Our equality bill is specifically designed to protect religion and belief on exactly the same terms as race or gender or sexuality.

To my astonishment, everything that I had assumed was now questioned by the findings. What started off as a search for identity that appeared to be purely Scottish in origin ended up as a discovery of my migrant roots - indeed an understanding that almost all of our families, at some stage, have been migrants - and my European roots.

For centuries, individuals have been learning how to live with their next-door neighbours.

I don't believe that any prime minister would send our troops into conflict without the assurance from the military that they had the equipment necessary for the operation.

You want your assistants to move up. But you want it to be a hard decision. You want them to only be willing to leave if they're walking into a dream situation. You don't want money to ever be a factor.

Keynes's contribution was not just to advocate spending government money in the middle of a recession. Every government had done that going back to the days of the Irish potato famine. What he gave to us was a way of thinking about the magnitude and the dimensions and so forth.

You never know if they like you for who you are or what you are. Would he love me or the money?

Feckless as it was for Bush to ask Americans to go shopping after 9/11, we all too enthusiastically followed his lead, whether we were wealthy, working-class or in between. We spent a decade feasting on easy money, don't-pay-as-you-go consumerism and a metastasizing celebrity culture.