Stuart Maconie > Quotes

“I have no desire to eat it beneath pictures of the proprietor sulking in a bandana, which is why I tend to avoid Marco Pierre White’s places. I agree with the singer Paul Heaton, who remarked recently, ‘women have been cooking for a thousand years and no one ever mentioned it. Men have been cooking for ten minutes and they never stop bloody going on about it’.”
― Stuart Maconie, The Pie At Night: In Search of the North at Play

“What was so terrible about properly funded hospitals, student grants, decent working conditions, affordable houses, trains that ran for convenience not profit, water that poured from the tap whose function was to slake your thirst not to make shareholders a dividend. What exactly was so wicked about public libraries, free eye tests and council houses? We may be coming to realise that the people who complain about the nanny state are the people who had nannies.”
― Stuart Maconie, The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save it

“If you’re an alien, how come you sound like you come from the north?’ ‘Lots of planets have a north.’ Doctor Who, 2005”
― Stuart Maconie, Pies and Prejudice: In search of the North

“Anaïs Nin.”
― Stuart Maconie, Hope and Glory: A People’s History of Modern Britain

“Robert Aickman’s strange story ‘Ringing the Changes”
― Stuart Maconie, Hope and Glory: A People’s History of Modern Britain

“We could be great again!’ Now of course I want her and her son and quiet husband to prosper. I want them to be happy. But when I hear talk like this, my heart sinks. What is this illusion, this phantasm of greatness these people chase? Is it the one where we trampled on the lives and rights of people all over the world and exploited them to death? Why do we yearn for some imagined greatness when right now England can’t feed its kids, heal its sick or run its trains? How about forgetting about being great? How about being happy? How about being competent? How about being sane?”
― Stuart Maconie, The Full English: A Journey in Search of a Country and its People

“Having defeated global fascism, a ruined country rebuilt itself from rubble thanks to the most progressive government in our history and the talents of its children, kids raised by and large outside of the establishment and the elite on a diet of orange juice, free school milk, NHS specs, Watch with Mother, public libraries, art schools, galleries and all the other benefits of a forward-looking state and a commitment to the public good not the private profit.”
― Stuart Maconie, The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save it

“Wise council, like that of Joseph Chamberlain noted above, has always been that placing essentials like our water supply in private hands is folly. But for forty years, greed has been trumping wisdom. The new Gekkos – or should that be ‘geckos’? – have slithered into every corner of our national life. Water privatisation has been perhaps the most difficult to justify on any moral or societal grounds. It’s difficult to square with the celebrated ethos of competition, that mythical beast beloved of the free-marketeer. The customer has no choice, can’t take their business elsewhere, has to pay the price set by the monopoly provider and thus loses on every count. So much for the benefits of competition. It is absolutely emblematic of what Frank Cottrell-Boyce spoke of when he excoriated the corrupt, effete version of capitalism that now holds sway in Britain. ‘The phase of capitalism that we’re in is not remotely competitive. Where are the dynamic venture capitalists? Who’s in the driving seat of our economy? Is it entrepreneurs? Is it customers? Is it workers? No, it’s hedge fund managers. Ours is an economy run by retired dentists in the Cotswolds. That’s not a lively virile capitalism.”
― Stuart Maconie, The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save it

“All right-thinking people respect and love the Beatles. Never trust anyone who doesn’t.”
― Stuart Maconie, The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save it

“When people say that we should preserve things for our grandchildren I’m fairly unmoved anyway. If the grandkids are anything like their grandparents, they don’t deserve it and will set about ruining it with the same short-sightedness and greed that their forebears did.”
― Stuart Maconie, Never Mind the Quantocks: How Country Walking Can Change Your Life