Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are issues that shape every generation and define every age. Climate change is just such an issue and our political generation has got to deal with it.
What is clear to me is that social media is a skill and you have to keep working at it. But it hasn't taken over my life. I think I use it, it doesn't use me.
What most teachers need is very strong leadership and motivation, and when it comes to recruiting teachers you want to have the biggest possible pool possible.
It is important to understand that the WTO, like the United Nations, is a weak international agency which depends upon financing and support from its largest members.
What we need is fundamental reform to address the deep social and economic problems that are gripping people and communities nationwide, particularly the least advantaged.
In Germany, apprentices undergo a final examination in the vocational school and an oral examination and practical test in the workplace. The same should happen in Britain.
Nothing is clear cut in the debate surrounding high-speed rail, but from its successes elsewhere we can be confident that it pays a great dividend to the society it serves.
Not one single country in the world is dependent for their trade wholly on WTO guidelines - they aren't 'rules,' because the sanctions for breaching the guidelines are puny.
Multinational companies exploit national differences to abuse their workers, to dodge their taxes and to 'regulation shop' as a means to avoid meeting their responsibilities.
Brexit is a cliff, not a gradient. The mistake we are in danger of making is to believe that some Brexits are better than others when the fundamental problem is Brexit itself.
Speaking to people in all parts of the country, it has become clear to me that there is a definite appetite for the option to reject Theresa May's Brexit and hold a referendum.
Lots of my contemporaries have had to come to terms with who they are and realise all those deeply held assumptions we had when we were teenagers and in our 20s no longer apply.
Virtually no other state concentrates as much political, economic and cultural power in its capital city. Even Paris is less economically dominant than London and its hinterland.
Apprenticeships must be more than a re-branding of in-work training if they are going to have a substantive impact on the future economy and the life chances of our young people.
Opening up closed markets to competition and protecting consumers from monopoly-style profits is the essence of pro-business politics on the modernising right as much as the left.
My father came to Britain in search of a better life. My aunts, uncles and cousins fled here in search of safety as Cyprus's Greek and Turkish populations fell into open hostility.
I'm clear that new schools should only go in areas where there is a need for places. I'm equally clear that we need those schools to have the governance and the leadership to succeed.
For the Conservative Party to become the mouthpiece of energy monopolists is not only a political error; it is fundamentally at variance with the liberal economics they claim to espouse.
School standards need to rise a lot further if the full potential of all our young people, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, is to be realised: there is no room for complacency.
I've always believed in one nation even when it wasn't entirely fashionable inside the Labour party... and I believe one nation means building a really solid alliance between the classes.
Yes, I have found many people who voted for Brexit and believe it will answer their problems. But they mostly realise that Europe isn't the problem, however much the E.U. could be improved.
The BBC is consistently manipulated by Brexiteers into providing them with false parity in arguments where their views add nothing, represent nobody and are demonstrably and factually wrong.
Britain's railways don't need to be wholly nationalised and they don't need to be operated solely by private companies. Both of these myopias harm our ability to get the best deal for passengers.
Efficiency, connectivity and productivity are all economic buzzwords that people have said high-speed rail will deliver. But at the heart of it what high-speed rail will deliver is growth and jobs.
The strength of the British constitution is supposedly its ability, because it is unwritten in key respects like the incapacity of the prime minister, to adapt to crises with flexibility and urgency.
Labour should have fought with every sinew in 2010 to retain power. To give up power voluntarily because you are tired of government and it is all too difficult is a betrayal of the people you serve.
Brexit is not, thankfully, a question of war. But, like Iraq, Brexit is an act of unprovoked self-harm and a massive strategic mistake that threatens Britain's credibility and authority in the world.
The original sin of Brexit - the lies, contradictions, half-truths and omissions on which it was built - have come back to haunt the Thatcherite Tories who started all this with Nigel Farage and Ukip.
Bruce Liddington, who has died aged 70, was the most exotic creature in the Department for Education in the 2000s. In a land of fairly staid civil servants, Bruce had flair and the panache of a brilliant parakeet.
Universities should be supporting Teach First, actively promoting it among their students and financially supporting them to join the scheme, using a small fraction of their income from higher fees for this purpose.
Systematic social and environmental deregulation, and the economics of austerity while enriching the rich, will be the markers of Farage/Tory politics after Brexit. Singapore-on-Sea for the rich; degradation for the rest.
Tests account for only a couple of hours within the six years of a child's primary education, but parents expect to know how their children are doing and the government has a responsibility to monitor and control standards.
The only way Brexit might have worked without an economic collapse is the Norway model of close integration with the structure of the European customs union and single market without being part of the formal E.U. institutions.
England's dominant schools, universities, professions and enterprises are largely in the ideological and filial grip of the Conservative party. This isn't always obvious but it is emphatic, especially when they are threatened.
The reason why I'm so passionate about turning around failing schools is that children who have the misfortune to go to unsucccessful institutions are far less likely to come across the individuals who can transform their lives.
For decades, British governments - including the Blair-Brown government in which I was an education minister - have done a good job of enhancing higher education but paid too little attention to apprenticeships and technical education.
The individuals who intervened in my life, transformed it, didn't do so in a vacuum. One was a manager of a children's home, a whole string of them were teachers. What they had in common was that they worked in successful institutions.
Until the late 1950s Britain's leaders were slow to appreciate the social and economic value of motorways. The first stretch of German Autobahn had opened before the first world war, as did the first highway in the U.S. Other countries followed suit in the inter-war years.
Our European neighbours in France have invested in their infrastructure early and are now reaping the rewards later. This is because wherever high-speed rail has been built between the major cities and economic centres of a country - as in HS2 - it has exceeded demand forecasts.
I want a European future where we extend and reinforce peace and prosperity to the east, a future where workers are better protected and inequalities reduced, where our energy and lifestyles are clean and green, where democracy is enhanced, where taxes are paid and corporations play by fair rules.
As a Londoner who delights in the capital's dynamism and diversity, I none the less agree with Ken Livingstone that London hosts too great a share of our national institutions. Where sensible, more should be located in other cities, particularly new or reformed institutions that involve new facilities.
Despite my deep misgivings about austerity and the harm it would do, I agreed to chair the national infrastructure commission under a Tory government, because I believed that delivering infrastructure investment could help build a brighter future for businesses and families. I am a pragmatist. I do what works.
By managing the speed of traffic and opening the hard shoulder as a new running lane in times of congestion, the M42 pilot showed that it is possible to smooth traffic flow and improve journey reliability safely on a seriously congested route. And it has proved popular with drivers whose motoring experience has improved.
Parents who've not had an education themselves find it hard to explain to their children what a decent education involves, and I completely understand that. Parents themselves need to be educated by schools about what sort of education they should expect for their children. I do think there's a heavy responsibility of the school.
Clement Attlee, the man who led us out of the rubble of the Second World War and into a more modern, egalitarian Britain, is one of this country's greatest Prime Ministers. One major reason for this is that he was better able to recognise the wants and needs of the British people than some of his more polished political contemporaries.
I joined the SDP as a founder member a few days after my 18th birthday in 1981. I was a councillor, activist and parliamentary candidate for the SDP and its successor party, the Liberal Democrats, for 14 years before joining Labour when Tony Blair became leader and abolished Labour's old clause IV - committing to general nationalisation - in 1995.
I thought I'd left politics when Labour lost the 2010 election and I went off and ran a thinktank for two years and founded the National Infrastructure Commission. It was only because of Brexit that I came back. And I had to learn rapidly how to do politics in the 2010s and it soon became clear to me that you had to be ever-present on social media.