Archive for May, 2016

Downfall In Downing Street

Tuesday, May 17th, 2016

Product Details

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.

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The Anti-Establishment Vote?

Tuesday, May 17th, 2016

This phenomenon, which started in Greece, is rampaging across the United States propelling Trump onwards and upwards and keeping Sanders in the race although he has lost the nomination but might win the presidency with more certainty than Clinton. It may be the contagion is settling here in the UK as well. This movement does not recognise party nor the verities of politics, it feeds any swing to vote against the governing establishment, the ruling order, the current state of things and whatever has gone before. This would explain why it is, when every detailed economic analysis argues that Brexit would be madness, the polls show Leave either ahead or neck and neck with Remain.

In other words we may be approaching an historically dangerous moment when the referendum campaign ceases to be about the EU and the merits of staying or going and becomes instead a vote against the status quo. People are angry, fed up and they have had enough. Time to kick the system in the teeth?

If they do the subsequent dental bill will come as quite a shock.

Vintage Thriller: Paperback or Download

Monday, May 16th, 2016

 Product DetailsThe latest edition of this ever popular psycho-thriller, now in its twentieth year, has a dramatic new cover and is offered for a limited period at the special price of £5.99 paperback and .99p  Download. A haunting tale of passion and the paranormal, written in the style of its setting in the 1920s.

A tiny English village slumbers on the Surrey/Sussex borders, but the pastoral exterior hides a number of nightmare secrets.
The return of a young man 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 the young man embarks upon an affair with the local farmer’s daughter, and a series of mysterious deaths seem to follow in his wake. Full of authentic period detail, this is a tale which will haunt readers long after the last page has been turned.

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Boris And Hitler

Sunday, May 15th, 2016

Boris making out that the EU is comparable to Nazi Germany’s conquest of Europe is bordering on the imbecile. Which is odd because Boris is supposed to be a clever man. To try and make out that the democratic and voluntary union of independent nation states for the benefit of trade, peace and human advancement is akin to the Nazi war machine with all its apparatus of genocide and enslavement, is  preposterous and causes great offence to all those who suffered and lived through those tumultuous times. Unlike Boris.

This referendum campaign has now sunk into the gutter. We will have to wait and see if there is anybody in the cauldron of bad temper and infighting, which is the present state of the Tory party, capable of picking it up and dusting it down.

Weekend Reads: E Books or Paprerbacks

Friday, May 13th, 2016

Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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IMF Brexit Warning: Should We Worry?

Friday, May 13th, 2016

In a word yes. With manufacturing in recession, external debt still the second highest in the world and  growth slowing, the UK economy is in no position to embark on an economic adventure into the unknown. The IMF is lined up with practically every financial organisation of importance in uttering dire warnings of a Brexit Yes.

The Leave campaign have only themselves to blame for this assault on their credibility, because they have failed to come up with a coherent programme, based on detailed research and credible investigations, which demonstrates a clear alternative which has every chance of working. These Leave people have been plotting for this moment for over a quarter of a century and it is hardly confidence inspiring to find them now clueless, reduced to calling all these world class institutions unreliable and mistaken.

Yet there is a key point which Leave appear to have missed. Most warnings include a sterling devaluation. If this were significant and big enough to damage asset values, increase the cost of imports by a margin that every shopper would notice and make UK manufactured goods cheap in world markets, it might just spark an economic reboot which could lead to prolonged growth and long term prosperity as a trading nation independent of blocks. Maybe the reason they dare not play the card is because the pain of the transformation would be acute. In a country with the highest level of household debt in Europe the pain might difficult for many to bear.

The Bank of England Weighs In.

Thursday, May 12th, 2016

If the central bank of any country warns publicly of the risks inherent in a political course, a rare event, note is always and should be taken. The problem for the Bank of England governor and his senior colleagues is that the government to whom they are responsible is split in half and facing opposite directions in the most perplexing referendum ever held in these islands. Since we have not held many that maybe does not say a lot, but it is certainly the most important issue facing the whole of Europe today.

It is perplexing because of the divergence of opinion on what is a fairly simple question. Is it possible to unravel a trading relationship, political partnership and legal system developed over four decades, with its intertwined financial systems and corporate structures, without causing serious damage to the whole fabric of the economy which may take years to repair? Nobody seems to know the answer, which should cause alarm enough.

In such circumstances only a fool would suppose that the opinion of the Central Bank was a private matter, not to be disclosed to people whose whole lives might be messed up by the wrong move, but whose votes will decide the issue. The Governor of the Bank of England is not the Queen. He is most certainly not above a political move which might damage the economy and it is his duty to comment on the risk. The rest of us have to take the decision. Voting in ignorance for what is increasingly beginning to look like an unprepared flight of fancy, could lead to a very hard landing.

Brexit Thoughts 10: A Tory Civil War

Thursday, May 12th, 2016

If it is indeed the case that Brexit would destabilise Europe and that it would be a financial disaster with unquantifiable consequences, why on earth are we having this referendum? Surely to call it is madness? Or if it is instead the case that Brexit will bring great benefits in trade and  jobs how exactly is this so?

The British public are faced with the extraordinary spectacle of a public contest between the serving prime minister and the man who intends to replace him, each in turn served by followers echoing blood curdling or Utopian prophesies depending on which side they are on, which rather than inform, simply confuse. The root of the difficulty is that this referendum is not really about Europe, it is about two wings of the Tory party, split ever since Thatcher  and perhaps well before, finally busting apart and fighting it out.

This is democratically ridiculous. It is like a general election in which one party is fighting against itself from each side. If our economy was as robust as the muddled Chancellor as his fumbling Treasury assert, how is it that our shrunken manufacturing sector is now officially in recession? Is that truly a symptom of a strong economy? Whether it may be better to stay or leave seems to be beyond coherent analysis. What is clear is that with the economy in the state it is, this is no time to fool about with a referendum. It is like playing with petrol in a house already on fire.

Good Reads: E Books or Paperback

Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

 

Malcolm Blair-Robinson

 

 

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US Election: Trump v Sanders??

Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

Some very interesting polling has emerged which matches exactly the prediction made in this blog previously. There is a synergy between the young backing  Trump and those backing Sanders. It appears that there is now some risk that Trump could beat Clinton if Bernie drops out because a lot of his support would swing to Donald not to Hilary. But if Sanders were the Democrat candidate instead of Clinton, Sanders would beat Trump. It just shows nothing about this election is straightforward and everything you know about political verities, forget. As we said at the beginning.