A rightwing insurrection is usurping our democracy | George Monbiot | Comment is free |... - 0 views
-
A consultant who worked for the billionaire Koch brothers claims that they see the funding of thinktanks "as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves".
-
From the beginning, senior journalists on the Telegraph, the Times and the Daily Mail volunteered their services. Every Saturday, in a wine bar called the Cork and Bottle, Margaret Thatcher's researchers and leader writers and columnists from the Times and Telegraph met staff from the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs. Over lunch, they "planned strategy for the week ahead". These meetings would "co-ordinate our activities to make us more effective collectively". The journalists would then turn the institute's proposals into leader columns while the researchers buttonholed shadow ministers.
-
As Pirie's history progresses, all references to funding cease. Apart from tickets donated by British Airways, no sponsors are named beyond the early 1980s. While the institute claims to campaign on behalf of "the open society", it is secretive and unaccountable. Today it flatly refuses to say who funds it.
- ...3 more annotations...