In politics, they found there were not enough females in the House of Commons, so they came up with the idea of shortlists having to have women on them.
And think of how we challenged the idea of a male dominated Parliament with All-Women shortlists and made the cause of gender equality central to our government. We were right to do so.
I'm not going to play politics on the floor of the House of Commons.
When I first came to the House of Commons and walked out into the lobby, men sprang to their feet. I asked them to sit down since I'd come to walk around. I didn't want them doing me favours.
I studied politics and economics at Bristol, and people always assumed that I'd go into politics or a non-government organisation when I left. I might well do this later on. I'd love to represent a West Country seat in the House of Commons.
My idea of what was going on in politics was driven by activism. I came out when I was 17, and right away I started working in the AIDS activist movement. For me, politics was about getting drugs approved and getting prisoners access to the same kind of drugs that you could get on the outside. It was about getting needle exchanges approved. That was politics. These were policy problems that were killing people, and we were trying to get them changed.
Why consider debates in the English House of Commons in 1628 along with documents on American developments in the late eighteenth century? The juxtaposition is not capricious, because the Commons during this period generated many of the ideas that were later embodied in the government of the United States.
In our house, everyone's opinion is welcome. I grew up in a house where everything wasn't when it came to politics or religion.
If ever I left the House of Commons it would be because I wanted to spend more time on politics.
Most women do not have [abortions] with some sort of party going on. It is the hardest decision that a woman ever has to make . . . One of the reasons we've had to make this decision is because so many women were found bleeding, dead, with hangers in their bodies because they were doing it themselves. The idea of this was to make it safe and clean - that was the reason the law came into effect.
Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give they a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling court, and let me have but an unfettered press. I will defy them to encroach a hair's breadth upon the liberties of England.
I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my fathers house to believe in democracy. Trust the peoplethat was his message.
The only newspaper in our house when I was growing up was the Daily Mail, and we would never have dreamt of discussing politics around the dinner table. So my involvement in politics came about through activism.
Interestingly, one thing I've found that neither women nor men give up on is the idea of men as protectors. Even in cases where the woman is earning more, they'll often tell me that if there were a fire or something, they would expect the man to be the one to protect them.
The Valkyries were an idea that my boss and I came up with when, at the comic shop one day, I mentioned how great it would be if there were a girl gang for women working in comic shops.
I'd be at someone's house or be up on the roof all day and I'd get lonely - stir crazy - and talk radio became this soothing voice in my life. But the idea that I was making $10 an hour and stacking drywall while these guys were making a few hundred thousand, and they were having a party, and there were Playmates and there were good times, I just couldn't imagine it.
When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.