University Of Oxford Alumni

"But it's also true that if people want to have children, governments should remove the financial and practical blocks that often make it an impossible choice. So far, however, even extensive support hasn't put any rich country back on track to grow its population in the future. This means we must think about immigration as a solution, too, including tackling where resistance to immigration comes from – and how to have a nuanced and balanced debate without making racial concerns the focal point."

"There are huge misconceptions about the kinds of people who believe conspiracy theories. This image of people as stupid and crazy is not the case. I often find people are very switched on, hyper-curious and engaged and deeply distrustful. Often they’ve been really let down by people in authority or power and then turn to social media that starts to play on that distrust."

"[From a family of male doctors and female nurses, Clarke at first did not want to become a doctor] I worried that my main reason would be because I hero-worshipped my dad, wanted to make him proud. [As a journalist, Clarke] had massive impostor syndrome, always felt like I was faking it, trying to act tough."

"If [[w:Sally Davies (doctor)|[Sally] Davies]] really wants to bolster rock-bottom morale among juniors, she could publicly lobby the government to address the gaps that cripple every junior doctor rota. She could argue for proper hospital rest facilities so that never again does a junior doctor kill themselves while driving home from a night shift, having fallen asleep at the wheel. She could demand a public inquiry into the recent spate of junior doctor suicides, because no one’s conditions of work should ever make them feel suicidal, least of all those who save lives for a living. She could, in short, campaign for meaningful action, not a conveniently cost-neutral name change."

"The morning after it happens, it is hard to believe the sun still shines. I am standing in the kitchen, staring out across fields of frost, when a wren darts and whirs through the hedge in front of me. Dad, in a flash, is there too. "Look, Rachel! A wren!" His heart, like mine, never failed to lift at this smallest and most jaunty of birds. But, the night before, cancer finally claimed my dad. The wrens will keep whirring, but he has gone."

"[T]he ABC acronym used in traumas all over the world today arose from a particular light aircraft crash on a Nebraska prairie in the 1970s. James Styner, the American trauma surgeon who happened to be flying the plane, was horrified by the chaos, incompetence and dithering that nearly cost his four young children their lives in a tiny rural hospital. The acronym he developed is based on the principle that when someone is critically injured, time is of the essence. Airway, Breathing and Circulation problems must be fixed in that order, before moving on to the next thing, because they are most likely to kill the patient fastest. The genius of the acronym lies in its simplicity. It gives doctors, nurses and paramedics a scaffold to cling on to amid the shock and disarray of a major disaster, providing emergency treatment one logical step at a time."

"It is wonderful to be able to let off steam in the Eye. Wonderful, when someone annoys me, to say "let's have a go." I rely much on my instincts. When you bear in mind the material we have printed over the years, I have to rack my brains to think of stories I regret. We have tended to pick the right targets."

"I am the first to admit we have dropped a few clangers — partly out of carelessness, partly out of an overzealous wish to run a story. The Eyes success has made us more cautious recently, particularly about business news. One has to be more careful about people in the City than when writing about, say, Margaret Thatcher, when one can be more knockabout."

"I have developed a habit when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it."

"My motto is publish and be sued."

"The Pashtuns invariably used violence to resolve their differences, which led to feuds between families lasting for generations. The Pashtun language even contains a specific word to define revenge between cousins. In many respects these frontiersmen were warriors in the Homeric sense, enjoying fighting for its own sake, often internecine, for the blood feud was central to their way of life. They took offence easily, were jealous of their personal honour and savagely cruel to any opponent no longer able to defend himself. They tortured, mutilated and killed without compunction."

"[On the Shakespeare authorship question] This isn't mere whimsy: it's calumnious bilge. It derives not from documentary evidence (there is none) but from dismay that the greatest figure of English letters was a commoner. In his history of this perverse idea, Contested Will, [[w:James S. Shapiro|[James] Shapiro]] documents how it's rooted in an anti-democratic ethos. It’s also irrationalist. If you reject Shakespeare's authorship, you dispense with the methods of historical inquiry altogether. Not coincidentally, the prominent Oxfordian author Joseph Sobran was a Holocaust denier."

