Given that GPs are essentially a private part of our health care system, providing services independently of the rest of the health service, NHS England is supposed to take a strategic approach to co-ordinating GP practices.

Putting roadblocks in the way of legitimate strike action only increases the likelihood of more wildcat strikes, which in turn will make it that much harder for employers to address legitimate grievances, given that they'll lose the ability to negotiate with recognised union leaders.

It's often been said that politics in Islington, in many ways, begins and ends with housing, and it's not hard to see why. Despite the borough's image of exclusivity - the stereotype that it's all Georgian squares and cappuccino bars - the reality is much more complex.

Food banks have become such a powerful symbol in part because they're inescapable.

When upmarket shops like Waitrose collect contributions for local food banks, they serve as a constant reminder to those of my constituents who are lucky enough not to have to worry about where their next meal will come from that those less fortunate than themselves are increasing in number, and suffering more than ever.

Whatever people's backgrounds or values, a society where more and more people face a daily struggle to house, clothe and even feed themselves and their families cannot possibly be the answer.

If we were to allow the Chris Grayling and his cronies to tear up the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights from which it is derived, we would set back the cause of victims' rights by decades.

For centuries, the courts took the view that preserving the discretion of the authorities trumped the rights of victims to hold them to account. It was because of the Human Rights Act that this began to change.

The Human Rights Act has not just given a voice to victims, but to the families who have to fight for the victim where the victim has died.

The Fraud Act 2006 makes it perfectly clear that Libor rigging is prosecutable as a criminal offence.

The Human Rights Act is not a terrorists' charter. It enables ordinary citizens to seek redress when the government breaches fundamental freedoms enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights such as the right to a fair trial, the right to life and free expression.

It's unfortunate that the U.K. and Europe don't have the kind of culture which esteems legal protections enforced by the courts in the same way as, for example, the U.S. does.

Our courts' decisions do not permeate the public consciousness - we have no equivalent of the Brown v Board of Education ruling which outlawed racial segregation, or of Roe v Wade, which enshrined a woman's right to choose not just into law but into the public imagination as well.

While scrapping the HRA would severely curtail people's ability to seek legal redress in U.K. courts for violations of their fundamental rights, the Tories' threat to withdraw the U.K. from the ECHR are far more frightening.

When you've made a mistake, you have to admit you've made a mistake, and correct it.

If I had a row with my husband, it's not going to work my saying, 'Right, if you don't do what I want, I'm going to walk out.' It doesn't work on any level. What you do is you go in and you say, 'I have a problem. You have a problem. Let's try and sort this out together.' You don't come to an agreement with people who you're falling out with badly.

I don't think we should be undermining our democracy.

I don't think you negotiate with people by going around telling them that they're like Nazi guards or it's all about prosecco.

There's a particularly nasty element when lots of men get together sometimes.

We got evicted from our house in Guildford. We were chucked out and had nowhere to go. We ended up in social housing. And it was very hard for my mum. My brothers were five and three.

Mum was on benefits for a few years. Then I failed the 11-plus and I went to the secondary modern. And that was hard because the expectations were so low in the school.

Yeah, it is particularly upsetting to be called, whatever it was, sneery, or a snob, given the background I have.

To give him his credit, I never thought I'd say this, but Donald Trump was talking about the importance of investing in jobs and infrastructure and in the economies across the country, not just the main cities, and that's right.

I think there are many people on £70,000 who may well feel that their circumstances are such that they are not rich.

This sounds ridiculous, but my political inspiration is not Marx or Engels or ­anything like that. It was my mum.

I was born into the Labour party. I was delivering leaflets by the age I could reach the letter box.

I've been in politics a long time and the only way you survive is by getting the hide of a rhino.

Everybody gets paranoid about deselections. I do.

I wear the chips that I have on my shoulder with pride.

You can take the girl out of the estate, but you can't take the estate out of the girl.

You have to be very poor and desperate, or very rich, or lucky, to live in Islington. We don't have the people in the middle, the people who serve the community.

People like to think about MPs in very crass terms: you're either an uber-loyalist babe, or you're a rebel. There isn't any grown-up room to be thoughtful. There isn't space in public debate for that.

I thought of 'The Big Sick' as a placeholder title, to be completely honest. I've grown to love it.

Betrayal can be extremely painful, but it's up to you how much that pain damages you permanently.

Divorce is one of the most destructive, emotionally traumatic experiences a human being can go through, no matter if you're the instigator or the recipient. It's hard, and it hurts, and it takes a long time to feel normal again.

Your life story is a gift, and it should be treated as such.

When we each focus on being the dominant force in our own universe rather than invading other universes, we all win.

I'm tired of hearing about 'Damages,' I don't care how life-changing 'The Wire' is, and I don't want to hear another word about 'Battlestar Galactica' or its super-awesome ending.

I had a tightly knit group of female friends in elementary school - we called ourselves the Sensational Six.

I don't remember being put into the coma, but I do have a lot of weird memories from being under. This may be because I was in a coma via medicine rather than trauma. That time period played out for me as one long rambling dream where I was at a hospital to visit my boyfriend, who I thought was in an accident.

When I was young and less wise, I thought that being a feminist meant being independent. It meant not sacrificing your needs for anyone else's and not relying on anyone else for even a smidgen of your happiness or well being.

In Hollywood, it seems that the people least successful at being married are the ones most eager to tie the knot over and over again.

Marriage is not a magical potion that serves to amplify adoration, reduce deep-seated feelings of resentment, erase fears of commitment, or answer questions about whether or not this is the right move. Marriage is a ceremony that cements your current bond to another human being, and while that's a huge thing, that's all it does.

As my marriage was slowly dissolving into silent meals and awkward nights of avoiding conversation, I started pondering an unmarried future and wondered if I'd ever be able to hack being single again.

Marriage will not change your spouse. It will not make him or her more mature, more loyal to you, or better at housework.

Your wedding day is supposed to be your big day, and yet a lot of engaged couples find that instead of creating an event that will be important to them, they're dodging through a minefield of modern etiquette traps.

Stays at the in-laws' aren't inherently sexy.

Sacrificing your relationship for your career sounds noble and romantic from the outside, but the reality is that it can create a pattern of self-destruction that will ultimately burn you out on the career you've worked so hard to build. It's a trap and, for some, an easy way out of having to maintain relationships under stress.

Women compete, compare, undermine, and undercut one another - at least, that is the prevailing notion of how we interact.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I imagine a lot of married and divorced people have insights to share about how they felt during their engagement.