“Frankly, I could carve a better opposition party out of a banana than the Tories.”
Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist
2009-05-14
Question Time
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/14/peter-hitchens-interview
There is no evidence that Skinner said this. But see quotation from 1 April 1981, above. <br class="br">It is an old joke which has been around since at least 1927 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/19/half-fools/. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: Skinner: "Half the Tories opposite are crooks." <br class="br">Source: "Dennis Skinner Did Not Call Half the Tories Crooks (and How to Verify Other Quotes from Parliament)" https://clioseyeroll.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/dennis-skinner-did-not-call-half-the-tories-crooks-and-how-to-verify-other-quotes-from-parliament/, 03 December 2016.
“Frankly, I could carve a better opposition party out of a banana than the Tories.”
Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist
2009-05-14
Question Time
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/14/peter-hitchens-interview
Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/jun/29/representation-of-the-people-bill in the House of Commons (29 June 1989) on the Representation of the People Act 1989. <br class="br">1980s
Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist
Article in London Labour Briefing, November 1981. When quoted in the House of Commons, Labour Party leader Michael Foot denounced him as the Labour candidate for Bermondsey. Source: Tatchell, The Battle for Bermondsey (Heretic Books, 1983) page 53.
Jacob Zuma (1942) 4th President of South Africa
In reply to the question 'Are you a crook?', from BBC Panorama http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7243095.stm interviewer Fergal Keane, 11 February 2008
“The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs
Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Robin Sloan (1979) American writer
Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 11 “The Spider” (p. 86; ellipses represent minor elisions of description)
“I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”
John Green book Looking for Alaska
Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 218
Looking for Alaska (2005)