Quotes from Dawn Foster

The human cost of austerity goes far beyond the period in which a country's economy endures those methods.

Women can be as destructive, possessive and prone to rage as men, it turns out: but discovering that is what terrifies them, while exhilarating women.

Modern life undermines any attempt at building communities and making connections with people without commerce.

Many people are unable to see friends and family as often as they'd like due to the cost of rail travel.

Illness, especially chronic illness, can be very isolating. Not only does it limit how and when you can socialise, it causes you to feel unattractive.

The bedroom tax turfed people, many of them disabled, out of their homes, while the government disseminated myths about people living it up in council houses the size of small mansions.

Empathy is an uncomfortable force in politics.

If we have a right to healthcare, we should also have a right to the most fundamental of human needs: shelter.

Learning that Jeremy Corbyn had a fondness for cold beans, it's impossible not to think of him in 'The Young Ones.' Hippie, long-haired Neil?

Supporting and publicising the campaigns of smaller unions pressures bosses to accept workers' demands.

While, legally, universal suffrage has been achieved for all undetained citizens over the age of 18, many people still find it difficult to vote in elections.

Renters didn't used to be cursed: social housing offered millions of people a steady, safe and secure home for an affordable price.

Part of the failing of mainstream history has been a reverential air often appended to the colonial era, underpinned by a rose-tinted nostalgia for a lost empire.

Here's why people don't live on oats and water: if you're cash poor, you're likely also time poor, and speed is of the essence when your job starts at the same time as your children's day at school.

Joining a union makes it more powerful and in turn strengthens the rights of all workers.

As long as almost no new social housing is built, gross inequality will persist, and class structures will grow ever more constraining.

Human life is fragile, and the threat posed to individuals in politics cannot be overlooked.

Many regard freemasonry as an 18th-century boys' club, all funny aprons and comedic handshakes. That's good for the masons themselves, but it's our mistake. The most senior figures are listed, but surely that's a sop because, all the while, the vast majority of lay members, 'the brotherhood,' remain anonymous.

Codes and signals are as important as explicit messages, and the two are linked. The bore pressing someone to tell them 'where they're really from' will see themselves as different to the aggressive stranger barking at someone to 'get back to their own country,' but the subconscious, if not explicit, message is the same.

Technology can help us connect to people and viewpoints we'd never otherwise experience: using it as a way of avoiding awkward but straightforward conversations that are part of everyday life just increases our isolation and disconnection from each other.

The police have spent years pursuing Islamic extremism while too often overlooking the growing violent threat posed by the far-right.

Psychologically, it's difficult to ever shrug off the effects of extreme hardship or poverty, family bereavement, chronic ill health or the memory of violent conflict.

People never know what to do with women who write, especially about lust, in a way that isn't sanitised and held back.