The British state’s failed attempt to kill off the Freedom of Information Act

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] a uniform commencement of 1 January 2005, which, it was believed, would allow for public sector bodies to consult, confer, and prepare for the new openness. As Conservative Party researchers demonstrated, the five-year lead-in also coincided with a notable uptick in file destruction by Whitehall departments, with some civil service branches essentially doubling their […]

That option no longer exists: Britain 1974-76 by John Medhurst

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: […] could be persuaded to embark on this journey – even though most of the senior leadership of the unions would probably have welcomed it – with a Conservative government. (And it is absolutely bizarre that anyone in the Heath government associated with this could ever have thought otherwise.) The author writes: ‘For a brief […]

The News Machine: Hacking,The Untold Story by James Hanning with Glenn Mulcaire

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: The News Machine: Hacking,The Untold Story James Hanning with Glenn Mulcaire London: Gibson Square, £12.99, p/b T he Conservative Party had already lost the Rochester and Strood by-election in the hours before its former director of communications left prison early on the morning of 21 November. Whether the timing of Andy Coulson’s release was […]

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) FREE

[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 […]

View ffrom Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] an eyebrow. By their omissions . . . Michael Gove, the outgoing Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, passes for an intellectual in today’s Conservative Party. In May he delivered a speech on anti-semitism.13 He made some interesting points. This paragraph, for example: There are no BDS campaigns directed against Bashar […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

The view from the bridge Robin Ramsay Meeja news Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of the German conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, did an interview with Russia Today1 in which, among other things, he said this. ‘Germany is still a kind of a colony of the United States, you’ll see that in many points; […]

View from the Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] an eyebrow. By their omissions . . . Michael Gove, the outgoing Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, passes for an intellectual in today’s Conservative Party. In May he delivered a speech on anti-semitism.13 He made some interesting points. This paragraph, for example: There are no BDS campaigns directed against Bashar […]

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

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[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 […]

We don’t need no…

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[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 […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] to the lessons of Major’s locust years. His government needs a philosophy, a set of principles, an ideology. Indeed Starmer’s need is greater than Major’s was. A Conservative administration benefits from a sense of purpose; a Labour government cannot survive without one. Progressive politics needs a galvanising, uniting, liberating, crusading temper – the arc […]

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