Ferdinand Mount
Ferdinand Mount
SirFerdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, commonly known as Ferdinand Mount, is a British writer, novelist and columnist for The Sunday Times as well as a political commentator...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth2 July 1939
argue cast combined defenders minute quo served status system taken
Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build.
chance choose dedicated letting nation needs people
What the world needs now is more Americans. The U.S. is the first nation on earth deliberately dedicated to letting people choose what they want and giving them a chance to get it.
history human insult position
We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.
age british constitution guess interest rough taking
At a rough estimate, I should guess I started taking an interest in the British Constitution at the age of forty-two and a half.
believing both cannot help independence poverty systems
I cannot help believing that both the poverty and the independence would wither under most systems of Proportional Representation (PR).
hate silence church
I hate churches, all of them. But they used to know something about the importance of silence.
real earning rich
In real terms, there is a greater disparity of earnings between the very rich and the very poor.
mean thinking people
I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing.
character court-judges judging
For the first half of this century, High Court judges have been cautious to the point of timidity in expressing any criticism of governmental action; the independence of the judiciary has been of a decidedly subordinate character.
america people want
For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness that most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want.
men self-worth law
All the research shows that being married, with all its ups and downs, is by far the most effective way of making young men law-abiding and giving them a sense of purpose and self-worth.
iraq white house
According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.
party thinking government
A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.
errors people stubborn
Of course great politicians are always liable to be wrong about something, and the more people tell them they are wrong, the more stubbornly they defend their error.