1. Academic research in the area of complaint is scarce, except in the case of consumer complaint. Exceptions to this rule are the excellent popular book Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors (Yale University Press, 2003) and the academic paper ‘Complaints, and Complaining: Functions, Antecedents and Consequences’ (Psychological Bulletin, vol. 119, no. 2, 1996), by the psychologist Robin M. Kowalski, and the paper ‘Complaint as a Form of Association’ (Qualitative Sociology, vol. 4, no. 4, December 1981) by the sociologist Charles F. Hanna.
2. David Walter Hall,The Last Priest. Hall also includes an actual passage from Meslier’s Testament (Gourmelon translation): ‘This is what gives all these gentlemen the means to entertain themselves and have all kinds of amusement, while you the poor, abused by the faults and superstitions of religion, groan sadly, poorly and without protest under the yoke of the oppression of the great.’
3. See Michael Onfray, In Defence of Atheism: The Case against Christianity, Judaism and Islam (Serpent’s Tail, 2007), esp. p.195.
4. Dhammapada (124), trans. Juan Mascaró (Penguin, 1973).
5. From Majjihma Nikaya, in Teachings of the Buddha, ed. Jack Kornfield (Shambhala Publications, 1996), p.74.
6. From Vissuddhimagga, in Kornfield (ed.), op. cit., p.18.
7. From Dhammapada, in Kornfield (ed.), op. cit., p.15.
8. All passages from The Koran, trans. N.J. Dawood (Penguin, 1974).
9. ‘Noble or Savage?’, Economist (19 December 2007).
10. Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape (Granta, 2005).
11. Summary of LAAG response to airport planning application, 26 April 2007, posted at www.kentnet.org.uk/laag/Planning?20Application-LAAG?20Response-summary.pdf
12. Environmental News Daily, issue 690 (31 January 2000).
13. George Orwell,The Road to Wigan Pier (Penguin, 2001), pp.88–9.
14. National Statistics Online, www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=934
15. Presentation given 30 March 2004, www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/downloads/files/lifechances_socialmobility.pdf
16. BBC News Online (3 September 2007), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6972699.stm
17. The text of this interview is widely available online, for example at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2726831.stm
18. ‘Morality? Don’t Make Me Laugh’, The Guardian (20 April 1999). See www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=203
19. Slavoj Žižek, interviewed in What More Philosophers Think, ed. J. Baggini and J. Stangroom (Continuum, 2007).
20. George W. Bush’s speech to the American Enterprise Institute, 23 February 2003, www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/iraq/bush_2–26.html
21. Prime Minister’s statement on Iraq, 25 February 2003, www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page3088.asp
22. See ‘Blair: Saddam Most Dangerous Leader’, CNN.com (20 February 2001), http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/UK/02/20/bush.blair/
23. See Robin M. Kowalski, Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors (Yale University Press, 2003).
24. Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America, (Oxford University Press, 1993).
25. Michael Power, The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty (Demos, 2004).
26. www.accidentclaimscountrywide.co.uk/services.html, accessed 12/11/07.
27. Mary Warnock, Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children? (Oxford University Press, 2002).
28. Michael J Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007).