"There is no diplomatic way of saying it but, in his journalism, [[John Pilger|[John] Pilger]] was a charlatan and a fraudster. And I use those terms in the strict sense that he said things he knew to be untrue, and withheld things he knew to be true and material, and did it for decades, for ideological reasons. If you know where to look, you’ll uncover his inspiration."

"The principal Shakespeare claimant these days is not [[Francis Bacon|[Francis] Bacon]] but Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. The case was launched on an indifferent public in a book called Shakespeare Identified in 1920 by a Gateshead schoolmaster with the unimprovable name of J Thomas Looney. Looney surmises from the plays certain attributes that the author of Shakespeare had and then alights on Oxford as possessing them. A small cult following was convinced, including Sigmund Freud. Yet the search for documentary evidence yielded nothing."

"Wikipedia relies on the wisdom of crowds. Knowledge is fluid. A definition contained in a reference work can never be regarded as complete and definitive. More reliable information emerges through continual revision. Consequently, anyone can edit an entry in Wikipedia. Many articles are plainly useless, but owing to the democratic nature of the medium the way is always open to incremental improvement. Some may find this a seductive vision of the spread of knowledge. I find it alarming. It combines the free-market dogmatism of the libertarian Right with the anti-intellectualism of the populist Left. There is no necessary reason that Wikipedia’s continual revisions enhance knowledge. It is quite as conceivable that an early version of an entry in Wikipedia will be written by someone who knows the subject, and later editors will dissipate whatever value is there. Wikipedia seeks not truth but consensus, and like an interminable political meeting the end result will be dominated by the loudest and most persistent voices."

"The book lacks a bibliography, but this hardly matters given Hannan's taste for talking off the top of his head."

"I'm a great friend of Ken's, and Perdition does not change that, [...] [b]ut when I think of the man who made Kes which tells us more movingly about the disinherited than any other film I've seen, I wonder what has happened. Poor Cow, Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home were all films of great humanity and were probably political films in their own way, but the compassion conquered all. He seems to be moving away from that and becoming more politically motivated and less interesting. It's a great pity."

""The aim is to destabilise Jeremy's leadership," Loach said, apparently unaware that suggesting Jews make allegations about antisemitism for their political or personal benefit is, in fact, one of the oldest antisemitic tropes there is."

"But Loach was not always a lefty – far from it. At school, he represented the Tories in a mock election. "I don’t think too much should be made of that," he says. I had assumed he was playing devil's advocate, or it was just a passing teenage whim, but no, he says: these were the values with which he was brought up. Loach's father was an electrician who became a foreman in his factory in Nuneaton – a classic working-class Tory, he says."

"[[w:Sydney Newman|[Sydney] Newman]] and [[w:James MacTaggart|[James] MacTaggart]] saw no problem with running a new wave of Paddy Chayefskyan problem plays out of the electronic studio, but [[w:Tony Garnett|[Tony] Garnett]] and Ken Loach were soon rejecting this whole classical notion of "the play"’. They had seen the future of television drama, and it was A bout de souffle mated with World in Action. While MacTaggart was away, they booked up as much off-base filming as they could for a television version of Nell Dunn's book, Up the Junction, a mouthy compendium of South London lower-class lore. "At that time, you were allowed about four days filming |with cumbersome 35mm equipment] just to show a car pulling up or driving away," says Loach. "So we used those four days to whizz round and shoot half the script with a hand-held 16mm camera - about 35 to 40 minutes of screen time." The remaining studio scenes were dubbed from tape on to film so that the whole thing could be collaged together in the cutting room, with Loach deploying all manner of neo-Godardian time leaps and wild-track effects."

"If Loach could make a film without a camera he would. He wants the actors to just be themselves so that everything looks as though it has just happened."

