YouSaid · the spoken record

Shami Chakrabarti

lines on the record: 44
first: 2008-11-02
most recent: 2008-11-02
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

“That's incredibly kind. This island is looking up, but it's not quite as Spartan as I thought. That will be wonderful. Thank you very much.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've got a lot to read with the Bible in Shakespeare, so I'm not going to be short of volume. So I will take to kill a mockingbird because it's been such an inspiration for my life and it'll make me smile, so I'll do that.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, to some extent, reflecting on your disks is reflecting on the gift of music, and music has been a gift to me in my life that came courtesy of my parents with those music lessons, courtesy of all the great inspirational teachers that I ever had, and this is the most exquisite piece of Mozart. It's the requiem. I think I may feel a little melancholy on my desert island. I think I'll need a bit of solace, and I get that from this piece of music. It's complicated, like me, like all of us. It's melancholy, it's heroic, it's tragic. I think it's worthy of the island.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That It is a bit like There's no question that you can't go on and on. And in truth, I don't know what I'd do next. I've been director of Liberty for five years. The bulk of the war on terror. So, I don't know. I don't want to start a run on the pound. You've got to be careful what you say on the BBC because suddenly people take their money out of the bank. So I think discretion will be the better part of Valner, but I'm not going to go on and on. You've got to go before people become sick of you. We don't have the money that big charities have for paid media. So as you've kind of very politely suggested, the principal spokesperson becomes like a human logo. And occasionally that logo needs to be refreshed”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right yes, I'll be worried about how to sort of cope, find food and all the rest of it, but I think I'll be even more worried about loneliness.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not very much not very much. I mean, I can be alone and it's often a treat and a joy when you're very busy and there are lots of demands on your time, but I think it would be, it's all right for a holiday, but I don't know how I'd cope forever. I'm assuming I'm on the island forever.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that I've never even been someone who enjoyed camping. So anything, the great outdoorsy part is going to be very difficult. And I think I will be lonely. I think ultimately, though I've mellowed a bit with the years I still verge towards the extrovert, and it'll be strange to be without other people.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You finally got me, Kirsty, you know, soul laid bare. This is the song that we had at our wedding as our first song. And this is a lovely, sentimental piece of synthesizer music from Cindy Lauper. It's time after time.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well it's partly true, isn't it? You know, we are complicated creatures and there must be a bit of kind of the grim reaper in me. I am actually wearing sensible shoes as we speak, so I can't really argue with that. But when you're on the telly for 10 seconds talking about extraordinary rendition, kidnap and torture, it's not very funny. And you have a job to do. But I hope I'm a reasonably rounded person and I try to be. I'm very happy with how things turned out, you know. I don't feel that I should have been something else or there are lots of unfulfilled dreams. I'm a very, very fortunate and happy person.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a sweeping list of things with some of these measures, like cameras, for example. It's not about having them or not having them. It's about proportionality, you know. And when people start thinking of the financial cost of various measures like identity cards, they become very good at doing a cost-benefit analysis. It's my job to throw in concerns for your privacy and your dignity into the same is it worth the money kind of balancing exercise. You know, when I engage with the public, my colleagues do, when we do polling, when we test our arguments, we feel that our values run very deep in this country. Whether you agree with us or not on every particular issue, you'd miss us if we weren't there. And actually, I think that Britain cares more about its rights and freedoms than you might think.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gosh, that's a depressing way of putting it. I ultimately feel positive about the prospects for protecting rights and freedoms in this country. Yes, I do think that for the last fifteen or twenty years there's been this authoritarian duel, if you like, between the two main parties. However, I do think that we're at a place now where we can have a conversation about what it means to be tough on crime and terrorism. It's not just about passing repressive laws. Sometimes they're counterproductive. Actually, if we go back to the core values of democracy, we could end up with policies that are actually capable of making us safe and free.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a fantastic band, called the enemy, and they are sort of twenty odd, so now they're, you know, twenty years younger than me, their music is contemporary and it's passionate and it's angry in a really positive way, but it also for me conjures up so many of the sounds and rhythms of my youth. You hear the jam, the clash, a bit of blur. It goes on and on. And what they produce, I think, is as good as any of those grades.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm careful about my son, who I'm describing as my son and not by name, for example, and that's a conscious decision. That's not just for safety. Kids have to be their own person. Of course, we all care about our family and want them to be safe. That's partly what this debate is all about.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You do get a little nasty mail most of it nothing much to worry about, occasionally something to worry about, and you know and then you do something about it. But I will say this when you're stopped in the street by people, they always have something kind and nice to say, but I have had more kindness and solidarity than I've ever had of the bad stuff.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean Mr Gaunt or Gaunty as he likes to be known did me a huge favour with that one. Let's face it I just wish I were the most dangerous woman in Britain be a lot safer place”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um some of them are actually terrifying, the truth be told, I think it would just be a lie to say that your stomach doesn't turn when you hear that question time music. So yes, there are aspects that are terrifying, but the bottom line is if I didn't do this job, I'd be sitting in the pub complaining about Belmarsh and Guantanamo and forty-two days and all the rest of it with a drink in my hand, you know.