Scottish journalist and author (1932- )
Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"Is Britishness a generous thing, or has it damaged England?", Open Democracy, Jan. 17, 2012
Who should regulate the media? Who should control the press? The commentariat agonises, as if the choice was between state control through some autocratic press law or a new Press Complaints Commission redecorated with false teeth. But there is another way. Let journalists regulate themselves.... Let's have a little democracy in the media. Even in the Murdoch papers, the number of journalists who are irretrievably lawless and callous is quite small. Most of the disasters at the News of the World happened because its editors treated their staff in the style of Muammar Gaddafi.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"A Democracy of Journalists", Open Democracy, Jul. 18, 2011
Broadly speaking, most people lived their lives in a kind of unwilling conformity. The thing was that they were offered, as time went by, various kinds of freedom, most of which were sort of dummy freedoms somehow.
NEAL ASCHERSON
interview, Frontline