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

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] the home? The two men said to have visited the source for the Express story and told him of paedophile parties in the south of England, former Conservative MP Humphrey Berkeley and Robin Bryans, are dead. Robin Bryans used to send me long, barely intelligible letters and did not mention any of this, even […]

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 […]

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

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[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 […]

View from 92

Lobster Issue

[…] of the Ukrainian farright.28 Looking at Skidelsky’s Wikipedia entry,29 the man has had a complex political journey. A founder member of the SDP, he moved to the Conservative Party. At one point he was appointed a Conservative spokesman in the House of Lords but was dismissed by then Conservative leader William Hague for publicly […]

Newton on Keynes

Lobster Issue

[…] of post-war British society. A range of political and economic philosophies and traditions went into the version embraced by the Attlee government and indeed successive Labour and Conservative administrations all the way to 1979. Nurtured by over a century of humanistic and religious teaching, and a respect for the rights of the individual citizen […]

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

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[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 […]

More Hess

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[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 […]

Reporting Trump

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[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 […]

View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] of the mid 1970s – control the money supply and you can control inflation – appealed because it was so simple. It took hold, particularly in the 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 […]

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