YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Salmond

lines on the record: 48
first: 2011-01-16
most recent: 2011-01-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Probably Paul Robson, he was such a hero, and because the song is about fighting. Torbsen changed the lyrics of songs to make them more about. I mean Omar River, it changed, I keeps laughing instead of crying until. keep fightin' until I'm dying. That's not a bad epitaph.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, as my gulf game deteriorates. The thing has deteriorated more than anything. I can play reasonably well, and if I go into a bunker now, I'm stuck lost. If I get a sand wedge and those desert island. When I'm rescued I'll be gar”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“certainly progressed to independence. not for its own setting, not for let's be independence, so we can hoist the salt, let's be independent as we can. Better the lives of the Scottish people. That would be something worth having.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years and years ago, before I was in politics, but I was doing stuff for the Royal Bank, I was the Royal Bank economist. While I was watching this interview I was doing on television and some hair out of place. See that here? That reflects in you. Every time, she says, get the shoes polished. I said, what matters? She says, mind what your granny said.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“should be a bit more subtle than that. She often disagrees with me. I'm sure that's part and parcel of any marriage and debate about anything, but she would perhaps ask me to have another think about something. Of course, more because she's Comes from a background outside politics. says she's moved past me in the political spectrum she's zoomed past me and it's much more radical than I am now and all sorts of things”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the most thankless task of the world's political spouses, not just waives. In fukt and politics, you're in public life, you choose to be in public life. thank political spaces I've just got the roughest end of everything they have all the downside and Moira my wife I mean I've been my for thirty years as you say and she has done it with such grace and patience and been so helpful I've just been so lucky”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's Johnny Cash and San Quentin. This is just the most electric. I think I'm right. There certainly was either world in action or panorama did a program on this way, way back. We're talking end of the 60s. And I watched it one night and ever since I thought this is just the most amazing live performance. This is Johnny Cash, the man in black going to San Quentin, the toughest nut jail in the United States of America and laying it on the line.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The yeah it does, and it does it in his own way, but I've never been in any doubt about that. I had just the best possible upbringing and just a wonderful family friends. I'm so fortunate because a lot of folk don't get that.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do, and I have to say my siblings, my brother and sisters spend more time than I do, but I was in seeing them just before Christmas and we talked for a long time.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I was trying to make the point people were saying, do you ever make mistakes in politics? Yeah, of course you make mistakes. But I think for me at least the other side of life is the things you regret more, I suspect. I last time I met my mum she cooked tea for me. I was going to eat canvas and I was rushing to get out. I'd promised to go canvassing in my hometown for the candidate. And I've always regretted not spending more time as she always did everything for me, as she did for all her children. And I've always regretted not saying oh well, the canvassing can wait half an hour. I couldn't, and I'm sure. Full listing have had similar experiences. I think the real regret is what you didn't do often and that's the same for everyone.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“were about to hear as Carmatheson, just a voice to dream about. It was Capper Kayleigh. This track's famous because this was the first Gallic song which made it into the charts and it's a wonderful song.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the overwhelming body of opinion in Scotland certainly, but I think wider afield is that I'm responsible to the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish people and the Scottish judicial system. I'm not with enormous respect responsible to the American Senate. And, you know, the day that an American president or secretary of state comes to the Iraq inquiry and gives evidence in London might be the day that there would be an expectation that a politician from another jurisdiction should be accountable to the American Senate.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think if you take a decision for the right reasons, then you shouldn't regret it. In terms of forecasting, how long anybody's got to live with terminal cancel, every person listening to this program knows that is the most difficult thing. I mean, people understand that”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, two things one, you'd be wrong to say that all families know relatives disagreed with the decision. UK families agreed with the decision and have said so. It's true to say that most not all, but most of the American families didn't agree with the decision, and that's entirely understandable. But we had to take a decision which we thought was on for the right reasons in the interests of the Scottish judicial system, and we have clear criteria for the issue of compassionate release. And I think we had some substantial supporters internationally, as well as some substantial detractors.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in these things, anytime in politics tough decisions will come along. And what you just have to To be confident about, it should have made the right decision. I think Kenny McCasko, the justice sector in Scotland, made the right decision. And everything that comes out about this case vindicates the position that the Scottish Government took. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's going to think we're right. I mean, if you take a tough decision, lots of focal think you're wrong. Some people think you're right. But everything that is revealed shows that the decision we took was based on judicial principles of Scotland. What we said we were doing is what we did.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was a boy soprano, my hero was Paul Robeson, the greatest bass voice of the twentieth century, in my view, and I was so impressed by not just the singing but the whole story of Paul Robeson. I demanded my singing coats that I should be able to sing Paul Robeson songs. But can you imagine a boy soprano singing old Man River? But the Paul Robeson, the great rallying figure of black emancipation, and they also had the voice of the century, a voice in which deep bells rang.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, can I just have it absolutely clarified? I don't go about kicking puppets. I mean, you know, you can survive many things in politics, but the idea that you might at any stage kick a puppy is, in my view, unsurvivable. No puppy kicking from this first minister. Now, look, I like debate. And if you ask her a bus question, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a robust answer. You mustn't try and eradicate the cut and thrust from politics. I mean, that would make it a lesser profession.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a difference in context. When I became leader of the SNP we had three MPs three at Westminster. I now lead a group of forty seven MSPs in the Scots Parliament. When you're three MPs out of six hundred and fifty, if you want to be noticed, if you want anybody to be aware of your existence, you honestly have to have two things a good conceit yourself, as you would say in Scotland. You have to have a bit of self-confidence, and you have to be prepared to elbow your way to the front. So I certainly did that, and I think history will record it was reasonably successful in terms of getting the S&P noticed for the first time in a generation. When you're first minister, when you're charged with leading a country, then it requires you to do different things, and just occasionally you've got to bite your tongue.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting. People used to say that, but when Harley Emily says it certainly in Scotland, though, I mean, Nicholas Sturgeon, John Swinney, Michael Russell, these are all major politicians, and one of the big arguments we've got is there's now a team of people of stature who are leading the country. I think most people would recognise that.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let's put this way. I've never, to my knowledge or memory, thrown phones that had updated that I can possibly know. All I say is this. I mean, I think lots of politicians and lots of Scots have a bit of a temper on them. And it's born out of an impatience. But the one thing I'd say in my defence that virtually everybody who's worked for me in the entire time, not just in politics, but before that I've always wanted to stay working for me, so that must mean something.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the pessimists are Celtic thing, isn't it? It's not as much pessimism, it's the move from hopeless optimism to deeply imbued pessimism, and sometimes it can take a matter of minutes. Sometimes a few whispers.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's a connection between J. Rafferty and the proclaimers who are about to hear, and that's that J. Rafferty produced their first big hit letter from America, the album. And it's just a good example of a great musician helping the next generation to come along. And I'm going to be 500 miles. Every Scott, and lots of other folk as well, they rock to 500 miles.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I can tell you exclusively that I intend to vote in the same direction as my husband and my son. I'm in a high state of excitement down in London and I'll phoning my dad every fifteen minutes and that this procession because all the journalists had been at the press conferences he had smelt a story so I'm phoning up and saying what's happening what's happening and my dad says listen she's no had so much fun since the blitz Stop worrying and the morrow of the story if you're really in trouble. Trust your mother.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always think that so I thought we'll do a London press conference. It was going really well. And a weak guy from the Daily Record, which is the big selling newspaper in Scotland, pipes up at the back. Is it true your mum's a Tory? And I said something like, listen, what my mum does or doesn't do is between her and the ballot box. But of course I knew what was actually going to happen. It was if he can persuade his mum, then how can he persuade the country? So I was in a state of panic about it because nothing really phases me in politics. But your family is a bit different. So I phones up my mum and explains what's happened. And she says, don't worry about it, just leave it to me. So half an hour later, to which my mum replies, Well, it's true that I have been a conservative, but I'm very disappointed in Mr Major.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I've for every boy mother's the most important person. When you lose your mother, there's nothing, nothing in life ever prepares you for that. In our later years she went rambling, climbing mountains, she did one hundred and ten monroes, which are high mountains in Scotland, galloping over the great mountain peaks of Scotland, and she died, but natural causes, but she died at one of these mountains, which for her was perfect, what better place to go than someone you love. For the rest of us it was a big shock because we thought she was immortal.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jerry Rafferty in Baker Street. Jerry Rafferty died very recently and it was a wonderful, wonderful musician. It's a haunting, haunting tune and my last year at university when I heard this first one album came out. It's that sack solo which everybody knows.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instead of getting an easy job, I was shifting an for sight and I couldn't understand what my uncle was a foreman. I wasn't looking for any great preference, but I'd got the dirtiest, smelliest, most ridiculous backbreaking job in the entire bricklayers. And after about three or four weeks I was really in a bad way. And so I said to my mum, I had to think about things. After the holidays, I'm going back to school after all. And she said, that's fine. Of course, it was years later, years later. I finally found out, of course, she told my uncle, you make sure you make absolutely sure that he doesn't want to stay at the Brag Horse. And that's why I'd got the worst jobs.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when we weren't poor, but I was brought up in a council house in West Lowe and I mean, I've got two sisters and a brother, and every single one of us got to university. Well, it wasn't easy for my parents to do that. I mean, that was a tough call, but it was something that they absolutely wanted it to happen. I had this notion when I was 15 that I wanted to go and work at Steen's brickworks and earn some money, like so many of my pals were doing, you see. And so I got a holy job at Steen's and Uncle was a foreman, and he could fix me up with a job. And so I announced this to my startled parents that I decided that for me it was Steen's backworks, you know. And my mum never said anything, if that's what you want, fair enough. So in the holidays, I couldn't understand it.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mum and dad had arguments I tend to spoke my mum and everything but the politics. But the contrast with my mum and dad was amazing. She was what you might call a Churchill Conservative. She thought that Churchill was the greatest man that ever lived and my dad wanted to hang him because of what he'd done to the miners. My dad was called Joe in the Navy after Stalin. But that was quite iconoclastic about these matters. It was a great contrast.