For families across the UK who are income-poor but more than that whose lives are blighted by worklessness educational failure family breakdown problem debt and poor health as well as other problems giving them an extra pound - say through increased benefits - will not address the reason they find themselves in difficulty in the first place.

Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure all crime in the end is the crime of the community.

To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives.

I have been blessed in many ways and one of those is to have been born in Africa for me a great treasure house of stories. I have been researching it since my infancy reading about it talking to men and women who have spent their lives in this land living it as I have and loving it as I do. I write almost entirely from my own experience.

I feel that between my experience and my mother's breast cancer is a little bit like someone who lives next door. I know what that person looks like and what their daily habits are.

Stories have always been the things that entertain me and make me feel happy and sad and move me and give me the experience of being able to live many lives in one lifetime. It's the best thing about being alive.

A spy like a writer lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

That's not to say that women's priorities are better than men's. Rather when women are empowered when they can speak from the experience of their own lives they often address different previously neglected issues. And families and whole communities benefit.

We went with the St. Lawrence Experience which is run by Joe Babbitt who is a close friend now. We went out there for 10 days and we had the best week of our lives and we've been going back since. We've been back three times now.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.

A woman's life can really be a succession of lives each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge and each marked off by some intense experience.

The advocates of abortion on demand falsely assume two things: that women must suffer if the lives of unborn children are legally protected and that women can only attain equality by having the legal option of destroying their innocent offspring in the womb.

There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter control or singly cope with.

We assume that everything's becoming more efficient and in an immediate sense that's true our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.

Vocational education programs have made a real difference in the lives of countless young people nationwide they build self-confidence and leadership skills by allowing students to utilize their unique gifts and talents.

The people in Iraq lived essentially good lives. They had brilliant health and education systems. Saddam actually created an incredible infrastructure in a very difficult country but they were a Mafia family. If you said anything against that regime or that family you would be killed instantly.

If my career detour from special education to singing has done one thing it has afforded me the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others.