columnists-from-the-united-kingdom

"Eighty per cent of our newspapers are anti-PC. There is no area that is not up for discussion. I do not believe that people go around on their tiptoes afraid to offend women or ethnic minorities. But we have become worse at the exchange of ideas. We are not good any more at having really honest debates without upsetting people. We have become very good at abusive, hysterical exchanges and less good at intelligent debate. We do need to develop a healthy trade in ideas."

"Millions of people in the world – including in Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Uganda, Thailand, Egypt and Syria – are prepared to die for the vote and this dabbler is contemptuous of that right. Incidentally, Isis and al-Qaeda share that contempt. As for revolutions – has Brand ever experienced one?"

"I, like all fallible human beings, have made errors of judgement in the past. But the criminal allegations being made against me are simply untrue. I would like nothing more than to address those spurious claims – I could actually spend the next two hours doing so – but on the advice of my lawyers, I cannot comment further. But I have been thinking much over the past few days about the current state of social media, where any allegation can be made in an attempt to get someone cancelled, but it is impossible to defend yourself against thousands of trolls."

"All in all, the spectacle of Dan Wootton begging for nuance and empathy is the heat death of irony. The two crucial things about people like Dan is that they are, without exception, monstrous hypocrites – and they also reduce the world. Their entire business is making human experience smaller. There are about six or seven basic story templates into which they believe all other people's lives must be squeezed, whether or not they want them to be. So to find the high priest of the reductive suddenly asking for an acknowledgment of complexity feels a little much."

"To make it super simple for Dan: GB News is not "anti-establishment". It is a London telly channel owned by a hedge funder and an investment firm. The deputy chairman of the governing Conservative party is one of its presenters, as is a recently knighted former cabinet minister whose father was a long-serving editor of the Times."

"I will not be appearing on Dan Wootton Tonight without Dan Wootton. Dan Wootton had a significant part to play in building GB News."

"He invited me along pre-launch, he also brought so many people onboard. Behind the cameras as well as on-screen talent."

"Including the careerist ambitious ones who are currently gunning for his job. These people are worse than the woke mob, because these vultures are giving the mob ammunition and essentially escalating the channel's demise."

"Standing up for Dan is standing up for the very idea of GB News. If he falls, we all fall."

"It's increasingly clear now that there is a move among some public health officials and politicians to create an ultra-cautious biosecurity state, copying the likes of China."

"[I]n Liz we must now Truss."

"The globalist remoaner coup continues. The excellent and brave Home Secretary Suella Braverman is being replaced by Grant Shapps. This is an anti-democratic disgrace. Shame on Liz Truss. We backed you to keep them out. They're now in control."

"Even though Meghan [Markle] doesn't plan to attend, she wants to cause maximum damage to the royal family."

"This gutless woman has downgraded her criticism to unconscious bias and admitted that the person who she claims to be the royal racist actually wasn't racist at all. I think there are many issues with this letter...she still wants to bring down the royal family...[but] she will be unsuccessful."

"These past few days I have been the target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind."

"Being in the middle of this witch hunt has made me think a lot about the sort of journalist and broadcaster I aspire to be – one focused on the massive political threats facing this country, not on personal attacks."

"There are dark forces out to try and take this brilliant channel down. And that's because GB News is the biggest threat to the establishment in decades, and they will stop at nothing to destroy us."

"I want to reiterate my regret over last night’s exchange with Laurence [Fox] on GB News. Having looked at the footage, I can see how inappropriate my reaction to his totally unacceptable remarks appears to be and want to be clear that I was in no way amused by the comments. I reacted as I did out of shock and surprise in an off guard moment while working out how to respond as he continued to speak by searching for tweets Ava had sent earlier in the day while having them read out in my ear at the same time. However, I should have intervened immediately to challenge offensive and misogynistic remarks. I apologise unreservedly for what was a very unfortunate lapse in judgement on my part under the intense pressure of a bizarre exchange. I know I should have done better. I'm devastated that I let down the team and our supportive GBN family. We seek to tackle the issue and not the person, which I intend to stress again on air tonight."

"You can imagine them freaking out in the gallery!!!!!"

"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."

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

"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."

"Racism is a worldwide phenomenon. In some countries it's met with disapproval, in others with denial. The A to Z of ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East embraces Alawites, Armenians, Assyrians, Baháʼís, Berbers, Copts, Druzes, Ibadis, Ismailis, Jews, Kurds, Maronites, Sahrawis, Tuareq, Turkmens, Yazidis and Zaidis and Nubians (by no means an exhaustive list), and yet serious discussion of ethnic/religious diversity and its place in society is a long-standing taboo. If the existence of non-Arab or non-Muslim groups is acknowledged at all, it is usually only to declare how wonderfully everyone gets along."