YouSaid · the spoken record

Siân Berry

lines on the record: 35
first: 2020-10-02
most recent: 2020-10-02
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

“We have heard an awful lot of lip service for the environment since Margaret Thatcher said that in 1989. And, you know, I am now 20 years into a political career where I've heard that all the time of my opponents. Oh, yes, we're going to be greener than the Greens. And then they get elected and a year later it's all forgotten about you. You know that you have to stick to those promises and holding them to account when they don't. That is our role in this crisis at the moment is to really just get into those rooms and be the conscience of the next generation of politicians because if they don't get it done this time, we really are going to be stuck.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This year there have been no elections, as you know, and last year's local elections were spectacular for us. We more than doubled our councillors in one go. And in the European elections that followed, we more than doubled our representation in the European Parliament, if only for a brief time. But we are facing a bumper year for elections next year. I think you'll see that the Greens are going to do extremely well, not least because I think the crisis, the waiting has made people think harder about the system and want to listen more to people who are putting forward big system changes that really do change the way that we organize society.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is when you're electing a single person to a position of such power, which is absolutely not something I think we should be doing in any election system. It artificially concentrates and you do end up really with a dearth of women standing for these positions as well. If you look at just the mayor elections across the UK, it's only us and the Lib Dems, I think, who've ever put up somebody as a candidate for one of those major mayor elections. And I think that's completely wrong, that when you concentrate power in that sort of macho one leader with all the power away, that's what ends up happening. Whereas under proportional systems, we know for a fact that parties are much better at selecting a range of candidates, different genders, different ethnicities. You get better representation of different people from a system like that. So yeah, you're just illustrating perfectly the problems with first past the post, elect one candidate to.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Population, it's very hard to get that represented because you've got to win a majority in a constituency in order to get a seat. So this is a problem for LGBTIQA plus people. It's a problem for disabled people. It's a problem for people who have real concerns about the environment. All these concerns that are spread more evenly around the population have a problem getting elected. And if we had a system with, and I think the best systems are the ones where you have constituency MPs or AMs like we do in the assembly, plus people who have proportional elected votes that put them into positions, then you have the best of both worlds. You have people who represent issues as well as local areas.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“we're putting for us out all across the country neck i think you'll find because we are now part of administrations in 18 different local councils we are a really strong voice in the london assembly we're about to win our first seats on the world's senate and that local power that that being at the table um in a in a town or in a city or on the county council we hope for next year obviously um those elections are coming up too those places can really make a difference you can put out a lot of fires at a local level nationally we've got an awful election system um quite honestly where things that are i mean the problem we've got with first past the post is that if you've got something that's a very local issue you can potentially take a seat off the bigger parties just on one issue but if you've got a single issue or a particular concern that's spread widely across the”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They, you know, they probably put me as a watermelon because I do, like I say, on the London Assembly, I do spend most of my time working on social justice issues, although I have an excellent colleague, Caroline Russell, who spends her time on chairing the Environment Committee there. So she's been working on climate risks and green energy and roads and streets.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably, I don't really know the mango thing is quite new. I think that's just to create some sort of rainbow pattern. I don't know. Kiwis, I think, refers to people who are very deep green, who come from these earlier environmental movements and really want to go back to the earth and be self-sufficient in that kind of old school kind of way. But yeah, I think, so yeah, we'll have debates about which policies to put forward the most strongly at election time. And yeah, we might say, well, universal basic income needs to be the headline and somebody else. But no, climate change. And we have these. Debates, they're very healthy debates within the Green Party on these issues.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was one of those things that you put into international discussions. For example, the movement to forgive debt, the Jubilee 2000 movement, that started out sounding absurd. Forgive debts, but where will that leave the world if you don't pay back your debts? What will happen then? It actually became a set of policies that started to be really seriously talked about at big global summits and significance amount of debt got forgiven as part of that process. So yeah, you'd be looking at getting together and negotiating effectively and seeing where you would get to.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a holistic process of working out the best way to restore the damage. So it isn't cash payments as such. It's global policies that make up for the centuries of injustice.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Changing its character to recognize that we're not doing anyone a favour here. We are repaying a long-term debt that we have to recognise historically. And I think that's really important.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is the policy. I mean, we've not voted it through yet, but it's a policy that's come from a very strong movement drawing the links between the slave trafficking, colonialism and climate and environmental exploitation that's been driven by the global north that's really had an impact on the global south. So it asks for holistic reparations to repair ecological damage, to forgive debts, to, yes, to explicitly apologize for the impact that our world has had on the rest of the planet.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said that the Black Lives Matter protest that toppled the statue in Bristol, which actually filled my heart with absolute joy because part of my part of the world, he said that was completely wrong, which I just think that kind of distancing from something that's springing up from the people in such a passionate way and doing something symbolic with such power is wrong. I think we need to be building a wider movement that consists of political parties and people taking action on the ground because it's the same cause of wanting to change things are done in a very big and transformative way.