YouSaid · the spoken record

Kate Green

lines on the record: 48
first: 2020-12-11
most recent: 2020-12-11
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

“I hadn't thought about it. I'm not sure I know where it is to be honest. Maybe you can hand it back, Virgil. I don't think that I'll be doing that. That's in the scheme of things I've got to sort out, that's probably not a very high priority.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm not a great fan of Senoman anyway personally and I did a real don'ts but my dad was thrilled and I kind of would say that about the system so I've just said to you I think we need to do a lot of reform but I think what we should not lose is the huge pleasure that it gives so many people who are awarded an honour that their their contribution to their community, to our country, to quality of life, improving things for their neighbours It gives huge pleasure to them, to their families, to perhaps the people they volunteer with the organisations they're part of. Yes, it needs reforming. It massively needs reforming, but we've got to keep that because that is special.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We really don't. It's really the wrong language. It's divisive. It's offensive. It's hurtful to people. And one of the things I've been looking at a lot in recent weeks is the black curriculum campaign, decolonizing our history and actually our whole curriculum. You can't excuse or justify that branding. but actually it's deeper than that isn't it i know many efforts have been made to To democratize, to open up that honor system, but it's still pretty hierarchical, isn't it, in terms of who gets what odd or who gets what award? There's a lot more reform in that space that I think is needed”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in the education portfolio, I say this a lot. It has brought into really sharp focus issues that we would have been concerned about anyway. So for example, the creation of a market and higher education. Now really exposed by the pandemic and students asking for their money back. For example, an examination system which put all the eggs in the basket of one terminal exam. What happens when students can't take that exam? An early year sector that has been stripped back, stuffed by low-paid workers providing childcare on an insecure and ad hoc basis, you know, that's characteristic of our whole insecure labour market. in the education sphere and in also other areas of public policy issues that we would have wanted to deal with and grapple with anyway but it's brought them into really clear”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should not have said that, Nick. And the reason I shouldn't have said it is because it was so crassen and sensitive to people who have suffered huge pain, loss in some cases will have been bereaved by this crisis. It was offensive and wrong to have said that. What I would say is that I think we are learning very, very clearly from this crisis what we will need to change if we want to come out afterwards with the potential to be a better country for more people than we were when we went into it.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we want competent, I would like a competent government and a values-led government and a government that has the capacity to bring about transformative change for people who are suffering appallingly through the COVID crisis following on from 10 years of austerity, which have weakened the resilience of this country and especially the poorest and most insecure in this country to withstand that pandemic.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can understand, particularly, for example, in relation to COVID restrictions, how important it is that the whole country stands together, but we are not entirely happy with the way that you are doing it. And it is difficult to get over a message about abstention and why we are abstaining in a particular vote. But it's not an illegitimate way of expressing concerns while ensuring that the good of the country is put first.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty clear that your knows what he wants and where he's going, and I think he's articulated that a lot in terms of broad vision, a best country to grow up in, which is very inspiring for us in the shadow education team, best country to grow old in. I think you've seen very clearly that he stands by what he believes and he is not at all afraid to take difficult decisions at the moment that a decision must be taken and that will be a decision that he believes to be the right one, not necessarily the popular one, whether that's popular widely or popular within the labour movement. And I think abstention is a legitimate way of a party in opposition in a parliament where the government has a very substantial majority for that opposition party to say, we won't stand in your way. We understand your mandate.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think a lot of, would I regret it is what you're really asking, isn't it? I think he needs to apologise to come back into the parliamentary party. He really does. We need to know that he understands what this anger and pain is about. And he can't. He can't expect that that can be waived or set aside”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Made it much more personal. Of course, it did. You know, suddenly it became not just something that was really horrifying that was happening in my party, but it was really, really personal.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely That's quite something. And you know, they were living 40 miles down the road. I think what we feel, my generation, my cousins of my age and their children is what a lost opportunity.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That just wasn't talked about at home. It was something that was kind of put to one side, although what I remember did really surprise my cousins was that my father's father, I do remember him coming to visit us when I was a very, very small child and there are photographs of this, of him playing with me in the snow and so on. And yet my cousin's family, the narrative had been that he had cut us off completely. And that wasn't true. He came to see me, came to stay with us. So you don't really know the history, do you? But it was obviously all very painful. Afterwards, once it came out into the open, my father was very happy to talk about it.