Zitat des Tages von Frances O'Grady:
I think being a mother helps keep your feet on the ground. There's very little dignity in parenthood. It's a great leveller.
Britain is a textbook case of how growing inequality leads to economic crisis. The years before the crash were marked by a sharp rise in remortgaging and the growth of 0 percent balance transfer credit cards. By 2008 the UK had the highest ratio of household debt to GDP of any major economy.
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.
The backwoodsmen are muttering about making Britain's draconian union laws - already among the toughest in Europe - harsher still. And parts of the media will continue to attack public service pensions, as if school meals staff, refuse collectors and healthcare workers have no right to a decent retirement.
The UK has a poor investment record. According to IMF data, we have come seventh out of the top seven industrialised countries since 1999.
The image of the unions is still not in tune with where we actually are, which is fifty-fifty men and women, with an increasing number of women at the top. I think it is changing, but I'm not complacent about this.
The dominant economic approach of the last thirty years is now on its last legs. Letting the market rip and an indifference to inequality are now seen as important causes of the greatest economic crash since the 1930s.
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.
It is not natural or inevitable that half the world goes hungry; that the freedom of markets trumps protection of the planet; or that citizens' rights come second to those of corporations.
Washing dishes as a 17-year-old in an Oxford college and seeing the privileged lifestyles of the undergraduates there convinced me that a system that allowed luxury for the few at the expense of the many needed to be challenged.
From the ashes of a financial crash, there is a chance to create a new economic settlement that is more equal, sustainable and democratic.
The difficulty for the Government is there's this ideological straitjacket of the market will provide, let the market rip and everything will work out... It's back to trickle-down economics, which, it's plain to see, have not delivered.
I want a society that provides decent jobs for those who can work and decent security for those can't.
I like independent films... European films. I do go and see popular films as well because my kids force me.
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.'
Would I describe myself as new Labour? I'm Labour, organised Labour. I think labels have a limited use and that's where you really get into boy stuff sometimes, just sticking on labels.
In the U.S. the powerful critics of austerity such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich rightly identify the decline of 'labor' as a problem, and renewing trade unionism part of the solution. Our opportunity is to make the same case in the UK.
Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever.
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.
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.
