Journalists From England

"As his ship reached the entrance to Goa harbour, on 15 December 1515, Albuquerque died just before dawn, aged sixty-three. His mark on the history of the Indian Ocean was indelible, and he had had the satisfaction of knowing that his foremost enemy, the Zamorin of Calicut, Mana Vikrama, had gone before him. He had done his best to arrange that."

"Once upon a time, the key unit in society was the family. Today it is the individual. The only principle we can agree matters is choice, though with the death of religion and philosophy, the range of choices that we can imagine has narrowed drastically, as culture and faith have been replaced by holiday photos and video games."

"Thank you, Matthew Parris! Since Esther Rantzen bravely went public with her stage four cancer, I've been invited onto several shows to put the case against assisted suicide – and, frankly, I've failed. The argument for relief from pain is so strong. The current proposal – that two doctors sign off a self-administered poison – is so limited that it seems hard to object. But then Matthew endorses assisted dying with such enthusiasm, eloquence and boundless insanity that one's doubts are confirmed. Yes, he wrote in a weekend essay, this will be the thin end of the wedge – but good!"

"Do I feel responsibility as someone who made the case publicly for Brexit? Well, I'm a Catholic, so I always feel guilty. The older I get the more guilt I feel: I actually apologised to someone who trod on my foot the other day. Do I feel humiliation as a Briton? Never, never, never. I don't confuse my government with my country, and my country muddles on, as it always does, with a sublime indifference to what the rest of the world thinks. We don’t panic."

"The West feels lost. Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus: we hurtle from one crisis to another, lacking definition, terrified that our best days are behind us. The central argument of this book is that we can only face the future with hope if we have a proper sense of tradition – political, social and religious. We ignore our past at our peril. The problem, I argue, is that the Western tradition is anti-tradition, that we have a habit of discarding old ways and old knowledge, leaving us uncertain how to act or, even, of who we really are."

"The transfixing of men hung in mid-air was one of the admiral’s favourite forms of execution, since it gave his soldiers good practice. However, there was a strange incident when three among a group of captured sailors from the Coromandel coast threw their hands up to heaven and told him that they wanted to become Christians. Da Gama, unmoved, ordered the interpreter to tell them ‘that even though they became Christians, yet still he would kill them’. The ship’s priest was allowed to baptize them none the less, and as he declaimed the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria they recited his words. ‘When this was done, then they hanged them up strangled, that they might not feel the arrows.’ The crossbowmen transfixed the rest of da Gama’s victims strung from the yardarm; but the arrows which struck the newly-baptized trio ‘did not go in, nor make any mark’. At this, the admiral seemed troubled. The three bodies were shrouded and thrown into the sea, which the chronicler of this event called the Lord’s ‘great mercy’ to gentiles. The priest said prayers and read psalms. However, da Gama was troubled only briefly. When yet another Brahmin was sent from Calicut to plead for peace, he had his lips cut off, and his ears cut off; the ears of a dog were sewn on instead, and the Brahmin was sent back to the Zamorin in that state. He had brought with him three young boys, two of them his sons and a nephew. They were hanged from the yardarm and their bodies sent ashore."

"The Labour revolution knows no limits. Give it five years and this farm we were standing in could be collectivised, populated by strapping Soviet boys looking doe-eyed at tractors."

"Europe's hypocrisy is matched only by its impotence, and if Britain had any sense it would accept the Pax Trumpus and politely ask to join it."

"With Calicut at his mercy, da Gama might have sent his soldiers ashore to put to the sword as many of its citizens as they could seize. Instead, he told his men to parade the prisoners, then to hack off their hands, ears and noses. As the work progressed, all the amputated pieces were piled up in a small boat. The Brahmin who had been sent out by the Zamorin as an emissary was put into the boat amid its new, gruesome cargo. He had also been mutilated in the ordained manner. The historian Gaspar Correa describes what da Gama did next: When all the Indians had been thus executed [sic], he ordered their feet to be tied together, as they had no hands with which to untie them: and in order that they should not untie them with their teeth, he ordered them to strike upon their teeth with staves, and they knocked them down their throats; and they were put on board, heaped on top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them, and the sails to be set for the shore, and the vessel set on fire … and the small vessel with the friar [Brahmin], with all the hands and ears, was also sent ashore, without being fired."

"But until we Europeans wean ourselves off America, not just militarily or economically but psychologically, we really cannot function without it and will always surrender. It has dominated us for a long time."

"People have been taking the piss out of trans people for 60 years. The narrative on trans issues has been controlled by people who have no understanding of them. Social media is about us grabbing the narrative back and telling our own stories – this is our reality, this is what we go through and this is what matters to us. We're here, we're in your face, we definitely exist. That's the most important thing – realising we exist."

