Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 190
January 8, 2015
Cameron And Merkel: Did She Yield?
No. She was polite and engaging. She acknowledged there were problems. She wanted Britain to stay. But on the free movement of people she would give no quarter. Neither did she see the prospect of treaty change. She declared Britain and Germany shared the same values and with a smile, a kiss and a wave she left. Cameron was jovial. And brave. But he got nothing he did not already have.
Unfortunately the avuncular and genial Cameron, good at articulating the public mood, is badly advised on foreign policy and flat footed when undertaking it. He makes a mistake forcefully declaring Britain’s demands. Instead he should concentrate on Euroland’s needs. Now deflated and with a Greek crisis once again simmering and the ECB poised to print money, it is becoming as plain as a pikestaff that greater federalism in the Eurozone is an ever more urgent priority. At the heart of the issue is the fact that the Eurozone has a Central Bank but no Treasury. For that it needs a government and sooner or later it either has to get one or fold up. The only alternative is to accept that Germany is both the Treasury and the Government. In other words Germany is not part of Euroland, but Euroland is part of Germany.
This is where the opportunity lies for Britain to cut a deal which all but the nutters will vote for in a referendum. As the Eurozone becomes Federalized, led by Germany, those outside the Euro become attached but not linked, led by Britain. A two speed Europe yes. But better than a stopped dead Europe, which is what there is now.
And everyone has to stop being silly about Russia.
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Printing Euros
Commentators think it likely that the ECB will finally get the green light from Germany to print money to boost the Euroland economy, now in deflation. This is not a given. Germany is culturally averse to the notion, especially when several economies within the Eurozone are not fully reformed. But it may happen.
If it does the outcome will depend upon the format used. If it follows the US/UK model of buying bonds from banks and financial institutions with new electronic money, the effect will be to grow the financial sector. This will develop the side effect, now beginning to unsettle both The UK and the US, where the people in the financial sector and the rich do much better than those in the more menial jobs and small businesses where the masses are employed. This is because this cash injection leads to asset inflation and makes lending more profitable and less risky than investing. That in turn will cause the gap between rich and poor to grow even bigger. And in Euroland, where the gap is already wide, this will lead to social unrest and political extremism. That extremism will come from the far right as well as the far left.
Frau Merkel will be thinking about these things as you read this.
January 7, 2015
BOOKS: BUY NOW
GOOD READS FOR 2015
From TOR RAVEN
Download all five fast reading thrillers now! Or buy paperbacks. Orders over £10 postage free.
From MALCOLM BLAIR-ROBINSON
These two mega thrillers are a must for those who love historical drama and political intrigue.
NHS Crisis? Well a Tory One For Sure.
It depends how you look at it. Nine out of ten people seen and treated in timely fashion (is a four hour wait timely?) or targets missed with the lowest performance for ten years. Or the best of all those which keep records in Europe. Of course the fact is if things were truly efficient there would be no statistics because there would be no noticeable wait. And GPs would have a system, as they used to, when one of them was always on duty 24/7. Care in the community would still be still functional (remember the District Nurse?).
But when people come on TV to tell how loved ones waited hours for an ambulance, when patients are not just kept waiting on trolleys in corridors, but before they even get to that are kept queuing in ambulances in the hospital forecourt, when hospital after hospital declares a major incident because it cannot cope, it is clear that something has gone badly wrong. Politically, whatever the cause, it is a disaster for the Tories, whose reforms are widely seen as a costly time waste and whose cuts to social care are said by many to be at the heart of the problem.
For Ed Milliband, who decided to launch Labour’s election campaign with the NHS at the centre of it, this vindication of his warnings gives him an edge. In a perverse way it is a lucky break. Ed may be geeky and bad at eating in public, but if he is lucky, then that could count for a lot. As for Osborne, the master political strategist who was widely thought to have won the first day of the election campaign for the Tories, he must wonder how this advance was reversed to a rout on the second.
January 6, 2015
SEVEN GOOD READS
GOOD READS FOR 2015
From TOR RAVEN
Download all five fast reading thrillers now! Or buy paperbacks. Orders over £10 postage free.
From MALCOLM BLAIR-ROBINSON
These two mega thrillers are a must for those who love historical drama and political intrigue.
North Korea: New Sanctions
I know the US is smarting from the Sony hack, but this blog has grave doubts about the value and effect of sanctions. There are several signs that the new regime emerging in this isolated and shunned country is keen on some form of engagement with the world outside its own stylised creation and this is surely to be encouraged.
All those years of Cuban isolation achieved nothing useful and are now ending at last. Iran and the US were estranged for over thirty years and there is no evidence whatever that good came to either side because of it. It is surely time to give the hermit kingdom a break and see where it leads. It could be to a better place for everyone, including the US. It would certainly be better for the North Korean people.
January 4, 2015
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Prince Andrew: It Is Getting Worse
The Palace was wrong to issue a further denial over alleged claims of under age sex (depending on local laws) and to expand it to deny all sex, just at the time the Sunday press comes out with new claims and photographs.
This has now become a contest of claim and counter claim. The media will whip up a frenzy. People will start to believe anything. All that is known for sure is that Prince Andrew befriended a billionaire who went to prison for procuring girls for sex. That is the known fact and it is quite enough. One polite denial is pushing it, not least because it has ignited the story world-wide, but on balance was probably unavoidable. A second simply stokes the fire and makes the first less credible. This is now a mess and not for the first time, the Palace demonstrates a lack of judgement about how to handle personal scandals in the Windsor family. Which is odd because there have been quite a few.
Last Day Free Book Promo.
The new Tor Raven novel HESS ENIGMA is now available FREE on Kindle. LAST DAY of promo. Hurry, download NOW!! Follow Amazon links below.
A tense modern thriller with historical flashbacks to the Nazi era. Will draw you in and keep you turning pages to the end.
