Adulting - #93 A Fresh Take On Teaching, Trade Unionism and How To Cook Properly with Nadia Whittome

Episode Date: January 31, 2021

Hey Podulters, this is the last episode of season 9!! I’ve absolutely loved this season - I think it might just be one of my favourites yet - and this episode is definitely a fab one to end on. I speak to Nadia Whittome, Labour mp for Nottingham East who also happened to become the youngest MP at 23, in 2019. We discuss the three things she wishes she had been taught in school, namely, being taught in a way that she learns, a fuller curriculum; including black history, the climate crisis and trade unionism, as well as how to cook properly. I really hope you enjoy, and as always thank you so much for listening x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. episode is defo a fab one to end on. I speak to Nadia Whittam, who is the Labour MP for Nottingham

East, and she also became the youngest MP at 23 in 2019. We discussed the three things she wishes she'd been taught in school, namely being taught in a way that she learns, a fuller curriculum, including Black History, the Climate Crisis and Trade Unionism, as well as how to cook properly. I really hope you enjoy listening and as always thank you so much for being a part of the podcast by listening with your ears. Lots of love. Bye! Hello and welcome to Adulting. Today I'm joined by Nadia Whittam. Hi Anoni. Hi, how are you doing?

Yeah, I'm well thanks. How are you? Or as well as can be during lockdown. How are you doing? No, I'm actually doing okay. I'm finding this third lockdown slightly easier. But I was talking to my boyfriend about this. I don't know if it's just because we've got used to it now and you're kind of better prepared to deal with it do you know what I mean yeah it's um it feels strange to be well not just strange it's massively disappointing and unacceptable to be a year on and to still be in this position but I was chatting to my friends about lockdowns and how they've become like cultural reference points we're saying oh yeah no that was the thing during the first lockdown or yeah remember midway through the second lockdown and this was a trend

it's so true it's like tiger king was lockdown one wasn't it that was like the main thing yeah I actually never saw that I was so busy during lockdown one that I feel like yeah the only thing that I did really was scroll on TikTok and obviously like doing my full-time job and everything else but in terms of like cultural stuff TikTok was about it if you can call it cultural I think it is oh it's definitely cultural it's a huge phenomenon and I was gonna say I imagine with your job you probably don't have much downtime to be chilling about binging Netflix so for people maybe who don't know who you are could you give us an introduction to Nadia what you do

what you're about all that kind of jazz yeah I'm the Member of Parliament for Nottingham East. I'm a Labour MP and you might also know me as the youngest MP in the UK, the so-called baby of the house. So I know that I've listened to you talk about it before, but I would, I mean, I was called the baby of my family because I'm the youngest, but I think in a a work setting it's a pretty shitty kind of like nickname how do you feel about that? Yeah like you I'm also the youngest in my family and I was the youngest in my year my birthday's on the 29th of August so I've always been used to being the youngest but being called the baby of the house at work is pretty infantilizing um but you know you've just got to kind of roll with it and I guess sometimes be prepared to to put people back in in their place a little bit like sometimes journalists will use it to introduce me

or to kind of try to undermine some of the political points that I'm trying to make and I've just got to be careful not to let that happen. Yeah that's so true and also it is really satisfying when you completely change someone's opinion of you or like go against all their preconceptions that is quite like a small enjoyable win which I imagine you get to have quite a lot of the time. That's so true actually yeah I hadn't thought of it in that sense but yeah there's a certain amount of satisfaction in that. So can you tell me about what made you decide to become an MP and where whether or not you'd had any inclination kind of before it was already happening that this was something that you were aiming to do. I'm really

fascinated about it. I mean, I'm a bit older than you. I'm almost 27, but I couldn't, the idea of being an MP, whilst I think it's one of the coolest jobs, even though it's obviously so hard, I would be absolutely terrified to go into that position. So how was it going in as the youngest MP and how was it realising that that was what you were going to be doing? And the place where I lived and I live now is called the Meadows in Nottingham, which some of your listeners might have heard of. It was hit very hard by austerity and by the bedroom tax. So I got involved in the fight back and then joined the Labour Party, joined the trade union and from there became involved in a lot of community activism both kind of locally in Nottingham but also nationally around Brexit and migrants rights and workers rights and trade union rights but no it's not something that I ever expected to be a career and I guess it's not something that I ever really thought of as like a career because my politics have come from my lived experience and from my family history as shock, really, in this time in 2019, the incumbent MP for Nottingham East defected and created his own party.

