Author: Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The Delta Flight. Phew! That was close. Outstanding responses by passengers and aircrew were remarkable. A miracle malfunction of the suicide bomb underlined the proximity to disaster that stalks every airplane. What is good is the level of effort that goes into counter terrorist activities by all the security authorities world wide. Focused as we […]

Railways One of my Christmas presents this year is a series of three maps, all covering the same area, but based on Ordance Surveys of the early and late nineteenth century and the nineteen twenties. It is immensly interesting to study these maps of a rural area in southern England and compare one period with another. […]

Saving I read yesterday that the U.K has become a country of net savers, by the biggest margin in history. In fact most of this is going to debt reduction, but it is nevertheless the best news for the future of our economy that we have had this year. It represents real structural change of […]

U.S Healthcare The Senate vote makes this dream of proper universal healthcare in the U.S very nearly real. It will transform the lives of millions. There are yet hurdles to overcome, deals to be done and compromise with the House Bill, before the President can sign it into law. Yet now it is much more certain […]

Snow So everywhere is chaos. Why? Because nowadays everything works to due process and best practice and for snow, because we do not get a lot of it in the south, there is no plan. But I have lived in the south all my life. We used to have snow and coped well enough. We […]

Copenhagen I sometimes feel that we have given to much emphasis to the man made element of climate change, giving the impression that maybe it might not happen if we change our lifestyle. I think negotiations would have been easier if it had been accepted from the very beginning that climate does change, of which […]

The BA Strike As regular readers of this blog will know my views are often leaning left. I am a great supporter of trade unions and believe everyone should be a member. I was myself for a number of years a member of the white collar section of the Transport and General Workers, now enveloped […]

The Chilcot Enquiry I like the way this inquiry into the Iraq war is going. I know there are some commentators and a good many disappointed lawyers who feel counsel should be employed so that witnesses can be put under pressure in cross examination to reveal a deeper truth. I think it is precisely because […]

Tony Blair Of all the important things going on at the moment, and there are a good many competing for the prime spot, none is more important, far reaching or deeper than the ‘see into my heart’ interview given by the former Prime Minister. It is fundamental because it tells us that with this man at the […]

That Deficit There seems to be a general agreement that Darling did not come clean on how he was going to cut and where, in order to bring down the deficit after the election. Maybe he knows he won’t have to worry because he expects Labour to lose. The fact is that we not only have a corrupt […]