I was left £50 when I was ten by a fairly distant cousin, which my father invested in GEC shares on my behalf. I became interested in the market and was given some more shares by my father, which is when I began looking to see how the shares were performing and learning how to read company reports, balance sheets, and so on in order to gauge that."

The appetite of the British people for a long-term involvement in another Middle Eastern conflict could not be weaker. There is no wish to have any further long-term obligations of a military kind that do not affect the most direct national interest.

I'm not interested in the past, I'm interested in the future. Europe is past.

It is of considerable importance that politicians stick to their commitments or do not make such commitments in the first place.

What we have to find is the right level of regulation of our financial system so that it has the incentive to invest in things, but at the same time, it is sufficiently regulated so it can't get in the kind of trouble that we have seen in the past and we have seen recently.

Here are some questions I am constantly fretting over: Do you splurge, or do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it's your last, or do you save your money on the chance you'll live 20 more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long?

Commercial banks - that is, fractional reserve banks - create money out of thin air. Essentially, they do it in the same way as counterfeiters.

I'm always going to go up against movies with bigger muscle and money, so I need to have a strong grass-roots game.