"We know who you are: you are a lawyer, not a lance corporal. Stop trying to pretend you know one end of a bazooka from another. By the way, there is no point in wearing camouflage indoors, either. It is there to help make you blend into the grass and bushes, not concrete."

"The visceral issues of Jerusalem, refugees and settlers are not yet resolved. But the truth is that they will be. Israel has decided to settle. The principle of land for peace has been accepted. What is now required is the peace to compensate for territorial surrender."

"Two absolutes inform Israeli diplomacy today: first, that peace is coming and, second, that it must be irrevocable. Nobody in Israel expects peace to be warm."

"Sceptics are asking whether they might be avoided if doctors did less to confirm unhappy employees' suspicions that they are clinically ill. Physicians love to diagnose what they can treat, but the fact that they think they can now treat depression does not mean most patients are depressed. Even if they are, the best advice, that few doctors will offer is this: reject the diagnosis. Throw away the the pills. Take a rest and get better naturally. For most people, that approach will work just fine. And it won't leave you unemployed. Believe me, it's a lot less depressing than suing."

"Riefenstahl did not fully understand the evil cause to which her work contributed. Ken Loach does not deserve such indulgence. He knows precisely what he is doing."

"He [Luckhurst's doctor] gave me a sick note that said I was suffering from hypertension, but not [[w:Major depressive disorder|[Clinical] depression]]. He advised me not to mention it either. I ignored him. What possible harm could be done by telling my employer the truth? I was entirely candid with The Scotsman. My doctor knew all about the stigma that attaches to any form of mental illness. I was absurdly naive. Six weeks later, feeling healthier than I had for years, my GP agreed I was fit to return to work. I was raring to go. My boss was having none of it. I was informed that I could not return as editor. His explanation was plain. "It might happen again." I refused the offer to go back to work in a demoted role and we agreed severance terms. The Scotsman was generous, but I was unemployed."

"Elvis was what Americans call trailer trash, in our terms a "chav", before the term was invented. Instead of aspiring through education he made a career out of sullen, posturing ignorance. His fans have often made the same mistake. Small wonder they appreciate the lyrics, which are the literary equivalent of tumbler-dryer instructions. Affection for Elvis is a workable predictor of anti-intellectual attitude. As one academic paper demonstrated in the 1970s, Beatles fans are much more likely to have experienced university education. They are also less likely to be psychologically insecure."

"[On "broadcast presenters"] Many are comically insecure and egotistical. They need to appear on screen like a shark needs to swim. It is an addiction and they will beg, steal and wheedle to feed it. Granted, this is a generalisation to which there are exceptions..."

"Had he been born in Kent, [[Gordon Brown|[Gordon] Brown]] would have been a Conservative. But he was born in Glasgow, so what he shares with England's establishment isn't party affiliation, but an armour-plated sense of entitlement. I doubt [[David Cameron|[David] Cameron]] has anything approaching Brown's faith in his right to power. Etonians have been disliked for decades. The country has only just begun to perceive the true nature of the Scottish Labour party. I shall be stunned if the Conservative leader emerges from his party conference looking as smug as Gordon Brown did this week. Never mind the polls, Cameron simply lacks the upbringing."

"It's a question of whether I can do something useful [...] It's not about personal ambition, it really is not. I joined as I believed that David Cameron would make a fantastic leader, and my decision to join was based on a clear decision that if he was not elected leader I would not stand for election. I'm overjoyed that he has been elected leader. He represents the strain of non-ideological reformist politics that I'm interested in. I have no interest whatsoever in standing for the Scottish Parliament."

"Victorian liberals who campaigned for a free press and educated people to read it believed that newspapers should prepare Britons to participate in democracy. The new voters repudiated this patronising view. They were not content to read accounts of parliamentary debates and analyses of British diplomatic endeavour. They wanted fun too. Crime and scandal provided it."

"[On the future of The Independent] With care, investment and innovation it might just thrive in the new media economy, particularly if a free distribution model covering all of Britain's major cities can be achieved."

"Now a newspaper innovation has been launched that can help the free world's news industry to recover the prosperity it first achieved under Queen Victoria. Johnston Press, Britain's most prolific newspaper publisher with 286 titles, will place the online content of six of its local titles behind paywalls."

"It [Johnston Press] is leading a change that must happen. People who care about democracy must hope it happens fast. We have not attempted political freedom without well-funded, intelligent journalism, but we can assume that it would not be pretty. When accurate reporting dies it is usually replaced by gossip, prejudice and bigotry."

