Words matter. These are the best Andrew Neil Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I read more bloggers now than mainstream columnists, because they’ve got more interesting things to say.
Whereas people increasingly get their news from the Internet, magazines have a different atmospheric to them. A magazine is something you sit down and relax with.
As class barriers tumbled and Britain became a more meritocratic society, young, well-educated Scots were best placed to exploit the new social mobility.
When I went up to Glasgow University in 1967, student life was dominated by 13-hour debates on Fridays, when one of the student political clubs would form the ‘government’ for the day and attempt to push through a piece of legislation, which the other clubs either supported or opposed.
My favourite sport’s cricket and one of the key things in cricket is to know when to declare.
I am a better journalist than I am a businessman.
Rupert Murdoch has been around since the dinosaurs. He knows how to get around any independent board – as he did with me, and as he’s done with other editors as well.
I am not an insider – definitely not… but I don’t think you could call me an outsider.
I would not rule out Rupert Murdoch once again having control of ‘Sky News.’
I don’t say for a moment that the far right is no longer a problem. We have seen the neo-Nazi nutters in Charlottesville in America.
Every house has to have rules – even ‘Animal House.’
I’m a bit of a loner.
This is the only country in the world where you can be criticised for trying too hard. That’s a put-down in London.
I don’t think the standard of our politicians is very high. And when you get good ones, world-class ones, like a Blair or a Brown or a Thatcher, then they do stand out – they are head and shoulders above everybody else.
No-one in their right mind would buy the ‘New Statesman’ and change it from being a left-wing to a right-wing magazine.
The Spectator’ has to be managed and people have to report. We all have bosses in this world and that’s true of ‘The Spectator’ too.
WMR is wholly devoted to acquiring and exploiting rights. We’re not a production company, and we’re not a broadcaster.
The Margaret Thatchers of this country made it through – like I did – because of the grammar school system, which gave the opportunity of a lifetime to working-class kids. It put them on a level playing field with the privately educated kids, and opened up the top universities to them.
You don’t really appreciate how much you are going to miss your parents. I keep thinking of all the times I should have made the effort to go up and see them but didn’t.
If the traditional British elite had made a great success of running my country, as successful, say, as the elites of Germany, Japan and America, then maybe it would be a club worth joining.
People know more about my views than they do about most BBC presenters because I had a life before becoming a BBC presenter.
Many U.S. Sunday papers are monopolies, and their contents can be an extension of the daily.
Those who claim to be in the know say Baros is nothing out of the ordinary as Maldivian islands go – that Reethi Ra is far more fashionable, Soneva Fushi more eco-compliant. Truth to tell, they all look pretty much alike from a distance.
When one English person speaks, another one immediately classifies him. No class system in the world is so audible, which is also why it is so pernicious and enduring.
When you have variety, you have freedom.
Journalists always want publishers or editors to leave. They’re creative troublemakers – that’s why you hire them.
I don’t fall in love easily… But I do fall in love.
Not all Republicans in the class of 2010 owe their seats to the Tea Party. But many do.
I made it clear when the Barclays took over the ‘Telegraph’ that I wanted no editorial position there. There is no way I could take a high-level editorial position at the papers. I have my work for the BBC, and that would be compromised if I did.
Most children of the underclass are born out of wedlock; relationships are fleeting and unstable (which ensures that what is born into the underclass stays in the underclass). This is a world in which there are almost no worthwhile male role models, which is a disaster when boys turn to youths.
I always wanted to have a career in print and as a broadcaster.
The Sun’ and the ‘News of the World’ fell in line behind New Labour in the run up to the 1997 election, ‘The Times’ stayed broadly neutral and ‘The Sunday Times’ unenthusiastically Tory. After the election, ‘The Times’ quickly fell in line as the New Labour house journal.
If you’re on the pull, a hen party gaggle, a gang of rowdy chavs or a group of braying snotty bottys, then Baros is not for you – which means it’s just grand for the rest of us.
There’s a substantial difference between dumping 100 copies of the ‘Telegraph’ at a Connex South Central station and giving away copies of the ‘Business’ with the ‘Mail on Sunday.’ ‘This kind of circulation is valuable and enhances the brand. Leaving them anywhere willy-nilly devalues the brand.
Newspapers are what matter in this country, not magazines.
The English, in their ignorance, still have the romantic notion that Scottish schools are superior to English ones; they are at least a generation out of date.
With each step away from communist constructivism to Hayekian capitalism, China has been richly rewarded.
Look, I don’t want to edit the ‘Scotsman.’ I have too many other things going on. I have four newspapers to run and two dot com companies going gangbusters.
The only exception to the demise/struggles of the European centre-left is Macron, in French presidential and parliamentary elections 2017.
No one can be in any doubt that Britain is becoming more like Europe, though few in an increasingly economically illiterate media seem to realise it.
Well, we all make mistakes, and I’ve made some; getting involved in a price-cutting campaign in Scotland when the biggest slump in advertising history was just around the corner was a mistake.
No, you see, unlike some interviewers, I love politics… overall I am not anti-politicians at all. I recognise they are more important than me.
Class and the snobbery it provokes still matter far too much in Britain, but we are a far more mobile society than we used to be.
During the Blair-Brown decade social concerns – what kind of society we have become – have gradually replaced economic worries. People fear that we have become an increasingly fragmented, boorish, more violent society.
I do not regret working with Rupert Murdoch. But there is a nasty undertone to a lot of what he does which does not exist with the Barclays.
Don’t forget that Rupert Murdoch has always regarded the Op Ed pages of ‘The Wall Street Journal’ – as he’s said to me – as a cup of strong caffeine that gets you going in the morning and tells you what to think.
Britain’s great postwar meritocratic experiment was broad-based, but it was in politics that the change was most dramatic.
I haven’t got a family. I live to work.
That’s the only time when newspapers have some influence, when they are pushing the British public in a direction they are already minded to go.
The Scotsman’ is a cheerleader for devolution.
