What single thing would improve the quality of your life?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Keir Starmer said elsewhere, not written here
Having more time to spend with Vic and the kids.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2023 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 206 →
Paul Merson English footballer and pundit
Nothing, because it’s up to me how I feel. I’ve been a millionaire three times and I still wanted to kill myself.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 January 2023 source ↗
Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man. But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. The growth of alternative mental interests is a long process. The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall on good ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed. To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.
Recorded Essay first published in the Strand Magazine in 1921–22 and collected in Amid These Storms, 1932, Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime, Project Gutenberg Canada, 1932 source ↗

More from Keir Starmer

View profile →
Question If you could edit your past, what would you change? Failure & regret
My mum died in her early 70s, and for the last six or seven years of her life she couldn’t move, didn’t speak. By the time our children were born, she was too ill to communicate. I haven’t many regrets in life, but I do regret that they never got to know her, even though she was still alive for a few years. They couldn’t see her warmth, her spirit, her courage.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2023 source ↗
Question How close have you come to death? Death & what remains
Before I was DPP, I did a lot of work trying to get rid of the death penalty in various countries, and one was Malawi. We’d been in court in Zomba and had to get a plane in Lilongwe, about 200 miles away. We got a local taxi: the guy changed his wheels for the journey because the car wasn’t roadworthy and then hurtled at speed, mostly on the wrong side of the road. I’ve never been so terrified.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2023 source ↗
Question Which moment embarrassed you most? Failure & regret
When I was appointed director of public prosecutions, I had a government car and visited the security services. When I came out, I got into the back of what I thought was my car, but it was somebody’s private car and they told me in no uncertain terms to get out. I had to reverse out with as much dignity as I could, with the head of security services watching.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2023 source ↗

More on daily life

Also answered this

Jeremy Vine, Zack Polanski, Caroline Lucas, Samira Ahmed, Jon Snow, John Prescott

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer