Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.
I'm honoured to have been selected to be the Labour candidate for Manchester Central.
Some argue that now isn't the time to push the green agenda - that all efforts should be on preventing a serious recession. That is a false choice. It fails to recognise that climate change and our carbon reliance is part of problem - high fuel prices and food shortages due to poor crop yields compound today's financial difficulties.
People rightly want our political leaders - on all sides - to concentrate on minimising the damage to jobs, living standards and our savings from the banking crisis.
These are tough times and under this Tory-led government many people in Manchester are suffering and getting left behind. If elected I will use all my energy, skills, experience and knowledge to stand up for our communities and get things done for the better.
At times unpopular measures are needed in order to change behaviour.
Like many of my friends and colleagues, I can't get enough of Obama news; latest polling, speeches, visits, reaction of world leaders.
I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.
I've always loved fashion so much and I didn't have access to the kind of fashion I really wanted, so I would do vintage shopping.
Decision-making power, whether it's on foreign affairs or domestic affairs, is concentrated in the White House in a reasonably small circle.
Since I have an aversion to movies in which people say grace at the dinner table (not to the practice but to how movies use it to establish the moral strength of a household), the opening night montage of Sunday-night supper in one home after another in Waxahachie, Texas in 1935 a whole community saying grace made me expect the worst.