Owen Jones Quotes & Sayings

Being born into a prosperous middle-class family typically endows you with a safety net for life. If you are not naturally very bright, you are still likely to go far and, at the very least, will never experience poverty as an adult. A good education compounded by your parents' 'cultural capital', financial support and networks will always see you through. If you are a bright child born into a working-class family, you do not have any of these things. The odds are that you will not be better off than your parents. — Owen Jones

He had become the writers' equivalent of a goldfish after years of writing 500 word articles and wondered whether mind-expanding drugs would help him hold a full-length plot in his head, because he was having problems with continuity. — Owen Jones

May you always look as beautiful as this last time I saw you. — Owen Jones

As a non-believer, I want the atheist case to be made. I want religious belief to be scrutinised and challenged. I want Britain to be a genuinely secular nation, where religious belief is protected and defended as a private matter of conscience. But I feel prevented from doing so because atheism in public life has become so dominated by a particular breed that ends up dressing up bigotry as non-belief. It is a tragedy. And that is why it is so important that atheists distance themselves from those who undermine our position. Richard Dawkins can rant and rave about Muslims as much as he wants. But atheists: let's stop allowing him to do it in our name. — Owen Jones

A stack overflow error caused cabin fever and the reset button was Pattaya. — Owen Jones

Taken together, New Labour policies have helped to build a series of overlapping chav caricatures: the feckless, the non-aspirational, the scrounger, the dysfunctional and the disorderly. To hear this sort of rhetoric from Labour, rather than the Tories, has confirmed the stereotypes and prejudices many middle-class people have about working-class communities and individuals. But it can be far subtler than outright attacks. Many of New Labour's underlying philosophies were steeped in middle-class triumphalism. They were based on the assumption that the tattered remnants of the working-class were are on the wrong side of history - and must be made to join 'Middle England' like the rest of us. — Owen Jones

Demonisation is the ideological backbone of an unequal society. — Owen Jones

A victory is scored when your opponents are forced to debate issues they would rather leave ignored — Owen Jones

When Art struggles, it succeeds; when revelling in its own successes, it as singularly fails. — Owen Jones

She was crushed by society like a mosquito fending for its unborn young — Owen Jones

We are like the RCMP, we are Mountees and we always get our man to come, just not always quietly. — Owen Jones

Get rid of all the cleaners, rubbish collectors, bus drivers, supermarket checkout staff and secretaries, for example, and society will very quickly grind to a halt. On the other hand, if we woke up one morning to find that all the highly paid advertising executives, management consultants and private equity directors had disappeared, society would go on much as it did before: in a lot of cases, probably quite a bit better. So, — Owen Jones

It is entirely undesirable that on modern housing estates only one type of citizen should live,' he argued. 'If we are to enable citizens to lead a full life, if they are each to be aware of the problems of their neighbours, then they should all be drawn from different sectors of the community. We should try to introduce what was always the lovely feature of English and Welsh villages, where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street. — Owen Jones

We bar girls don't cheat on wives, we are just the rope that cheating husbands hang themselves with. — Owen Jones

Dieting is long-haul. Many rapid weight loss programs actually only squeeze the water out of you. Just like a wet sponge. But a good dieter maintains his or her grip on that sponge, not letting it soak up water again. — Owen Jones

You can argue whether it's right or wrong,' says Halfon about the scrapping of Connexions, 'and yes I believe we should be balancing the economy, but nevertheless the think-tank people never consider how it actually impacts on the front, although they do create an intellectual framework. — Owen Jones

The modern Establishment relies on a mantra of 'There Is No Alternative': potential opposition is guarded against by enforcing disbelief in the idea that there is any other viable way of running society. — Owen Jones

But as the late socialist politician Tony Benn would often put it, social change is a combination of two things: 'the burning flame of anger at injustice, and the burning flame of hope for a better world'. — Owen Jones

One day, this Establishment will fall. It will not do so on its own terms or of its own accord, but because it has been removed by a movement with a credible alternative that inspires. For those of us who want a different sort of society, it is surely time to get our act together. — Owen Jones

The Establishment is amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it. — Owen Jones

Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred. But it cannot be understood without looking at more recent events. Above all, it is the bastard child of a very British class war. — Owen Jones

But the reality is that chav-hate is a lot more than snobbery. It is a class war. It is an expression of the belief that everyone should become middle class and embrace middle-class values and lifestyles, leaving those who don't to be ridiculed and hated. It is about refusing to acknowledge anything of worth in working-class Britain, and systematically ripping it to shreds in newspapers, on TV, on Facebook, and in general conversation. This is what the demonization of the working class means. — Owen Jones

As well as a shared mentality, the Establishment is cemented by financial links and a 'revolving door' culture: that is, powerful individuals gliding between the political, corporate and media worlds - or who manage to inhabit these various worlds at the same time. The terms of political debate are in large part dictated by a media controlled by a small number of exceptionally rich owners, while think tanks and political parties are funded by wealthy individuals and corporate interests. — Owen Jones

I would like Britain - and indeed other countries - to be run in the interests of people's needs and aspirations, rather than on the basis of profit for a small elite; for democracy to be democratically managed by working people; for democracy to be extended as far as possible, including in the workplace and the economy. — Owen Jones

The objective is to change the system and the behaviour it encourages, rather than replacing 'bad' people with 'good' people. — Owen Jones

Under the modern Establishment, the function of the state has been reconfigured. Now, it exists to support private interests, including sectors - like the City - which have nothing but contempt for the state. — Owen Jones

Yet there is a logical flaw at the heart of Establishment thinking. It may abhor the state - but it is completely dependent on the state to flourish. — Owen Jones

If we want kids with 'aspiration', we need to give them something to aspire to. — Owen Jones