The TUC's new slogan 'a future that works' sets a profound challenge. Austerity and rapid deficit reduction is failing in its own terms but even at its best it is short-sighted muddle-through politics with no vision of a new economic model.

I know people will think it's funny because I've done glamour modelling in the past but I felt embarrassed about my body and just wanted to cover it up.

Ray Bradbury is for many reasons the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be should be and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible willing to tolerate and to teach happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

There was really no friendship in modeling though a certain amount of warmth comes from running into models you know on shoots because you end up in so many unfamiliar places from Alaska to Africa.

It would be too frightening for me to consider myself a role model. But I like the idea of not being afraid of letting your imagination rule you to feel the freedom of expression to let creativity be your overwhelming drive rather than other things.

The liberals think government exists to fix what's wrong with America. They find fault with our Constitution our economic model and our core values. We disagree with the premise of their argument. We believe there's nothing wrong with America that an extra dose of freedom won't cure.

America is a model of force and freedom and moderation - with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.

I swear I want to be a food model.

With nine degrees of warming computer models project that Australia will look like a disaster movie. Habitats for most vertebrates will vanish. Water supply to the Murray-Darling Basin will fall by half severely curtailing food production.

I have a lot of trouble understanding all the detail of finance and administration - but if you combine intellectual and professional capacity with a social conscience you can change things: countries structures economic models colonial states.

When I was young I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.

I'm learning as I go. I don't know everything. I never had anybody to look at nobody ever taught me and where I'm from I didn't have any famous role models.

But things move in circles: one minute it's the models who are famous then it's the actresses then it's the designers.

It's very difficult today for girls to become supermodels. There is a lot more competition a lot of countries in the East have opened up so there are many more models than there were in the Nineties. Now they have to compete with famous actresses but also with say reality stars to be on the magazine covers.

I made my living being 20 or 30 pounds heavier than the average model. And that's where I got famous.

I put my money in the bank: I have to think of life after modeling when I'm not famous any more.

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

Nobody in my family ever thought that I'd a be a model.

Faith Hill is a big role model.

By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability is simply attracting the best-educated most exciting young people into urban schools and keeping them there.

If I could sell 500 million records every time it would be great. But I've also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager in a very kind of model version of it.

We are a model country where gender equality is concerned.

I recognize that I have a unique position to be a role model to young girls because I am doing something that they consider glamorous which is acting and yet I took a time to really get my education and study mathematics and I think math is the cat's meow.

I'm thinking of slowing down on modeling and branching out to other things. I want to pursue some new and old dreams and start making them happen.