Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: […] fleeting shadow of an MI5 officer. alumnus of the far-right Murdoch-funded Campaign for a Free Britain, in which Hart tried to cajole Wyatt (a friend of Mrs Thatcher and the Queen Mother) into recommending Crozier to Thatcher for a knighthood. It really is a small world in the British Establishment. Speaking of which….. Coulson […]

View from Lob 73

Lobster Issue

[…] listen to polls and focus groups for their professed views, I find myself unable to suppress the thought: I wonder what they are really thinking? Take Margaret Thatcher: what did she really think she was doing when she fronted the creation of the grossly unequal society we now have? Frank Field MP gave us […]

A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey by Jim Sillars

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey Jim Sillars Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2021, £14.99 John Booth There aren’t many people still active in British politics who served in the Royal Navy when sailors were given 200 free cigarettes a month.1 But Jim Sillars is one of them and has lived to reflect thoughtfully on the 65 […]

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]: Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics Neil Findlay Edinburgh: Lulath Press, £14.99 But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it Alastair Campbell London: Hutchinson Heinemann, £22.00 John Booth Here we have two approaches to politics and public life […]

Laissez faire as religion

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE

[PDF file]: Contents Lobster 58 Laissez faire as religion Robert Henderson The enemy of rationality is ideology. By an ideology I mean a mental construct which consists of a menu of tenets which the adherent applies without regard to their utility or truth. The observance of the ideology becomes an end in itself. All ideologies are inadequate […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), told its annual conference that they had to ‘to take the gloves off and have a bare-knuckle fight’ with the Thatcher government.34 But no such fight ensued, Beckett resigned and in the following decade while the City boomed, British manufacturing shrank by about 20%. The focus these […]

The Mossad Spy It’s not what you’ve done it’s who you are… the transgender spy

Lobster Issue

[…] like to be transgender two generations ago. But most of all it is a stunning indictment of the lawless, literally murderous, unaccountable British secret state in the Thatcher years. Olivia’s experience shows that MI5 committed arson, falsely imprisoned people, manipulated the National Insurance system, the passport office, the prison service, the criminal justice system, […]

Megrahi – You Are My Jury: The Lockerbie Evidence by John Ashton

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012) FREE

[PDF file]: […] case. It’s Scotland’s biggest terrorist atrocity. These are serious questions raised by serious people, and the world is watching.’ But Mr Salmond, following the precedents of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, was adamant in his refusal: ‘They’re looking for an inquiry for the responsibility, ultimately, for Lockerbie. That […]

Tittle-Tattle

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: […] ‘extremely serious’. Of course not all of those should be laid at the door of the SYP as forces from around the country were deployed by the Thatcher government during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. May does not seem unhappy at taking them all on. She has long targeted the Police Federation for criticism2 5 […]

Mark Lewis and ‘the ultimate hacker’

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012) FREE

[PDF file]: […] were described in ‘Our Friends in the North West: The Owen Oyston Affair’ in Lobster 34 (Winter 1998). property dealer who had several times hosted prime-minister Margaret Thatcher at his home in Preston. More delivered to Bill Harrison financial profiles of the Labour leader of Preston, the deputy Labour leader of Preston and their […]

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