South of the border (occasional snippets from)

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] of ‘crass assassination plots’.2 Which is an odd way of describing what had happened, as the Merriam-Webster definition of crass is ‘having or indicating such grossness of mind as precludes delicacy and discrimination’.3 Indeed, leading figures from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) would have it very differently. Speaking a month after the […]

007’s real mission continues

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] 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, […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] is at 2 scepticism (given full wind on social media) when post-election stories about anomalous results started to trickle in. The example that is foremost in my mind is the constituency of Bedford Borough, my place of birth and a key Tory-Labour marginal. Here it was reported that a sack containing 5,000 extra votes […]

In the Thick of It: The private diaries of a minister Alan Duncan

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] . 10 8 chaired the Jewish Leadership Council, a key body in promoting the ‘Labour anti-semitism’ scare?11 This is just one of many questions that come to mind reading this tour d’horizon of the much-travelled diarist. But first he must be thanked for telling us so much about the workings of UK government and […]

Kelly Bond 007 text

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, […]

Freefall: Free Markets And The Sinking Of The Global Economy by Joseph Stiglitz

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010)

[PDF file]: […] the global warming agenda and his desire to see large transfers of wealth from the first world to the developing world. Yet despite this authoritarian caste of mind, he still fancies himself to be a pro-markets man. This book is worth reading for one reason and one reason only: as a primer on the […]

The Two Goulds

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: The two Goulds Robin Ramsay In ‘The crisis’ in issue 62 of Lobster I referred to the economic debate during the Labour Party’s policy review, which produced the Meet the Challenge, Make the Change document in 1989. On page 6 of that are these sentences: The Conservatives are the party for the City. We are […]

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq by John W. Dower

Lobster Issue

[…] of war), the length and verbosity of the various US enquiries set up to determine culpability for being ‘unprepared’ at Pearl Harbour, suggest a widespread frame of mind that takes as its starting point that America is entitled to regard itself as invulnerable.1 This conclusion is strengthened by the author neglecting to discuss the […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] review was reposted at Aaronovitch Watch at . put on their front pages the fact that the Labour Party had hired a former Obama strategist to master mind their forthcoming election campaign. Of course they looked to America. Where else? As these columns have reported ad nauseam for nearly twenty years, the Labour Party […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] George Osborne saying that he had seen the figures and it was quite horrific in real life as opposed to spin life… .” ‘Clegg….had already changed his mind about the deficit reduction plans. He was concerned about the firestorm engulfing Greece, and worried that it would spread across Europe, as Spain appeared vulnerable ….he […]

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