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“extinction rebellion has done an extraordinary job alongside the school strikers and Greta Thunberg at raising the alarm and that's I think what they would say their role is in all of this it's making sure that nobody forgets that we are in a climate emergency so if they're the fire alarm then then we're the fire brigade we're the we're the people who bring the policies and the ideas that and actually stand to get elected to get that seat at the table to put the the motions get the votes change the policies that's our role within what is a wider movement and we are we are the party that's come out of movements like that we still have really close links to movements like that but within the actual party the work we do as greens that is within the electoral system and about getting elections yeah it's important that we're good allies and that we don't do things like what Keir Starmer did which is try and turn your back on direct action”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I genuinely do not particularly agree with that policy's wording, I have to say. You focus on the numbers of people, you might as well focus on how long people live for, because it's the number of years, year people that live on the planet, not the number of people that ultimately makes a difference. And you would never have a policy that was against people living for a long time. So, yeah, no, I don't. I think that isn't where we should be focusing our efforts. We should be changing the system because we can provide what everyone needs on the planet currently.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't have much truck with campaigns like that. I have to say it's about the resources that you use. And considering the lengths and effort we have to go to to secure the right to decide for yourself exactly how many children you should have, I'm not going to go about interfering with any woman's rights. If you want to have lots of children, then great, just don't put them all on a plane every five minutes. The choice that you make about your consumption that makes the most difference. And actually, ultimately, it's the effort you make to change the system that's going to make the most difference. This is the conscious choice I've made in my life is to spend my time trying to change policies, change the system, get things so that nobody is in need and everybody has what they need to live, but we stay within the limits of the planet. And this is a possible thing to do.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not, but I eat very little meat. I have a stick of salami that I'll go through every month. So that's about all, really.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ooh, now that's a really good question. I mean, I had to take apart my laptop to get all the dust out of it because it was really getting very hot at the end of the day on Zoom recently. So that's probably the last thing I whatever refurbished or mended. I do a lot of adjusting of clothes and I've definitely been doing that lately because we've all put on a little weight during lockdown.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do try not to do anything that's overly wasteful completely, yes. It also chimes in with my general values as well that I also get from my dad and my granddad, like to have things that can be mended that are second hand to try not to go through too many resources in the course of your life. But I enjoy that as well. I really like mending things, doing something with my hands at the end of a long day on Zoom is a really good thing to be doing.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, before I was an assembly member, like I said, I worked on a dead average wage. And quite honestly, I was being priced out of London. This is the most I could possibly have paid for this flat. And it was taking half my wages. Now, obviously, as an assembly member now, I earn much more. I earn about double the average, but I'm still paying off the debts from the previous existence. So yeah, if I wanted to move, I'd struggle to find anywhere bigger than this, even on my current salary. I'm not trying to plead poverty, but I'm just saying.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, I live in one room that is basically the whole of the roof of a building above shops. And yeah, lockdown is awful for that reason because you can't even have a different room to go work in. It's really tough. It's really tough.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did lots of different things. I came out of university with a science degree and did various jobs that involve science writing or science education. I worked for Imperial College, the medical school for a little while. And then I wanted to change the world. So I had to work really hard to change into being a campaigner who was paid to do that day to day. But to do that, I had to take a massive risk. I had to leave a job that was and go and try and find a job from scratch without any fallback or any if I'd have failed I'd have had to I don't know leave London so as a London assembly member now and I still you know in my 40s rent my flat and I've worked for charities and smaller organisations earning a dead average wage all my life and I know how much there is to struggle about in London”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you can see around you in London. So, I work for private renters, I try and fight for their rights. I help support the campaigns from people who live on big estates that are being demolished to build luxury flats with absolutely no reference to the fact that people's homes and communities that are being demolished and split up. And I work an awful lot on police disproportional sort of use of force and tactics and give a voice there to people who are discriminated against. And that's really, you know, that's been my mission as an assembly member. I'm very lucky that I changed careers halfway through my life. And I'm very incredibly lucky now to be elected to represent people.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I'm dead ordinary, to be honest. I'm like most people in the country in that, you know, my parents were teachers. That's like the absolute average wage and we don't have family money or anything to fall back on. So like all the way through my career and like such a lot of people, it's always been earning today for today very, very hand to mouth. And I think that's something that people who've had privilege and had the ability to just go back to their parents' houses when they hit difficulties or get money borrowed. Don't appreciate that people have to live entirely on their own wits through their lives, can't take risks the way that they can. So a lot of the policies I work on as an London assembly member speak directly to the struggles of the people who are most excluded from all the wealth.