‘Nobody told us we could do this’

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012)

[PDF file]: […] Rob Wilson MP points out that Clegg had – apparently – been a member of the Conservative Association at Cambridge University, and that he later worked for Thatcher cabinet member Sir Leon Brittain when Brittain was an EU Commissioner. It was clear, then, that Clegg might be more inclined than his predecessors to talk […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] the 1980s which were released in late December, was one concerning the Peter Wright book Spycatcher. The Guardian reported that on one of these documents prime minister Thatcher wrote in October 1986: ‘I am utterly shattered by the revelations in the book. The consequences of publication would be enormous.’ 1 Obviously she didn’t have […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] politicians to get real. But politicians can’t ‘get real’ just yet. No mainstream British politician is willing to say that Britain is run down because (a) the Thatcher and New Labour administrations abandoned the manufacturing sector of the economy, and (b) the prosperous haven’t paid enough taxes for 40 years. For a while longer […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] the 1980s which were released in late December, was one concerning the Peter Wright book Spycatcher. The Guardian reported that on one of these documents prime minister Thatcher wrote in October 1986: ‘I am utterly shattered by the revelations in the book. The consequences of publication would be enormous.’ 1 Obviously she didn’t have […]

Off Message, and, Standing for Something

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] Commons in 1997, looking forward to a long period of Labour government that would ‘buttress parliamentary power, entrench historic civil liberties which had been threatened by the Thatcher administration and address the twin problems of poverty and inequality’. He was, in his own words, a ‘poor innocent fool’. What went wrong? He fixes most […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] as chief executive of the Tax Payers’ Alliance and Williams was the CBI’s chief economic adviser. 2 1 Type to enter text bemoaning the decline of the Thatcher legacy (Baker, 17 October) and yearning for someone like Mrs Thatcher to sort things out (Parris, 20 October). The difficulty most of us have in changing […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] in explaining Soviet policy and thinking just at the point when the Soviet Union was cracking up, thus smoothing to way for the Gorbachev relationship first with Thatcher and then with the Americans. ‘Decisive’ – maybe not; but not insignificant. Angus Hanton in his Vassal State, writes that 56% of British shares are now […]

Deception in High Places: a history of bribery in Britain’s arms trade by Nicholas Gilby

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] history of bribery in Britain’s arms trade Nicholas Gilby London: Pluto Press, 2015, p/b, £14.00 This is very good: clearly written, massively documented1 and carefully done. Mark Thatcher, for example, some of whose wealth is widely believed to come from BAE’s 1985 Al Yamamah deal with the Saudis, isn’t mentioned. What might be sayable […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013)

[PDF file]: […] read Gerald James’ 1995 In The Public Interest, and James is quoted on the site. Andrew Rosthorn has pointed out that some of it appeared in ‘ Thatcher, Astra, Iraq & murder of Gerald Bull’ in Intelligence 81, 8 June 1998, p. 1. Bilderberg comes to Watford Watford? Strange choice of venue: close enough […]

Spookaroonie!

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: […] in his Eye column’. (p. 264) ‘told that he wished to be sufficiently well briefed to be able to counter “some of the rather extreme advice” Mrs Thatcher had received.’ That advice had been coming from Crozier and his colleagues.7 A cautious, tiresomely bureaucratic MI5 is how David Shayler saw the organisation in the […]

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