YouSaid · the spoken record

Carla Denyer

lines on the record: 44
first: 2022-11-11
most recent: 2022-11-11
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

“Based on where polling is at the moment, it doesn't look likely that we're going to have another Conservative government. The exact complexion of the new government will, you know, it's hard to predict at this stage. A lot's going to change probably between now and the next general election. But I would be very happy to work with other left-wing and centre-left parties to form a coalition government. I would negotiate hard to make sure that we learned lessons of where Greens have gone into government elsewhere. So in Scotland, for example, the Scottish Greens negotiated a really good deal with the SNP where they managed to get really firm commitments out of the SNP and reserve the right to publicly differ on areas they disagree on, like North Sea oil and gas. And so it's absolutely possible that we could have Greens in government after the next election.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm standing in Bristol West, which is the constituency that I stood in last general election as well in 2019, where I came second and got more votes than any Green has ever got in the UK, other than Caroline Lucas in Brighton. And we have every chance of getting me elected as the first Green MP in Bristol next time around. Especially, I was just going to say, especially with the boundary changes, which have just been announced, which...”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Ukraine is a sovereign country and has an absolute right to defend its borders. And Russia has breached those and has invaded Ukraine. So it's absolutely right that Ukraine should be able to defend itself and that the international community supports Ukraine in doing so. But I feel that's quite different to being in favor of wars. I want to see the world move towards rather than mutually assured destruction and threats of violence to solve problems. I want to see a global security architecture and maybe the UN could be the beginning of that. Where the default is solving things through negotiation more than it is currently.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, and you don't have to look as far as Germany to see examples because a sister party, the Scottish Greens, are in government in Scotland and getting great policies through such as free bus travel for all young people, bringing in a rent freeze and an eviction ban over this winter to protect people who are at risk of eviction because of the cost of living crisis. Those are the kind of policies that Greens in government can bring about. And I'm chomping at the bit to do the same in England and Wales.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, you know, I don't. The Green Party aren't in the business of being the thought police. People can differ from Green Party policy on certain areas. They can have different opinions. But I do think that it's very important to set a clear line where people not only have those views but act on them in a way that attacks other people, in a way that is prejudiced against trans people, denies them opportunities to speak, denies them opportunities to stand, deliberately misgenders them and so on.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was coming to the answer, but I just think it's really important to challenge that idea that trans people's rights and women's people's rights are at odds. I really don't believe they are, and I say that. Assis gender women.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's absolutely not incompatible to be a feminist and to want safe spaces for women. I'm a feminist, I want safe spaces for women. I don't feel any of those”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't go into the details of why individual spokespeople were or weren't given roles. Oh no, I didn't mean that. That's not something that I can talk about.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't anything to do with our deputy leader, actually. It was to do with a party spokesperson who's no longer one of our party spokespeople. Green Party policy is really clear. Trans men are men, trans women are women, non-binary identities exist and are valid. That policy passed by a healthy majority at our party conference and in fact every policy with it. Every policy that the Green Party has is set democratically by our members and every time a policy has come to conference around gender, around trans people's rights, access to healthcare.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we also have are on a learning curve about how to communicate our policies clearly. I think we're getting better at that now. I think that, yeah, like a few years ago, the leaflets that we would put through doors might be a bit too verbose, a bit too many words and a bit too philosophical. And I think we get better at you.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm happy to look in the mirror, but let me just answer your question as well. Part of the challenge is being given the opportunity to speak on the media. So thank you very much for giving us this opportunity. But for example, there hasn't been a leader of the Green Party on question time since 2019. And yet we have more councillors now than UKIP did at its peak, at which point Nigel Farage was on question time every couple of months. There's”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The political system certainly doesn't help. The first past-the-post system is very disproportionate in terms of the number of seats you win for the number of votes. And interesting fact, I don't know if you know this, the UK is one of only two European countries that still uses first past the post for general elections. The other one is Belarus, which is a pretty corrupt borderline dictatorship.