"Inspired by the Italian neo-realists, who also used non-professionals, Loach says that his biggest influence is probably the sixties Czech cinema of Jiri Menzel, Milos Forman and Ivan Passer. "It just allowed something to unfold and had a quality of observation: the sense of tuning, unhurried rhythm, framing of the shots, and relaxed humour." He also sensed a democracy in the film-making. "Maybe it was just because they were shot in eastern Europe in black and white, but you felt that the people were very proletarian. It was a bit like saying working-class people are worthy subjects of a film. There wasn't the sense that you needed vast production values, you didn't have to wind everything up with a lot of art direction or a lot of music; you just had to have confidence in the people front of the camera.""

"The family took the rightwing Daily Express, and Loach would read it cover to cover, never questioning its values. As far as he was concerned, it simply reflected the world. "I adopted the Tories like you adopt a team," he says, embarrassed. How long did he adopt them for? "Probably until I was 19, when I went into the RAF.""

"When Loach selects his actors, whether professional or not, there are certain givens. He will not cast against class: "You carry your class with you in how you talk, how you behave, how you pick up a fork. You can't really act it, and you can't act a dialect." But he stresses that while a professional's training can be a handicap, equally there are parts usually when they are precisely scripted and information has to be revealed in a certain way that could not be handled by non-actors. Loach has used many good non-professionals, but Crissy Rock is phenomenal. He says he auditioned 300 people for the part, two-thirds professionals, but she was the best. Watching the film, you have to believe him."

"Unless we get Labour MPs who believe in that manifesto last year we won't get in power. If they've been going to the demonstration against him outside Westminster... those are the ones we need to kick out."

"You cannot work with people who have come to undermine the biggest challenge we've had - we've never had a leader like Corbyn before in the whole history of the Labour Party ... and that's why the dirty tricks are going to come out."

"Labour HQ finally decided I'm not fit to be a member of their party, as I will not disown those already expelled. Well, I am proud to stand with the good friends and comrades victimised by the purge. There is indeed a witch-hunt. Starmer and his clique will never lead a party of the people. We are many, they are few. Solidarity."

"Jo Coburn: There was a fringe meeting yesterday that we talked about at the beginning of the show where there was a discussion about the Holocaust, did it happen or didn't it ... would you say that was unacceptable? Loach: I think history is for us all to discuss, wouldn't you? Coburn: Say that again, sorry, I missed that. Loach: History is for all of us to discuss. All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze. The founding of the state of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing is there for us all to discuss. The role of Israel now is there for us to discuss. So don't try to subvert that by false stories of anti-Semitism."

"The whole antisemitism issue has been substantially revealed as a campaign that is not based on fact. It's based on political determination to do a number of things, to remove people from the left, to protect the state of Israel, which many people, many Jewish people in the Labour Party, oppose, oppose this campaign."

"[On antisemitism in the Labour Party] It's funny these stories suddenly appeared when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, isn't it?"

"I will not speak about Ken Loach because he's a man of love. He has been an extraordinary father, and is a compassionate, wonderful, loving, brilliant grandfather to three Jewish boys. ["Then Levey looks [interviewer Kate Maltby] straight in the eye"] But I will reiterate, as a rule of thumb, maybe don’t say antisemitic things, if you’re worried about that being a slur. It's probably best to keep shtoom. [...] If you’re worried about people continually calling you antisemitic, maybe don’t say antisemitic things?"

"We had won the war together [...] Together we could win the peace. If we could collectively plan to wage military campaigns, could we not plan to build houses, create a health service and make goods needed for reconstruction? The spirit of the age was to be our brother's and our sister's keeper."

"People talk about Thatcherism all the time [...] I felt it was important to record the memories of those almost written out of history who upheld the spirit of '45. Today, the market penetrates everywhere. It's time to put back on the agenda the importance of public ownership and public good, the value of working together collaboratively, not in competition."

"If you have a society where a large section believe they are not part of the political discourse, that is a situation for trouble. The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy. We need to remember and learn from the lessons."

"If there has been a rise [in antisemitism in Europe] I am not surprised. In fact, it is perfectly understandable because Israel feeds feelings of antisemitism."

