Ian Mather, Observer 19th Feb. 1984 Recent Nato study concludes that USSR’s spending on arms in past 7 years has been increasing at less than half the rate previously thought. Notice that the headline is completely misleading: the report actually describes a change in NATO estimates of Soviet military spending. What they are actually doing … Read more
A secret service? In the Guardian of 12 June 2000 David Leigh had an important piece on the relationship between our secret servants and the media. At the core of this was his account of the revelation, via a libel suit in London, of an MI6 operation to plant disinformation in the Sunday Telegraph about … Read more
Pieces without an author are by the editor. Parish Notices Thanks to Jane Affleck, Richard Alexander, John Burnes, Phil Chamberlain, Terry Hanstock, Robert Henderson, Paul Lashmar, Philip Murphy, Rom, David Turner, Peter Watson and Robin Whittaker for information. This issue of Lobster would have appeared a week or so earlier than it did had it … Read more
Colin Thompson was in his sixties, with bottle-bottomed glasses. He was carrying a laundry basket when we met, so he offered me his forefinger to shake instead of his hand. When I asked who he had voted for, Colin became visibly confused. It was just after 9 pm on 5 May 2005 and polling stations … Read more
The first of three essays in this issue are about New Labour and its origins. I put mine first because of its general, context-setting nature. The subsequent essays, on the Successor Generation and the operations in the British Unions, deepen and thicken the section towards the end of the opening essay which discusses New Labour’s … Read more
Europe Inc: Regional and Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power Belén Balanyá, Ann Doherty, Olivier Hoedeman, Adam Ma’anit and Erik Wessselius Pluto Press, London and Sterling (Virginia, USA) 2000, £14.99 Blowing the Whistle: one man’s fight against fraud in the European Commission Paul van Buitenen, London: Politicos, 2000, £12.99 In his memoir, In … Read more
Al Martin Pray, Montana: National Liberty Press, 2001, $14.95, ISBN 0-97-10042-0-X Alexander ‘Al’ Martin is a retired Lt. Commander in the US Navy, a former member of the Office of Naval Intelligence and a middle-ranking player in the thicket of scandals known as Iran-Contra. This might be the most startling book written about post-war American … Read more
At 00:20 on Sunday 31 August 1997 a black Mercedes S280 carrying four people left the Ritz Hotel in central Paris. Shortly afterwards at 00:25 it crashed into the thirteenth pillar of the Concorde-Boulogne lane of the Pont d’Alma Tunnel in central Paris. The driver – Henri Paul – was killed instantly. The front passenger … Read more
Say it ain’t so, Joe Joe Haines’ 2003 Glimmers of Twilight (London: Politicos, 2003) got a fair bit of attention when it appeared, most of the comments noting either former Harold Wilson press officer Haines’ allegation that Marcia Falkender claimed to have had an affair with Wilson in the 1950s, or the claim (supported by … Read more
Lundy: The Destruction of Scotland Yard’s Finest Detective Martin Short Grafton, London, 1991 Scotland Yard’s Cocaine Connection Andrew Jennings, Paul Lashmar and Vyv Simson Arrow, London, 1991 The sixties media guru Marshall McLuhan is nowadays generally derided as a fraud.I suspect that most people would found it difficult to accept his statement that television is … Read more
