YouSaid · the spoken record

Christina McAnea

lines on the record: 45
first: 2021-05-28
most recent: 2021-05-28
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

“I just love it. I remember going one of the first operas I saw was Samson and Delilah and it was a friend of mine was in a ballot and she got two really cheap tickets to go into it was first time I'd been to the Royal Opera House just after I moved to London and we were right away up in the gods and it was Placido Domingo singing in Samson and Delilah and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I've never forgotten that and I love trying to recreate that feeling so yeah I do love it”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like Opera, yeah. I'm not that knowledgeable about it, but I love going to see the opera and I do like listening to it.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely I'm a real Grecophile so I love Greece and my husband and I have been going for 25 years we've been going to Greece not every year but most years with my children when they were younger and we would love to go to Greece later in the summer if we can so we're keeping our fingers crossed and we'll be able to go”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think probably most political parties have forgotten that, and we're so driven now by social media and by advertising and by people seem to be, they seem to get information from different parts of society these days. I think the Labour Party has to perhaps, and other political parties, have to think about the impact of their policies and the impact of what they're doing on individuals' lives and not just make assumptions that because this economically makes sense that it won't have an impact on individuals and I think it's always going down to remember what it means to those individual people who lose benefits or who don't get access to certain services what does it mean if your elderly mother doesn't get access to a particular service you having to give up work to go and look after that person it's always trying to think through what the impact is on individuals”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suppose it's my mother actually and what I learned from her was So many people make assumptions that low pay means low intelligence or that you're not very smart or that you've not been trained properly and actually nothing could be further from the All of our members are individuals, they all have individual lives, the working class are not a homogenous group, and you just have to constantly remind yourself that this is about people's individual lives and getting a decent pay rise can make a huge difference to those people. And that's one of the drivers for me to want to continue to be a negotiator.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I first became General Secretary I did an AGM, an annual general meeting in one of our branches. It was Lodian Health Branch in Edinburgh and I knew Steward asked me at the end, had any advice for new stewards and what I said was, and I really meant this is remember what brought you into being a trade unionist. Remember what it was, was it something that happened at work, something you saw that you didn't like and you thought, you know what, I have to step up here, I have to do something about it. And it's that passion and anger to stop bad things happening in the workplace that you should never forget. And that was the advice I gave him.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not just the words actually to come up with a costed plan for it. I mean I'd like the Tories to come up with a costed plan for it. I've got to the point now I don't care who does it, I just want somebody to do it. I want somebody to come forward, the government to come forward with a plan for the health service and I'm part of one of the founders of a group called the Future Social Care Coalition which is cross party, brings together employers, providers and trade unions and what we're arguing for is start with the workforce and build out because you just get so distracted by structural issues. You know, does it sit in the NHS? Does it sit in local government? How will it be funded? Is it direct taxation? Is it whatever? Actually start with a workforce strategy where you say this is the kind of workforce we need to deliver the care that's needed in this country. We need to pay them at this rate. We need to train them and then cost them.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I so hope so now. I can't tell you. I just feel if there's anything good to come out of this pandemic, surely, surely it has to be a recognition that we cannot go on with the care service the way it is at the moment. I mean, it's unsustainable in so many ways. And there's over 100,000 vacancies in the care service in this country at the moment. The turnover rates are shocking. They're around a third. And in parts of London, it's over 40%, which means every year four in ten people leave the service. So if you've got an elderly relative who relies on people coming in to care for them, they're probably seeing different people every week or every other week. That's not good for them, but it's not good for the service. It's things like during this pandemic, care workers have been dying at twice the rate they should have, taking everything else into account, all the other data that's there.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure that's the case though. I mean, possibly that was the case, they would come forward and tell us, but my understanding is there's still 100,000 vacancies. If anything, it's going to get worse because of Brexit. We've got people who've left the country. I mean, the nurse who looked after the Prime Minister just the other week there announcing that she was leaving this country to go nurse elsewhere because 1% pay increase just feels like an insult. And I think when you, when I speak to our members in health who work in the health service, and it's not just, of course, doctors and nurses who have been, of course, at the forefront of this, but it's the cleaners, the catering staff, the porters, the admin workers, all the people who keep the health service going, they're exhausted, utterly, utterly exhausted. Exhaustion is the one thing, the one word that comes back from them all the time. And they really feel they've stepped up.