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I acknowledge that that's the perception. I think it's increasingly at odds with reality. So, for example, in Bristol, where I'm a counsellor, I'm one of 24 Green councillors on Bristol City Council, largest ever group of green councillors in the UK, in fact. And our group of Green Councillors is really diverse. We've got quite a few councillors from working class backgrounds, very proudly so. We also have a great diversity in terms of age, sexuality, etc. And I think that is really good because it results in better quality decisions when you've got a wider diversity. So I agree that it's a challenge for the environmental movement, but I do think it's one that we are getting better and better at including more people in the discussion.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you've very nearly touched on there why I think that climate justice and economic justice have to be tackled hand in hand because we want to see redistribution. We want to bring in a wealth tax because that would help tackle the gross injustices in this country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. A wealth tax, quite a modest wealth tax is what we proposed at our conference. Just 1% only on wealth above £3.4 million and that would go to all of the stuff I've been talking about earlier installing more renewable energy, a nationwide home insulation program. That would help those on the lowest incomes. And we have other taxes.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is not about proactively pursuing economic degrowth so much as being agnostic about the particular measure of GDP growth, gross domestic product, because GDP is a terrible measure of how an economy is doing and how a society is doing. GDP goes up when we have more wars and it goes up when more people have cancer because it means that there has to be spending on weapons and on expensive cancer treatments respectively. I don't think anyone would say that those are good things and so we need a measure that reflects that.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we actually want is for certain sectors like renewables and insulation, for example, to grow and they need to grow rapidly in order to meet the needs of society. But that does mean...”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Views would probably differ, but slightly between different members. But I think we are certainly very sceptical of capitalism as an economic system.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the Green Party has always been The reason I join the party back in 2011 was because I realised that unlike the other political parties, the Greens understood that climate justice and economic and social and racial justice are inextricably linked. They have some of the same, the injustices have some of the same causes and many of the solutions are the same. And so they have to be tackled as one. Whereas the other parties, I feel that one or other of those is often considered a kind of bolt-on extra that when times get hard they can discard. So yes, I do talk a lot about fairness. In my role as a counsellor in Bristol, as well as being the proposer of the first climate emergency declaration in Europe, I've also had a big focus on looking after renters in Bristol. So Bristol has a very overheated rented market and so there's a lot that renters need help with in terms of housing security.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're both just starting to take off and were in the headlines a lot. There was really a much greater public awareness of the need to reduce carbon emissions at that exact moment. And I think that contributed to politicians from other parties feeling intense public pressure. I know that lots of councillors received multiple emails and phone calls and letters from their residents calling on them to support my motion in a way that doesn't normally happen with motions at local government level. And that meant that my motion passed unanimously and it now means that we can keep up the pressure on our council, which is a Labour administration currently, to decarbonise as fast as possible in order to meet the policy that was agreed a few years ago.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's what I was just going actually that Greens have been proposing ideas like this, albeit with perhaps a different name for a long time, and usually been dismissed and patronised and ignored by politicians from other parties. The difference this time in 2018, I think is partly that there are many more Greens in local government than there were in the previous years, so there's more of us there in the rooms where the decisions are happening, but also that it was really hitting the headlines in a big way at around the time that I was proposing that motion. I'd been working on that motion for about three months, but it just so happened that around the time that I was getting ready to propose it in November 2018, we had just had the UN report describing how incredibly bad even 1.5 degrees of global warming would be. We'd also just had a lot of extreme weather incidents in the UK and across Europe and the extinction rebellion movement and school.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Yes, so in 2018 I wrote and proposed a motion to Bristol City Council calling on it to declare a climate emergency, to bring forward the city's carbon neutral target date from 2050 to 2030 and to lobby the government for the powers and the funding necessary to achieve that goal. This is although the specific idea of declaring a climate emergency was pretty new, my motion, which was successful, was the first in Europe and since then hundreds of other organisations have followed suit. About three quarters of UK councils have now declared a climate emergency and many of them with ambitious carbon targets as well. However, the idea of trying to get your local authority to take more rapid action on climate change is of course something that green councillors have been doing up and down the country for a long time.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, one way of improving energy security might be to drill for more oil and gas, but that has such big negative consequences in terms of the climate and stranded assets. A much better way of ensuring energy security would be to reduce the amount of energy that people need to use in their homes by making them more energy efficient and in businesses as well. And that means that you're less reliant on foreign sources of energy because you can produce all of your own in the UK.