Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 54
September 16, 2018
Gothic Crime: Free Downloads
The Gothic Crime Series are among Tor Raven’s most popular reads now available free to download on Kindle or with the free Kindle app on laptops, phones and tablets. GET YOUR FREE COPIES NOW! Also check out the dramatic brand new Zara Vine Book One. New character, new style, gripping!
Click here for all details USA
Free Downloads: Gothic Crime
The Gothic Crime Series are among Tor Raven’s most popular reads now available free to download on Kindle or with the free Kindle app on laptops, phones and tablets. GET YOUR FREE COPIES NOW! Also check out the dramatic brand new Zara Vine Book One. New character, new style, gripping!
Click here for all details USA
Brexit Blunder: Six Months To Go.
Readers know this blog is opposed to Brexit on political grounds. I like the idea of a united Europe, I think it is the greatest political achievement since the fall of the Roman Empire, I am proud of my European citizenship and I love being able to come, go, buy, sell, live wherever and as I please. I think anybody who wants to change this is bonkers, but when of 17 million of my fellow Brits voted to leave, I accepted the outcome and hoped that everything would, as I expected it to, work out okay, even if not to my choice and the other 16 million plus who voted like me to stay.
What has followed is the biggest collapse of competence by any government in our rich history as a democracy. And it is not just the government at fault. The entire political class is now a seething cauldron of discord, sniping and abuse, with not a workable idea, nor a common thread between the lot of them, or if that is too harsh, most of them. Now there are just six months left to go. But as this blog has asked time and again, to what?
Here is a snippet. The cabinet met last Thursday to go over its latest no deal preparations. There were various briefings as well as the publication of the latest Notices or Advice Notes or whatever they are. The bits about driving licences, passports, roaming charges and general silly annoyances to a settled life routine that not a single leave voter had given one moment’s thought to, grabbed the headlines. But the real news was hidden.
Among the cabinet briefers was the governor of the Bank of England who was smuggled in and out through the back door, who laid out potential financial consequences at least in the short term, of a no deal Brexit. This reinforced other warnings from lawyers, scientists, medics and of course business and industry. The notion that house values would fall by a third or more was like a stake driven into the Tory heart. The reason that there was little said after the meeting was that the cabinet was then, and still is, in a state of shock. Finally it had tasted reality. Such was the acid flavour, Leavers and Remainers alike around that long table of blown up egos and bad tempered discord, were united in one overriding truth. Voters would never swallow it.
This may be a turning point. We must wait and see.
Two Free Downloads: Gothic Crime Series
The Gothic Crime Series are among Tor Raven’s most popular reads now available free to download on Kindle or with the free Kindle app on laptops, phones and tablets. GET YOUR FREE COPIES NOW! Also check out the dramatic brand new Zara Vine Book One. New character, new style, gripping!
Click here for all details USA
September 15, 2018
Railway Misery: We Have Had Enough
The railways have never been so popular, not because the franchise holders run a wonderful service, but because they are the fastest and most convenient way for people to travel mostly longer distances, or for commuting. The track system is already publicly owned, but although the rest of it is let out in franchise contracts, the government retains responsibility for the delivery of the service. Which is now falling apart. Not unlike the government.
Labour is right to say enough is enough and that under their party in government, the whole thing will be taken back into public ownership. One can only hope that soon they will be given an opportunity to put this promise into effect.
September 14, 2018
Salisbury Tourists
There has been widespread incredulity, derision even, of the halting, stilted and peculiar interview on RT with the alleged GRU agents involved in the Salisbury poisoning. This blog is not proposing to embroil itself in this. The evidence, including micro traces of Novichok in their hotel room, plus CCTV footage which contradicts their innocent tourist claims, is conclusive.
Yet there are questions. The GRU is one of the most sophisticated military intelligence agencies in the world and it seems extraordinary that such highly trained personnel would act with such abandon, almost waving at the CCTV as they go by, when engaged in a covert assassination mission. Or that such people would chuck the unused poison in a dustbin or park. And yes, how did they get it through customs? And if the highest authorities in the Kremlin were involved, surely they did not expect such a shambolic response to their orders, which let us remember, failed completely to kill the targets. It was an innocent and vulnerable civilian who died, not a traitorous double agent.
There is a lot about this story which we do not know and maybe never will. Two things are clear, aside from the damage to the Salisbury economy, the use of weaponized nerve agents by a foreign power of British soil and the death of an innocent citizen, politically it has not been unhelpful to May. But to Putin, allegedly the author of the project, it has been an absolute disaster. That fact alone poses yet more questions.
September 10, 2018
Failure of a Political Class
It is hard to think of a time in the last two centuries when the British people have been so completely let down by the entire political class. It does not matter whether you voted for or against Brexit. Having voted and decided the issue everybody on all sides expected the decision to be put into effect with the minimum fuss and in timely fashion. Just look what has happened. For the first nine months, nothing. Then uncertainty, wishful thinking, ideology, pipe dreams, balderdash, everything you can think of until here we are, less than two hundred days away and still we don’t know. Away from what exactly? We don’t know that either.
In truth what was promised to voters was never there. What is there turns out to be so complicated and multi dimensional, that nobody, no group, no party can agree on any single detail. So they have fallen back on fighting each other. It is not party against party. Labour has divisions for sure, but to some extent they have the luxury of opposition so it is permissible. But the Tory party leads the government and it is not just split. It is busting apart in all directions. Meanwhile Boris, who fancies himself as Tory PM in waiting, the vulgar one of several, is lost in a swamp of his own making to do with suicide vests.
The latest is that the hard core Tory Brexiteers, led by the peculiar old Etonian who does not do nappies, having trailed the publication of its Brexit plan, has pulled it, because it cannot agree the contents.
Wow!
September 9, 2018
Zara Vine: Download or Paperback
Introducing my gripping new crime thriller under the Tor Raven brand. New genre, new characters, new style, fast, punchy and very readable. Download or Paperback. Don’t delay. Buy Now!
Zara Vine is a modern woman with a troubled history and a talent for turning baggage into power. But who exactly is she? Who are her real masters? What is her agenda? Dubbed the She Wolf and the alpha female, she drives all before her and uncovers crimes of world class horror in Book One. Written in a very modern style, compelling, taught with emotion, passion and fear, Zara Vine will draw you in and grip you right through to the stunning conclusion.
Boris Again: Too Much Ideology, Too Few Ideas
Once again this self absorbed narcissist has launched a broadside upon the government he was once a part of and now wants to take over. Once again it contained a tasteless headline grab.Those who have any direct knowledge of suicide bombings are appalled, as we all should be.
Once again there are no specific plans which stand any chance of getting through Europe or the Commons. We all remember the Red Bus with its big lie painted on the side. That is the best way to think of Boris. Publicity at any price. A vulgar showman and a stranger to truth. Do not be fooled it is about you, your future and the future of your children. It is all about him.
September 8, 2018
Zara Vine: New Crime Series
Introducing my gripping new crime thriller under the Tor Raven brand. New genre, new characters, new style, fast, punchy and very readable. Download or Paperback. Don’t delay. Buy Now!
Zara Vine is a modern woman with a troubled history and a talent for turning baggage into power. But who exactly is she? Who are her real masters? What is her agenda? Dubbed the She Wolf and the alpha female, she drives all before her and uncovers crimes of world class horror in Book One. Written in a very modern style, compelling, taught with emotion, passion and fear, Zara Vine will draw you in and grip you right through to the stunning conclusion.
