I see this fella built like a barn door... and there's all these fox hunters, who didn't like me, screaming and shouting and as I walked past him I looked at him and he hit me with something.

We are making the fundamental changes. It was like the decent housing target. We said by 2010, we'd have taken a million houses and refurbished them into decent housing.

I was the one that brought it in, but not only for the north-east, for every area so we can develop all the regional economies, lift up the national productivity, get greater wealth and share it more evenly.

We believe the 36, nearly 40, billion pound discount given for a right to buy houses took a million houses out of the public housing sector which is desperately needed for rent.

You have got to be the masters of your own financial future.

I don't care about wealth. What seems to be upsetting is institutionalizing the advantages that wealth gives you.

We send a lot of money - I don't know, I think it's in billions - of money to the Saudi government. We have so much tremendous leverage as the United States of America, but we seem to choose to look away when there's other interests at play.

Poverty itself is not so bad as the poverty thought. It is the conviction that we are poor and must remain so that is fatal.