YouSaid · the spoken record

Grant Shapps

lines on the record: 35
first: 2019-10-03
most recent: 2019-10-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“He certainly did not say that to me, but there certainly are a hell of a lot of things to sort out, and I'm enjoying doing it, and I hope that we can bring the same success to the Brexit transport issues as has been, broadly speaking, the case with Thomas Cook.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love music, but I absolutely love what I'm doing right now. It's a bit of a secret, I shouldn't really say it, but I said to Boris, if you are going to include me in eating, offer jobs, if you are going to include me anywhere, please put me in transport. Transport, really? Why? Because I really got a passion about it. I am fed up with getting on trains late. One of the first things I've done is said rather than trains being five or ten minutes late, being counted as being on time, which used to drive me mad, now they're only on time if it's to the minute.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was in big order dynamite, which was with Mick years ago now. He is a big, as with so many families, my brother is a big remainer. I voted Remain, but I accept that it's a kind of democracy thing, so we always have lively discussions.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Says I sort of spend my time apologizing to Mick. I always imagine it must be incredibly embarrassing having a Tory minister as a cousin. And then he apologizes to me for some sort of rock and roll kind of should never have happened type of activity that's gone on. So we just have a sort of apologetic both ways round relationship.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, okay, good point. Yeah, luckily quite an eclectic family with quite a broad range of interests usually at work.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's going to happen because it didn't happen in March either. And actually the system has, if you like, degrees of resilience. So if this bit doesn't work, what we've put in place is, ah, well, we'll drop that back to this. Oh, we'll drop back to this in the case of medicines, stores, but also keeping these routes running and then also making sure we have a freight contract in place.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That time, which is only a few weeks ago, I'll give you an example, for example, one of the things that it's based on is only 20% of exporters and hauliers turning up at the coast ready to export. Well, if after all this time, we can only get two out of ten people turning up. So clearly that's not the issue. Let me answer your first question, though, which would be the best and the worst things. I think I would say the readiness at a lot of the other ports, and there are, by the way, dozens. Actually, there are about 400 ports in the country, but there are a dozen supports that can carry goods, is much better than people realize we've been quietly working with the vorts and helping to get them ready, putting money into it. So that would be one thing. The other thing is, just the extent to which unless you really guide it, often think times things don't happen. So there was some road works that needed to be completed, obviously, by the thirty first, and a fairly obvious thing, unless you actually spot these things, they become problems. That's really what I've done with the Thomas Cook things, try to spot the problems before they occur.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, everyone now seen these yellow hammer documents, which are the thing called the reasonable worst case scenario. And I look at that, and that's absolutely true. If you did nothing, that would be the reasonable worst case scenario. The point of this is that we're not doing nothing. We are preparing. We are ready. We get on a plane and the pilot says, listen carefully to this announcement, and they read out in the enlightenment, we land on water, take out your life jacket. People don't not fly again because they, my goodness, there's a high chance I'm going to land on water. It's the worst case.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Complexity there are. So actually, it really segues back into the previous conversation very well. If you are going to do something, as you say, sounds like a binary, what are all the complications, then the course of the one thing you want to know under that plaster? What are all of those individual sort of tiny microbes, large and small but many of them decisions and outcomes which would come from leaving, for example, without a deal? And I've spent now three months sat on the exit operations or exo committee in the Cobra room every day for every weekday pretty much for the last few months. So I now know what is under that what is under there.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing certain in life, we all know that. But here's the thing the country voted three and a half years ago, forget Boris, forget everything else. If I'm having a conversation with someone as I often do, on the train journey in, let's say, on the great northern line where I'm now responsible for the things I've been cursing about, the trains being late for all these years, there is something that people inevitably end up saying, whether they're remainers like me or levers. The conversation just eventually turns to which I'm going to say, can we just get this thing done? Can we just get it out of the way?”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With data, if you get it right, what people sometimes call big data these days isn't quite big data, but you get to a level of detail in granularity that most people miss. So what you can do is not ask the question, you know, Nick, what do you think about Boris Johnson once, but ask that question a dozen different times from different people to get a really good sort of detailed almost building up a patchwork of information, which becomes much more powerful in itself. And then when you take the decision, in my particular case, you know, to work with this campaign, you're doing so from a position of knowledge. People say you took a risk. I would say, well, yes, but it was an educated risk.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, and the connection here, I would say, is I took a chance in that sense by backing somebody who was not the obvious favourite at that time. People said he couldn't get through because I based my, as you would take it, risk taking entirely on data, entirely on information. What was in that data that was...”