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was my father was still in touch with his family all the way through. He was seeing them, he was meeting them. And so when I spoke to him, I said, you know, they have been in touch with me. He said, oh, yes, he said, you know, this is who they are. But it was because when he had married my mother, who isn't Jewish, I don't know the whole story. And it's obviously hugely sad and painful. And as I've said before, it's not my story really to talk about. They wanted to keep it private and I respect that. Basically, it hadn't been talked about because the marriage had caused some real tension, I think, in the family. And I guess for all sorts of reasons because it was painful, because I think it was felt quite insulting to my mother.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it was not when I did tell him that I had found the family or the family had found me and it was. And one of the things that had become clear from these cousins making contact with me was that they, not they, but their”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cousin and his family, I'm no close to, I've got to know them really well. I think I've been very lucky to meet a whole group of relatives who until I was 50 years old I had no idea existed.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hear any more actually, and so for quite a long time a year, so nothing much really transpired. Turned out later that the cousin, it was a cousin, who had written to me had died shortly after he'd written to me, which explains why I didn't hear anything further from him. But eventually, and I can't remember the order in which this happened though, but both I did eventually say to my dad, look, I've had this letter. I have heard from people who are your nephews. And another cousin got in touch. And that”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So after I was elected in 2010, I received a letter from somebody who said, I think I'm your cousin and said quite a lot of other things as well about the family, all of which were correct and rang absolutely true. And although I hadn't known, for a long, long time I had wondered there were other things I knew about my father's family and his childhood and things he didn't talk about that made me suspect that he might be Jewish, that the family might be Jewish, but I didn't know it had never ever been discussed. And then I received this letter. It seemed to me very, very like it was true. Everything stacked up. And I didn't know what to do at first. I talked to my sister. We tried to decide whether I should say to my father I'd had this letter or not. And then we didn't.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't think he was the right person to be the leader of the Labour Party. I didn't think it in 2015 when I nominated Yvette. I didn't think it in 2016 when I supported Owens and Ran, as you say, Owens campaign. And I didn't think it's at any time subsequently.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I don't think that would have been what I felt at all. I just felt a despair actually about what was happening in the intervening years, particularly latterly. I mean, in 2017, we got such a much better general election result than anyone had predicted, including pretty well anyone in the Labour Party. You know, when we started that election campaign, I think there was a huge amount of anxiety about how it was going to go for us. And we did so much better than we had expected to. And we got lots of really good MPs elected. But after that, particularly as the factionalism and the anti-Semitism, which was horrific and shameful, and we're still having to battle it, it's still present in our movement. I just felt despair, Nick. That's really how I would characterize the last couple of years before the general.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can see a lot of common ground, and that's where I think we will be able to do our most effective work. And I shall be very careful to avoid cupboards when I'm next visiting an NEU conference.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“my top priority was that children should be in school. It's the best place for them that schools, they had remained open, but they should be open for all children, that we should have a return to compulsory education. Children learn best in school. It's best for their socio-emotional well-being. There's a really important safeguarding point. We saw in the first national lockdown how many children”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm afraid this is not personal against Gavin Williamson, but I have never had any sympathy for the way he's been doing his job and the challenges in the job. I think my sympathies have been entirely with students, with teachers, with families, with workers in our education system. And I think he has let them down.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there are really good models of what can be done from other countries about integrating the state and the non-state sector. And I think that's what we've always been talking about in that campaign. But is it an early priority? No, it isn't. There are much bigger tasks to get done when we return to government.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm a pragmatist, Nick. And when we come back into government after 15 years in opposition, it will be a question of priorities. And I think it will also be very much a question of responding to what parents and students and education workers think are our priorities. And I think what they will be most concerned about, and quite rightly, is what's going on in the primary school, the secondary school that their children attend. They'll be most concerned about the job prospects for their children. They'll be most concerned about where they're going to get the nursery place for their new grandchild.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's probably not a top priority, Nick. In fact, it's definitely not a top priority. And as I've said repeatedly, you know, I'm far more interested in the 93% of kids that are not in the private school system than the 7% who are. But I think the underlying concern is really serious for public policy, actually. How can it be right that resources, access to networks and contacts, facilities, educational opportunity is so disproportionately weighted to such a small group of pupils? How can it be right that, and I understand the legal challenges to this, but how can it be right that our charity law actually provides extra advantages to a group who are already more advantaged? How can it be that today we find our country run by a group of people disproportionately?”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is no point in being in labour politics if you can't change people's lives. Absolutely none. It's why I have hated 10 years in opposition.