You find most journalists now are on all these social networks. They’re all about creating… they want a direct relationship with their audience, in a… - Heather Brooke

The transparency law they'd passed earlier that applied to everybody else, they tried to keep it so it didn't apply to them. What they hadn't counted on was digitization, because that meant that all those paper receipts had been scanned in electronically, and it was very easy for somebody to just copy that entire database, put it on a disk, and then just saunter outside of Parliament, which they did, and then they shopped that disk to the highest bidder, which was the Daily Telegraph, and then, you all remember, there was weeks and weeks of revelations, everything from porn movies and bath plugs and new kitchens and mortgages that had never been paid off. The end result was six ministers resigned, the first speaker of the house in 300 years was forced to resign, a new government was elected on a mandate of transparency, 120 MPs stepped down at that election, and so far, four MPs and two lords have done jail time for fraud. So, thank you.

The oppression of women is key in fascism because insecure men don’t feel they have what it takes to attract and maintain a relationship with a woman. They believe the only way to get a woman is through manipulation or force. Why would a free woman with choices and resources, choose them? In their mind, they wouldn’t, so their solution is to take away freedom, choice and resources from women. This is also the driving insecurity of patriarchy, which is a form of fascism.

I used to be suspicious of happiness. It’s not that I yearned to be unhappy, but too often the quest for happiness was, to my mind, tied up with delusional thinking. It involved putting on blinkers, so the darker, sadder, more disturbing aspects of reality were blanked out. I’ve always had a ravenous curiosity for truth. I want to understand life and get to its essence, so putting on blinkers was not for me.