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 […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015) FREE

[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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Armed and Dangerous: The US Far Right in the Trump era

Lobster Issue 88 (2024) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of racial violence and vandalism. There would be much more horror to come’. And ‘at least two prominent white supremacist organizations – Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens – saw their websites crash due to the flood of online traffic that came their way following Obama’s victory’. Incredibly, Johnson has had the faces […]

View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] it was so simple. It took hold, particularly in the or 37 The author’s other articles in this field are listed at . 38 39 40 12 Conservative Party, where what became the Thatcherites adopted it and wrecked the British manufacturing economy with it between 1980 and 1984. Margaret Thatcher was a politician who […]

Reporting Trump

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] his chief of staff were decidedly frosty too. (pp. 63-64) It is worth remembering here that McCain was not some sort of liberal, but a right-wing warmongering conservative who just could not stomach Trump’s ignorance, dishonesty and corruption. This, one cannot help but thinking, is what Sopel considers the limit of legitimate opposition to […]

Newsinger Armed and Dangerous 88

Lobster Issue

[…] of racial violence and vandalism. There would be much more horror to come’. And ‘at least two prominent white supremacist organizations – Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens – saw their websites crash due to the flood of online traffic that came their way following Obama’s victory’. Incredibly, Johnson has had the faces […]

More Hess

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

[PDF file]: […] interest. His interlocutor at this point, Lt Murrough Loftus, had been commissioned in the Scots Guards on 21 December 1940 and was the son of Pierse Loftus, Conservative MP for Lowestoft. It seems to be assumed in various accounts, including Padfield,7 that Lt. Loftus was sent to guard Hess to obtain from him details […]

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