60 Quotes by Frances O'Grady

There is this sense of David Cameron leading a Government that's badly out of touch with ordinary people's lives. I'd absolutely welcome the opportunity to show all political leaders what life is like for most people.

It is not natural or inevitable that half the world goes hungry; that the freedom of markets trumps protection of the planet; or that citizens' rights come second to those of corporations.

My first hero, as a teenager, was James Connolly. I remember discovering that he was a feminist, and that was an eye-opener, coming from a man of such poverty.

I worry that some politicians still think we are living in the 1950s where the man is the main breadwinner and the woman works for pin money. Actually, most families where there are two parents depend on two incomes to get by.

The backwoodsmen are muttering about making Britain's draconian union laws - already among the toughest in Europe - harsher still. And parts of the media will continue to attack public service pensions, as if school meals staff, refuse collectors and healthcare workers have no right to a decent retirement.

The implication that women work for pin money and can manage on a worse pension, presumably by relying on husbands, riles. But even more galling for women is that few government ministers seem to even appreciate the value of the work they do.

Washing dishes as a 17-year-old in an Oxford college and seeing the privileged lifestyles of the undergraduates there convinced me that a system that allowed luxury for the few at the expense of the many needed to be challenged.

A business is good if it gives a decent day's reward for a decent day's work, treats people decently, and gives them a voice at the top.

Although there's a lot of focus on the Lib Dems, we need to keep our eyes on the far right of the Tories, who I suspect will become increasingly impatient in their appetite for tax cuts, deregulation and shrinking the state even further.