We don’t need no…

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] was necessary to let him make friendly things (sic) to the manufacturing people.’ 12 (emphasis added) Mrs Thatcher also bought this line. In his memoir, the former BBC political correspondent, John Cole, describes asking Mrs Thatcher for an example of how this ‘service’ or ‘post-industrial economy’ would work: ‘She cited an entrepreneur she had […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] Together came from the Israel lobby in the UK. I wonder why. Not a million miles from which . . . as far as I can see BBC News, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and The Times have not reported the arrest of Richard Medhurst and Sara Wilkinson under anti–terrorism legislation for their reporting […]

Is there a ‘political class’?

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of social and economic liberalism, and they reproduce themselves across the generations, with the children moving seamlessly from (usually) private school to university, to political intern/private office/journalism/ BBC, to think tanks like Reform, Policy Exchange or the Centre for Policy Studies, or to polling organisations like YouGov, and thence to Parliament. If they want […]

South of the border (occasional snippets from)

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of 40 years! The shitshow continues Regular perusers of this column may recall my item from Lobster 78 on facial recognition.17 The 6th August report on the BBC news website that ‘Facial recognition tech mistook me for wanted man’18 informs us that the shitshow continues. Presumably, we are supposed to be comforted by the […]

Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad by Michela Wrong

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] out: ‘Whatever these Western government ministers might say publicly, they could not claim to be unaware of Kagame’s tactics’. Where they were unsuccessful was in getting the BBC, CNN or Al Jazeera to give the tape recordings an airing. (pp. 77-78) Why then was the Rwandan regime so liked in the West? Tony Blair […]

Meltdown UK, and, Crisis and Recovery

Lobster Issue free article

[PDF file]: […] (Lobster 31 et seq). He is now director of the Global Policy Institute, a senior fellow of the Federal Trust and a prominent republican, opining recently on BBC Radio 4 on the forthcoming royal marriage. His latest book is a fulminating criticism of those elected to power in Britain while he was busy on […]

The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice by Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] describe Lockerbie in her memoirs, had wanted a more doughty foe than Dr Swire she’d have been hard put to find one. A former Army officer and BBC television engineer who then retrained as a general practitioner, Flora’s father was just the kind of honourable, hard-working and patriotic figure Thatcher told us was the […]

GArrick Timmi text

Lobster Issue

[…] that, on the preponderance of evidence, Olaf Neitsch’s father was indeed a Stasi officer, even though that Stasi officer might not have been Herbert Neitsch. 10 11 BBC News, 15 January 2017. See . An academic study has analysed the degree of nepotism in the Stasi’s Karl-Marx-Stadt district office, where the above-mentioned Herbert Neitsch […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: South of the border (occasional snippets from) Nick Must Spook joke department ‘UK spies will need artificial intelligence’ reads the headline to a Gordon Corera piece on BBC news online.1 Yes, the gags are pretty much writing themselves now. Deferred prosecution agreements – buying your way out of trouble ‘A deferred prosecution agreement, or […]

The crisis

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010) FREE

[PDF file]: Contents Lobster 60 The crisis Robin Ramsay The doom loop W e are now into the ‘doom loop’ described last year by Bank of England officials Alessandri and Haldane in which the banks, having discovered that their respective host states do not have the courage to regulate them, say ‘Thanks for the bailout’ and carry […]

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