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I think there is a lot of public support for it. Certainly we've got a lot of support in the union. I think the public do support it. And we've got 100,000 vacancies in the NHS. There's a business case for it as well as a moral case for it.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I haven't negotiated with Matt Hancock because I'm no longer our head of health, but I imagine she has. But I have negotiated with senior government ministers in the past.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I've had it flung at me lots of times. The saving grace within the union movement is that no matter what you do as the lead negotiator, you have to have a hinterland. So you have to have We had a big member-led union, so even when I've been in leading the negotiations, I'm not doing that without the backing of a group of senior lay activists. So senior people who do the jobs that represent the vast majority of the members. So if I was in negotiating, I'd know that the people who are sitting behind me would be a senior technician, a nurse, a hospital porter, a cleaner. What we are discussing with the employers when I go back to them, if they say to me, no way, then that's it, that's the end of it. If they say to me, yeah, keep going, see what you can get on this, you know you're on the right track. So it's not me being the big negotiator, it's me being the representative of a group of people who work in the sector that you're negotiating on behalf of.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's what negotiation negotiation means reaching a position. Going in with a possession, but then negotiating your way around and the other person's got a position. So in a sense, compromise is built into it. It's about, I suppose, who compromises the most. And it's what you've got at the end of it something that's still an improvement. And better perhaps than you thought you could get out of it. You have to be pragmatic as a trade union official. You just have to be.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think to get a good deal, it helps if you like them because you can then build a sort of rapport with them. You can do the behind the scenes discussions with them. But you don't have to like them. I don't think it's essential. I mean, I'm not particularly friendly with them.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Strike? Well, not necessarily a strike, but yeah, you have to, there are times when you'll see things to employers about what members will or won't accept that may be true in some cases and may not be true in other cases, but you have to be convincing either way when you say it. They have to think”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And to an extent a bit of threats, but that actually is not what achieves things, in my experience, that's not what achieves things. What achieves things is what you can build up in terms of a relationship. Do they think you're serious when you're speaking to them? Have you got the backing of your members for a start? That's always an important one. And I suppose can you, to an extent, can you bluff with confidence?”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so you're trying to get a consensus among the unions so that you're stronger when you're pushing for a certain position. And so that kind of behind the scenes, trying to make sure you've got the best position you can get to when you get to meet the employers or the government, whoever it is you're negotiating with. And that's not about, there are times when it is necessary to be tough and hold your nerve and who blinks first and walks out the door and that.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure Ez and I think people have a strange idea of what negotiations mean as well. And I've been asked a few times and what do I think makes a good negotiator? And for me, it's about emotional intelligence. It's about being able to build a relationship with people and that includes the people you're negotiating with. So whether that's employers or government. But also it's about negotiating with your fellow trade unions because sometimes that's the most difficult part of it.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I suppose I did think, am I really the best person for this? It's a big job, it's a big step up because precisely we've been talking about the Labour Party, that's not an area. That was somebody else's job in the union. I didn't have to do that. I was the lead negotiator. I've come through the negotiating route. My big thing was how do you improve paying conditions in the workplace? What do we do? How do we make relationships with governments and employers to get the best deal for members?”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly for me I'm sure there was an element of is this really the job for me? I mean I haven't spent the last twenty-five years of my career thinking I want to be general secretary I've spent my last 25 years thinking I want to do a good job and what's the next job for me to do and so I'm not denying I've been ambitious and I've gone from more and more senior jobs within the union but I haven't had a plan of in X number of years this will happen and if there had been other people standing particularly another woman that I would have been able to get behind I may well not have stood the truth be told and even just Well, I think absolutely what you did say.