You can't defend the indefensible - anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical.
Outsiders often have an insight that an insider doesn't quite have.
I was a postman one Christmas and I developed a morbid fear of dogs.
Mental health is often missing from public health debates even though it's critical to wellbeing.
When fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple, the children surf the internet all day in dark corners of the room and are bombarded with latest gadgets. Things replace parental standards.
In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values.
The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.
My forebears refused to cut the sugar cane for plantation owners, and I am recognisably a product of that background.
My London constituency in Hackney has one of the highest levels of gun crime in the country. But the problem is no longer confined to inner city areas. Gun crime has spread to communities all over Britain.
Tackling childhood obesity is key.
Families are struggling against a tide of junk information on junk food.
I believe every abortion is a tragedy.
Finally, there's a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.
Because when you watch U.S. television, all the presenters and reporters, they're all out of central casting.
I knew what could happen to my son if he was sent to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd.
My father was a manual worker.
My mother liked Jim Reeves. I hated his records. He was unbearable.
I'm a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.
Abortion is an issue of conscience for the Labour party.
In Parliament we debate on and we decide the laws that are going to govern the country.