"[[w:Alexander Lebedev|[Alexander] Lebedev]] may not require profits. He may be willing to subsidise quality newspapers in return for the voice in national affairs they offer. If that is his ambition, he will be embracing a tradition that has endured throughout the democratic era. 19th- and early 20th-century examples of subsidy by political parties and departments of state suggest that subsidy by wealthy individuals may harm democracy less than subsidy by the state. A durable alternative to market distortion by oligarchs could only be achieved through restrictive laws on media ownership. Such laws rarely protect freedom and, even at this time of unprecedented chaos and despondency in the news industry, such legislation should not be conceived in haste."

"Rod Liddle will not be editor of The Independent. The screechingly intolerant campaign of hostility directed against him by metropolitan critics has done its job. They call themselves liberals. If they are right then the word has come to have as little meaning as its common counterpart "progressive"."

"A healthy democracy needs professional journalists to report accurately on public affairs, to find out things the powerful want to hide and to expose wrongdoing. These duties have been performed by journalists throughout the era of universal suffrage and in every country in which liberty flourishes. People who deride this claim as idealistic naïvety are enemies of parliamentary democracy. Its supporters must learn to appreciate that good journalism is worth paying for."

"Google uses the work of journalists to sell advertising. Then it takes Daddy Bear's share of the profits and justifies its gluttony on the basis that it drives traffic back to the newspaper's own site. This is like a musician stealing a song, recording it, and excusing their crime on the basis that the illegal cover version may draw attention to the original."

"Ken Loach denies that he is a "socialist realist". He is right. There is not an iota of realism in his support for George Galloway's Respect movement."

"Eton made a much more profound impact on me than Cambridge, which I would say really made none, and all my attitudes and real friends were made at Eton. The friendships I made at Eton provide the entire infrastructure for my life now. It is probably true to say that of the 10 close male friends I have, certainly eight are Etonians, and I have not the slightest doubt that it will remain so until I die. I am bound to say that if I meet somebody that I have never met before, for example, if I am travelling abroad, or through work or something, and it emerges that they were at Eton, I feel an interest in them that is multiplied by at least 10. There are certain people who weren't there, and I do admit that in some strange and awful way I think, "Now, why weren't they?" and that it counts against them slightly. If we are being completely candid, I do accept that I prefer the company of Etonians to the company of people from any other school in the world."

"The most important political divide in the world is no longer between left and right. It is not even between liberal and authoritarian. It is between those who grasp the sheer scale and potentially revolutionary consequences – in the US and around the world – of what Donald Trump is trying to do in his second term; and those who don't."

"[As of 2023] Universities and employers often subordinate this previously cherished liberty [free speech] to the claims of "offence" (necessarily subjective) and to the risk of "harms" (usually ill-defined). One egregious outcome of this cultural shift is that an alarming number of people – especially gender-critical feminists – have lost their livelihoods. In October 2021, for instance, the philosophy professor Kathleen Stock was driven to resign from the University of Sussex by a campaign of intimidation that included the letting off of flares by masked trans activists outside her family's home and the warning: "Fire Kathleen Stock. Otherwise you'll see us around." The standard riposte is that [[Maya Forstater|[Maya] Forstater]], Stock and others like them (though by no means all) have gone on to other forms of gainful employment and prominence in public life. How, then, could they possibly have been "censored"? This is an absurd and infantile argument. The fact that these two women have been sufficiently resourceful and resilient to find new ways of making their ideas known and their voices heard is neither here nor there. Stock should never have been menaced to the point that it was intolerable for her to remain a faculty member; Forstater should not have lost her job."

"[On Russell Brand's performances] There was a time when he hid behind the theatricality of high camp; which, as Susan Sontag teaches us, "is a solvent of morality. It neutralises moral indignation, sponsors playfulness". Posturing as a Goth Noel Coward, he was, onstage, remarkably open about his sexual conduct. But it was hard to take seriously a man who looked like the lovechild of Lenny Kravitz and Charles Hawtrey; an explosion in a wig factory. That was his cunning. He sniffed out zones of impunity and crouched within them."

"As New Statesman editor, he published articles denigrating the north Wales victims as "damaged" and manipulated by journalists such as me, all part of a modern witch-hunt in which the real victims were those accused of abuse."

"[W]hat shocked me was the creeping realisation that he had used his position as an editor and columnist to create what the writer Beatrix Campbell has called a "hostile environment" for victims of abuse. It dawned on me that he had applied that "hostile environment" to me at the outset of my career when I was a freelance reporter at the Independent on Sunday, and he was its news editor."

"Wilby argued for "nuance" in these matters, while denigrating those who dared complain of abuse. There was nothing nuanced in the material Wilby collected and created over his career – they were crime scene photographs of our most vulnerable children being raped for his pleasure."

