So it has happened! He would punish women who had abortions. No matter that he U turned and changed to it punishing doctors. The damage is done. Let us say it again. This man who aspires to be President of the United States would ‘punish women’. That he should even think such a thing, let alone be stupid enough to say it, makes him unfit for purpose as leader of the free world.
This blog has been tolerant of Trump and at times even complimentary. But no longer. If America were to choose this man it would enter a strange world in which it would be impossible for its President to visit the country of its closest ally Great Britain, and probably most of Western Europe. Its leadership of the West would be forfeit and would stay that way for so long as the Trump Administration lasted.
America now has to get a grip. It has exposed itself as angry and ungovernable under a constitution which is beginning to look ridiculous in a modern world. It is the home of all which people admire and aspire to. Yet while people all across the world love Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, power their lives through Google and swoon over Hollywood and love their American friends above all others, they recoil from what America has become as a society and an example. Like a drunken host in a beautiful home, slowly the party guests murmur polite excuses and drift away. A country which is full of pro-lifers who nevertheless demand the constitutional right to arm themselves to kill their neighbours has very big issues, long overdue for attention.
Punish women. Dear me.
The joint Russian/Assad recapture of Palmyra, aided by Iran and others is very good news, unless you remain shackled to many of the flimsy pipe dreams of the so called strategy of the West. It is good because this priceless heritage is back in the hands of those who wish to preserve and treasure it. It is good because it is a strategic defeat for the destructive forces of IS. It is good because this is the first time the Syrian regime and Russia have concentrated forces against IS, with spectacular results. It will be good too for the West and its Arab allies because the joined up nature and clear thinking of their rivals will cause some internal anxieties and bickering which should lead it to sharpen up its act. In particular the West, NATO and the Gulf States will have to take on board a partnership with Russia, which in the end recognizes her as an ally, in the fight against militant and extreme Islam.
There is a caution in this tale however. It may well be possible to degrade and even destroy IS as a state, but it will remain as an ideology to attract those who feel angry that the good things in life are not available to them and are on the lookout for something to give them status and their lives meaning. As a terrorist organisation IS does not require to be a state, and defeating the latter may actually increase the threat from the former.
It was brave of the Secretary of State for Education to stand up and confront the teachers; a challenge several of her predecessors funked. Unfortunately what she had to say betrayed a good deal of ignorance and was very disappointing. There is something fundamentally wrong with the idea that billions of public money be handed to semi-independent schools to do more or less as they like with no organised supervision to which the public has access, not as a specialist niche arrangement in exceptional circumstances, but for the whole state system. As Corbyn said yesterday it is a form of asset stripping.
There is no mandate for it. It was not in the Tory manifesto and it is worth reminding their government that while they have a majority they won it on their lowest winning total of votes since long before WWII. There is trouble ahead. This policy will not stand.
Even Tory councillors are beginning to rebel against the peculiar and absurd announcement that all schools paid for by the taxpayer and in the state system are to be forced to become academies. Peculiar because it was a key element of Osborne’s disastrous career breaking budget; this is not the usual way to announce fundamental changes to education. The councillors rightly protest because the policy is absurd. Academies were a good idea to address special situations of failing schools. Some have been a success, but by no means all. Statistically they are no better and no worse than the local authority led schools of like type. Fundamentally academies suffer serious shortcomings which play to advantage in certain specialist circumstances, but which rule out this misguided proposal that they become universal.
They are outside the control of anybody except the Secretary of State for Education, who while steeped in ideology and privately educated, is clueless of detail. That means that public money is being used to fund an education system which will be so detached from democratic control as to be beyond it. It means that parents will have nobody to turn to when things go wrong. It means that parents will no longer have representatives on the governing body. It means teachers will no longer be paid according to a scale because academies can pay what they like. Teachers will not even have to be qualified because academies can employ whomever they like. To cap it all they will also be allowed to teach what they like. We can be certain of a chaotic outcome. There will be a few which are amazingly good. a few that a good, a lot that are in a low average and far too many which will be abject disasters.
In case you wonder how I come to these conclusions I can add that through a large family I achieved the curious record of having at least one child continuously in full time education for 48 years, one is a teacher with experience at both LA schools and academies and I have twice been a school governor. On the last occasion I was parachuted in to a school in special measures by the local eduction authority and played a leading role in closing it down and reopening it as an academy. So I speak as an insider. Pay attention!
Potentially the winners of the budget mayhem and Tory civil war are the Liberal Democrats. They now have a narrative. Compare the orderly one nation government of the Coalition with the chaos of the government of a Tory majority. It could be enough to win back a good deal of the West Country, some Home County suburbs and a few seats further north. Tim Farron is an articulate orator. It could be his moment. This could be a political sub-plot worth watching.
Starting today four Tor Raven thrillers go on sale from £4.99 Paperback and from .99p Download. This is terrific value for page turning quality reads. Get your copies now and enjoy the Easter break with relaxing drama on your phone, tablet or in hard copy. Click links at the end of each synopsis.
St.John Whilloe is the black sheep member of a wealthy legal family, whose firm of solicitors looks after the affairs of many of the top families in the country. He is consulted by a young woman who claims to be frightened by her husband. Things are not as they seem and St.John finds himself drawn into a complex web of intrigue and murder. He is soon in a race against time to solve a mystery with roots in a tortured family history, with sinister paranormal undertones.
An English village slumbers on the Surrey/Sussex borders, but the pastoral exterior hides a number of nightmare secrets. The return of a young man, Philip, after a long absence stirs memories of the horrific murder of his mother and uncle years earlier and of an ancient curse delivered upon the family in Napoleonic times. The villagers’ unease grows as Philip embarks upon an affair with the local farmer’s daughter, and a series of mysterious deaths seem to follow in his wake. Soon their anxiety turns to fear as they feel evil in their midst. Could Philip be in league with the Devil? Set in the 1920s and full of authentic period detail, this is a tale which will haunt readers long after the last page has been turned.
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.
The narrow, ordered life of a gentle but almost reclusive artist, Jane Block, is disturbed when a bequest, intended for her dead mother, passes to her. Mystery surrounds the nature of the inheritance and Jane is led on a sinister trail to secrets of the past, forcing her to confront her own fears and inhibitions. She finds herself caught in a frightening quest to unravel a mysterious cover-up from World War Two, and in so doing finds intrigue, love and betrayal.
Here are FREE downloads of three of my most popular thrillers. U.S PT +midnight to -midnight Tuesday 22 March. GMT 9 am Tuesday- 8.59 am Wednesday. Click links at end of each synopsis.
Lise Bauer is born in Africa in 1906, brought to England by her parents from where she is expelled with them in 1914, because her father is an East Prussian. They settle in America and become Americans, but return to Europe in the 1920’s. Here Lise is involved in the rise of the Nazi party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. She settles again in England with the consent of the security services and she and her husband establish a cell to act as a secret communication channel between Hitler and Churchill at the critical period of WWII.
The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history. It leaves readers wondering why they were they never told about the double lives and events shrouded in secrecy. UK US
Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.
Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself. UK US
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.