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that I thought that we had been sounding like a bunch of lawyers, which is fine for the courtroom, but it was really important to get our values out into the newsroom and the classroom and the parliament chamber. I thought, and I still think actually, that we're very fortunate to live in, I know the oldest unbroken democracy on earth, and you know we can get a bit cynical about politics and about the possibilities of social change, but I have seen it. You can bring a coalition of people together and you can make good things happen.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is really for my extraordinary colleagues at Liberty, some of them fifteen or more years younger than me, but so wise and so professional and so able to make a difference. And this is the Kaiser chiefs, the angry mob, and it's witty and it's ironic. But the chorus reminds me that you don't have to be cynical. You don't have to assume that public opinion can only be followed and never be persuaded or led.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mr. Harthen, Mr Jawley, and then at five minutes of Mr Blunkett before I went, but not for that reason. Well, I said to myself right at the beginning when I started that everybody has a line that they won't cross. And the line that I set for myself was that if there was any talk of reinstating the death penalty, then that would be it for me. There's no way that I could work in that system. So that was a line, and maybe other lines would have happened. I don't know if I'd still been there. Interesting question to myself, if I'd still been there after 9-11, would I have sat there drafting laws that allowed people to be punished without trial or incarcerated without trial? I don't know. I hope not. But at the time, you know, I did raise a few eyebrows, not least in the family. I think my parents thought I was about to go and stand at the port and ask people the reason for their visit, you know.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was an idealist, but I did and still do believe that the law is for the most part a good thing, and that everybody behaves slightly better for good legal advice, and also it was just going to be such a fascinating place to see law, policy and politics all coming together. And that was the motivation.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh for years, have I not given him an ear for? Do you know who you're talking to? Yes, endless argument and banter for at least I know the first seven years of our relationship.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did have to work up the because I'd never actually, this makes me sound pathetic, but I never actually asked a guy out before. and I haven't done it since it worked out quite well. 100% record.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I was clearly pulling more than pints. That's right. The pipe dream of going to study film hadn't really worked out. And there I was kind of working out what to do next. And yes, he walked in and I eventually asked him out.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have always had this kind of love affair with the United States, and I can remember watching a movie with my dad and seeing the end credit. It's an American movie, and he said to me, Look, there's a Japanese surname, there's an Italian surname, there's an Irish surname, but they're all Americans. And my parents saved up for me to finally go to the States for my twenty first birth then. It was a lot of money, you know, they saved up something like a thousand pounds. And I turned up for the first time at Grand Central Station with my Sony Walkman. I probably shouldn't say that on the BBC, but they probably don't exist anymore, and turned on Gershwin's Rhapsody and Blue as I looked up at those skyscrapers for the first time. And of course, you know, you think of Woody Allen's Manhattan chapter one. He loved New York City. He idolized it out of all proportion. And I've loved it ever since.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was partly that there were all the mostly chaps actually, but all these guys who you could just tell wanted to go and run a small country. And this was just a kind of nursery slope for them. I can remember it was the first Iraq war. And I remember people passing lots of resolutions about that, which was fair enough. But no one was doing anything about disabled access on campus. And I thought, hang on a minute, there's a mismatch between the grand ambition and what you might be doing, which is actually delivering something closer to home.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went to, I can remember going to the Chase Manhattan Bank and to various other sort of city banks. And I could talk a good interview, but when it came to the mental arithmetic, I was way behind.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Success at something else. Unfulfilled pipe dreams that some of us have. I had this idea that maybe I wouldn't be a lawyer after all, that I could go to the States and study screenwriting. And the grand plan was to finish university, perhaps go and make some money in the city for a few years as a trader or something, you know, and I probably had no idea what that would really be like. I probably thought it was Wall Street or something. And then I'd save the money to go to the States. But there was a recession and I wasn't very good at adding up. And I was competing with all these kids with their sort of maths degrees.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure that my love of the movies began with my mother, and I can remember being really very small and sitting at home during wet school holidays, sitting snuggled up with my mother watching Hollywood classics, and it's just never stopped for me. The cinema has just been an unending source of learning and entertainment and at times solace for me throughout my life. I'm really delighted to say that my son feels the same way and I took him before he was eighteen months old to see some cartoon or other, and he held a tortilla chip between thumb and forefinger as the lights went down and the movie started and two hours later he was still holding it.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This piece of music, beautiful piece of music has probably haunted me for over twenty five years. Since I heard it in a film called Sophie's Choice in which Merrill Streep gives a masterpiece performance playing a Holocaust survivor in the United States just after World War two, it is a haunting piece of music and of course, you know, the story that it tells and the Holocaust and the blitz and all that become the moment from which we build modern human rights.