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, I just want to finish what I was saying on the last point. Yes, the market is encouraging people to invest more in renewables. The trouble is it's not going fast enough. The climate science is very clear. We need to reduce our emissions very sharply. The UN has said that we are currently, there is no credible pathway to keeping within 1.5 degrees of global heating on our current trajectory. So they're not saying it's not possible at all, but they're saying we urgently need to change trajectory. And so that means that we cannot get away with sitting back and trusting that the market will sort it out for us. The government needs to intervene to accelerate that transition to renewable energy and insulate people's homes, which will bring down bills, of course, and mean that we need to use less energy in the first place. Now, you were talking about energy security.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when we're calling for stopping extracting more oil and gas from the North Sea, we're not then saying and then sit on our hands and do nothing. We're saying invest instead in renewable energy and in insulating people's homes. Renewable energy is around nine times cheaper than gas in the UK at the moment. So it's a much wiser investment. We can get more bang for our buck. The UK is a fantastic place to develop renewable energy because we're on an island and it's quite windy.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So no campaign is effective in isolation. It's part of the wider picture. But I think the divestment movement is really powerful for a number of reasons. Firstly, those big institutions, and it is often universities, councils, religious institutions. I was also involved in the campaign to get Quakers in Britain to divest its funds from fossil fuels a few years ago.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, the term is stranded assets because the vast majority of the oil and gas that is under the ground and under the sea cannot be burnt. And so it is financial folly to invest in more oil and gas extraction, which, by the way, is why we're opposing the current conservative government investing in more oil and gas extraction right now”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think it does. It's really powerful. And in fact, one of the experts that I was citing in the speeches I was writing and the documents I was submitting as part of my efforts to get the University of Bristol to divest was quoting Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England at the time, who was warning that investment in new oil and gas extraction at that time, which was 2015-16. Is fiscally unwise, even if you don't care about climate change.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was very, very obvious from watching the news and hearing what was coming out of the earlier climate conferences that the UK and the world was not moving anything like fast enough on carbon reduction. And I could see from my job and from watching the news that the barrier to moving at the pace we need to was not technology. I mean, you know, there are still some technological challenges that very clever people are continuing to work on. But the real barrier to moving faster was political will of those in charge. And so I joined the Green Party a few years after I started working in the Wind Energy sector, initially with absolutely no intention of becoming a politician myself. It wasn't even a twinkle in my eye. It was literally just to give them, give the Green Party a little bit of money and a little bit of my volunteer time to help get other people elected because I knew that the Green Party”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that is what I thought to start with, and indeed the work I was doing was about more accurately estimating how much energy a wind farm would generate or helping a developer decide how to lay out their wind farm, especially big offshore wind farms. And that work does help to bring down the cost of renewable energy. And so if they can make more money on wind farms, then they're likely to build more of them. However”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my parents are both scientists, and so I guess it's not surprising that I went into engineering initially. They certainly brought me up to give me a broad range of experiences. And I think that they're both people that get stuck in. So my mum would often joke that she must have mug written across her forehead because she always seemed to be immediately roped into volunteering for any organisation she was part of. So she was on the PTA most of the time I was going through school, for example, and I certainly seem to have inherited that gene because when I joined, first joined the Green Party in 2011, it was that I went to my first meeting less than a month later and I signed up to be the membership secretary of my local party”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I probably wouldn't say I'm absolutely 100% pacifist. Like I think that the UK is right to be supporting Ukraine at the moment, for example, but it is absolutely a philosophy of seeking peace and recognising that peace isn't just the absence of war. It is a proactive movement and it's hard work, you know, that takes decades. Quakers have often been at the heart of peace building work all over the world. And I really value that about Quakerism and about the peace movement. So I wear both.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wear the red poppy to remember service people who've fallen, of course, as many of us do, but I wear the white poppy to say never again and that we must work towards peace rather than just solving our disagreements through war and suffering. Is it as simple as that?”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I discovered Quakerism when I was at university. I got involved in campaigns on peace, on fairness and workers' rights with things like the Matriet Fair campaign and on climate issues in sixth form and at university. And then it was through some of the individuals I met in those campaigns. Actually, several individuals who I thought were particularly effective and driven and principled. And it turned out that several of them were also Quakers and that made that piqued my interest and made me think, oh, okay, maybe there's something to this Quakerism thing if all of these people I admire are members.