[…] a ‘shorthand’ instrument of political PR, speeches are its ‘longhand’ equivalent. The Prime Minister has given three ‘world vision statements’ since 11 September 2001. These were at Labour Party Conference that year and this, as well as at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in September 2002. At the last of these, he announced a […]
[…] Freedom of Information Act, and are not likely to get one from any of the British political parties. Imagine a conversation in the office of the new Labour Prime Minister in a year or three: ‘FOI? Too much trouble, too much aggro with Whitehall. As if we need any more, what with the economy, […]
[…] WTO-driven free trade regime in a world without enforceable international law and with large accumulations of capital emerging from the supply of consumer wants (including guns, sex, labour, drugs, untaxed goods and unregulated financial services), the lifting of capital controls by the Reagan-Thatcher generation also meant the globalisation of criminality in all its forms. […]
[…] ) It’s a nice try, in a way, this pretence by Times columnist Kamm to be a left-winger. (For Kamm ‘left-winger’ means being a member of the Labour Party). It gives him a pitch – ‘left’ support for the Iraq War/’war on terror’ – that the media are supposed to find interesting. You can […]
[…] us that “today, in Wallace’s mind, ‘Clockwork Orange’ has become a more sinister Mark Two which … went beyond destabilising the IRA; it was aimed at mainland Labour politicians – which just happens to dovetail with similar allegations, raised in Parliament from an entirely independent source, namely Peter Wright.” This really is extraordinary. In […]
[…] Hook mentions Rousset’s suggestion in Out of Step, op. cit. p. 432. The God that Failed (Hamish Hamilton/London, 1950) was a collection of six essays edited by Labour MP Richard Crossman, three by ‘the initiates’ (Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, and Richard Wright) and three by ‘worshippers from afar’ (Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, and Stephen […]
In February this year, unnoticed by the press, a funeral took place in a quiet Sussex village. In attendance were some famous names from London society of the fifties and sixties, and two men in regulation dark suits from an undisclosed department of the Security Services. They had been contacts for the deceased, Maria Novotny, […]
[…] Essentials, 2002; £3.99 Pocket Essentials are the publishers who have had the taste and good sense to publish my Conspiracy Theories and The Rise of New Labour; and will publish a volume from Lobster contributor John Burnes on MI5 this year. So, yes, this is a shameless plug. However Nixon’s book is really […]
[…] Bridewell police station. Ryan and Daly were rather vague characters to me, who lived in a political twilight world on the fringe of the trade union and labour movement. I met Ryan and we went to the Bridewell. Jordan emerged looking dishevelled and complained that he had retired for the night, only to be […]
[…] the banality and irrelevance,’ describing them as ‘uniformly nineteenth century minds pretending to relate to the twentieth century’. Another of those who have attended, Christopher Price, then Labour MP for Lewisham West, found it ‘all very fatuous……icing on the cake with nothing to do with the cake.’ (Eringer 1980, p. 26). Denis Healey, on […]
