The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] the sake of liberal values may and 23 24 The radical right in the USA has spotted it. See ‘Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media’ at or . 25 9 26 seem a paradox, but it is not illogical. For latter-day hyper-liberals, free speech is useful only so long as […]

Collapse of stout party: Eden, Suez and America

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: Collapse of stout party Eden, Suez and America Simon Matthews Have you heard the one about the Conservative Prime Minister who is disowned by the right-wing of the Tory Party for not seeing through a bombastic and nationalist policy, and disowned by its left-wing for duplicity and generally ridiculed by the wider public? Forget […]

How our politicians helped to kill UK manufacturing

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] Barber was Heath’s Chancellor the Exchequer. Of the Thatcher/Major period, 1979-97 he notes: ‘ . . . Britain’s manufacturers should have thrived during the 18 years of Conservative rule . . . yet the reverse was the case with the manufacturing industry suffering painful reductions in markets, capacity Dan Atkinson’s thoughts on what is […]

Chris Hani book

Lobster Issue

[…] over the past 40 years or so.4 He quotes a South African report from 1991 describing it as ‘an informal forum of influential representatives of a ” conservative cast of mind”’ – which is what Pinay/Le Cercle was and remains. Among recent British participants are former Conservative MPs Norman Lamont, Rory Stewart and Jonathan […]

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]: […] If the current line is held to the election, the ducking and diving of Labour will become as big a turn-off as the deceit and dissembling of Conservative ministers.’ 2 He promptly backed the election of Tony Blair as Labour leader and left journalism to work for him as spokesman on a salary we […]

Chris Hani book copy

Lobster Issue

[…] over the past 30 years or so.3 He quotes a South African report from 1991 describing it as ‘an informal forum of influential representatives of a ” conservative cast of mind”’ – which is what Pinay/Le Cercle was and remains. Among recent British participants are former Conservative MPs Norman Lamont, Rory Stewart and Jonathan […]

‘To Stand against Israel is to Stand against God’: Zionism, Trump and the US Christian Right

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] standard of living may not be sustained’. Falwell singled out Margaret Thatcher, who had just become Prime Minister in Britain, for particular praise. Having thus established his conservative credentials, he went on to address the ‘culture wars’ agenda with chapters attacking Feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment, ferociously condemning abortion, defending the Christian family […]

Hoodwinked by the Department of Health? Frank Dobson and the 1997 Jimmy Savile report

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] the 1997 General Election’ in Lobster 73.1 What happened to the external management review of Broadmoor highsecurity hospital that Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell had commissioned, once the Conservative Party had left office? The report was sent to his office in April 1997, shortly before the Conservatives lost power at that year’s General Election. The […]

We don’t need no…

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: […] appreciation of the pound expected from its imminent status as a ‘petro-currrency’, the government would raise interest rates to ‘control the money supply’. Which is what the Conservative government elected in 1979 did. Increased interest rates made the pound attractive, pushing up the value of sterling. Frank Blackaby noted that, during the great rise […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] Murdoch has a slyer sense of humour than we realised, since it was precisely the abolition of the ‘fairness doctrine’ that enabled the growth of the rabidly- conservative self-styled ‘fair and balanced’ Fox News. Murdoch’s covert pas de deux with the Gipper raises interesting questions about news coverage of some of the 14 CIA’s […]

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