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, no. Quite, quite, quite late. But of course, the problem, if this could have ended up being a huge risk to taxpayers' money, and it was a risk. And I just want to kind of answer or get to the point of your question. Am I a risk-taker? No, not a reckless one, but I do like to look at data. I do like to look at information. I spent a lot of time setting up a spreadsheet when Boris Johnson, who was an outsider at that time, everyone said he could not become the leader of this party because even though he would probably win amongst the membership who were cheering him to the rafters at the conference speech today, MPs wouldn't put him through. You require a third of the MPs to do so. And I looked at the information, at the information available, at the data, collected and collated that, and set up a spreadsheet using actually what I'd learned from reading a biography in part about LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his ability to do this thing in politics, which is to count, be able to count.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The decisions were a sort of ongoing conveyor belt of decisions where you had to sort of, first of all, let me understand this company. So I went back to its 2007 and I looked at the way they were buying shops as from other failed companies as the high street itself was dying. But as you suggest, they've been in trouble.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or just a theoretical. It was about Tom Skinner. And in the weeks that followed, I had to study in great detail, pull in as much data as possible, understand that business and what was going on, whether there was any chance of it being saved, which I deduced that there wasn't, and put in place through what you would describe as a gamble, I would describe as having looked at the data a calculated risk to order the CAA to spend tens of millions of pounds to prepare aircraft from around the world to start leasing aircraft from around the world in order to get them in the right place in order to do this repatriation. So yes, sometimes I'll take a chance. I've got a second example as well. Just before you do.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just to be clear, lots of people use pen names, but for some reason in this case it has to be turned into something else. I'm not sure why. Here's how sometimes taking a calculated risk is the right thing to do, and I don't believe in taking reckless risks ever. Calculated risk. When I came into this job, a few days later, the officials shuffled into my room and said, Minister, Secretary of State, we need to talk to you about Matterhorn. I said, what matterhorn? Why do we need to talk about a Swiss mountain? That's the code name for an operation if we need to bring people home if a travel company collapses. There is a problem, Minister. We're only aware of six aircraft in the world that we could use. And there are 150,000 people.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they'll all say the same, but Michael Crick and I've gone out for a few lunches since and laughed about it. But look, I come back to the main point, like you ask, you know, what drives me. It's actually not money and what have you. Of course, people want to have enough resource to bring up a family. I've got three kids, one of whom's just going to gone to university and a wife. And you want to be able to do all those things. But more to the point, because actually I just like to get things done. It comes back to that running thing, I think, and it is fantastic when you do something. Knock on a door and somebody says to you, you help me get this kitchen for my husband who's disabled without which we're absolutely stuffed and we were going to have to move and we don't know where to. So those things really do.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, oddly neither. I kind of like to do things to succeed in doing them and have always put that head of specifically making money. In fact, I've always been more driven by the things that you can do in this world, the influence that you can bring, the lives that you can change in purely politics. That's what I spend all my time doing is thinking about my constituents, how you can improve their lives. And I know it sounds quite trite, but the same as a minister, you have enormous power as a minister, even in a hung parliament, even in a parliament where there's no majority, because every day you get a box where you're making decisions. So that drive, which by the way, in terms of business, is far more from the 30 years of running my printing business than some sort of online and quite short-term thing. But anyway, don't let that ruin a good story.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There wasn't ever actually the words of the business, although it's been taken by the media, and I'm not going to argue about it because I think in the end these things become counterproductive. But it was actually a publishing business that was publishing things, some of which had some fairly racy titles, as you rightly say. Not the average, but were they? No, no, it was sort of how you can create a publishing business online and actually make it generate income fairly quick, something that's all true. As I say, it became sort of quite a thing.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would be untrue to say there weren't some dark knights, I remember, in the hospital I was treated at the Royal Free in London for cancer. I remember one night in particular when I was waiting for a whole host of results on things like HIV and all this sort of thing. They routinely check you on and have told me that a lot of people who presented with my particular cancer, which was Hodgkins, 80%, seventy percent. They said came in with HIV as well. So they kind of put the ider in my head that somehow, you know. So some dark times. But again, actually came through it again when I talk about it all these years later. It feels like somebody else's life. And I think it does kind of make you think time to get on. But I don't think I came out of fundamentally changed or different person as a result, just keen to get on.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I had always been fairly driven and determined, I don't know where it comes from, I feel as a fire in my belly. I like to get on. I don't like wasting time. I find myself running upstairs and people say, oh, I saw you earlier. You look like you're in a terrible rotten. No, no, no. I just was just cutting out the bit in the middle. I just wanted to get to the next thing. So I've always had that sort of burning desire. But I think you, of course, come out.