Team mercenary GB: Part 2 – This is the modern world

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] contracts with private UK security companies rose from £12.6m in 2003 to £48.9m in 2012, according to official figures.’9 One of the memorable jokes from the 1980s BBC comedy ‘Yes Minister’ is along the lines of, ‘If those are the official figures, then you can imagine just how much it really is!’ British dominance […]

Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, and, This Land: The Story of a Movement

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] basis: it supported the Iraq war that Corbyn strongly opposed.35 Both books also offer little detail on the contribution of the broadcasting media to the ‘crisis’. The BBC was consistently critical of Corbyn. One of the worst examples was the 2019 BBC TV Panorama programme ‘Is Labour Antisemitic?’. It opened with an unidentified former […]

View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] has reached issue 167.3 There will be something there of interest if you are reading this. Owen Jones has an important piece about the pro-Israel bias of BBC reporting of the assault on Gaza.4 It has been followed by a detailed analysis of the BBC staffer at the centre of this, ‘BBC Middle East […]

Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: Holding Pattern Garrick Alder Doppelgangers Hillary Clinton’s apparent fainting spell during the 9/11 commemoration in September led to an explosion of theorising. The right-wing, who had been on her case over an alleged ‘secret illness’ for some time, went absolutely bananas.1 This cloud of conspiracy conjecture followed her into the car that rushed her away […]

The Dr Strangeloves of the Mind

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010)

[PDF file]: […] found out what was going to happen and objected he just dosed them up so they didn’t know whether they were coming or going. In April 2009 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary by James Maw entitled Revealing the Mind Bender General. Maw interviewed several of Sargant’s patients who spoke of their lives being […]

Historical Notes on Tom Nairn and the British State

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] mentor, Sir Keith Joseph, commented in 1976 that ‘the pursuit of income inequality will turn this country into a totalitarian slum’. During the 1979 election Thatcher told BBC reporter Michael Cockerell, ‘I can’t bear Britain in decline, I just can’t’.18 Like the coup plotters, the Thatcher governments were determined to reverse a ‘decline’ they […]

The Western Union Clandestine Committee: Britain and the ‘Gladio’ networks

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] Park. 22 As good a point to start for anyone who might want to read more about ‘Numbers Stations’ would be and the YouTube upload of a BBC Radio 4 programme at . 23 An official, and very dry account is at the Intelligence Corps Museum website at A more entertaining read can be […]

Romeo Spy by John Alexander Symonds

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] of inaccurate tales of espionage.’ (p. 314) Symonds’ account ends with this devastating final paragraph. ‘In retrospect, nobody emerges from the Mitrokhin affair with much credit. The BBC and The Times competed against each other to see who could renege on their agreements first; MI5 tried every slippery trick to conceal Dame Stella’s stunning […]

Kincora: Britain’s shame by Chris Moore

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] the behest of MI5; and Colin Wallace was framed for murder for trying to expose it. There are four main threads to this book. Moore was a BBC reporter in Northern Ireland and one theme is his account of trying to investigate Kincora over the years: meeting brick walls to begin with; fragments of […]

Kicora review

Lobster Issue

[…] the behest of MI5; and Colin Wallace was framed for murder for trying to expose it. There are four main threads to this book. Moore was a BBC reporter in Northern Ireland and one theme is his account of trying to investigate Kincora over the years: meeting brick walls to begin with; fragments of […]

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