A Quote by David Blunkett

Being an MP is not a desperately hard life, like going down the pit or working in the steelworks - with which I am all too familiar, having been brought up in the city of Sheffield; and it certainly isn't badly paid compared with any of my constituents.
I was born in the UK and brought up by my single mother in Ghana, where being black was unexceptional. As an adult, I learnt to succeed in white Britain, going from a state sixth form, to Oxford university, to a well-paid job in the City, to becoming the first black Conservative MP to attend the cabinet.
I have never tried to fiddle my role as leader of the city of Sheffield, as an MP or as a minister.
Most of my life, everybody made more money than I did at the places I worked. In fact, when I've been an employee, I have never been anywhere close to being the highest paid person there, never. I was working hard. I was working hard. I was doing things I didn't want to do, that I thought I should do. I was getting up every day, going to work, did not phone in sick. Striving. Trying to get ahead, you know, doing what Obama says, working hard and applying myself and trying to get ahead. There was always somebody, there were always a lot of people that earned more than I did.
He described how, as a boy of 14, his dad had been down the mining pit, his uncle had been down the pit, his brother had been down the pit, and of course he would go down the pit.
The whole consideration of - ... am I being compared as such and such's grandson and son - that was minuscule compared to the problems I was having just working... I didn't have time to start worrying about who I was in the eyes of the public.
As an MP, I could hardly meet my constituents' genuine needs as the funds at an MP's disposal are meagre.
Bangalore needs a honest, passionate and hard-working MP, and I will be that MP.
An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.
Today I am so at home in Dublin, more than in any other city, that I feel it has always been familiar to me. But, as with Belfast it took me years to penetrate its outer ugliness and dourness, so with Dublin it took me years to see through its soft charm to its bitter prickly kernel - which I quite like too.
The city grows like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth.
I think I can define my entire life, virtuosity and business philosophy down to the core fundamental that I absolutely hate being told what to do. But like any artist or any human being out there, I desperately want to be loved, and I spend my entire life trying to balance those two facts.
I've flown in space four times now, so it's going to be hard in that respect, but I certainly look forward to going back to Earth. I've been up here for a really long time and sometimes, when I think about it, I feel like I've lived my whole life up here.
While unions did not play a part in my family life when I was being brought up, my early years were most certainly spent in a working-class community.
I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Am I lucky? Am I lucky that I didn’t die? Am I lucky that, compared to the other kids here, my life doesn’t seem so bad? Maybe I am, but I have to say, I don’t feel lucky. For one thing, I’m stuck in this pit. And just because your life isn’t as awful as someone else’s, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. You can’t compare how you feel to the way other people feel. It just doesn’t work. What might look like the perfect life—or even an okay life—to you might not be so okay for the person living it.
At school I got harassed so badly for being too tall, too thin, too pale - too everything that has gotten me where I am now, which is quite ironic.
I experienced it at Sheffield United, where there were rumours that Everton were coming in for me and I was going there for a million pounds. At that time, I am a kid who uses social media like Twitter. Sheffield United fans were saying they would walk and carry me there, wanting me to go. As a boyhood Sheffield United fan, that still cuts me deep.
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