QUOTE UNQUOTE

Labour put up taxes like donkeys have fleas - John Major

He has got to stop trying to balance everything - John Townend, Tory Euro-sceptic, on Mr Major's approach to the beef ban

Anybody who believes we are going to modernise the welfare state without making tough choices is wrong. That is not what new Labour is about - Gordon Brown, Shadow Chancellor

I and my colleagues spent nearly pounds 250,000 of taxpayers' money between 1991 and 1994 on observing newts - Prof Herbert MacGregor, head of zoology, Leicester University

What the loyalists do best is kill Catholics, and that's the threat hanging over people at this time - Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president

We are net contributors to the EU, costing billions yearly. Anyhand- outs to Britain are foreigners' decisions about how to spend some of our own money - Lord Wyatt of Weeford

He loses interest. He doesn't sit and watch it the whole time. He's not like us - Phyllis Bell of the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Portland, on a whale who has a 32-inch TV to keep him mentally stimulated

"I have been sentenced to six weeks in a pub, it could be worse" - Nigel Nelson, political editor of the 'People', who set up office in the Red Lion after being banned from Parliament for 20 days for allegedly disclosing security information