British - Politician | June 6, 1947 -
To punish MPs because of the distance they live from London - those with fast train journeys quite close to London as well as those at some distance from both the capital or an appropriate airport - is perverse, but also dangerous to democracy.
David Blunkett
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Being an MP is not a desperately hard life, like going down the pit or working in the steelworks - with which I am all too familiar, having been brought up in the city of Sheffield; and it certainly isn't badly paid compared with any of my constituents.
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When I first came into parliament, there was, on average, a by-election every three months - due not to MPs bailing out, but because of the death rate.
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I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.
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Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.
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The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.
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As home secretary, I gained a reputation for being 'tough'; less concerned with liberty than with public protection.
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To make sense of a world in which rapid change and globalisation create genuine insecurity, we need benchmarks by which we can judge our actions and their long-term impact.
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If, in the name of liberty, we allow individuals to act in a way that damages the wellbeing of the whole, it will inevitably mean the breakdown of mutuality, thereby changing the very nature of our society.
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I'm as keen as the next person to preserve the right to free speech.
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Much extremist activity falls short of directly inciting people to violence or other crimes and so is not caught by laws on incitement. Neither does the Public Order Act, used to protect groups of people from harassment, deal with the problem.
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The government wants to be able to attack extremism and hatred wherever it occurs.
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