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A physical attack. My mum and dad were attacked by a group of skin eds when I was just a few months old. And there were times in the 70s when I felt uncomfortable. I can remember sitting on the tube with my parents and feeling uncomfortable by a group of fellow passengers possibly football fans singing slightly racist chants. I was never terrified and it never went on for very long, but I can remember hoping that my parents hadn't noticed. Parents haven't noticed that piece of graffiti. They're slightly menacing people at the end of the carriage and of course they're feeling the same way about me.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a very fortunate childhood and I won't say that I experienced anything like some of the racism that so many people have experienced, but you couldn't be untouched by it. I knew, for example, that my parents had been subject to a racist attack”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess, yeah, and I was a swat and I beavered away and I thought I could do anything, and that, thinking you could do anything, came from my mum and dad, no question.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I was precocious, probably a little irritating, probably took myself a little too seriously. Some people hear this and say nothing's changed. Nothing's changed, quite intense certainly until my sort of late teens.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, it's true. I went off to school with my violin in a fibreglass case. The fiberglass is important. And on a zebra crossing on the way to the bus stop I collided with a car, or a car collided with me, and I went flying over the road, but the violin case acted like a sort of shock absorber. And the violin inside was sort of smashed up. And I was barely hurt, minor head injuries. So there you have it. Music saved my life.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is David Burry. The challenge here was which Bowie song to pick. I've picked this song because it reminds me of being at the LSE and going to Berlin, the New Year's Eve before the war came down, and because it's called Heroes and there have been so many heroes in my life.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there was never lots of cash around, but it was about their priorities, really. I mean, they really are that kind of family who would probably eat baked beans for a few days and then save up to have this wonderful dinner for all their friends. And they were like that with me too. You know, they saved up so that I could go and school trips and they saved up for my violin lessons and allowed me all these opportunities to taste the world kind of beyond their means, really.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He is a big character with a big heart and on occasion a quick temper and jumping into arguments and lots of opinions and there's a bit of that in me, I suspect.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. And I think I was trying to show off to my dad and that I could make some sense of this. And I said something about what they should do to that monster when they caught him. And my dad is not a classic bleeding heart liberal at all. But he turned to me very quietly. He's not generally very quiet either. But this was his one big Atticus finch moment, I think, and he said, you've got to understand that no criminal justice system in the world will ever be absolutely perfect, and you have to imagine that you are the one person in a million. And you've been convicted, no one believes you, even your family don't really believe you anymore, and you are walking to the electric chair or to the gallows, and how does that feel? And that is my earliest profound political memory.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right, my parents lived in what's now obviously a very smart part of town, but in the late 50s and early 60s, when it was Bedsitland, they learned my dad in particular learnt to cook. But they are because they're both around, thank goodness, dreamers and not people who were ever really interested in making a lot of money and that kind of success. They believed in things that I now believe in, but I now have language for it I'm now a sort of human rights campaigner. A lot of the early motivations for that probably came from them. Everyone's bored of me telling the story about my dad, telling me why the death penalty is wrong.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My earliest memories are of my parents house full of food and full of guests and full of laughter and sometimes argument, sometimes heated debate. It was a very open house. They had friends who had come to London from all over the world and who they made friends with during their bedsit period.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a no brainer for me, it's not representative, it is the song, and this is the song that my husband and I sang to our little boy when he was a baby. I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very hard to separate these things, becoming a parent had a profound effect on me, I think in two ways firstly I don't think I would ever have been crazy enough to apply to be director of liberty if I wasn't drunk on being a mother and thinking well that's the most amazing thing I've ever done surely I can do anything now but I think the other profound change was my attitude to human rights they weren't just legal concepts or philosophical concepts anymore it felt like I had a huge investment in the future a personal emotional investment but hopefully also I understood more what it is to be afraid what it is to really worry about whether your family are going to be blown up on the underground or whether your child is safe and I hope that that's helped the way that we try to frame some of our arguments as well”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I didn't realise initially was just how fundamental the shift would be. I never imagined Guantanamo Bay. I never even imagined that we would depart from very old concepts of charging people and trying them before we punish them in Britain.”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly do, as you said, it was my second day at Liberty. I had a new job. I was meeting colleagues and chatting about what the future might hold for a campaign group like Liberty, what the priorities should be. I had lunch with a new colleague and when I returned we saw the pictures appearing on people's computer screens and on the television and it was, of course, completely horrific. I don't think I quite knew at the time, but I was also pregnant and in the weeks and months that followed, I thought, you've just left the home office. Is this the time to be leaving all your chums in the home office who are trying to keep people safe? And is this the time to be bringing a new life into the world?”
2008-11-02 · Desert Island Discs · Shami Chakrabarti · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source