David Blunkett People Quotations

Nothing is more important for young people than enhancing their life chances, liberating their potential and encouraging their contribution to a globally competitive and modern economy.

Much extremist activity falls short of directly inciting people to violence or other crimes and so is not caught by laws on incitement. Neither does the Public Order Act, used to protect groups of people from harassment, deal with the problem.

Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.

Let's not allow the voice of the people to be overwhelmed by the siren song of those who opposed regulation, who demanded that government should stand aside and let finance and business run the show.

If you don't create a sense of order and stability, if people do not feel secure, then progressive politics is dead. That is a fact of history. The right has always emerged supreme when destabilisation and insecurity prevail.

We must draw on our early roots and remind people why the Labour party was created and who it sought to represent. We have never been a sectional party promoting self-interest, but instead a force for engaging self-reliance and self-determination.

Children whose parents return to study do much better at school. Offenders who persist with studies are much less likely to reoffend. The national mental health strategy recognises the important role adult learning can play for people recovering from mental illness.

We've got to get back to old-fashioned politics that's in touch with the people we seek to represent and to avoid self-inflicted wounds.

My job as Labour Home Secretary is to ensure people are prepared to listen to us when we take on our opponents across the political spectrum.

the state has a role in helping people through rapid economic change. But not as a permanent safety net.

People from all over the world were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. They came from many different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu believers were killed together as they worked in the towers.

The economy of our country, international trade and the free transport of people would have all been completely disrupted. ... This would have been a catastrophic thing to have done.

It is feasible for someone who comes from a privileged background to understand the privilege they have had and to use the formal political arena in a way that would disperse power and engage with people in their own lives.

Simple numbers of people of a particular age tell us nothing about the condition of their health, the environment in which they live, and the support systems they can afford to pay for.

We have a media that presents every politician as being as bad as the next. There is no distinguishing between one good idea or another; no explanation of why constitutional change should be uppermost in the minds of the people I represent.

The people we are dealing with are sophisticated, well organized and entirely ruthless, but they are also in a position to exploit the very freedoms we seek to protect.

At this very moment in time there will be people making, breaking relationships, regretting deeply what they've done, and causing hurt, but that is a fact of life, and if we weren't full of emotion, we'd be automatons, and I don't think people want us to be that.

Strengthening our identity is one way or reinforcing people's confidence and sense of citizenship and well-being.

I can hear people smile.

I said it's impossible to have an amnesty without ID cards and a clean database, because you firstly don't have any incentives for people to actually come up front and register, and make themselves available, and secondly you have no means of tracking them.

I love the walk although my security team weren't too sure to begin with but I was anxious to be able to lead a near normal life. Whilst walking I do get the chance to meet people and keep in touch.

My view is that heads should roll. There are too many people in the system who simply don't care. I fully support Charles Clarke in getting to the bottom of this.

It's to do with people who are prepared to resort to violence and self-destruction in a way which can take us absolutely nowhere,