With its terrible loss of life and serious faults in fighting protocols for a then modern sea battle, the British nation was aghast in 1916 when the expected Trafalgar style victory over the German fleet not only failed to materialise, but what did was three times the deaths and more ships lost than the Germans, who on those […]
According to leaks, the Chilcot Inquiry Report, finally due out in July, will be very bad news for Tony Blair. Such as is left of his political reputation, and that is not much, will apparently be shredded by disclosures and judgements about how on earth the decision to attack Iraq, to defend against the imminent use […]
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 […]
Decisions driven by fear are rarely the best. If they turn out wrong and the fear turns out to have been either groundless or confected (as in the Iraq War and Weapons of Mass Destruction) there is a sense of national outrage which never goes away. It is therefore important to avoid such tactics in national […]
Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. Through the death of her estranged father she sets out to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and […]
What is so deplorable about the endless economic sniping between Remain and Leave, is that each is using various figures and statistics to mean the opposite of what is actually the fact. So this post will set out some key economic pointers and leave you to decide which campaign would be most likely to deliver on […]
This is the problem with the Brexit argument. The political class in England (not in Scotland) consider parliament sovereign. It is not. In a democracy the people are sovereign and they exercise their sovereignty through democratic institutions of which parliament in the UK is the senior. But the people also exercise their sovereignty in the […]
There is almost a case to be made to close down the referendum campaign, so much nonsense is being talked by both sides, with a period of silence till the day we vote. The basic facts are clear. Either you regard yourself as European and see in the EU a huge advance in human fellowship […]
There is no wonder that the NHS has overspent because the funding model is mathematically dysfunctional. The problem is obvious. You cannot provide an infinite service with a finite budget. In other words the more patients it helps and who come through its doors, the less it has to spend on each of them. Imagine […]
The most remarkable thing about the Queen’s Speech is that at the age of ninety, be-robed and with a heavy crown upon her head she can still make it with a firm voice and faultless delivery. There is no doubt that the Monarch herself is a good deal more remarkable than the stuff she had […]