Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 130
April 3, 2016
Migration: The Big Issue
World events are hard to predict and few would have foreseen that in the second decade of the twenty-first century mass migration would threaten the cohesion of Europe or indeed that it would be the outcome of the ill judged War on Terror.
There are two kinds of migration. That which is legal, organised and approved; EU migration to work in the UK is an example of this. It can bring public resentment and cultural stress, but it is essentially harmless. The second kind is the diaspora of the desperate now engulfing Europe, of people fleeing various civil wars. Here the West, including NATO and especially the US and UK who were the ringleaders, bears a heavy responsibility for starting wars which not only cannot be finished but deliver results opposite to the aim. One can only hope that lessons have been learned, although the outpourings of several of the candidates aspiring to lead America give cause to wonder.
The problem with mass migration is that however hospitable a nation or a group of nations may be to those in need, the concept is framed in hundreds or possibly thousands. When it becomes hundreds of thousands and then millions everything breaks down. Political unity, consensus, tolerance and welcome are all overwhelmed together with resources and services to cope. Those who thought they had set out on a journey to a better life are left freezing in fields while agreements buckle, administration flounders and anger rises.
There is no answer to this or if there is this Blog does not have it. There is a direction of travel which says these wars must be brought to an end, countries have to be rebuilt and conditions must be made to prevail which will draw people back to their homelands. The cost will be vast; a clean up on a scale not seen since the end of WWII. The West will have to foot a lot of the bill, but a major burden must fall on the Arab states who have become mega rich on oil production and who, if not directly engaged in one of the several wars, have in their different ways and without exception, fanned the flames.
Bargain Books For Spring Reading
April 2, 2016
Brexit Thoughts 6: A Vote For What?
It is becoming clear that Leave cannot articulate a coherent plan for exactly how the UK will prosper if we leave the EU. These anti EU idealists believe in their hearts that to leave and be free is all that matters. Only a minority, certainly a motivated minority, agree, but enough who will follow a cause on merit, might join them to convert them into the majority, if they can show for sure people will be better off in the long run. This is clearly beyond Leave’s competence and outside their planning. But they can still win.
Remain’s campaign is relatively simple. We are too interwoven into the EU fabric to withdraw without significant damage in the short term and without any certain advantages in the long term. Fear of change in other words. Very little positive stuff about the huge achievement of a united Europe after centuries of bloodshed, the benefits of being able to travel, live and move capital without restrictions anywhere within its borders. Just fear. Fear of the unknown.
But Leave is stoking a fear of its own. Fear of immigration. Never mind that the probable root cause of the growth of the UK economy faster than others in the EU is because of the economic benefit of having more migrants working here. It is a fear of pressure on housing, services, health and education,, because all of those core elements of life are on their uppers after years of austerity.
So the vote will in the end not really be about staying in Europe. It will be about fear of leaving or fear of immigrants. People vote against what they fear. The result will be determined by what people fear most.
April 1, 2016
Gripping Reads: Download or Paperback
Here are three of my popular thrillers. Two are dramas played out today but founded in the Nazi era. One is a political thriller from the immediate post Thatcher era. Click on the links above each title. From £2.08 Download and £6.99 Paperback
GB: A Nation Of Steel
When a crisis breaks upon a country, what is needed is a decisive government that acts fast and firm. News that the core of Britain’s industrial power, utterly fundamental to any notion of a manufacturing economy (a notion abandoned by the asset inflating Tories some while back although not admitted) is on the brink, has gripped the nation in anxiety and come as a hammer blow to those whose life vocation is the manufacture of the world’s best steel.
One casts back to the moment in 2008 when the head of the world’s largest bank rang the Chancellor of the Exchequer at lunch time and declared that his bank would run out of money by 3pm that day. Whatever their faults and whether you like them or not or whether their politics appeal or no, Darling and Brown acted at once to save not only the UK’s financial system from collapsing, but that of most of the free world. So we might suppose that Cameron and Osborne, faced with a lesser challenge but one with long term consequences for our country potentially as great, would too step up to the plate.
Before we examine what is actually happening at the apex of this divided government now foundering at every level and in every quarter, let us examine the root cause. This crisis derives not from the failures of our steel industry. It has two prime causes. The first is that China has got its sums wrong, is having to rebalance its economy involving sacking 1.5 million workers and in order to ease the pain is allowing its steel industry to dump on world markets steel products at well below the price its costs to produce them. The second is that, unlike America which has imposed penal import tariffs to ensure none arrives in the US and its home industry is protected, Europe has failed to act and has imposed such modest tariffs that they act as no bar to importers. And why? Because one country is opposed to raising tariffs and has sufficient support to block levels which would, like America, protect home production. And which country is that? Yes it is the UK.
So the fumbling Osborne, the oily Cameron and the globe trotting Javid, hold meetings (well not Javid who was away on a jolly) and issue the usual unctuous reassurances everything will be done, when in practice they plan to do nothing but talk. What a mercy and a blessing it is they were not in power in 2008. ‘Propping up the banks is not the answer’ would have been the Downing Street line until the Queen rang up and asked why she and none of her people could access their money.
This is a moment when ideology has to be dumped, the steel industry nationalised, its pension black holes plugged, its plant upgraded, and its market protected from global threats which are both unsustainable and unfair. Anything less than that is just silly. It is worse. It is cruel to the people of the steel community who for generations have always been there for their country. It is now time for their country to be there for them.
March 31, 2016
Book Sale: Bargain. Downloads and Paperbacks
Trump Crashes: He Would Punish Women!
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.
March 28, 2016
Palmyra Recaptured
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.
Book Bargains
Here are three of my popular thrillers. Two are dramas played out today but founded in the Nazi era. One is a political thriller from the immediate post Thatcher era. Click on the links above each title. From £2.08 Download and £6.99 Paperback
March 26, 2016
Nicky Morgan: Brave But Wrong
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.
