I’m not sure it pays to do anything remotely public in Britain. It’s such a spiteful society. People seem to enjoy making your life hard for the sake of it.
I have no time for those who say there is no way Scotland could go it alone. I know first-hand the contribution Scotland and Scots make to Britain’s success – so for me there’s no question about whether Scotland could be an independent nation.
My relationship to Britain is of no consequence.
Because Great Britain has self-confidence, it doesn’t need a monumental Olympics.
I welcome the role that people of faith play in building Britain’s future – and the Catholic communion in particular is to be congratulated for so often being the conscience of our country, for helping ‘the least of these’ even when bearing witness to the truth is hard or unpopular.
Britain in 1939 and 1940 really thought they were going to lose the war. It looked like they were going to lose. There was bombing every day, and people were literally starving.
A lot of the time in modern Britain, certainly in urban life, we barely have any contact at all with the people around us.
Heartless though it may seem to some, among the least harmful things to eat are sustainably culled wild animals. In the absence of natural predators, deer populations in parts of Britain have reached such dense numbers that the woodlands they browse fail to regenerate.
I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
When Britain signed up to the European Convention and its later protocols, the words ‘universal suffrage’ were deleted from the ‘right to vote’ article.
I love filming in Britain.
I get newspapers from Britain and other countries twice a week and read them almost page to page. Sometimes I find I’m reading things I don’t even need to read, because my mind is still hungry.
As a political current, Maoism was always weak in Britain, confined largely to students from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The Remain campaign… I’ve never seen a more miserable offering. All they are saying is stay in and we’ll do our best to make sure that Britain’s Parliamentary independence isn’t eroded faster than we can possibly imagine.
I have three kids in Britain, and I am there at least once a month.
I am Batley and Spen born and bred, and I could not be prouder of that. I am proud that I was made in Yorkshire, and I am proud of the things we make in Yorkshire. Britain should be proud of that, too.
Some newspapers in Britain have become closer to these kind of mafia families. They wield an incredible power. They choose our governments, they choose our prime ministers, and they live above the law.
The 1970s – I was ten in 1975 – were a bad decade in all sorts of ways but the middle class had comfortable assumptions about the prospects for its children. The middle class was smaller then; it was a much less competitive Britain, less meritocratic.
I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair’s Britain, but I can’t work up much affection for the culture we’ve created for ourselves: it’s too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.
Trade is the key to the economic outlook in Britain and the E.U. Many corporate chieftains joined large bank CEOs and the fearmongering IMF to suggest that the E.U. will deal harshly with Britain if it leaves and stop all trade. That’s mutually assured destruction – MAD.
In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.
It does not seem to me that the steps which would be needed to make Britain – and others – more comfortable in their relationship in the European Union are inherently so outlandish or unreasonable.
I believe that Britain is becoming more class-conscious, and I quake at the very idea of Old Etonians ruling the world again.
In Britain, eponymous lifestyle branding as we know it started in the late 1960s, with two fascinating families – the Conrans and the Ashleys – who in increasingly brilliant settings and catalogues sold rather different visions of what the new ideal upper-middle-y life looked like.
All I want is to keep boxing for Great Britain and inspire others.
In Britain and Europe, no event is less forgotten than World War I, or ‘The Great War,’ as it was called until 1939.
We want a strong, vibrant economy for Britain so that we can set out a clear and affordable alternative programme for government.
Great Britain had a much different situation than we do and did here in the United States, in that they had literally thousands of infected animals with human health risks. Their infectivity in this disease happened before very much was known about it.
We moved back to Britain for my secondary education.
Britain is not homogenous; it was never a society without conflict. The English fought tooth and nail over everything we know of as English political virtues – rule of law, free speech, the franchise.
This very individualistic form of Protestant Christianity that became so basic in English and then American life is to a large degree responsible for the historical success of Britain and America.
What I would argue in my defence is that shows like ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and ‘The X Factor’ have actually got people more interested in music again and are sending more people into record stores.
And being in the EU has given Britain a stronger voice in the world. Britain leads in Europe, from trade to climate change, from good governance to debt relief for the poorest nations, and in turn Europe helps to lead the world.
At some point in the future – possibly the very near future – Britain will be hit by a deadly pandemic, and its impact could be utterly devastating.
Britain should take pride in a foreign policy that reflects her values and responsibilities – but it must be grounded in the tangible interests of the citizens who pay for it.
It is a standing source of astonishment and amusement to visitors that the British Museum has so few British things in it: that it is a museum about the world as seen from Britain rather than a history focused on these islands.
It’s a sad fact that a lot of those countries who haven’t been involved in the war in Iraq have taken far more responsibility for rehoming people displaced by the war than Britain has done.
I’m resigned to the fact that the corseted history of America is not as exciting as that of Britain.
If you go on TV and say there’s no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.
You know the illusion of the cheap money is over and now Britain has to go out there and graft and earn its way and create wealth and prosperity in a very competitive world.
It’s not a matter of if economies around the world becoming low-carbon, but when and how: through struggle and strife or through advancement and progressive leadership. Larry Elliot described it today as the ‘Green New Deal.’ It’s a leadership we in Britain can provide, and from which our economy can benefit.
Britain’s an island; it’s always had a constant ebb and flow of immigration – it makes it a better place.
I can’t accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support.
Britain is obsessed with political correctness.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts.
They believed that Britain was in Ireland defending their own interests, therefore the Irish had the right to use violence to put them out. My argument was that that type of thinking was out of date.
I remember a picture on the front page of the ‘Sun’ during the Brixton riots: a rasta guy with a petrol bomb, and a headline saying something like: ‘The Future of Britain.’ And I thought: ‘Wow! Look at the power of that image,’ and I wanted to get behind the camera to make these people three-dimensional.
What’s most disappointing about May’s failure on climate change is that Britain played such a pivotal role in securing international agreement on it in the first place.
They don’t think we’re in touch with modern Britain, or understand modern Britain or like modern Britain.
In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person’s life chances, so we’re less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it’s much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.
I feel there should have been some recognition of the Spice Girls at this year’s 25th anniversary. We flew the flag for Britain around the globe in the 1990s and we achieved a hell of a lot.
The era of industrial Britain, where a large section of our workforce provided cheap labour in factories and processing goods, is over.
We don’t value food in Britain, so therefore the cheaper it is the better it is. We all eat far too much, we all pay far too little for our food. We have environmental problems, we have health problems, we have food transport problems.