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ronald McDonald said, Do you know this stuff? Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, McDonald's, who knew, ran still and actually often when you buy a burger, you'll see there's a box there and you can put change in there before people use in contactless and that's how they raise the money. They run that wasn't actually my care. It was just like I could stay near or my mother in fact who'd flown out could stay near the hospital and I stayed there as well in a Ronald McDonald's center.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but that was, I was in a coma for the best part of a week, and I woke up in Wichita, Kansas. A friend of mine had been driving, and I think probably just fell asleep at the wheel in one of those very long straight Kansas roads. And I just knew as I came around, I'd be very lucky to survive. I knew something terrible had happened. But I had cerebral conclusions. I was dizzy for a bit, but I made a good recovery and eventually got home. I think possibly on my twenty first birthday I was flying home actually, so that's the timing on it.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, not at all. Honestly, it feels like it's talking about somebody else's life because it's so many years ago, 30 years ago.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and they gave the name president to the person leaving it, leading it, so you probably certainly get ideas above your station doing that job. But it was a fantastic training ground because I, for example, got training courses, went to the States where the organization's been able to very big there, and got the kind of training you might not otherwise get until you're in your twenties and thirties and, you know, on the Marks and Spencer's training course or something. But getting that as a kid was very influential for me, and I found it helped me, actually helped throughout the rest of my life.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the biggest of the time, although actually quite small, there's only a thousand kids, but it was called Benabrith, the BYO, and it was expanding at the time. We got it up to the biggest membership it had ever been, so it was sort of preeminent in its time. But in that sense, you're always...”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thought it would be useful for propaganda one day. There was just in my mind pre-internet. It was the way that you were able to distribute information.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He said very depressingly as far as I was concerned, finish your education. So although I sort of notionally left school at sixteen, I did actually do an FE college. I heard the Prime Minister talk about FE colleges today. FE College course, then I went to Manchester as discussed. And he said, finish your education, get some experience in industry. I worked up here in Manchester for a year and then perhaps start your own business. Brilliant, what kind of business? Maybe a fish and chip shop, but have a chain of them. It doesn't matter. I like printing. And so I decided to start a printing business.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, the name of everyone in Parliament. But yes, I thought that since careers and vice, I went to tell them in my careers advice discussions at school. I'd like to be an MP. They weren't really able to give me much guidance. In fact, they may have even put the idea of calling the local association in my head. And I called them up. And a few days later, to my surprise, they called back and said, the MPH says, why don't you come for a cup of tea at the House of Commons? And I'll have a chat with you, Tristan Garrell Jones was the Watford MP, and that was the first time I ever stepped foot in Parliament.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I she phoned the local association where I was at school, which is in Watford, and said, look, I'd really love to do this. I have no idea how to become an MP. Can I, you know, what do you recommend?”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's probably news round. It was at Turk. John Crow. That's it. And then I ended up thinking, hold on, they are spending all their time reporting on these people who are actually making decisions. It'd be far better to be making the decisions than sitting reporting on them. Okay, my job is worthless.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, 1415. And my route to that was actually my parents who themselves were in business they had a sort of photographic equipment business would be out, I would get home from school, I'd tend to dabble with a bit of homework, but primarily watch the television, watch the news, and then kind of got interested in, I thought maybe I'd be a news broadcaster. Then I kind of got interested.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mayabina Thatcher thing, connection to this inasmuch as I have no family background in politics whatsoever. So when I, you know, still at school, announced to my parents, I've worked out what I'm going to do and they thought I'd gone for some career advice or something. Of course, you don't get this kind of thing from career advice generally. I want to be an MP. Right, okay.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. I did a business studies course at Polytechnic. I don't have a degree, in fact. It was an HND, which I thought was a great course, but my friends insisted on calling have no degree. So you're right. I own state school and no degree. But I think you need in politics people from all sorts of backgrounds I've never felt that my education was a disadvantage at all. I became actually, as with so many people, so much more interested in studying later in life and on my own accord. So I read a lot more than I ever would have done, I suspect than I ever did when I was a youngster.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you've got to take calculated risks in life, otherwise you get nowhere, do nothing. In fact, I mean, I did carry on studying until I was eighteen, then I went to Manchester here in Manchester and studied more business studies up here. But just as a little kid.”
2019-10-03 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Grant Shapps One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source