“All nationhood is to some extent the artificial, the product of historical accident, the convenience of tyrants and the disengagement of colonists.”

“The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales.”

“The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.”

“Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management.”

“Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.”

“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”

“Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.”