Top 15 Tim Luckhurst Quotes

Victorian liberals who campaigned for a free press and educated people to read it believed that newspapers should prepare Britons to participate in democracy. The new voters repudiated this patronising view. They were not content to read accounts of parliamentary debates and analyses of British diplomatic endeavour. They wanted fun too. Crime and scandal provided it.

[On the future of The Independent] With care, investment and innovation it might just thrive in the new media economy, particularly if a free distribution model covering all of Britain's major cities can be achieved.

Rod Liddle will not be editor of The Independent. The screechingly intolerant campaign of hostility directed against him by metropolitan critics has done its job. They call themselves liberals. If they are right then the word has come to have as little meaning as its common counterpart "progressive".

[Alexander] Lebedev may not require profits. He may be willing to subsidise quality newspapers in return for the voice in national affairs they offer. If that is his ambition, he will be embracing a tradition that has endured throughout the democratic era. 19th- and early 20th-century examples of subsidy by political parties and departments of state suggest that subsidy by wealthy individuals may harm democracy less than subsidy by the state.
A durable alternative to market distortion by oligarchs could only be achieved through restrictive laws on media ownership. Such laws rarely protect freedom and, even at this time of unprecedented chaos and despondency in the news industry, such legislation should not be conceived in haste.

It [Johnston Press] is leading a change that must happen. People who care about democracy must hope it happens fast. We have not attempted political freedom without well-funded, intelligent journalism, but we can assume that it would not be pretty. When accurate reporting dies it is usually replaced by gossip, prejudice and bigotry.

Now a newspaper innovation has been launched that can help the free world's news industry to recover the prosperity it first achieved under Queen Victoria. Johnston Press, Britain's most prolific newspaper publisher with 286 titles, will place the online content of six of its local titles behind paywalls.

A healthy democracy needs professional journalists to report accurately on public affairs, to find out things the powerful want to hide and to expose wrongdoing. These duties have been performed by journalists throughout the era of universal suffrage and in every country in which liberty flourishes. People who deride this claim as idealistic naïvety are enemies of parliamentary democracy. Its supporters must learn to appreciate that good journalism is worth paying for.

Google uses the work of journalists to sell advertising. Then it takes Daddy Bear's share of the profits and justifies its gluttony on the basis that it drives traffic back to the newspaper's own site. This is like a musician stealing a song, recording it, and excusing their crime on the basis that the illegal cover version may draw attention to the original.

[On "broadcast presenters"] Many are comically insecure and egotistical. They need to appear on screen like a shark needs to swim. It is an addiction and they will beg, steal and wheedle to feed it.
Granted, this is a generalisation to which there are exceptions...

Had he been born in Kent, [Gordon] Brown would have been a Conservative. But he was born in Glasgow, so what he shares with England's establishment isn't party affiliation, but an armour-plated sense of entitlement. I doubt [David] Cameron has anything approaching Brown's faith in his right to power. Etonians have been disliked for decades. The country has only just begun to perceive the true nature of the Scottish Labour party.
I shall be stunned if the Conservative leader emerges from his party conference looking as smug as Gordon Brown did this week. Never mind the polls, Cameron simply lacks the upbringing.

Elvis was what Americans call trailer trash, in our terms a "chav", before the term was invented. Instead of aspiring through education he made a career out of sullen, posturing ignorance. His fans have often made the same mistake. Small wonder they appreciate the lyrics, which are the literary equivalent of tumbler-dryer instructions.
Affection for Elvis is a workable predictor of anti-intellectual attitude. As one academic paper demonstrated in the 1970s, Beatles fans are much more likely to have experienced university education. They are also less likely to be psychologically insecure.

Riefenstahl did not fully understand the evil cause to which her work contributed. Ken Loach does not deserve such indulgence. He knows precisely what he is doing.

Ken Loach denies that he is a "socialist realist". He is right. There is not an iota of realism in his support for George Galloway's Respect movement.

It's a question of whether I can do something useful [...] It's not about personal ambition, it really is not.
I joined as I believed that David Cameron would make a fantastic leader, and my decision to join was based on a clear decision that if he was not elected leader I would not stand for election.
I'm overjoyed that he has been elected leader.
He represents the strain of non-ideological reformist politics that I'm interested in. I have no interest whatsoever in standing for the Scottish Parliament.

He [Luckhurst's doctor] gave me a sick note that said I was suffering from hypertension, but not [Clinical] depression. He advised me not to mention it either.
I ignored him. What possible harm could be done by telling my employer the truth? I was entirely candid with The Scotsman. My doctor knew all about the stigma that attaches to any form of mental illness. I was absurdly naive.
Six weeks later, feeling healthier than I had for years, my GP agreed I was fit to return to work. I was raring to go. My boss was having none of it. I was informed that I could not return as editor. His explanation was plain. "It might happen again." I refused the offer to go back to work in a demoted role and we agreed severance terms. The Scotsman was generous, but I was unemployed.