The UK has a poor investment record. According to IMF data, we have come seventh out of the top seven industrialised countries since 1999.

Each day more coalition MPs in seats outside the South East come out against George Osborne's regional pay cut plans, and Vince Cable now claims they are dead.

I cherish the creation of public space and services, especially health, housing and the comprehensive education system which dared to give so many of us ideas 'above our station.'

I am a feminist and I have no problems being called that.

I suspect there are people in all walks of life who need to be dragged into the 21st century in terms of attitudes towards women.

I'd be happy to have regular face-to-face meetings at Downing Street with David Cameron to argue the case for alternative economic policies.

When I look at my daughter, who's 24, she is much more confident than I ever was and her expectations are higher. But I worry that there is a backlash brewing against progress on equality.

Ordinary people who have lots of good ideas want more than a suggestion box, and they need a union to represent that thinking.

I came from a family where joining a union was the expected thing to do. I've always believed that the relationship between an employer and an individual worker is fundamentally unequal.

I want a society that provides decent jobs for those who can work and decent security for those can't.

We too often hear about red tape but what they mean is the vital rights of workers.

In order to show your best skills and talents-you must share them, or no one will ever know they exist- Lorenzo Victory

Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you, " I say. "Controlling you is.

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified.

Was it possible that perhaps the most plausible explanation was being offered by someone who anyone with an ounce of sanity would have long ago consigned to the realm of the insane?

Man can be an atheist only in theory, not in practice, because the universe is too frightening and too chaotic to be too independent!

I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.

People are locked up in all sorts of ways.

Your success as a writer will probably not depend on how well you write so much as in how you handle rejections.

You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

When you gaze upon the lovely sight. Of twins, arm in arm, asleep at night. Think not that the house has been doubly messed. But that you, as parents, have been doubly blessed.