"His vision of the Statesman was as a totally independent, and therefore fearless, mischief-maker. Sometimes this worked - the magazine's anti-Iraq war campaign was prescient and much copied; sometimes it did not - New Statesman covers could take on the wrong taboos, viz its Zionist conspiracy or its Blair as Stalin covers, or more recently the issue marking John Paul II's death, in which the late Pope's impact on Africa's Aids epidemic was compared with that of prostitutes and truck drivers."

"Peter Wilby, who succeeded [[w:Ian Hargreaves|[Ian] Hargreaves]], is a committed socialist, an old-fashioned Bennite according to some, and the passage of the Blair years has done nothing to soften his stance. On the contrary he has become ever more critical of the Government, notably with the anti-American line he took after September 11, and he has given free rein to those like his friend, Nick Cohen, who seek to use the magazine to attack the Prime Minister in person."

"Eight opinion articles he wrote that addressed British media coverage of sex offenders have been removed from the Guardian's digital platforms following his conviction in August 2023 for possession of child abuse imagery."

"The New Statesman has now completed an internal review of all articles related to child sexual abuse that were published during Wilby’s editorship, or subsequently contributed by Wilby as a writer. Approximately 19,000 articles were published during Wilby's seven years as editor, of which 126 have a significant reference to child sexual abuse or paedophilia. Of those 126 articles, 12 contain comments or arguments that could reasonably be interpreted as either minimising the seriousness of child sexual abuse, or as questioning the integrity of victims, whistle-blowers, police or journalists investigating allegations of sexual abuse of children. Four of the 12 remained available on newstatesman.com as of 18 August, and they have now been taken down. Subsequent to his time as editor, Wilby contributed 659 columns or pieces to the New Statesman from 2006 to 2022, of which 37 contain a significant reference to child sexual abuse or paedophilia. Of those 37 articles, four contain arguments that the degree of public concern around child sexual abuse is out of proportion to the actual scope and scale of the horrendous crime. Those four articles have been taken down."

"[W]hile those who allege abuse should be heard, accepting what they say as self-evidently true is not better than dismissing it as childish fantasy. It is just another form of not listening, and relying instead on prejudices and preconceptions. It also leads to a new set of victims. Abused children may suffer mental illness and suicidal thoughts. But so may those falsely accused."

"Some "victims" will make false allegations, often prompted by lawyers, in the hope of substantial payments."

"Unearthing journalists' faulty predictions and poor judgements is always enjoyable. To my delight, I once discovered that the Sun, in a fawning interview in 1973, described Gary Glitter (later imprisoned for sexual offences against children) as "the rock’n’roll daddy who makes little girls ask to see more of his hairy chest". So before anybody else finds out, I will reveal that, during my editorship, the NS ran an article under the headline "Max Clifford is a nice chap shock". We reported that Clifford, who has just been convicted of sexually abusing four girls, was a man of "private modesty . . . committed to public service" whose "personal life has been a paragon of virtue". Since this was in 2000, we don't even have the excuse that it was the 1970s."

"The repulsive Paul Gadd — or Gary Glitter — as I cannot bring myself to call him because of its frivolous connotations says he wants police protection because some "nutter" might kill him. I'm not sure how much of a nutter one would have to be to want to kill Gadd, a convicted paedophile with a penchant for small girls. Most rational people would find it quite acceptable if he were to be taken out and shot in the back of the head, and will be regretting that he came through his three years in a Vietnamese jail in quite such good shape. I am not for a moment suggesting that anyone outraged by the existence of Gadd, or who fears for their own children when this man is loose on British soil, should take the law into his own hands. I do, though, fail to see how making him sign the sex offenders' register is going to make the blindest bit of difference. The police have better things to do than to protect this piece of filth. The only reason why they should stick close to him, though, is to keep him away from our children."

"What makes a great journalist?"

"[On the Battle of Orgreave] When the horses rode through some of the miners and knocked a few down, the Queen said words [to the effect of], "Oh, that’s awful! Oh, we shouldn’t do that!." And for the Queen to make a political comment like that was news."

"My reactions to 9/11 were, from the start, different from everyone else's. As we watched on the office television, somebody said with horror, "I can't believe this is happening in Manhattan!" To which, I thought, why not? Many countries had, at some point in the previous 90 years, experienced the effects of aerial bombardment, sometimes from American forces. Why should we regard Americans as uniquely immune from such barbarity? The US, after all, had become the world's sole great power and it revelled in this status."

"It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it [...] She had said it – I got that absolutely confirmed."

"Almost anybody should be thankful that the US, not the Soviet Union, won the cold war. But a dominant or imperial power, however benign or enlightened, will be resented. The violent 9/11 attacks were not right - they were a criminal atrocity - but they were hardly surprising."