To be effective in tackling poverty wages, a living wage has to be mandatory and basic trade union rights should be restored so workers can protect themselves from exploitative employers.
Heathrow is in my constituency and I have been at both the Terminal 4 and Terminal 5 planning inquiries. At these inquiries my community has been assured by the inquiry inspectors, BAA and government ministers that each development would be the last piece of expansion of the airport because of its ever-increasing noise and air pollution.
Many argue that graduates earn a 'premium' because of their education, and should have to pay their way. I agree, and that's why I've always advocated a progressive taxation system - so if people do receive large salaries, they pay more income tax.
The spread of information technology and the long-term decline in the cost of computing power have created opportunities that simply did not exist before. Airbnb, for example, could not have existed before the Internet.
If bitter party name-calling turns people off then smear politics just destroys all credibility in the aims of politicians, the role of political parties and the political process itself.
Politicians have patronised and talked down to us all when it comes to our economy, but ordinary working people have to manage on incomes significantly lower than the likes of George Osborne and his friends in the City. They could teach the bankers and many commentators a thing or two about managing a budget responsibly.
Nationally, unrestrained Heathrow expansion has prevented the balanced development of regional airports and their economies and the planning of an integrated transport system maximising more environmentally friendly modes of transport such as rail linked more effectively to Europe.
We need an NHS with fewer managers, fewer contractors and more power (rather than choice) to patients - with the input of the real experts: healthcare professionals.
We have to face up to the fact that without the armed uprising in 1916 Britain would not have withdrawn from southern Ireland.
We stand in the centre ground of the Labour party and our traditions. The policies we are advocating go right back to the beginning.
To me, education is not a commodity. It is a public good, essential to any society with a claim to being civilised.
Leaders play an important role, but it is the Labour party's supporters and potential supporters who should take the lead in discussing and determining the sense of purpose and direction of the party if we are to return to being a social movement aiming to transform our society.
Political rivalry is one thing but personal smear campaigns scrape the barrel of political infighting.
Since John Smith's death and the Blair/Brown takeover in 1994, party members have watched the way in which an elite leadership group has formed in the Labour party, cutting itself off from the party's traditions, values and norms of behaviour.
I call a spade a shovel, straightforward. If I disagree with someone, I tell them.
The interests of big corporations have so permeated government that its major decisions are indistinguishable from the boardroom demands of the leading companies in each commercial sector.
The New Labour political elite has long conspired to secure a so-called 'smooth transition' for Blair's successor. This would amount to little more than the imposition of a leader on the party and our supporters without any real democratic participation.
Governments usually end not with a bang but with a whimper, as the Conservatives learned in the 1990s. Support and authority erodes over time until there is a final collapse of support and pivotal electoral shift.
When I left school I went onto the shop floor, working 12-hour shifts in a TV factory. My workmates were sharp, skilled and all capable of enjoying higher education - but they didn't have that opportunity.
I have a political philosophy by which I judge political events. It's called socialism, which at its core is about achieving equality, justice and peace through democracy.
