David Stirling: the authorised biography of the creator of the SAS Alan Hoe Little, Brown and Co, London 1992, £17.50 As the subtitle suggests, most of this book is taken up with the story of the foundation of the SAS. I didn’t read that section. I read the last third which contains lengthy accounts […]
[…] deep into the heart of the Blair project and into the history of its precursors. Follow Draper, the Labour student initially offered work by Agriculture Minister Nick Brown and then taken up by Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson, and we get a few insights into New Labour of the ‘stuffing my bank account […]
[…] the two men became friends. (4) A month later the leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, died, and Blair won the leadership election contest with Gordon Brown – in some accounts with financial assistance from Levy. (5) All accounts are agreed that Michael Levy then set about raising money – the figure of […]
Ben Pimlott Harper Collins, London 1992, £20 At one level, this deserves the plaudits it has received. It is a belting good read, such a good read, in fact, that I had got as far as 1967 before I realized that there was no mention of Lord Cromer, the Governor of the Bank of England […]
BAP The Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines a bap as a ‘large soft bread roll’. How soft or hard the British American Project for the Successor Generation is — only time will tell. But it is certainly proving rather indigestible to the British media. By any standards a major story, Tom Easton’s piece on BAP (in […]
Our Secret Servants: the Shayler affair Things had been going rather well for the British security and intelligence services in the 1990s. Under pressure from the Wright-Wallace-Massiter revelations of the 80s, they had conceded a notional form of parliamentary accountability with the creation of the Intelligence and Security Committee. With members who either knew nothing […]
[…] doesn’t mention Loy Factor around whom the book is built. On p.812 Armstrong tells us: ‘Some researchers speculate that the man wearing the horn-rimmed glasses and the brown coat may have been Lyndon Johnson’s associate Mac Wallace whose fingerprint may have been found on one of the boxes near the window…’ . On p.375 […]
[…] or was about to become Chair of the Labour Friends of Israel were simply untrue. I have never sought or wanted such a position.’ Gordon Brown also apparently has the interests of Israel close to his heart. A report in the Jewish Telegraph 27 June 2003 described Gordon Brown addressing the annual […]
[…] is clearly the seminars given to the New Labour government-in-waiting by Andersen Consulting, the people who signed-off on the accounts of Enron, the shysters’ shysters. And Gordon Brown has been at the centre of this; this has been his project at least as much as happy-clappy Tony’s. For all that New Labour people think […]
‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s … Read more
