Owen Jones

“Britain's end-of-life and palliative care services are a national travesty. That a public debate on this crisis is so sorely lacking has much to do with our fear of confronting dying and death.”

“Because so many employers refuse to pay their workers a wage on which they can live - most Britons languishing below the poverty line are in work - the state has to spend billions of pounds a year on in-work benefits.”

“But surely no company is going to launch an advertising campaign if it thinks it will lose money; therefore, by definition, any social justice-orientated marketing is driven primarily by money, not advancing the cause of human progress.”

“My dad saw himself as part of a historic struggle for human liberation: he met my mum canvassing for the Labour party in a snowstorm in Tooting, he helped lead strikes, and recruited miners to socialism.”

“A huge portion of our lives involves the surrender of our freedom and personal autonomy. It is time in which we are directed by the needs and whims of others, and denied the right to make our own choices.”

“Yet we have learned from the Scottish independence vote and with Brexit what referendums do to our politics. They foster bitter divisions in ways that parliamentary elections tend not to do.”

“Yes, we need action to deal with online hatred and abuse. But let's make sure there are clear safeguards, or history will repeat itself, and peaceful opponents of an unjust status quo will suffer the consequences.”

“Austerity and economic insecurity have collided with the scapegoating of migrants and refugees, at a time when global instability and warfare have driven millions to flee violence and persecution, a minority of whom have arrived on European shores to be met with hostility.”

“Genuine democracy is frequently messy, not stage-managed.”

“We need to organise unapologetically anti-racist campaigns in our communities, ones that emphasise the fact that the blame for social ills lies with the powerful.”

“Britain's unions were broken and battered by Thatcherism and never recovered.”

“In the hyper-exploitative sector of retail and hospitality, workers are made to feel worthless - undeserving of a proper wage and genuine security.”

“What do we value more: an economic system which privileges profit above all other considerations, or the continued existence of human civilisation as we recognise it? A reckoning is coming.”

“Restoring our shared humanity isn't easy, not least because powerful interests - from media outlets to politicians - relentlessly seek to undermine it. But it is the only hope for a troubled world.”

“We are unlikely to spend our last moments regretting that we didn't spend enough of our lives chained to a desk. We may instead find ourselves rueing the time we didn't spend watching our children grow, or with our loved ones, or travelling, or on the cultural or leisure pursuits that bring us happiness.”

“The age of mass politics is one that demands radical solutions rather than tinkering.”

“For years, media moguls and campaigns bankrolled by the rich have fed the lie that migrants are the cause of injustices propagated by the powerful: the failure to build housing, the strain on public services by cuts, the lack of secure jobs, the decline in real wages.”

“As inspirationally tireless as hospice fundraisers are, these are services that desperately need sustainable central funding. This means addressing the social care crisis too, which has inevitable knock-on effects on palliative and end-of-life services.”

“In the 1920s prohibition in the US notoriously failed to tackle alcohol use, led to lethal forms of liquor entering the black market, fuelled organised crime and its associated violence, and wasted public money.”

“Tuition fees have formed part of a full-frontal assault on the living standards of a generation battered by a housing crisis, stagnating wages and slashed services.”