"Team GB's success at the Beijing Olympics can, in part, be said to have been made in Manchester. For example, all the cycling medal winners trained at Manchester's velodrome, the National Cycling Centre."

"Being out and about talking to residents and representing their views is, in my view, as important to politics as the grandstanding that takes place in Westminster."

"As a relatively young woman - I'm 33 - I hope to one day have a family and already have commitments. If and when I'm elected as an MP, I would face a choice: take my family with me to London each week or be apart for four, maybe five, nights a week."

"There's a loss of faith in the banking system that for so long has been the backbone of prosperity and growth."

"Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest."

"Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient."

"We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves."

"It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country."