Politics and Public Life
Haji-Ioannou is a member of the New Enterprise Council, a group set up to advise the Conservative Party on business policy. He stated at the time that this appointment did not reflect his political affiliations, adding "I agreed to be included in the group of entrepreneurs because I was assured it will be non-partisan. not much difference between Left and Right any more."
On 1 April 2010, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Haji-Ioannou joined 23 other UK business leaders, including Marks & Spencer's Stuart Rose and Next's Simon Wolfson, criticising the Labour government's plans to raise National Insurance contribution rates.
The character of Omar Baba in the BBC TV comedy Come Fly With Me was based on Stelios.
Read more about this topic: Stelios Haji-Ioannou
Famous quotes containing the words public life, politics, public and/or life:
“Bryan is the least of a liar I know in public life. I have always found him direct and honest, and he never goes back on what he has said to me in privatea rare thing, if found, in public men. I found him purely frank.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous.... Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead.”
—Harold Rosenberg (19061978)
“Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you cd. do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint cd. think he understood.”
—Ezra Pound (18851972)
“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18091882)