Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 141
December 19, 2015
Syria: Cautious Progress
This blog has been saying for years, as regular readers will confirm, that there will be no settlement in Syria without the help of Russia and Iran. The blinkered and often naive attitude of the West and its fixation with Assad has undoubtedly not only prolonged the war but caused immense suffering. The flight of millions now engulfing Europe is a direct consequence. So the UN resolution and the determination on all sides to work towards a political settlement is a great moment of hope. It is of course still true that the view of what that settlement should look like has many variations, not one of which will be fully met. There will have to be compromise, but all sides are now reconciled to that. As I have said so many times before, the unsophisticated antipathy of Western diplomacy towards Russia is both costly and inhibiting. Perhaps that lesson has now been learned. Let us hope so.
December 18, 2015
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GB and the Euro.
It is very unfashionable in Britain to say we should have joined the Euro at the beginning. Indeed the kindest would fail to take the observation seriously and the nasties would tell one to seek some help. So it is with some enthusiasm that this blog, which likes be be out on a limb, will now make the point.
Had GB joined with the project the Euro would have been properly structured and properly managed from the very beginning, not from Frankfurt but from London. It would have a governance system that worked and a much more robust approach to dealing with errant members, with a much more realistic one for those about to go over a cliff. Most important of all the UK would have enjoyed a structural devaluation of sterling’s competitive position on the lines of Germany, which would have powered up our manufacturing base and produced a much more industrialised economy than our current model driven by shopping and house price inflation. The tax base would have been larger and with it the revenue, so that the cost of delivering good quality public services would have been more in balance with income.
There are a multitude of other advantages but in the current context it is necessary to mention only one. The government constantly asserts that EU migrants flood in (perhaps many more than official figures show according to leaks today) because of benefit generosity. Yet statistics show we make more in revenue than we lose in payments so that is an emotional rather than a fiscal argument. The real reason migrants come is to profit. The pound is valued higher than the Euro, although each currency unit buys roughly the same in its own zone. So if you are, say, Polish and you come here to work whilst leaving your family at home, and you earn £100 and send it home to Poland, your dependants get E137. See?
Add to that the fact that GB has a trading deficit with Euroland of £50 billion annually and it does not look a opting out was quite as clever as we thought.
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Cameron Negotiates: For What?
There is before the United Kingdom a self inflicted problem, which is bedevilling any constructive and useful influence Britain has in Europe. It echoes the tense zone of a couple drifting apart and willing to do so, yet trying to find an excuse to stay together.
The issue now facing this country is not whether Cameron can negotiate some fig leaf deal sufficient to hide the rampant right wing of his party, so that he is able to recommend that the UK stays in. It is whether fundamentally the UK wishes to remain part of Europe. Messing around with the detail makes no real difference. The concessions demanded, if granted, are actually neither here nor there. You are either for it, or agin it. This blog is for it, always has been and always will be. This is because I see it not through the prism of benefit tourism, but through the tears of close on 100 million dead from two great wars.
The fact that everybody is peacefully now arguing about benefits entitlement is one of the greatest successes of history and this blog can see no valid reason to walk away. All those legions of mostly young men and all those cowering civilians either died for nothing or they died so that we might get to where we are today. These silly conflated issues which could so easily be resolved, and which if conceded will make only a marginal difference anyway, are just not reason enough to let their memories down. We owe them more than a poppy and a silence.
December 16, 2015
Hess Mystery: Download 99p Paperback £4.99
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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.
Money And The NHS
Almost every time people tune into the media nowadays there is news of some or other part of the NHS in financial difficulties. There are three reasons for this. The first is that the management structure is absurd. Not only are there managers, but there is an array of quangos and data collectors which according to one harassed NHS Trust CEO now exceed fifty in number. The second is that you cannot offer an infinite service on a finite budget. The more patients the NHS sees and the greater the demand on its services, the fewer the resources available to provide them. That is a mathematical nonsense. Third, instead of being joined up, it is ever more fragmented and has almost ceased to function as a national structure.
To remedy these problems quite a lot needs to happen. The weird twilight zone in which doctors are employed, part self, part not, has to change to an exclusive employment like any other servant of the state from mandarin to general to minister. Hospitals must operate three shifts of eight hours with the full complement of medical services to eliminate waiting lists. A tax structure to fund the system has to be developed which expands with demand. At present the UK spends less as a percent of GDP than many other developed countries on healthcare. At one point around 2009 it rose to 8% but it is now falling. This has to rise to 10% as medical treatments expand and longevity increases. The current actual cost of running the health service properly is approaching £150 billion, which is way beyond its allocation.
Finally and most important of all is that the people of Britain have to come out of their state of denial that healthcare can be done on the cheap. It cannot. And to pay for it taxes will have to go up.
December 15, 2015
Dynamic QE: A Way Out Of Austerity: Download Now 99p
QE in various forms is now very much part of the economic conversation, especially in connection with a fresh approach to financial issues by the new leadership of the Labour party. Dynamic Quantitative Easing remains under government, not bank, control and targets specific investment projects without borrowing, interest or repayments. It can reboot the economy, boost manufacturing and exports and enable sustained growth of real national wealth shared by all, rather than just asset inflation which is the downside of ordinary QE. If you want to find out more you can enjoy a lucid explanation of the original idea from the link below.
A Brit Into Space
I recall the excitement felt across the world when Yuri Gagarin became not only the first man in space but also the first to orbit the earth, when the Soviet Union once led the space race, in 1961. The Soviets managed to get their man aloft weeks before the Americans, who only achieved an up and down flight, not an orbit. The Soviets had also been the first to get a satellite up, the Sputnik in 1957, causing absolute consternation in the West as the achievement indicated they were well ahead on rocket technology and potentially intercontinental ballistic missiles, putting America in the front line for the first time in its history. The reaction fired the programme that took the Americans to the moon.
At that time Britain was one of the world leaders in aviation and had its own rocket in the design process. One did not then imagine it would take another fifty four years for the first Brit to be blasted into space. Nor that he would be atop a Russian rocket. Or that he would be accompanied on the historic (to the UK) mission to the International Space Station by two others, a Russian and an American. Times do change. More than people realise. Especially politicians.
