Our equality bill is specifically designed to protect religion and belief on exactly the same terms as race or gender or sexuality.

To my astonishment, everything that I had assumed was now questioned by the findings. What started off as a search for identity that appeared to be purely Scottish in origin ended up as a discovery of my migrant roots - indeed an understanding that almost all of our families, at some stage, have been migrants - and my European roots.

For centuries, individuals have been learning how to live with their next-door neighbours.

I don't believe that any prime minister would send our troops into conflict without the assurance from the military that they had the equipment necessary for the operation.

The fact that the movement was carried on by women who, for the most part, had no money of their own and were totally inexperienced in organization, and that they won their fight in about two generations, makes a story often dramatic and always worth preserving.

So many times I've heard people say that the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples won't really change anything other than some legal and financial stuff. It's a dumb argument: those legal and financial effects matter.

The important source of finance is now commercial papers, bonds, and so on.

I look at the idea of eliminating the state and local tax deduction as a geographic redistribution of wealth, because you're taking money from a place like New York to provide deeper tax cuts elsewhere.