Adrian McKinty Quotes

Several people, not just reviewers, took me to task for writing about what they called the working classes - something I've been doing for 40 years. I thought that was contemptible - what do they want to do, ghettoize the working class as a subject? Can you only write about your own class? I've written about royalty, am I not allowed to do that?

Since I still think of myself as a middle class guy, people get to see that side of me in films like 'Middle Class Abbayi.'

Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.

I come from an Irish working-class background but went to a posh school, and any type of pretension was quickly mocked at home. I've always had a keen eye for pretension.

We're a phenomenally snobby society, and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

Labor, under their current leadership, want to be the Downtown Abbey party when it comes to educational opportunity. They think working class children should stick to the station in life they were born into - they should be happy to be recognized for being good with their hands and not presume to get above themselves.

I've never been aware of the difference between so-called posh actors and working-class actors.

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

'Posh' is not really political. I didn't want to aim a brickbat at the system. Or to bash Old Etonians. It was always the class and privilege aspect of that world that I was most drawn to. There is something endlessly fascinating about imagining something you could never be involved in.

The common people are more disposed to trust one of their own class [in political office] than those who may efect to be superior.

If you're white working class, it's very easy to caricature the elites, and if you're elite, it's very easy to caricature the white working class.

People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath.

I think there's a tendency in England, when you look at the past, to either have upper middle class period drama with its own rules, or if you're going to look at working class people, you have to do that in a particular 'Isn't it a shame, aren't they oppressed' way, or it's treated comically.

You'd be surprised how many politicians have a working class background but they get it beaten out of them.

So often in English fiction, people are either upper-class twits, or else they're knockabouts, less than human.

There's been a kind of inverse snobbery about culture. I get the feeling some people would look at Shakespeare and say, that's a bit too intimidating for working-class people.

Most people were annoyed with my voice, I think, because I'm working-class, and that doesn't sound quite right on Radio 4.

There's always been a nasty strain of class prejudice ingrained in the condemnation of football's 'undeserving rich,' as if the working class is uniquely susceptible to being corrupted by money, and as if they deserve their wealth less than those born to it.

I have a class prejudice - against the upper class, which is foolish.

I like working-class people, generally speaking.

Lord Salisbury constitutes himself the spokesman of a class, of the class to which he himself belongs, who'toil not neither do they spin'.

People in Hollywood can condescend to the way a lot of other people are living.

There is the idea that there's a section of society, these working-class tradesmen, are driving around and they all think the same. Everybody who has tools in their vehicle have all the exact same thoughts: it's incredibly patronising isn't it?

I think the working-class part of me comes out. Sometimes the people who have the loudest mouths are upper-class, upper-middle-class. The quietest are often working-class people, people who are broke. There is a fear of losing whatever it is that you have. I come from that background.

It's shameful that the elites basically have one-and-a-half political parties. Working class men and women have zero parties - or they have half a party. That's exactly what progressives are upset about.