As women slowly gain power their values and priorities are reshaping the agenda. A multitude of studies show that when women control the family funds they generally spend more on health nutrition and education - and less on alcohol and cigarettes.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.

I watched Italia '90 with my Mum and Dad and my brother you know leaping around the house when the penalties were on... It would be great to be part of that to have that kind of impact.

Greatness in the last analysis is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.

The Internet: transforming society and shaping the future through chat.

The challenges of change are always hard. It is important that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this nation and realize that we each have a role that requires us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future.

I mean the shoe - there is a music to it there is attitude there is sound it's a movement. Clothes - it's a different story. There are a million things I'd rather do before designing clothes: directing landscaping.

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources like artists because art and music allow people a certain freedom.

I guess lyrically they're similar because they're talking about escaping the kind of misery that likes company. 'The Last One Alive ' for me is very simple. It's just about alienation really that causes anger.

I thank you God for this most amazing day for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.