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, probably it is, although I think my geekari was then embedded in both one-parent families and especially child poverty action group because they are very, very evidence heavy campaigning organizations. So I think policy process, I became a bit of a geek when I was in the home office. And then the sort of evidential underpinning and how that strengthens your policy argument that was developed more in the jobs I did later.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was there, it was doing some really exciting things and some of them really, really well. So for example, I was there when Jack Straw kicked off the McPherson inquiry and I saw how much effort and commitment was put into that. I was there when the youth justice strategy or the youth offending teams, the youth justice board, all of that was set up and got going and I think that was really good effective policy. I also saw things that were never really sorted out, aren't sorted out to this day. The immigration and asylum system and labour had come in promising, farewell, faster, fairer immigration. I think it proved very, very difficult to get to grips with that in the time I was there or any time since.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I liked a lack of carefulness. I was also really struck by, and again, I think this is an interesting lesson for Labour. We've been in opposition all my time in Parliament, but there have been three elections since I came into Parliament. So I'm quite used to talking about what would it be like if we were going into government. And I went into the Home Office very shortly after the 1970 election victory, just what a time of excitement that was among the staff, how civil servants were so keen to support a new incoming administration with a radically different policy program. And I found that fascinating the way they had prepared for that, as civil servants always do in the run-up to any election, they're preparing for whatever outcome.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I arrived in the home office when they were having a team away day. And that was really lucky. I meant that I got to meet a lot of them at once. And I remember at the end of the day, the then permanent secretary saying to me, so what do you think of us? And I said, I think you're very clever. And I think you're very careful. And I never really revised that opinion because I found them just fascinatingly thoughtful, you know, they would consider all aspects of a policy to the point where, you know, this was the reputation they had, that nothing could ever be decided or moved forward because the analysis paralyzed the action. I don't think that was fair. But I was really interested in how careful they were to examine the impact of public policy. Something that kind of still sits with me in the way that I like to do my job in Parliament. I was fascinated.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the most interesting job I've ever had. I learned so much in those two years about how I think the country is really run. It was absolutely fascinating.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seen older people, you know, that wasn't unusual, but that just horrified me. And that's what drove me into labour politics.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was, absolutely. I don't like war very much. And this one was one we should never have needed to have got into. And I think, you know, Carrington himself admitted that. And, you know, it was a war that had been brought about by carelessness and neglect on the part of the British government. So I don't like inefficient and incompetent government to this day. So that was another factor. The other thing I think was just the horror of how some of the poverty manifested itself. So this was the time, you'll remember it too. You know, families living in one grotty bed and breakfast room, sharing a loo in a kitchen down the corridor. It was the time when, you know, the Westminster Cemeteries were being sold off for, was it a penny or a pound? And people were feeling how horrifying that was that, you know, where their relatives had been very, that that was disrespectful. It was the first time when I came to live in London at the beginning of the 80s, I'd seen young people sleeping on the street.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure there must have been some. I don't recall those. I do recall them. And this is so interesting, going for job interviews during the war and being asked one of the classic interview questions that interviewers, very respectable middle-aged gentlemen used to ask you was, what did you think of the Volkmann's War? And I would say, you know, I'm very concerned about it. I'm very worried about it. You wouldn't persuade me to go out and fight in that conflict. And they would agree. And yet in a matter of weeks, the whole public would shift it. And it became a war that everybody was behind. And I found that absolutely fascinating.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I stood well aside from that, and I didn't go into the Labour Party with any sort of interest in all of that that was going on. What actually drew me into the Labour Party was when I first arrived in London at the age of 22. And I had never lived before in a city where I had seen such incredible wealth. And I'd never lived before in a city where I'd seen such incredible poverty. And it was that contrast coupled with, as I say, I was starting my working life at a time of very, very high youth unemployment. So it was my generation that were feeling it, coupled with the fact that the Falklands War had just concluded. And I didn't very much like watching my own generation being sent to the other side of the world to fight what was actually a very horrible war with some really awful maimings and deaths experienced by young people of my generation.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything changed after that campaign. I thought I can never go back to that old life. I've seen something entirely different that I want to do.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Candidate in 1997 with the full intention that I would do this campaign for a few weeks and it would be interesting. And then I would go back to my old life. And in fact...”