If companies shared profits with their workers, employers and employees would have a greater mutual interest in each other's success.
Edgy' music has always formed the cornerstone to any teenage rebellion. Most indulge in it precisely because adults like me don't like them doing so.
The 1980s were tough for most of Britain, but nowhere more so than Tottenham.
We cannot afford to lose talented young black people, who make it to university, overseas, or worse, to let other talented black people be put off by the notion that university is somehow not for them.
While at Harvard, I was struck by the palpable sense of noblesse oblige that surrounds their sophisticated outreach and bursary programmes. It is almost as if they view extending opportunity to disadvantaged individuals as their highest mission.
It is hard to speak the truth about valued national institutions. But when they are not fit for purpose, we must speak out.
As the MP for an area like Tottenham you quickly learn that the factors leading to unemployment are as numerous as they are diverse.
Unemployed people should be treated as potential to be realised, not a problem to be solved.
We should not let those with a political agenda use London's growing population to support their anti-immigration rhetoric, and we should challenge those who want to label London's global attraction a flaw rather than a strength.
The New Labour doctrine that skills training was the responsibility of employers was flawed. The idea that employers should take on a bigger role ignores the reality that employers have no incentive to train staff to leave. We can hardly expect Tesco to train checkout staff to become dental nurses.
Our political class obsesses over social mobility from one generation to the next - whether or not people are doing better than their parents did - but we rarely talk about those who are already in work and want to progress.
Mum eventually graduated with a City & Guilds certificate that hung proudly on our living room wall throughout my childhood.
The idea of a family sitting round the kitchen table and carefully planning their future family size based on the certainty of years to come is a complete fantasy. Back in the real world, jobs are lost, livelihoods taken away, families break apart, partners leave or pass away.
Plenty of people are intrigued by their family history. Growing up as the son of West Indian immigrants who moved to London in the 1950s and 60s, I was especially fascinated by anecdotes about the lives of my Guyanese relatives, which seemed a million miles away from Tottenham's Broadwater Farm estate.
A loving family matters. So do male role models.
If we want to raise the aspirations of young men, we should be praising their achievements, not talking them down.
We have to challenge head-on the way the BNP takes legitimate concerns and manipulates them in the interests of its fascist agenda.
From protecting consumers to establishing common standards and promoting free trade, the E.U. plays a central role. And nation states alone cannot tackle common threats such as climate change without the co-ordination that the E.U. and other supranational institutions provide.
As a young man, I was angry about all things legal.
Throughout her life my mother, Rose, prayed for good health. My father left when I was 12 and money was tight, so she couldn't afford to take time off work. I have a younger sister and three older brothers, and she used to panic that we'd be taken into care if she wasn't able to look after us.
