Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics by Neil Findlay and But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it by Alastair Campbell

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] included this hoping no one recalled his role in the promotion of the Iraq War, the mysterious death of Dr Kelly or his venomous attack on the BBC that led to the resignation of its chair, Gavyn Davies, and its director general Greg Dyke. Dyke initially helped fund Blair. He later regretted it ‘because […]

The Brexit impasse

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] this out last year, it Scott Newton, ‘The Conservatives and Europe: the long view’, History and Policy Opinion Paper, January 2013, or . 14 Matt Drake, ‘ BBC Newsnight: Lord Heseltine “in favour” of voting for “horrific” Corbyn to STOP (sic) Brexit’, Daily Express, 10 November 2017. 15 still involves a very significant U-turn. […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] the country as it actually is and as it is represented in Westminster.3 If Butler and McTeague are political commentators, Libby Purves is not. Occasional Times columnist, BBC presenter for many years, Purves is the personification of the middle-of-the-road, mainstream, apolitical (but conservative) journalist.4 But things are now so bad even Purves was moved […]

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 […]

South of the Border

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] fact that there has been more than a little victim-shaming – sometimes subtle, other times not so. Take, for example, a piece by Gordon Corera for the BBC in 2021, detailing information on U.S. diplomats who were suing their government employer.1 Corera states that ‘members of the public, some with mental health issues, approach […]

lob86South of the Border

Lobster Issue

[…] fact that there has been more than a little victim-shaming – sometimes subtle, other times not so. Take, for example, a piece by Gordon Corera for the BBC in 2021, detailing information on U.S. diplomats who were suing their government employer.1 Corera states that ‘members of the public, some with mental health issues, approach […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] bullshit basket he calls for some global action which he knows will never take place but which he thinks sounds impressive. His latest was reported on the BBC News website: he wants a ‘global fund for education’.6 No doubt this will be next on the list after the new global financial system he wants […]

The State of Secrecy: Spies and the Media in Britain by Richard Norton-Taylor

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: The State of Secrecy Spies and the Media in Britain Richard Norton-Taylor London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2020, £20 h/b Scott Anthony Logic would tell you that the relationship between journalists and secret agents should be antagonistic. Journalists are after all charged with exposing power, while intelligence work is supposedly done in the […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] for his homespun homilies. I was aware that Friedman’s ideas were in the air but had neither read nor seen him; and, like the politicians in the BBC studio, I was astonished: why was this idiot being taken seriously? At this distance the interesting historical question is: how and why did the editors of […]

Misleading Parliament – a case to answer

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

See also: Misleading Parliament – Appendices

[PDF file]: […] home (Kincora), or to the other five boys’ homes, and the circumstances which led up to the problems.13 Moreover, when asked on The World At One ( BBC Radio 4, 18 January 1984) if the inquiry would take evidence on the alleged activities of the intelligence agencies, James Prior, Northern Ireland Secretary of State, […]

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