102 Quotes by Dawn Foster

If Freemasons won't be completely open about their membership, should we not say that in all cases membership is incompatible with public service? Asking public servants to either confirm they are not a member of a masonic organisation or to be open when they are won't fully excise the backroom deals or the stench of privilege.

Social mobility has always been a slippery term, with nebulous markers of success: how many state school children have to achieve postgraduate degrees, or fill higher professional jobs, before society is deemed to have achieved the requisite degree of mobility to consider prejudice or injustice a thing of the past?

For homeless and formerly homeless people, losing their ID and then having to apply for and afford new ID is insurmountably difficult.

Part of the failing of mainstream history has been a reverential air often appended to the colonial era, underpinned by a rose-tinted nostalgia for a lost empire.

Making it compulsory to show identification before voting risks compromising a basic human right by creating further barriers for people who may no longer have an acceptable form of ID, thanks to the often unpredictable and chaotic lifestyle homelessness can cause.

The majority of us don't do what's best for us all the time because life is complicated and busy - and creating excuses is so much easier than getting on with the business of wellbeing.

Winter is always the hardest period for rough sleepers because of the climate and the post-Christmas dip in generosity towards anyone begging. And there's a genuine risk to life for anyone having to sleep out as temperatures plummet.

If you're in a meeting and a man talks loudly over you, rather than copying that behaviour and normalising it, what you could do is say 'Can everybody stop doing this and instead put up a hand when we talk?'

Focusing only on street homelessness is resource-intensive, and acts after the rough sleeper has already endured significant hardship and trauma. Acting before people are homeless makes far more sense, economically and for the long-term wellbeing of a household.