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's shocking actually. And I was really surprised when I was standing that I was the only woman candidate. There was actually five of us who went through the process, although only four got into the ballot paper. And it was four men and me, almost the exact opposite of what it should have been given, the Unison's membership, which is 80% women. I was surprised that none of the other sort of groupings, the political groupings, put up a woman. Yeah, I'm surprised that we haven't had a woman leader of the Labour Party yet. I'm still that way. I feel it's still slightly shocking that we're still seeing the first woman to anything.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we've got a million women members. There's no other organisation in the country that comes anywhere close to that. I think the women's institute's got about, I might have got this wrong, about 250,000 members or something.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that had to be the top priority surely is dealing with them, and then to top it all, what is it, two weeks after they became leader, we went into lockdown. And would have been presumably a go round the regions, go around towns and cities talking to people, you know, getting ideas from people, that all gets blown out of the water because you have to then be seen to be dealing with the immediate crisis that the country's facing.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you can. I mean, I think my personal view is, you know, cares. I don't had that much involvement with the leadership of the party. I mean, I don't think I've ever had the conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, to be honest. Eunison backed him, and there was a lot of the stuff he said that I would absolutely support. But I think now with Keir Stammer, and again, someone I don't know very well, I've met him a few times. But I think you have to look back at the past year. I mean, he took over a party that had did the worst defeat since 1920.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it has to be a combination of both. Of course, you want a leader who's inspiring and passionate, but my understanding, and I know this because when I was standing myself to be leader of unison, I had some people who were part of my team and we were talking about where do I position myself, what's the image I want to portray. And a big part of I thought my selling, my sort of unique selling point was, I think, competence and experience. And I think you do need to be able to demonstrate competence and experience as well as having a passion and a vision for where you want things to go. So you do need both. You can't disassociate. I think one without the other just won't work.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure there are. I mean, I'm not an expert in that, but I suspect it's because I think the SNP tapped a nerve, and it was that feeling of Disassociation being ruled from Westminster by people who don't necessarily, even if they were Scottish, didn't necessarily understand the issues that you had in the kind of areas where I grew up. And having local politicians from another party who at least spoke your language seemed to understand what you were going through.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it did, and it is hard to understand why except the SNP, I think, positioned themselves very cleverly in, I don't even know if it was clever, it's just that people who went to the SNP, I think, had that almost socialist tradition for many of them. So the idea of, you know, when I was young, we called them the Tartan Tories. And I don't think you can say that about them now because they have quite a, you know, radicals too strong a word but they have a social policy that I think many people who support labour would be in sympathy with and once they started to gain ground then you could see why people who supported that social policy would go to them”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's hard for me to really come to terms with it, and I see it in my own family as well, people who I thought would never have voted anything other than Labour now voting SNP. And so many of my friends and family now vote SNP. But the thing is, I think. Well, I think it was a feeling of the needed change in Scotland as well, that idea that you needed something to change. And I don't think necessarily they were voting for independence, but I think that feeling that Scotland was always being driven by the Westminster agenda and as you know, we haven't had that many Labour governments. I mean, that's the reality. And even though Scotland at one point, I think, had, what, 50 MPs who were in the Labour Party, that didn't necessarily mean you had power in Westminster.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think by that time I had realised that, but I didn't join a party again until I was probably in my late 20s and I came to London and I'd been in London a couple of years and decided yeah I think I'll join the Labour Party.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There wasn't a moment, but there was. I'd been in it for maybe about, so that was about, I was 15, 16 when I joined. And then when I was in my mid-20s, it was all sort of, there was factions and they were all fighting each other. And I just drifted away from it. The meetings weren't enjoyable anymore. There didn't feel that there was a strategy to do anything. And I just drifted away from it.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I never wanted to be a politician. I never wanted to stand for office. It's never appealed to me. And if you'd ask me... I think Now, when I look back at it, I don't think I thought this at the time, but now when I look back at it, I think it's a thankless task, quite frankly, and I think I admire people who stand for the council and people who stand to be MPs, but they get so much stick and so much hassle, and it feels like they can't do anything right.