Team mercenary GB: Part 2 – This is the modern world

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] contracts with private UK security companies rose from £12.6m in 2003 to £48.9m in 2012, according to official figures.’9 One of the memorable jokes from the 1980s BBC comedy ‘Yes Minister’ is along the lines of, ‘If those are the official figures, then you can imagine just how much it really is!’ British dominance […]

Historical Notes

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] two things about me, says FBI interrogator’, CNN Opinion. 21 March 2023, at or . 36 Gordon Corera, ‘How the search for Iraq’s secret weapons fell apart’, BBC News, 21 March 2023, at . 37 David Frum, ‘The Iraq War reconsidered’, The Atlantic, 13 March 2023 at or . 38 See Bergen (note 35). […]

Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: Holding Pattern Garrick Alder Doppelgangers Hillary Clinton’s apparent fainting spell during the 9/11 commemoration in September led to an explosion of theorising. The right-wing, who had been on her case over an alleged ‘secret illness’ for some time, went absolutely bananas.1 This cloud of conspiracy conjecture followed her into the car that rushed her away […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021)

[PDF file]: […] was prompted to look at it for the first time in a while by seeing the headline on Gosling’s latest email collection: ‘Wife-Killer Prince Charles Flexes Orwellian BBC Mind-Control Muscle, Eyes Global Great Reset & Peace Antichrist Roles’. Yesterday’s men Two of yesterday’s men, Conservative MPs Philip Hammond, former Chancellor the Exchequer, and Alan […]

Decades of Deceit: the Stalker Affair and its Legacy

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] methods deployed by the RUC SB as they followed the approach recommended by Walker and Oldfield clearly caused some unease within the force. In September 2019 the BBC Northern Ireland current affairs TV series Spotlight broadcast an episode about the suspected shoot-to-kill policy. It featured Raymond White, who stated that in 1986, when head […]

The Western Union Clandestine Committee: Britain and the ‘Gladio’ networks

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] Park. 22 As good a point to start for anyone who might want to read more about ‘Numbers Stations’ would be and the YouTube upload of a BBC Radio 4 programme at . 23 An official, and very dry account is at the Intelligence Corps Museum website at A more entertaining read can be […]

Tittle Tattle

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011)

[PDF file]: […] Gould’s old sidekick in the ‘modernisation’ of Labour. Hill’s partner is Hilary Coffman, who previously worked for Kinnock and Michael Foot. BAP and the BEEB Hill’s sister, BBC chief editorial adviser Margaret, is a longstanding member of the British American Project (Lobsters passim) whose members now seem to fill more and more of the […]

Romeo Spy by John Alexander Symonds

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] of inaccurate tales of espionage.’ (p. 314) Symonds’ account ends with this devastating final paragraph. ‘In retrospect, nobody emerges from the Mitrokhin affair with much credit. The BBC and The Times competed against each other to see who could renege on their agreements first; MI5 tried every slippery trick to conceal Dame Stella’s stunning […]

Historical Notes on Tom Nairn and the British State

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] mentor, Sir Keith Joseph, commented in 1976 that ‘the pursuit of income inequality will turn this country into a totalitarian slum’. During the 1979 election Thatcher told BBC reporter Michael Cockerell, ‘I can’t bear Britain in decline, I just can’t’.18 Like the coup plotters, the Thatcher governments were determined to reverse a ‘decline’ they […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] between the country as it actually is and as it is represented in Westminster.30 If Butler and McTeague are political commentators, Libby Purves is not. Times columnist, BBC presenter for many years, Purves is the personification of the middle-of-the-road, mainstream, apolitical (but conservative) journalist.31 But things are now so bad even Purves was moved […]

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