Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 56
September 5, 2018
Zara Vine: New Thriller
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. As the youngest Detective Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police she is forced to resign because of an armed response in which an innocent is shot. Her career in tatters, her marriage over and worst of all, the death of her only child, she decides to leap to oblivion from a famous cliff top. Saved by a Samaritan, she self-drives a rebirth and joins the Polechester City Police, the smallest UK force. Initially tasked with Cold Cases, she is called in to solve a series of murders with sinister undertones and national implications. 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 in the search for answers 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. It will also stir your conscience as it asks some of the questions few dare confront.
Lord King Speaks Out: Former Bank Governor’s Dismay
Lord King in an interview with the BBC has spoken out over the Brexit shambles. An extract from the BBC article in printed below. The full report can be reached on the BBC website by following the link at the end. It includes the filmed interview.
Former Bank of England governor Lord King has blasted Brexit preparations as “incompetent”.
The Brexit supporter said it “beggared belief” that the world’s sixth-biggest economy should be talking of stockpiling food and medicines.
This left the government without a credible bargaining position, he said.
A spokesperson for the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) said that getting a good deal with the EU was “by far, the most likely outcome”.
Lord King said that “a government that cannot take action to prevent some of these catastrophic outcomes illustrates a whole lack of preparation”.
“It doesn’t tell us anything about whether the policy of staying in the EU is good or bad, it tells us everything about the incompetence of the preparation for it.”
In a BBC interview to discuss the 10 years since the economic crisis – due to be aired next week – Lord King spent a significant amount of time saying the 11th hour preparation for a no-deal Brexit has undermined the government’s negotiating position.
He added: “We haven’t had a credible bargaining position, because we hadn’t put in place measures where we could say to our colleagues in Europe, ‘Look, we’d like a free-trade deal, we think that you would probably like one too, but if we can’t agree, don’t be under any misapprehension, we have put in place the measures that would enable us to leave without one.'”
Free Download: Political Crime
![Power Corruption and Lies by [Raven, Tor]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1508856323i/24261113.jpg)
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Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. Tor Raven’s novel captures the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex. GET YOUR COPY FREE TODAY!
September 4, 2018
Zara Vine: Brand New Thriller
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.
Chequers Brexit Plan: Is it Dead?
Literally yes. It has been rejected by Barnier and his officials, it is rejected by the Brexiteers, it is rejected by Remainers, small businesses find it frightening and it will never get through the Commons. So that makes it dead. But it is, after over two years of arguing and delay, the only actual plan. There is no other. There is a lot of ideology and words, but no detail at all about what else can be done. Not wished for. Done.
So Chequers may have built into it a phoenix quality so far missed. If May allows the rows within her party and cabinet to go on until there is so much confusion that the threads of reason are completely entangled with fantasy and self delusion, thus making a crash Brexit certain, she may yet win. Because at that point she could agree in the national interest (a new phrase now flying around Downing Street) that the only option is to stay in the single market and the customs union and the Commons will back her. Opinion polls will indicate a majority of voters back her too on that issue.
Then Brexit, as conceived by the zealots who proposed it without knowing what it was, will be dead.
As the Tory party implodes into open civil war and a general election becomes the only way forward, because it was the governing party that lead the country into one of the most damaging and chaotic experiences in peace time history, it will be driven from office on a scale which will mean, politically, it is dead too.
September 3, 2018
New Thriller: Zara Vine Book One
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. As the youngest Detective Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police she is forced to resign because of an armed response in which an innocent is shot. Her career in tatters, her marriage over and worst of all, the death of her only child, she decides to leap to oblivion from a famous cliff top. Saved by a Samaritan, she self-drives a rebirth and joins the Polechester City Police, the smallest UK force. Initially tasked with Cold Cases, she is called in to solve a series of murders with sinister undertones and national implications. 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 in the search for answers 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. It will also stir your conscience as it asks some of the questions few dare confront.
September 2, 2018
Parliament Returns on Tuesday: Time to attend to The Nation’s Business.
There are great issues facing our country, dominated by Brexit, but not just what sort of Brexit, if any, we end up with. We still need solutions to problems in health, social care, prisons, patient safety, railways, teacher shortages, the list lengthens every time I post on these worries. We are entitled to bold leadership, quality debate, discipline in government and in opposition, as well as openness and facts.
What we are getting are unending quarrels within the political parties about everything from Islamophobia, Antisemitism, sexual conduct, bullying, misogyny, you name it. Of course all of these issues are very important and very important indeed for those affected by them, but they must not be used as cover to run leadership campaigns or to destabilise the ability of Parliament to function and provide sound government.
So at the end of the summer recess, there must be a political reset. The people’s business must come first.
August 24, 2018
Brexit No Deal Papers: Are We Any Wiser?
Yes. A Bit. The publication yesterday of the government’s first tranche of up to 80 Notices laying out guidance to everybody, including businesses, services and private citizens, were detailed in some places and vague in others. To non ideologues they demonstrated what all thinking people know. A crash Brexit will cost. Not just on the big ticket items like borders and supply chains, but on individual things like credit card charges, roaming fees, pensions paid to ex-pats and so on. There is a whole raft of new costs for business to cope with a more complex regime for both exporting and importing. Dozens of new government agencies have to be set up to monitor all the regulations to be repatriated. Life will become more complicated and it will also become more expensive. At least in the short to medium term.
At the centre of it all is this simple emerging truth. Britain will not be better off. And people were told that the reason for voting Brexit was compelling; we would be better off. This is going to have consequences. Big ones. And perhaps sooner than we think. Stay tuned.
August 23, 2018
America and Australia: A Curious Coincidence
Australia seems about, once again, to change its prime minister as the result of an internal coup by members of its federal parliament who belong to the party in power. At the moment this is the Liberals, who equate with our Conservatives. But previously it has been Labour. In other words both parties are at it when in power. Because only members of parliament are allowed to vote in a new party leader, it is just a handful of people switching support that brings down a prime minister. This is not a good system of democracy and works only because Australia has strong State governments which cater for most of the day be day needs of the population.
In America, short of death, a change of president once elected to office is well nigh impossible and has succeeded only once, when Nixon resigned. Since then it has become almost routine for opposition forces to mount a campaign to discredit the president in office, trying to prove via special prosecutors some degree of culpability for something, to enable impeachment proceeding to begin. The actual process has begun only with Andrew Johnson in the period immediately following the civil war, and Bill Clinton. Neither was driven from office. But Reagan ( Iran Contra arms scandal) Clinton (sex and perjury) and now Trump (Russian collusion) have been subjected to major campaigns dominating Washington and hobbling their presidencies for considerable periods. Once again the I word is in circulation on Capitol Hill.
Both countries need to consider reforms. This is not the kind of democracy voters favour, because it appears to place the priorities of politicians above the needs of the voters who put them there.
August 20, 2018
Birmingham Prison in Crisis
The news that Birmingham Prison is to return to government control is very welcome. What has been going on there is a blot upon the civilised values of the whole nation. You can judge the inner core of a country by the state of its prisons. A Birmingham situation suggests the core, if not rotten, is rotting. This blog has never supported prisons run by private contractors. Some services are just not for profit and never should be. Prisons are certainly one of them.
Rory Stewart, the prisons minister, is one of the best intellects in the Commons and already has a distinguished career as historian, diplomat, writer and broadcaster. If anyone can sort out the mess our whole prison system has become, he can. That is if the brawling mob the Tory party in parliament and government has become, allows him to do the job as he sees fit.
