Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

You read my blogs and many of you are Remainers and also Corbyn supporters who want to see a Labour victory. Especially younger readers who own the future.

I have enjoyed a lifetime as a political observer and at times a participant. My first election memory is of 1945 and grown ups around me expressing disbelief at the rejection of Churchill and the scale of Attlee’s victory. My first general election, as a Tory activist,  was in 1959. Later I became a founder member of the SDP and as the inequalities and injustices of the Thatcher economic model began to emerge, I turned to the Left.

Labour Can Win is an abridged version of my dissertation Turn Left to Power. If the Labour Manifesto for the General Election on June 8th contains proposals which echo just some of the principles which I set out, Labour will spring an historic surprise on June 8th. If you want a Labour victory, this is a must read. It will give you ideas and inspiration to drive you forward. A message of hope over fear in under 100 pages.

Click image to buy. Just 99p for download £4.50 paperback

There a has been a cyber attack world wide. But the impact on the UK is acute because it has disabled much of our health service, put staff under tremendous pressure and without doubt put lives at risk. This would be a challenge in itself, but the appalling fact is the NHS should not have been affected. It is because large parts of it are using an out of date unsupported operating system vulnerable to this kind of attack, from which more modern systems are protected. Since 2010 Tory led governments have borrowed more than ever before but have failed to boost economic output sufficient to balance the books.

The consequences are run down and creaking infrastructure vulnerable to failure, or in the case of the NHS, cyber attack. We do not know if power and water supplies are similarly at risk. What we do know is that time and again it has become clear that the NHS is underfunded and over stretched. Now we know that lives are threatened because the IT is clapped out. Vista gave good service on my first laptop, but now I have moved on. Supposing that a system unfit for private use can work safely in the NHS is at the very least reckless and not far short of criminal.