Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 175
April 10, 2015
FREE DOWNLOAD: Hitler’s First Lady
Click on image to download UK
To celebrate the new cover image for the paperback and Kindle editions of this Nazi era drama, it is available free to download until midnight US Pacific Time Sunday. The image shows Karl Kaufmann, Gauleiter of Hamburg and husband of the woman on whose life the character of Lise is based in the book, riding in the left back seat of Hitler’s car.
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 party, marries one of Hitler’s closest associates and later has a relationship with Hitler himself, before divorcing her husband and marrying an English friend of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. She settles again in England with the consent of the security services and she and her husband establish a cell to act as a secret communication channel between Hitler and Churchill at the critical period of WWII.
The novel offers a new view of Hitler’s sexual relationships, a plot to overthrow Churchill and the flight to Scotland by Rudolf Hess. Using historical characters often portrayed in a new light, this dramatic account challenges the accepted view of recorded history. It leaves readers wondering why they were never told about double lives and events shrouded in secrecy.
April 7, 2015
Election: Time To Up The Game
This is just about the most stilted and sterile election campaign in my life. I think I have been through seventeen and this is the eighteenth. While the minor parties have some distinctive ideas whether you approve or not, the two major parties are slogging at each other over details which turn everybody off concerning exactly when, by how much and whose fault. Ask any of them a simple question and it is impossible to get an answer. No wonder the polls are stuck neck and neck. Basically the choice is between the unctuous Cameron or geeky Milliband, austerity heavy or austerity light. It is all about management not about government.
It is therefore welcome that the somewhat discredited Tony Blair is going to enter the fray today with a powerful defence of our membership of the European Union. This is a timely upgrade to a campaign bogged down, which will significantly raise the stakes. For too long the only voices raised to challenge the quitters have been either muted or from the past. Just recently and to his credit Milliband has become more strident and this may explain his improvement in approval ratings. Blair looks set to give him a boost. The Tories will have to raise their game to keep in the frame. Meanwhile the only election communication I have received is from UKIP. That might be significant.
April 4, 2015
The Daily Telegraph: A Peculiar Story
The extraordinary report in today’s Telegraph to the effect that Sturgeon wants a Cameron victory is an extraordinary lapse of editorial judgment for two reasons. The first is that the the trail of who said what to whom and when is the stuff of a matinee farce, not a serious broadsheet. The second is that if it were true, which seems unlikely, it provides a poll boost to Milliband, not Cameron. The fewer seats the Scot Nats win, the more will be held by Labour and the more likely Milliband is to form a coalition.
This blog is impartial, but the Daily Telegraph is not. It is Tory. It has done Cameron no favours.
Growth Up:Borrowing Down
An idea to stimulate economic growth without further government 
borrowing. Written in plain English and very easy to follow, this is the only really fresh approach out there to the intractable problems of the UK economy, and it is just beginning to be noticed in important places. Buy!
Aviation Mass Murder
The revelations about the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane, which he deliberately crashed, being treated for suicidal tendencies and other symptoms of mental illness raise all manner of questions about how such a victim of these disorders can be placed in control of a passenger aircraft. It is is easy to blame the management of Lufthansa, who are in the end responsible and accept the fact. But without being given the required information and warnings, it is difficult to see how they could have known. This is going to be an area of scrutiny. It is right that individuals should be protected from the release of personal data, but mental illness in an airline pilot, or some other critical person upon whom the lives of others depend, surely should be the subject of exception.
It is also the case that extreme precautions against hijack appear to have created the very situation in which this deranged young man not only plotted and researched to take his own life, which he could have done easily by taking pills or jumping off a bridge, but for some unfathomable reason to commit mass murder on an historical scale. Whatever is done and however procedures are amended a guiding principle should apply; no precaution should be allowed if it creates a new risk.
April 3, 2015
Debate: So Who Won?
The most accurate response is that they all did. The minor parties appeared centre stage for the first time and acquitted themselves well. None of the party leaders had a breakthrough but none was savaged. The big outcome is that it is now perfectly acceptable to vote for a minor party and doing so might make your vote count much more than if it were still a two party system. The event was not a game changer for any one party or leader, but it may have been a game changer for the way we vote and the way governments are structured in the UK.
The three women showed themselves feisty and passionate in their advocacy. Wood and Bennett were more niche players because of the nature of their offer, which was very strong if you feel it affects you either because of where you live or what you believe in. Sturgeon was outstanding because not only did she promote Scotland but she showed an interest in the UK as a whole and a clear vision of what her party stood for in the context of the union of all the four nations.
Among the men there were no surprises. Farage punched way above his weight with his simplistic narrow view, Clegg did his best to justify propping up a Tory led government for five years, Cameron was his usual avuncular self, full of common sense and reassurance. Maybe Milliband gained the most. Most polls put him neck and neck with Cameron, one in the lead. For a leader who began the race as the geeky outsider with bacon sandwich issues, to now be galloping neck and neck with the favourite is indeed a change.
April 2, 2015
Growth Without Borrowing
An idea to stimulate economic growth without further government borrowing. Written in plain English and very easy to follow, this is the only really fresh approach out there to the intractable problems of the UK economy, and it is just beginning to be noticed in important places. Buy!
Election: Is It The Economy?
Most commentators agree that the economy is the key issue which will drive voters to make their decision and because the economy is recovering the advantage is with the Tories. This blog is inclined to that view also. However we must remember Wilson’s surprise defeat in 1970 and Major’s annihilation in 1997. In both cases the economy had been in trouble but was recovering strongly. The failure of the Tories, so far, to gain a convincing lead suggests something may be going on at street level this time too.
There is some evidence that digital and social media has moved the debate among voters to a different model to the one being followed by the politicians nationally. Nationally everyone is concerned with the big picture; forecasts, trends and costings dominate. But on the doorstep it is specific issues which catch the voter’s interest. Policies which affect them in their lives, jobs and homes. Looked at in these terms, the lack of a big narrative from Labour may not be quite the problem this blog has made it out to be. It may matter to commentators and to people who would never vote for them anyway, but to Labour voters and those who might swing their way, shrinking tuition fees and giving employees an opportunity to opt in to something better than zero hours may play better than at first thought.
Not only is this coming general election hard to call, it is equally difficult to identify the dynamics driving it. What we think we see my be an illusion with the truth hidden behind it.
