Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 186
February 5, 2015
Pushing Greece To The Brink
This blog is not confident that the policy being followed by the ECB of refusing to accept Greek bonds or the German intransigence at more haircuts, is going to work. People who lend too much money to a customer beyond any fool’s notion of what is wise or likely to be repayable, must take some responsibility and bear a good deal of the loss when the debtor goes bust. And Greece from the very beginning has been bust and has not become less bust by being lent more on terms which are penal and guaranteed to arrive at what this blog calls the social limit.
The risk to the Euro is now greater than the risk to Greece. A few more nasties and Greece will exit. This will be a car crash for Euroland, but it could recover and reform, perhaps. If Greece left the Euro, struggled, recovered then prospered, for Euroland it would be a catastrophe. It would be more than a crash; it would be a write off. German dominance in the EU would be over. Not everybody would be sorry.
February 4, 2015
Book Bargains
Download all five fast reading thrillers now! Offered at 99p or 99c. Or buy paperbacks from £4.99. Orders over £10 postage free.
February 3, 2015
Tory Cynicism
One of the problems with the Tory party is that it has not taken on board that people are a lot more clued up than they were in the golden age of Thatcher and they have developed an instinct to see through the wily schemes of politicians, who now rank top of the list of untrustworthy citizens. The proposal to give English MPs a ‘veto’ on legislation affecting England only, is a good example.
The only way to deal with the question of English votes for English laws is to turn the House of Commons into an English parliament and replace the House of Lords with an elected UK Parliament with responsibility for the currency, defence, national security and other issues affecting the whole of the UK collectively. It would also act as a revising chamber for each of the national parliaments. All the countries making up the UK would then have their own parliaments do deal with devolved affairs and there would be a proper democratic assembly for policy affecting all of them together.
The Tories know that they have a natural majority in England (it is curtains for them if they don’t because they are hardly represented anywhere else) and they could therefore block anything a Labour led coalition, which might include a big clutch of Scot Nats, put before the House which affected England, which would be everything of importance. This would make the county almost ungovernable and lead to political instability unknown before. The Tory business community would not like that at all.
Thrillers: Kindle from 99p, Paperback from £4.99!
GOOD READS FOR 2015
Download all five fast reading thrillers now! Offered at 99p or 99c. Or buy paperbacks from £4.99. Orders over £10 postage free.
Thee Way Babies
When MPs vote on this issue, this blog hopes that they will ignore opposition from the Church of England and the Catholics. Had the world listened to the the Christian church in the past it would still think the earth was flat and that the telescope was an evil instrument.
Organised religions based on faith can do good and on occasion they do a very great deal of it. Unfortunately the notion of faith demands adherence to certain verities which are often shown to be flawed by the advance of knowledge, science and culture. The mindless objection to women in the priesthood or becoming bishops is one such disgraceful example. Institutionalised paedophilia is on a somewhat different scale of abhorrence and disqualifies the Roman Catholic church from pronouncing on any moral issue for at least a generation. With forgiveness comes a price.
Meanwhile any scientific advance which frees future generations from a destructive genetic malfunction which causes disability, death and suffering is welcome to all civilised and compassionate thinkers. We must hope that includes the majority of MPs.
February 2, 2015
Learning X Tables
It has always been a complete mystery to me how it is that anyone who supposed they knew the rudiments of teaching mathematics can ever have imagined that the full range of multiplication tables could be learned whenever the fancy took the teacher or the pupil.
Without these feats of memory retention which are lifelong and which can recall in a millisecond what would otherwise take time to calculate, any advance forward in problem solving arithmetic is just made slower and more difficult. It is also potentially boring. I was taught all my tables up to twelve times at the age of six. It took two weeks to master them and answer questions correctly at random, like 7 X 8 = 56 (and not 54) and at the time it was not considered special. That was during WWII and the process took place in the cellar beneath the school most of the time, as the area was under constant bombardment from VI flying bombs. There was a single light bulb which flickered with the explosions which thudded and crumped all around and a bucket for a toilet.
It seems extraordinary that it is now even necessary to ‘require’ all students to reach my six year old standard when they reach eleven, yes eleven. I would start by testing the teachers. And while you are about it the ministers too. And maybe the mandarins, where you could begin at the Treasury.
January 30, 2015
Free Kindle Downloads : Last Few Hours!
Follow the links to my Author pages on Amazon and download FREE both these linked historical novels based on real events in WWII. Promo ends tonight Pacific Time, so hurry!
Purple Killing
Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.
Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.
Hitler’s First lady
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. 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 fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history.
The reader is drawn into the heart of both the governments in London and Berlin to find convincing portrayals of both Churchill and Hitler which offer surprising insights into the men behind their images.
NHS and Labour : Delivery Not Dogma
The eminent surgeon and Labour peer Lord Darzi was right to say last night that obsessing over ‘creeping privatization’ of the NHS by Labour was a mistake. What matters to patients is the delivery of services and as long as they are free, it is irrelevant whether they are provided by the state or private providers. What matters is the quality of the service and its timely availability.
Labour’s trump card in the election game is the NHS, but as bridge players know, trumps are limited in number and have to be played with skill to win. Other players at the table have trumps of their own. The issue is not private providers. The issue is a service divided into compartments which do not talk to each other, hierarchical structures which create artificial barriers causing delay and a failure to integrate care and services into seamless delivery at point of need.
To this can be added two more must do changes about which we never hear because the medical professions are too powerful and the politicians too chicken. NHS doctors should not be allowed to moonlight in private practice while building up waiting lists in their hospital clinics to provide willing customers, and hospitals should be open fully for all services 24/7 and 365 days a year. It would take a big change in working practices and three eight hour shifts, but it is doable and should be done. Then we could kiss goodbye to waiting lists and targets and the huge bureaucratic industry they have spawned.
Free Kindle Downloads : Last Day
Follow the links to my Author pages on Amazon and download FREE both these linked historical novels based on real events in WWII. Promo ends tonight Pacific Time, so hurry!
Purple Killing
Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.
Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.
Hitler’s First lady
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. 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 fictional account challenges the accepted view of recorded history.
The reader is drawn into the heart of both the governments in London and Berlin to find convincing portrayals of both Churchill and Hitler which offer surprising insights into the men behind their images.
January 29, 2015
League Tables: Confusion?
There is a lot of excitement in the educational world today because the new league tables published are not following the previous format and are judging outcomes in a revised methodology and to new standards. The change is designed to demonstrate more reliably how well a school is providing its students with the kind of education which should be valuable in developing their lives and careers. It is no use sending our young people into a workplace which gives their jobs to better educated Poles.
Nevertheless when change like this occurs, the moment of change is uncomfortable because people tend to compare the new table with the old, when such a comparison will not work. Some schools seem to have prepared better than others and maintained a competitive standard. Others, formerly top performers like my local Academy, appear to have fallen off a cliff. Those which have done so will no doubt show up better next year. If they don’t we shall know that not all was as we were earlier led to believe. Parents will vote with their feet. That apparently is the whole idea.
