My latest novel, Hitler’s First Lady is getting positive feedback that it is a real page turner because its explosive and shocking take on historical facts. Here are the questions which I am continually asked: Was Hitler gay? Was the British Royal family looking for a peace deal with the Third Reich? Did Churchill reach […]
Without getting into the specifics of any of them, this blog is concerned about the cost to taxpayers of big set piece trials covering public issues from corporate fraud, through phone hacking, to sex crimes, which have a very high cost to taxpayers running into many tens of millions, yet which nevertheless achieve a low conviction […]
The answer must be yes. Not least because to embark on the convoluted marathon which is Labour’s election process, in the run up to the General Election would be a suicide jump for the Party. Ed Milliband has done much to make Labour a very effective Opposition, as well has pulling the party together after […]
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, once a Tory foreign Secretary, made a little intervention in the Commons today earning him a news clip, to urge restraint in building bridges with Iran, likening the potential relationship as similar to that with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. What drivel! There is a generation of Western politicians who […]
The US and Iran are discussing what to do to curb the ISIS advance in Iraq and how to bring stability to this stricken country. The talks are informal and they are at official rather than leader level. But they are happening and that fact alone is the most significant diplomatic development in the this […]
The Tory hierarchy is looking a bit the worse for wear. It is beginning to take on aspects of the last year of the Major and Brown governments, with hostile briefings, rows and leaks, as ambitious acolytes try to distance themselves from a busted flush and position themselves for election defeat followed by a new leader. They […]
Tony Blair, evidently a devout Christian, has an ideology which is curiously old fashioned. He believes that he is a goody, those who see things differently are baddies and all can be put right if you intervene militarily and impose an outcome by force. Democracy will take over, freedom will flower and milk and honey […]
We are now watching the final outcome of the post WWI settlement, when France and Britain divided the spoils of the defeated Ottoman Empire. They drew lines on a map and created two counties, one a republic, Syria, and one a monarchy, Iraq. The boundaries of these countries, within which some of the world’s oldest […]
Last night’s speeches at the Mansion House were refreshing in that George Osborne, who had remained indifferent from the carefully calibrated warnings from the previous governor, Sir Mervyn, now Lord, King about various aspects of the economy, woke up at last to the dangers of house prices and a debt fueled recovery. Mark Carney warned of […]
The answer is both. It is a sign that concentrating all power to the centre with virtually nothing between governors and government is no way to run a publicly funded institution such as education. It is a symptom of what can happen when you do. It all goes back to the Thatcher era reforms which […]