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I didn't come from a political family at all, and I certainly wasn't very interested in capital P politics, party politics.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. So I went to a regular state school, but it was a really good state school. And in particular, this was during the Blair era where he had this super teacher program, I think it was called, basically recent Oxbridge graduates would be encouraged to go and teach in a state school for a couple of years before going off and doing something else. And my school received one of those. This teacher, Mr. Horgan, if you're listening, he set up lots of extracurricular activities that perhaps the other teachers wouldn't have had capacity to do alongside their jobs otherwise. And one of those was a debating society, which is very unusual in state schools. And so we learnt the skills of debating, you know, disagreeing politely using And I think that did give me experiences and skills that undoubtedly have proved helpful now.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I learnt that change is possible and that campaigning works. And even though I wasn't interested in party politics at that stage and had absolutely zero idea that I might one day be the leader of a political party, it undoubtedly led to a confidence in myself that I could bring about change. And then I got involved in subsequent campaigns at my university, getting my college to provide recycling facilities. And then when I got elected as a counsellor in Bristol”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, our sixth form canteen didn't provide those, and we thought they should. And so me and a group of my friends lobbied the college to change their suppliers. And initially, they said no because the contract supplied not just our sixth form, but a number of others in the region. And so they said it would be too difficult. But long story short, we didn't take no for an answer the first time. And in the end, they said yes, not just for our sixth form, but for all of the educational establishments they supplied.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's all happening around the time that I'm doing my GCSEs and A-levels. And I also was involved in a campaign called Make Trade Fair. So listeners who are my age or older will remember that fair trade, coffee and chocolate and bananas didn't used to be available in supermarkets. If you wanted to buy those products that were produced Paying people a decent wage, and in some cases, avoiding child slavery, which seems like a no brainer, but it was commonplace in those industries, then you had to usually go to a church hall for a particular two hours on a Saturday afternoon to get your fair trade chocolate bars.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. So I kind of got involved in campaigns on particular issues in sixth form particularly. I was part of the Stop the War campaign, so this was in the run-up to the Iraq war.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whether or not you agree with the method that protest groups use, the things they're calling for are rapid action on climate change to insulate people's homes, bring down their bills, which is good for reducing carbon emissions, but it's also good for lowering people's bills, which is really important in this cost of living crisis. The difference is the Green Party are proposing those policies in City Halls and County Halls across the country and increasingly in the London Assembly and in Westminster.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I definitely support their right to protest. I think that's a key difference between the Green Party and the other political parties that I think their right to protest is essential, whatever the concept and has an important role. However, that doesn't mean I agree with every protest that takes place, certainly not. I think some of them are quite well targeted and make their point well. I think others perhaps have not really targeted at the right people or the balance of disruption might not be what I would choose. But it's not for me to decide. I'm not a member of those organizations. My relentless focus is on getting more Greens elected because”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I'm the co-leader of the Green Party of England Wales. I'm not a member of Just Stop Oil or Insulate Britain or anyone like that. And so I really can't speak for them. You should invite them on if you want to. I know, but I'm not asking you to.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have taken part in climate protests and I do think that's a really important part of the mix. I guess part of the reason that I'm pursuing change through party politics is that I think that's where I personally can add the most value. I have a background as an engineer in the renewable energy sector so I understand the science. You know, I'm reasonably good with numbers and I think it's good to have people who understand the science and the maths in the decision making halls of power if you like to raise the issues and to ask the questions that need to be asked.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way that I'm pursuing change is through party politics. So I've not chosen to take that route myself. However, I do think there is a really important role for protest in any healthy democracy. You only have to look at the democracies that don't allow and stamp down on protest to see that that just doesn't make for a good society, for good political decision-making. But my focus as the co-leader of the Green Party isn't on protest in the streets, it is on getting fantastic Green councillors, London Assembly members and MPs elected at all levels of government to enact the policies that will tackle climate change.”
2022-11-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Carla Denyer One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source