quotes of the week

They think there is going to be some very big win that is going to change their lives. That is a world of fantasy that does not help people.

David Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool, on low-income Lottery players

The House of Commons is surely the biggest village hall of them all.

Trevor Taylor, producer of 'Gardeners' Question Time' on broadcasting the programme from Westminster

There are one hundred thousand million suns in our galaxy and over a hundred thousand million galaxies in the observable universe. So I don't think we should consider that anything any of us do is of overbearing importance. John Reid, Labour MP

[The broadcast] would have to be moitie-moitie, wouldn't it?

The Queen, asked to appear on Canadian television by a hoaxer claiming to be the Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chretien

What is this country coming to when a husband can be separated from his wife and family and thrown out of the place he has called home for 30 years?

Rodney Bickerstaffe, associate general secretary of Unison, after the deportation of a Nigerian whom campaigners had battled to keep in Britain