The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 93 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] with the help of the joint intelligence committee . . . Due to be published last autumn it was blocked by No 10 as too negative’. The BBC discussed it on the 27th,6 so evidently Whitehall had ‘As Trump menaces Greenland, this much is clear: the free world needs a new plan – and […]

Climbing the Bookshelves

Lobster Issue

[…] read Climbing the Bookshelves by the former Labour Cabinet minister who helped launch the short-lived SDP in 1981. Sure enough the wise words I’d heard on the BBC were there. But so was her description of how as a 21-year-old Oxford student the then Shirley Catlin was funded by the US government to take […]

1976 and all that: the IMF incident

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] 1974. However, 1976 saw Harold Wilson’s resignation but the advancement to PM of James Callaghan – who immediately lost Labour’s tiny majority in the Commons. See ‘ BBC on this day: 5th April, 1976’ at . 2 1 deficit and a pound that was in danger of falling too far against the dollar.3 The […]

Cummings, Greensill and all that

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: Cummings, Greensill and all that Robin Ramsay I watched the Dominic Cummings interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on the same day that the first report on the Lex Greensill affair became available on-line. Greensill was the fringe banker who hired former PM David Cameron – at around £29,000 a day – as a ‘consultant’.1 […]

The Rise of New Labour: Into Office

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] employed more than 30% of the work force, half had recorded a rise in unemployment in the previous six months.8 As I was writing this paragraph the BBC news announced at the beginning of August 2001, that the manufacturing sector of the British economy was officially in recession – in large part the victim […]

finklestein 1976

Lobster Issue

[…] 1974. However, 1976 saw Harold Wilson’s resignation but the advancement to PM of James Callaghan – who immediately lost Labour’s tiny majority in the Commons. See ‘ BBC on this day: 5th April, 1976’ at . 2 1 deficit and a pound that was in danger of falling too far against the dollar.3 The […]

Hack Attack: How The Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] interests of News International. What seems to have persuaded Murdoch to ditch him was the Tories’ readiness to take measures to inflict serious financial damage on the BBC by freezing the tv licence, weakening Ofcom and waving through the Murdochs’ takeover of BSkyB. It was not that Brown would have balked at such measures […]

Contamination, the Labour Party, nationalism and the Blairites

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

[PDF file]: […] Way (Blackwell, Oxford, 1986). 25 Bryan Gould, Goodbye To All That, (Macmillan, London, 1995) p. 202. 26 Gould p. 205. Eatwell is now Lord Eatwell. 27 Duckworth/ BBC, 1982 28 See note 24 above. 9 The day before the document was due to go to the printer, Gould was asked to meet a delegation […]

Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: […] read Climbing the Bookshelves by the former Labour Cabinet minister who helped launch the short-lived SDP in 1981. Sure enough the wise words I’d heard on the BBC were there. But so was her description of how as a 21-year-old Oxford student the then Shirley Catlin was funded by the US government to take […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

The View from the Bridge (a kind of blog) Robin Ramsay Big Cyril H ow do we interpret the Cyril Smith story to date? We know that allegations about Smith were given by MI5 officers to Colin Wallace in the British Army’s Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland in 1974 for use in psy-ops projects. […]

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