I'm not saying [economic] growth is wrong, but throughout the years of growth, many things didn't get better. ... If you look at America, the proportion of Americans with no one to talk to about important things went up from a tenth to a quarter.

The really interesting moment will be when you have a critical mass of people engaging through the networks, more than through the press and TV. When that happens, the culture of politics has to change, moving away from controlled one-way messages towards a political culture that is more questioning.

There are hardly any apprenticeships in care; hardly any schools preparing teenagers for jobs in care; and few signs that politicians know what to do to raise the status and rewards for what will soon be one of our most important industries.

Cities simply don't have the powers they need to radically innovate in cutting obesity or the number of disaffected teenagers.

A lot of people in government don't really read books at all.

As with products on supermarket shelves, the public has a right to know where their financial products and services come from.

Big business increasingly likes to portray itself as socially concerned, adopting the style of civic action through 'campaigns' of varying degrees of cynicism.