Excessive pay and rewards for failure are bad for shareholders, the economy and society.
I have a confession to make: I am a Labour parliamentary candidate but like and get on with some of the Conservative persuasion.
Getting from A to B can be crucial for small-business owners, self-employed people and freelancers too, who often rely on trains and buses to get around, conduct business and meet clients.
Look, politics can be tough.
I've never bought the argument that people are apathetic about politics.
It was a Labour prime minister who appointed the first black male and female cabinet ministers.
Whether it is clamping down on tax avoidance by multinationals, setting ambitious targets for tackling climate change, or reforming the posted workers' directive to better protect migrant workers, European countries are working together to get things done.
Back in the 1980s parts of our country were devastated by de-industrialisation. This wave of globalisation and the first fruits of technological innovation destroyed industrial jobs or exported them to low-wage economies. The loss of work had a devastating impact.
Leaving the single market, making communities poorer and more alienated, is not the way to deal with public concerns about immigration, most of which comes from outside the E.U.
Banks provide payment systems, core deposit and lending facilities that enable us to manage our day to day affairs.
If truth be told, certainly culturally, I never felt totally comfortable in the Labour party, because I've never really been a massively tribal politician.
My father was a black, working-class man who arrived here with no money in his pocket from Nigeria; my mum came from more of a middle-class background, whose father had prosecuted the Nazis at Nuremberg.
I have quite a different background from a lot of people in the Labour party - I'm of mixed heritage.
While we are clear that it is right that those who work hard, generate wealth and create jobs for our country are rewarded, where failure is rewarded or people award themselves huge pay rises that bear no relation to performance or what their companies can bear, trust is severely undermined.
One way to promote shareholder engagement and activism is through greater accountability and transparency.
Requiring fund managers to disclose how they vote would increase accountability and mean that pensioners and ordinary investors would more easily be able to see how those acting on their behalf vote on all issues, including remuneration.
There are retailers successfully combining conventional and online retail, like Argos or John Lewis.
More and more department stores are acting as the shop window for a range of retailers now, using space more efficiently to recreate the feel of the local market, creating new market opportunities for the small and the niche.
Shopping in the future can become an experience where conventional retailers can complement the success of online retailing. Government needs to work in partnership with the sector to help make this a reality.
With Tory privatisations in the past we've seen how service users can end up losing out and getting a raw deal.
