The media are doing this, not because they have a sinister motive, but because they love to feel that they are influencing events. That’s why they hate politicians so much, because politicians have direct power and they do not.
BEN AARONOVITCH…don’t ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let’s just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.
More Ben Aaronovitch Quotes
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He was calling it an atonic seizure because, even if he didn’t know why it had happened, it was important to give it a cool name.
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Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.
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…don’t ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let’s just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.
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Conflict resolution,’ said Nightingale. ‘Is this what they teach at Hendon these days?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry, they also teach us how to beat people with phone books and the ten best ways to plant evidence.
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The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling.
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If you just warn people, they often simply ignore you. But if you ask them a question, then they have to think about it.
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What do you think you’re doing?
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My dad once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it led. It’s the best piece of advice he has ever given me, and probably the reason I was born.
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When you’re a boy your life can be measured out as a series of uncomfortable conversations reluctantly initiated by adults in an effort to tell you things that you either already know or really don’t want to know.
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What frustrated me was the thought that with three thousand years of history someone in China, some monk in a monastery halfway up a mountain, must have developed a magic kata.
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That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.
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It’s a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.
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…good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
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The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with and ology tacked on the end.
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You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.
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In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.
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I gave the prescribed Metropolitan Police “first greeting”. “Oi!” I said “What do you think you’re doing?
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Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I’m not a country person. I don’t like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig.
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Somebody doesn’t know they’re not in Kansas anymore,’ said Stephanopoulos.
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And once they start to think about the consequences, they almost always calm down. Unless they’re drunk, of course. Or stoned. Or aged between fourteen and twenty-one. Or Glaswegian.
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The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class.
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If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it’s your safest bet.
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The clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop
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The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn’t set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.
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The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you’ve generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life – like drinking and sleeping, and if you’re lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice.
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This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there’s someone else to do the housework.
BEN AARONOVITCH