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Extraordinary. Fantastic, and that's why at a young age I joined the Communist Party was my sister and her husband were in the Communist Party, or my sister's husband was, I'm not sure she was, and we went to see Jimmy Reed speak at Glasgow City Hall and it was one of these two hours walked up and down the aisles on the stage, off the stage no notes, just made this fantastic speech and there was people with clipboards going up and down the aisles signing you up for the Communist Party and I just signed it and that was it. I was in the Communist Party.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they wouldn't give a woman a TV without a male guarantor. And she probably could have got her brother or something like that to do it, but she was like, nope, that's it.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The news, and it'd be some Central African country that I'd barely heard of, and there'd be a coup and my mother would tell me the history of that country. Oh, you know why that happened? That's because five years ago when General So-and-so, I think, how do you know these things? She just had that wide-ranging knowledge of...”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, yes and no, neither of my parents ever joined a political party. They were both socialists. My father used to play cards with a guy who lived in Earry State. Who always stood for the Communist Party in local elections. And so we would, my mother and father would always support them and they'd always vote for him. And they were political, as in we always stop to listen to the news when it came on and they would discuss it. And they both had a very wide eclectic knowledge of things. So my mother was one of these people who I'm talking about. Was older, he'd be”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes it was my mother described it as a hand-to-mouth existence, so very much a kind of... You got paid on a certain day. I mean, she worked for the council and she sleeps. on a Wednesday always remember this Wednesday When And they stand out. We got a cake. And my father would get paid on a Friday. So again, the weekends. But it was that, by the end of the week, You Money, and you know, if a big bill came in, and I know this from our members today, that that's still the case for people that if you have that kind of low income life, Then any kind of big bill or unexpected expense or the kids going back to school and you need to buy them in new school. is huge. worrying because you just don't have people don't have savings Live those kind of lives”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And my mother was always very sympathetic, and they never divorced Catholics. When he was seriously Towards the end of his life, he was Back home to Glasgow. Kind of went to a home and was All up visiting them and seeing them, and when he died, he was buried from my mother's house, as it were. So it was still. There wasn't a big hard break, if you see what I mean”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dunkirk, and Eldest brother died and his Brother was taken prisoner. There's one of these apocryphal family stories that my grandmother And got a telegram telling her now. Son had died Then a few days later she got one saying her second youngest son was missing in action and then when the third telegram came which was from my father to say he landed in the south of England she fainted, couldn't be at all for it.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet I did. When I lived there, I think there was thirty thousand people living It's not even half that live there. It looks very different. There's now, of course, mixed housing. Now you get social housing and private housing there. When I lived there, it was entirely a councillor state. It had its own culture, I think, in many ways. And I, although we didn't have much money, no one around us had that much money, but there was still a big variation, as in there What can cost people who had good jobs, who had cars, who went holidays, but the vast majority of course were probably more like our family.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And our special needs school down the road. Later on Watched in Glasgow University Students Union shop, you know, delivering, it's not quite exactly public sector, but you know that idea. So yeah, throughout her career, she mainly worked in cleaning and catering were probably the two areas that she worked in.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was my mother was when I was in primary school she cleaned the local secondary school that my brothers went to and then by the time I got to secondary school she was a school meals worker.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's really easy to say, and I think once the government starts to put a squeeze on public sector funding, and you can already hear the mood change coming from government, you know, that kind of almost setting worker against workers. Well, at least you're Your members have had a job all through the pandemic, yeah, that's because they've been doing essential work through the pandemic. You can't now use that against them and say, therefore, you're not entitled to a pay increase. That's just not logical in my view and unfair.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a lot of the houses in my road are converted into flats. And where there was people out of top floor window. Banging pots and pans, and it was actually really nice to see that”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Applauding the people who work in the shops and the delivery driver. Months, nine months down the road. Of It What I don't want to see is the government.”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I know these people say it's weeks a long Politics, but I just feel whilst everyone Work as applauding healthcare workers”
2021-05-28 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Christina McAnea One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source