"[On where he fits on the left] I would have thought if you want to align yourself to any left current, the one to follow would be the one that fought Stalinism at the outset, and that was the left opposition and [[Leon Trotsky|[Leon] Trotsky]]. So I think that socialist current is the one I care to be identified with."

"I turned down the OBE because it's not a club you want to join when you look at the villains who've got it."

"Labour's rhetoric may be softer than the Tories', but its fundamental stance is limited by the same imperative: profit comes before all else. Can the Labour party be reclaimed? Or, rather, made anew into one that will represent the interests of the people? History suggests it cannot. The high-water mark of 1945 is long gone. The many great achievements of that government have largely been dismantled, either with the collusion of Labour or directly by the party when it has been in power."

"[N]othing has been a greater instigator of antisemitism than the self-proclaimed Jewish state itself... Until we deal with that, until that is acknowledged, then racism, I'm afraid, will be with us."

"[Screenings of Loach's work suffered during this period] You are only part of a process of communication with a lot of people who have no chance to be heard at all. [...] The suppression of that is much more important than the problems of individual filmmakers."

"MAX STAFFORD-CLARK claims that the decision to ban Perdition from the Royal Court was his alone (Letters, March 3). Nonsense. It was clearly a response to the massive campaign mounted by Zionist groups in the weeks before the production. The unprincipled, mendacious and consciously distorting articles, the meetings between Zionist campaigners and members of the Royal Court board, the threats about the future of the Court this was the pressure that caused Stafford-Clark to cave in. Or is he now saying that [the] orchestrated furore was just a coincidence? Remember, his objection was not to the acting or direction, but to the text."

"Perdition was stopped because it criticised Zionist leaders in Budapest for co-operating with the Nazis in sending half a million Jews to the camps. Today, we are wary of criticising Israel, because of our feelings of horror and guilt at the atrocities committed against the Jews. If the Hungarian incident is examined, that inhibition may be lessened. With a few honourable exceptions, the establishment liberals, who rightly support Salman Rushdie, ignored the political censorship on their own doorstep. Ken Loach. London"

"[On film executive Nat Cohen, then responsible (according to his rivals) for about 50% of film production in the UK] I found Nat very kind and helpful. [...] [A] lot of things went wrong in those films and I realise it now. I saw this but he didn't say a word and allowed me to finish. That's on a personal level. On a different level I find Nat's position in the film industry very disturbing. He has too much control over it. Do you know how he works? Every morning he studies the box office receipts and sees which films are making money and concentrates on those. So, slowly, the spectrum is becoming narrower and narrower."

"The Labour party is part of the problem, not the solution. The Greens have many admirable policies, but we look in vain for a thoroughgoing analysis for fundamental change. We need a new voice, a new movement – a new party."

"I don't think people exist outside of their social situation. You can't abstract people from their environment. It always baffles me when people ask why I don't direct a comedy or a thriller. I think they would be much more artificial fields in which to work. The great expanse of people is really rather interesting."

"You can't treat mental health on an assembly line, which is the way it is now organised."

"[On politics in the 1960s] There was a feeling that there was a great possibility of political change. Obviously, no one knew in what form it would come, but there was a sense that the working class was getting politically conscious, particularly those involved in occupations and industrial disputes. The quality of political discussion was higher. People understood die analysis even if they disagreed with it."

"Every country has its peculiar issues to deal with; I think, however, that in Nigeria it has become easier for us to blame our problems on the leadership. Even so, I would argue that those being led play a role, as well. Let us step back, if we may, into history for a moment… The first crop of leadership in this country was of great significance, emerging at a critical period in our nation when we had just won independence from Great Britain. This group of leaders took on their role very seriously, and so did the citizenry. Unfortunately, since then, we seemed to have lost something crucial in the nation building process that we have not since been able to regain."

"If we want to develop the agricultural sector for instance, there should be a resolution on what cash crops should be grown, and this should be capitalized upon in specific zones once an agreement is reached to begin exportation."

"The society at large should hold teachers or examinations’ body staff responsible if they sell question papers prior to examinations, and also the parents or students who feed this malpractice by buying them."