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It did, we had some policy goals as well. So we wanted to see higher rates of vehicle access duty for the most damaging cars. We wanted to get higher congestion charge, which we won off Ken Livingston, but Boris Johnson later cancelled. But actually, it did start a national debate and started to dent the fashion for them, which was really important. So you can never reach that point like they did in America.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On people's windscreens, and it was very effective campaigning tactic because people noticed these, they were quite funny and they were unusual, quite not quite a sort of spiky tactic and it became the conversation we were on the today program and we were on all the radio.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is the first thing I did more or less after I became politically aware. I joined the Greens already and was involved in a local council campaign, so working on local planning applications and green spaces and buses and things like that. But I was seeing day to day more and more of these great big 4x4s. And the internet was quite new at this point. And I went on the internet and found that this was in America. This was worse than that. It was like 50% of the vehicles being sold in America were these SUVs. And I thought, well, what can I do to prevent that happening here? And I was working as a medical writer and I've been doing work on behavior change. So I took all the theories of behavior change and wrote these little leaflets that look like parking tickets that had in them all these very persuasive arguments for why not to have a four by four. And we started putting them.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, we had our struggles as students. There was a plan by the bursas of all the different colleges to put our rents up. So we had a bit of a battle over that. But no, I never. In the student common room, that's the sort of thing I used to do at university, yeah.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“what if someone had told me at the age of like eight or nine that in 40 years time i would be looking at a world where half of those species were no longer there where where everything was was concreted over where seeing a butterfly or you know more than one different kind of caterpillar in your garden was very very unusual i i would have i would have been absolutely shocked and i'd have been as cross as anyone and out on the school strikes i'm certain of it”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Him was full of all the wildlife, it was obviously packed out with hedgehogs and caterpillars and all the different really nice birds.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly, I gave no thought to politics until I was well into my 20s. I was not a student politician in any way. I was very, very just trying to find my way in the world, trying to work out what sort of person to be. I did eventually find activism in the Green Party. And that did come about in the period when there was big concern about the environment and big concern about globalization and big trade deals and things like that. And that's when I started to connect the dots on a sort of global level and think about taking change. But as a child, basically, I was writing to nature. I was very, very lucky. I grew up in essentially the countryside, the very edge of Cheltenham. And our estate where my parents bought their house for me to be born in, that estate was built onto Greenfields. We had a bit of original hedgerow down the back of the back garden. The wildlife still hadn't got used to the fact that they built an estate right there.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yes, I mean, what we saw was we were absolutely constrained from doing some of those things that we've been told for years couldn't possibly be cut back on. Obviously, lockdown is a very specific thing and has its absolute horrors as well, the loneliness. And I mean, I live on my own in this flat. The fact that I've had to do almost all my human contact via a screen for the last six months is really tough. And people sent to work at home miss the office terribly. But the idea that you couldn't work some of your time at home, that you couldn't cut back on flying abroad for business meetings almost completely. But now and again go and go and do that has been thrown out of the water. We absolutely can make big changes to how things work. And with some improvements and mitigations, that is how we could live. the future”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's so much what we've been talking about, and they are linking up the different crises. It's a completely different. World of public opinion out there at the moment, I think.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think you can talk about cause and effect like that. I mean, there have been pandemics in the past, but I think what we've seen is people certainly looking at this crisis and the economic crisis that's followed from the measures we've had to take to protect public health. And one thing, a solution, a recovery, reinvestment that solves all our problems together. The polling on a green recovery, on investing via a Green New Deal now, is hugely high. People, when asked to saying, yeah, we must have a recovery that's green, that solves that climate crisis, that builds a better world. And it isn't like it was 10 years ago after the banking crisis, which was purely an economic crisis, where all the arguments were about how we can cut back and we've got to restrict the public purse and cut public services. People are not talking about that now. They're talking about what we can invest in to build better.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we've seen that the declaiming style does not work, particularly not on a lonely podium in an empty room. It really isn't what you can actually do. When you haven't got that, those people in front of you reacting to what you say, giving a speech is a completely different endeavor. And I think Jonathan and I, we're co-leaders, so we're doing a speech together. We're certainly working on a speech that's much more of a chat with the membership. a thought piece about what we do in the future than it is about announcing policies to a room of acolytes. It's very, very different. I'm really sorry. I need to turn off my outlook, don't I?”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not sure about the attention being elsewhere business, to be honest. I think there's an awful lot of interest in finding the right solutions to these multiple crises that we find. And I really think that our party members who are very exercised, like you say, about climate change, about the crisis we face there, but are also on the ground, they are the ones who are working in the mutual aid groups, trying to sort out proper community level resilience. There's an awful lot to talk about and also we've got the crisis of populism and racism around the world as well. So yeah, there's an awful lot to be talking about. But certainly in format, it's an online conference. It's going to be very, very weird. There's going to be no hall to give a speech to. And I think we've seen all the other party leaders really struggling with that.”
2020-10-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Siân Berry One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source