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad's civil servant, as was my mother they met in the civil service, in the Ministry of Pensions office in the Livorgo.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet Walter Scott once, wrote a book called Tales from Your Grandfather's Kee, which was about Scottish history told as a grandfather to a grandson, and I got that from my grandfather. And of course it was like getting Braveheart, except it was much better, because my grandfather, for example, he told me once about how Bruce Robert the Bruce's men had retaken the Livgow Castle it was then from Edward I's armies and the way my granddaughter told it he told the story and then he'd start naming the folk who'd done it he would say and it was some Hamiltons involved and Davidson's and Oliphants now olives were the local bakers in the Livgow so I'm sort of four or five year old I've got this vision of the guys in the bake house dusting down the flat and charging up to the castle and retaking the castle it was just amazing stuff and made me very aware and conscious history and very conscious of Scotland of course that was the point about it”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Among the night visitors, this is an opera from Juan Carlo Minoti, the Italian American composer. So it's about a peasant boy and a single parent mother in Palestine towards the birth of Christ. And he's a cripple. They've got no food in the house, no wood for the fire. Things are really bad. And then events take a magical turn.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that the straight answer is no. Everybody made just the most incredible fuss of your spoilt rotten. But I know that it taught me how to handle audiences. And the thing I got out of my singing was the ability to handle an audience.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the most important thing. If you can second thousands of people when you're ten or eleven, then you're speaking in Westminster Parliament is nothing. Being a Scottish First Minister is nothing in comparison to that.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got four octaves, that's a boy soprano. And what happened about the Australian tour, my singing coach was great palace with the musical director of ABC in Australia, and he heard the part I did. Australia, but unfortunately I was, I think, 13 by then, and he was terrified my voice was going to break, so they sort of shipped me out to Australia and then find, instead of a soaring soprano, they had a half broken tenor. So I never got to go. And what I remember is the great joy I got and be able to perform.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was all right. I mean, I had a good voice. I mean, I could sing lots and lots of octaves, and I love doing it. I absolutely adored it.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or they might look at the state that Norway's in and say do we have a lot of comparisons with that country or they might look at the state the United Kingdom's in and say why on earth would we want people in London to run our banks or to run our economy? Wouldn't we rather better to run our own show and make sure that the resources of Scotland benefit the people of Scotland”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that depends on the people in every sense, it depends on the people in the election this year, the Parliament they choose, but if we are in a position to get a referendum vote through the Parliament, then we'll do it. The destination is as certain as anything can ever be in politics. The timeframe depends on the wishes of the people.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I disagree, I think we're closer never. When I was in politics people told me you never have a Scottish Parliament. And then they told me there'll never be an SNP government in that parliament. And now that the same people tell me Scotland will never be independent now, I think given the were wrong in the first two, they're wrong in the third as well. We've never been closer.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“political life was racing before me, but it was just a great moment it was a chance for a new direction in Scotland and a chance to strike out for the future.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you get something that you've thought about for a long time, but it's never happened, and then it happens. It's a sort of strange, almost, I mean, apparently according to everybody, I look very calm and collected and cool. I wasn't feeling particularly calm and collected. I shouldn't explain in the Scots Parliament, you don't know your first minister until the Parliament votes. It's not like down here, although it was less so this year, obviously, or last year, when there was a hung parliament, therefore there was a bit of postmatch excitement. In the Scots Parliament you never know you're going to be First Minister until the vote happens in the Parliament, which either makes you or doesn't make you the first minister.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was a boy soprano, and I sang lots and lots of burn sons because my singing coach Beeser Brown was a Burns fanatic, and that's basically how I got introduced to Burns. And that's one of the most beautiful.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, while I'm in the I don't know, I'm in I don't know what percentage of songs are love songs but it must be the majority. First up is my view the best love song ever written. This is Robert Burns Aphon kiss and performed by Anlon Gillis, one of Scotland's many outstanding female voices.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The major problem with Ministial Carves is that it's your best opportunity to phone people. So the music gets interrupted by the phone call, the politics gets in the way of the music.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love music. I used to the times I had most time for music when I was doing a lot of driving, between meetings and things. But music has been a huge part of my life right since I was a wee laddie.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in the company of Clarissa almost certainly, but then you don't get much look in, do you? But having dinner, then that's a different matter altogether.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of thrill in the game. I think most politicians, certainly good politicians like the game, they like the chase, they like the activity, they like the art of politics. But unless you're aiming for a goal, it's all meaningless. And I think a lot that's wrong with politics now, it's not the standard of politician, it's the standard of ideas that are very, very few politicians who actually have a goal in mind. Now, I mean, if you go back a generation, then people in the Labour Party believed in socialism, they believed in the new Jerusalem. So if you lose your end goal, then it does make the art a bit meaningless.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She'll show him more charmer than Bully. I think politics you're doing a combination of things, and I think charm is more essential than bullying.”
2011-01-16 · Desert Island Discs · Rt Hon Alex Salmond · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source