[…] Cold War there have been occasions when the intelligence services, the CIA and SIS for example, actually did provide intelligence of substance. The first that springs to mind was the Cuban missile crisis, when the information from the Soviet intelligence officer Penkofsky about the actual accuracy of Soviet missiles did appear to play a […]
[…] defendant typically receives an expedited but much-reduced sentence for their candour and penitence. The effect of Ashton-Cirillo’s untruthful pre-trial comments was to convict Lira in the public mind as soon as he had been arrested. The reality was clarified when the Ukrainian authorities proceeded to set court dates for Lira’s defence case, in a […]
[…] Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor at the time of the Iraq invasion, told him ‘that whatever the size of the march the Government would not have changed its mind.’ Which is what we all suspected anyway. Tony Blair, Dubya’s political catamite, knew what was expected of him and was determined to deliver it. 199 Summer […]
[…] always easy meat for the orthodoxy of the City.) What was inflation between 1945 and 1970, 2-4% per annum on average? Who, in his or her right mind, would not trade off 4% inflation for full employment and 2% growth? Vaisey’s vision Another version of the same basic perception that a great watershed had […]
[…] past 40 years or so.4 He quotes a South African report from 1991 describing it as ‘an informal forum of influential representatives of a “conservative cast of mind“’ – which is what Pinay/Le Cercle was and remains. Among recent British participants are former Conservative MPs Norman Lamont, Rory Stewart and Jonathan Aitken.5 Three pages […]
[…] 1839. Henderson emailed on 6 April: ‘ Starmer is my MP. Mmmm . . . I wonder if I should visit him at his surgery and re mind him of the time when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions and how he refused to take action after Tony and Cherie Blair had attempted […]
[…] Cold War there have been occasions when the intelligence services, the CIA and SIS for example, actually did provide intelligence of substance. The first that springs to mind was the Cuban missile crisis, when the information from the Soviet intelligence officer Penkofsky about the actual accuracy of Soviet missiles did appear to play a […]
The view from the bridge Robin Ramsay As always, thanks to Nick Must and Garrick Alder for editorial help with Lobster. *new* Oh-oh By some distance the biggest story I have seen recently is that told on CBS’s 60 Minutes series recently, Scott Pelley’s ‘Havana Syndrome mystery continues as a lead military investigator says bar […]
[…] us this about Sarah Brown and the spin doctors, Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan: ‘The demure public image was the front of a woman with a steely mind who was fiercely protective of her husband and family. She formed a strong, and to some at No 10 surprising, alliance with Damian McBride and Charlie […]
