a field day yesterday with his parliamentary gimmick which has wound Labour up in knots. Corbyn looked subdued as his Shadow Chancellor put a brave face on what had been something of a disaster. Underlying all of it is the fact that the parliamentary party is way out of step with the Labour membership, represented by Corbyn and McDonnell. Add to this the fact that Corbyn and McDonnell have little experience of leading (though lots at rebelling) and events are unlikely to run smoothly. Two things must now happen.

Labour MPs must recognise, as many do, that whatever their own preference, because they themselves had lost touch with their party’s natural roots, it has chosen a leader far to the left, because that is where the new engine and of change is developing, not just in Britain , but across Europe and even to a degree in the US, where Bernie Sanders is pulling surprising  crowds. The time has come to fall in line and help. Or join the Tories.

Next the new Labour leadership must now sharpen up its act on the economy. It did well in the leadership election, even coming up with the promising, though slightly flawed but easily modified, people’s quantitative easing. At least this was a new idea to offer a real way through the stranglehold of debt and shortage of real money in the ordinary economy. We need to start hearing more about a new economic agenda that challenges almost all the verities of Thatcherism which are now beginning to look frayed and counter productive. And there is something else. Yes there is a certain refreshing appeal about being not too slick and bit unprepared in a hated (by the public) over spun, too slick, deeply distrusted political culture. But they face Osborne. He is the slickest, craftiest, sharpest tool in the political box. That is why yesterday was his. His weakness is that politics is also about tomorrow.

QE in various forms is now very much part of the economic conversation, especially in connection with a fresh approach to financial issues by the new leadership of the Labour party. Dynamic Quantitative Easing remains under government, not bank, control and targets specific investment projects without borrowing, interest or repayments. It can reboot the economy, boost manufacturing and exports and enable sustained growth of real national wealth shared by all, rather than just asset inflation which is the downside of ordinary QE. If you want to find out more you can enjoy a lucid explanation of the original idea from the link below.

Download .99p  Paperback £2.99

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