Saturday 15 March 2014

Tony Benn RIP

Tony Benn ..... "continued to make the case that a world in which the richest 400 have the same wealth as the poorest 2 billion is probably a bit wrong, and could do with putting right. And he did it to the end, in such a way that made anyone listening believe it was possible."

three of my favourite Tony Benn quotes:

1. "After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses?"
To a PBS documentary in 2000.
2. "If one meets a powerful person - Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, -  one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system."

3. When you think of the number of men in the world who hate each other, why, when two men love each other, does the church split?"
On equal marriage and the Church of England. 

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