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I had got involved quite early on. I was a party member and had various posts within elected office in the party, a local branch chair, a local constituency chair, that kind of a thing. But what tipped me over into first standing for elected office, public office, was another party member herself actually a teacher who said to me one day, have you ever thought of standing for parliament? And I said, don't be silly, people like me don't do something like that. It had never crossed my mind. But once the suggestion was made, I thought actually that could be quite interesting, might be quite fun just to give that a go, do it once, you know, interesting experience still with no real career plan in politics or expectation that this would ever become my life. And then I was very fortunate to be selected to be a”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're not all evil in the sense that, I mean, they're not all evil, let's be fair to bankers, they're human like the restaurants. What I used to say a lot about my experience in retail banking, at which, by the way, I was absolutely useless. It really wasn't a career in which I shone. But what I used to say is in the city of London where I was working some of the time, you know, most of the people I worked with were not high-powered investment bankers. They were young people from Essex, from Kent coming up on the train, commuting into Fenture Street and Liverpool Street every day. A whole workforce by a small number of super rich, super earning investment bankers. But the truth is that wasn't really what it was for a lot of people.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, partly because of this issue of I need a job and I need a secure job, that sort of family mentality, that security is really, really important. It's more important to be safe than happy, really, partly because I've got to the age of 22 and I was in Edinburgh and I could see the life of an Edinburgh lawyer opening up before me and I thought, you know, here I am. 22 years old and if I don't leave this Nelia, I've probably met everyone I'm ever gonna know. And it felt a bit like two small a stage to be honest.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Didn't assume anything. It wasn't talked about in terms of party politics, but it was a household of which politics small P was talked about a lot, what was going on in the sort of public world, in the events of the day. There were lots of newspapers lying around in the house, all of which I read avidly. And that was from a very early age, sometimes not really understanding half of what was going on in them. So it was political small pee, but party politics were considered something that were private and you didn't talk about them.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not about party politics. I had no idea how my parents voted growing up, in fact well into adults who had the first time I really knew how at least my mum voted was when I first stood for election. She came out as a Labour supporter then.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know that's quite a clever insight of yours. I don't know if maybe you've picked up something I've said before. They weren't constantly pressing on do well at school, you know, get your results. That wasn't something that was driven at home. And in fact, I was quite good at school quite suited me the academic environment, but they were desperately, desperately concerned about job security. That was the most important thing to them because they had lived with this terrible insecurity. The worst thing that could happen really, as far as they saw it, as far as I see it too in many ways, was not to be able to get work. And when I first graduated from university at the beginning of the 1980s, it was nothing like now in terms of youth unemployment. I mean, what's happening now is very frightening, but it was the first time really in my life I'd come face to face with the possibility that it wasn't just going to be that easy to get that first job. And it was really harrowing. So yeah, you're right.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my parents were both teachers. Education was just, it was kind of taken for granted its importance. It wasn't ever expressed that it really mattered, but it was just assumed, I think. For them, it really was transformational. It was what lifted them out of growing up in poverty and Glasgow slums, to be honest, Nick. You know, both my parents remembered their father's going down to the Glasgow shipyards on a Monday morning to see if there would be work some weeks there would be work. Other weeks there wouldn't. We call that a zero hours contract a day. But my dad used to talk about how sometimes his father would come home and say to his mother, there won't be any money this week. And you could tell it had really scarred them. But education was the great opportunity for them to get out of that and really was hugely important to them. And therefore a sort of underpinning of everything.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, when I got it, which was a total surprise, actually, I said no Labour MP could possibly refuse this job. It absolutely goes to the heart of what were foreign politics, what we believe in in politics, you know, giving everybody the opportunity absolutely to make the most of themselves and to have the best life. And as you know, I had spent 10 years immediately prior to being in Parliament in the children's sector, first at the National Council for One Parent Families and then at the Child Poverty Action Group. So it's really building on all that history for me. And yeah, I feel very, very passionate about it.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That wouldn't be unfair because I follow on carefully on Twitter. One has to be up to speed on what's going on down the road from home. Yeah, it's a bit, the whole thing is a bit tricky in the club at the moment, isn't it? It's a bit upsetting, really. We need our glorying days back.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, that wouldn't be fair. In fact, I love watching it. And my mom and I used to love watching it on telly, but it's even more exciting at Old Trafford watching it live. I just have no idea what's going on. Naturally, of course, I am an avid supporter of Manchester United.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, Nick, there are a lot of my colleagues that think this constituency is totally wasted on me. Not only do I have old Trafford the football ground, but I also have the cricket ground, and it's fair to say over the last 10 years I've been on quite a learning curve about those two sports.”
2020-12-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Kate Green One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source