A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey by Jim Sillars

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] to spot in today’s public services.’ The MPs’ expenses scandal, Owen Paterson, and the sunshine freebies offered to MPs and councillors by foreign governments all come to mind, not forgetting PPE contracts for pals and the rest of the moral turpitude of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street. This political apprenticeship in Ayr seems to have […]

Tokyo legend? Lee Harvey Oswald and Japan

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] confused the high-priced Tokyo Queen Bee hostess who never existed with the beautiful Eurasian ‘White Russian’ at Iwakuni who also never existed. In the alembic of Donovan’s mind, the Tokyo Queen Bee B-girl now became fluent in Russian: ‘In Japan, Oswald, who was paid only $87 per month, frequented the Queen Bee Bar, a […]

Sir John Sawer’s speech and some aspects of SIS PR

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] ideal: i.e. he condemned torture and had the credibility to do 11 Question: how do you give a YouTube video legs? Answer: you remove it. Keep in mind that The Sunday Times reported ‘Sawers wants to phase out the image of the MI6 officer as a globetrotting James Bond figure who undertakes glamorous missions […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] on the free market/business groups assembled around the Conservative Party’s spokespeople on the environment and economic policy, on a site that is new to me, DESMOG.uk.13 Never mind the imminent collapse of the environment, what we need is more economic freedom and less government regulation! The question that always arises with these groups is […]

Last post for Oswald

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, he ended up taking part in Oswald’s interrogation on the morning of Sunday 24 November 1963 purely by happenstance. He supposedly changed his mind about going to church at 9.30am and made his way to Dallas Police HQ instead, where Captain Will Fritz unexpectedly invited him into the interrogation room. […]

Kelly Bond 007 essay

Lobster Issue

[…] began writing the 007 books, the official story is that Fleming began to write ‘the spy story to end all spy stories’ in order to ‘take his mind off an impending marriage’. While marriage for the long time bachelor was certainly in the works, other more important things were on his mind. Noel Coward, […]

The Return of the Public, and, Death of the Liberal Class

Lobster Issue

[…] for faint hearts. It has much of the challenging force of those German anti-Nazis – Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Fritz Reck-Malleczewen are two names who come readily to mind – who steadfastly marked out the ground in earlier battles for rights, decency and integrity in a disordered world. Tom Easton is a freelance writer. 145 […]

Contamination, the Labour Party, nationalism and the Blairites

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

[PDF file]: […] to tell the Chiefs of Staff in early 1948 that ‘there was no one to fight’, but eventually capitulated after pressure from Ernest Bevin, who changed his mind and accepted the line coming out of the Foreign Office,16 and a 13 There is now a large and growing – At last! It only took […]

1976 and all that: the IMF incident

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] 23 November 1976 Tony Benn noted in his diary, ‘Peter suspected the figures produced by the Treasury.’ As did Prime Minister Callaghan: ‘The only doubt in my mind, borne of previous experience, was how far to trust the figures.’ James Callaghan, Time and Chance (London: Collins, 1987) p. 422. Healey wrote: ‘I cannot help […]

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