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PL’s al-Jazeera film revealing manipulation of the Brexit vote

Who Paid for Brexit?  

I front this programme for the Al-Jazeera ‘People and Power’ team. With more calls for a UK Mueller style inquiries, it seeks to explain the jiggery-pokery of the dodgy donors, dark money, voter manipulation and appalling failure of the Electoral Commission, politicians and police to tackle these issues in the immediate aftermath of the referendum.

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The relationship between mental health and job insecurity- an early warning

I came across this piece I wrote for the New Statesman in 1995 that now seems quite prescient given the mental health crisis and the rise of the gig economy. There is a clear and obvious link the government – being Darwinian – refuse to make to this day.

IMG_4373 (2)

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Reporting 7/7 and the ‘war on terror’, a practitioner’s reflection – PL has new paper published.

7/7: A reflexive re-evaluation of journalistic practice

First Published September 3, 2018 Research Article

Can be found at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918797210 (Subscription required)

Abstract

The suicide bombings of 7 July 2005 remain the most serious terror attacks in the United Kingdom to date in the so-called ‘war on terror’. Much has been published on the war on terror but few journalists have reflected on their practice post 9/11 and none on their domestic coverage of the 7/7 attacks. This article is written by a journalist who covered the London bombings for a UK national newspaper and more recently is a practitioner-academic. Using academic texts focusing on the domestic reporting of the war on terror as stimuli for scholarly reflection, this article reviews the author’s own coverage using reflexive practice and content analysis. This article places 7/7 in the continuum of reporting subsequent to 11 September 2001 (9/11) and issues discussed. Some 63 authored articles were considered from the period. Scholarly texts have proposed a range of concepts to analyse coverage from including political ritual, trauma, national wound and hegemony. This article concludes by noting that while many academic texts see coverage of terrorism as an elite discourse, dominated by political economy drivers and responding to events in a homogeneous reactivity, in practice, news organisations can have complex responses and journalists, agency in their coverage of major terrorism events.

Keywords Journalism, London bombings, national security reporting, terrorism
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PL’s latest paper: From Silence to Primary Definer: The Emergence of an Intelligence Lobby in the Public Sphere

Abstract

Until the end of the Cold War the UK intelligence services were not officially acknowledged, and their personnel were banned from entering the public sphere. From 1989 the UK government began to put the intelligence services on a legal footing and to release the identity of the heads of the intelligence agencies. Since then, public engagement by the intelligence agencies has gathered pace. What this article hypothesises is that there is now, in the UK, an effective intelligence lobby of former insiders who engage in the public sphere – using on the record briefings – to counter criticism of the intelligence community and to promote a narrative and vision of what UK intelligence should do, how it is supported and how oversight is conducted. Content analysis and framing models of non-broadcast coverage of intelligence debates, focusing on the 36 months after the Snowden revelations, confirm an active and rolling lobby of current and former intelligence officials. The paper concludes that the extent of the lobby’s interventions in the public sphere is a matter for debate and possible concern.

Keywords Five Eyes, GCHQ, intelligence lobby, MI5, MI6, public sphere, SIS

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0896920518780987#articleShareContainer

Note: Subscription only for full access

 

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New film ‘Hurricane’ – ‘THE FEW’ WHO SAVED BRITAIN WERE EVEN FEWER IN NUMBER THAN ANYONE IMAGINED

With the film Hurricane on release I was reminded of this story I prepared earlier that refers to the famous 303 Squadron. The Independent (London)September 16, 2000, Saturday
‘THE FEW’ WHO SAVED BRITAIN WERE EVEN FEWER IN NUMBER THAN ANYONE IMAGINED

BYLINE: Paul Lashmar

“THE FEW” who knocked the Luftwaffe out of Britain’s skies in 1940 were even fewer than anyone previously realised. Six out of 10 RAF pilots in the Battle of Britain never shot down an enemy aircraft, new research suggests.

Christopher Shores, the author of Aces High, says a relatively small number of pilots was responsible for most of the German aircraft shot down during Britain’s “finest hour” and that the top 17 RAF “aces” – less then 1 per cent of “the Few” – shot down 10 per cent of all enemy aircraft.

The survey, published yesterday, also shows that many people in modern Britain have a woefully inadequate grasp of their debt to these Second World War heroes. An ICM poll to mark the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain found that some were not even sure that Britain was fighting the Germans, saying they thought the enemies were the Romans or Normans, while 10 per cent thought the French were the foe. Some people were also confused as to whether their wartime leader was Winston Churchill or King Alfred.

In the survey 1,000 people were asked four questions about the Battle of Britain. Fewer than half of those aged between 18 and 24 knew it was an air battle. The RAF pilots, whose victory forced Hitler to abandon his invasion plans, became known as “the Few” after Churchill’s speech in which he said: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

The Battle of Britain was fought between 10 July and 31 October 1940. RAF pilots claimed to have shot down about 2,600 German aircraft, but figures compiled later suggest that Luftwaffe losses were more likely nearer 1,700.

Of the 2,332 Allied pilots who flew fighters in the battle, 38.85 per cent could claim some success in terms of enemy aircraft shot down, but the number claiming more than one victim amounted to no more than 15 per cent of the total.

To qualify for the description of “ace”, a fighter pilot has to shoot down or be involved with others in shooting down at least five hostile aircraft. During the Battle of Britain just 188 pilots achieved that performance – 8 per cent of the total involved. A further 233 of those claiming successes during the battle became “aces” later in the war.

Mr Shores says: “It is particularly illuminating that the 17 most successful pilots (0.7 per cent of those involved) claimed 220 victories between them (8 -9 per cent of the total claimed), a quite disproportionately high level of achievement.”

The 188 “ace” pilots claimed approximately half of all the victories. The most successful were Sgt Josef Frantisek (from Czechoslovakia) 17; Pilot Officer Eric Lock (England) 16; Flying Officer Brian Carbury (New Zealand) and Sgt James ‘Ginger’ Lacey (England) 15 and 1 shared each; Pilot Officer Bob Doe (England) 15; Flt Lt Pat Hughes (Australia) 14 and 3 shared; Pilot Officer Colin Gray (New Zealand) 14 and 2 shared; Flt Lt Archie McKellar(Scotland) 14 and 1 shared; Flying Officer Witold Urbanowicz (Poland) 14. Eight others claimed 10 or 11 individual victories, with varying numbers of shares.

These included the well-known Flt Lt Bob Stanford-Tuck and Flt Sgt George “Grumpy” Unwin (both of whom were English).

The findings complement research published in Aeroplane magazine that examined which were the most effective RAF squadrons during the Battle of Britain. The most prolific were: 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron – a Spitfire squadron based at Hornchurch, Essex – which shot down 57.5 enemy aircraft; 609 Squadron, another Spitfire squadron, based at Middle Wallop, Hampshire, with 51.5 kills; and the Polish -manned 303 Squadron and 41 Squadron, which were close to being equal with 45 and 44.75 credits. Douglas Bader’s 242 Hurricane Squadron achieved 22 kills.

A recent television programme debunked the widely held belief that nearly all the fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain were ex-public schoolboys from an upper-class background. Of the 3,080 airmen awarded the Battle of Britain Clasp, only 141 (6 per cent) were educated at the top 13 public schools, the largest contingent having attended Eton: 22 pilots (0.9 per cent).

Aces High, Christopher Shores’ account of the battle is published by Grub Street.