So there was a vacancy and my friends and I and other activists got together and we thought, why don't we do this and build a campaign? And yeah, we might not win, but we'll be able to raise the issues that are important and aren't raised enough. And then, oh God, sorry, my headphone just came out. And then we did win. And it was over that weekend that I had to kind of come to terms with becoming a new MP. I was elected on the early hours of the Friday morning, had to go to Parliament on Monday morning for my first day. So it wasn't something that I could have really prepared myself for, particularly as the life that I was going from was so different to the world that I was about to enter. So I'd been applying for Christmas temp jobs before I was elected.

Yeah, I mean, how was it? I tried to make some notes during my first week in particular. And I remember saying to a friend that as a woman of colour and someone who's from a sort of ordinary working class background it's it feels like a pretty hostile place and it feels like somewhere where you're both invisible and hyper visible at the same time if that makes sense in fact my my colleague Kate Green who's now the Sheldon Education Secretary, put it really well. She said there are more portraits of horses in Parliament than there are of women. And that's just talking about representation of 50% of the population, let alone people who are marginalised in other ways.

I think what you said about your politics coming from your lived experience is really important and kind of crucial in terms of, I think what you said about your politics coming from your lived experience is really important and and kind of crucial in terms of I think how politics needs to move forward because so many of the people that we see in power were seeking out the position of politics because of that seeking out of power rather than because they have been directly impacted and affected by these legislations that can change people's lives. And so I think that's a lot about what's wrong with politics and the kind of style of leadership that is valued and is set up as being a gold standard. It's very sort of dominating and authoritarian. It's about how much power you can wield over someone rather than about amplifying people's voices from the grassroots, I guess.

So I think it's less a problem with individuals being bad people and more the system that we have that makes politics like that yeah I think I think that you're right I think that those institutions have just been like that for so long that that's kind of the recipe and the kind of the end result is kind of built from years and years of that same person going into the position that how does it I feel like it is changing in certain instances and that we definitely have more women in parliament and there's definitely more people of color and black people and people from different backgrounds that are working in

parliament now but but it's still such a small minority like how how does that impact like you were saying about feeling visible and hyper-visible. Do you feel like your identity often gets in the way in a space which is so whitewashed and so full of men? I think there have been some changes, but they've been pretty piecemeal and superficial rather than institutional and structural. And that's what I see part of my role as being

is to change that institution not just to become a part of it um and I think it sort of highlights the problem with just looking at representation as an end in itself because obviously representation is important but we could have we could have a whole parliament made up of um of people like priti patel or sajid javid still enacting those policies that systematically discriminate against and marginalise people from similar backgrounds to us. And that's why when we're talking about changing kind of systematic change and liberation rather than you know when we have enough women in parliament all of a sudden society won't be sexist or misogynistic anymore it's it's like the whole idea isn't it of having women CEOs and that somehow equals

women's liberation when until the paid women until cleaners and caterers in that company are being paid at least the real living wage and have power and control in their workplaces and in society then liberation hasn't happened but even even taking just representation alone we don't have a single trans MP that's so true never had a single openly trans MP I'm not saying that would be the end but it would be a start it's something that I spoke about with Michaela Loach actually recently on a podcast and we were talking about activism and we were talking about how oh she's so amazing I know she's so clever it was one of my favorite conversations and um we were just talking about the trap you can fall into when you become quite successful

in a movement and you're doing really well and people start to respect you is it's actually very easy to then just become I'm not saying literally the white man but you know like the ideological version of like a white privileged man it's actually a really scary accidental thing you can fall into because you like for instance you manage to get into the space that you're trying to infiltrate and change the structure of. And then if you're not concentrating, you kind of can become part of the same system, which I guess is what you're saying. Like there has to be so much resistance and so much real inclination for legislative, systemic, institutional change, not just individuals breaking barriers and um you know appearing in places yeah completely that's it's a really good point and i know that this is something that michaela has said as well that there's there's a tendency to put people on a pedestal which is i think something that society kind of creates but it's something that we've got to

resist in left-wing and progressive movements because none of us are infallible none of us are perfect and I think it's it can it's it can be quite a scary thing, but it's being led by clever people or people who are, you know, especially unique or special. We're going to achieve the things that we need to achieve, like gender equality, racial equality, powerful workers through our collective efforts and putting all of our minds together and that's kind of how I try to live my politics. I very much believe in pluralism and that no one person has the answer to everything but we come up with better ideas when we have debates and when we have disagreements and it's fine to have those disagreements but we've

just got to do it well. Yeah I agree I think that we've got quite worried about being on the wrong side of history even if it's just for a moment if even if it's just challenging something with a friend or figuring something out I think there's this tendency to want to get it right first time every time. And that can actually stop people from even engaging because the bar is set so high that it seems too scary to even attempt to figure out a means of changing something or even doing the smallest piece of activism or trying to be active within your community or even saying something which you think might alleviate some pain from someone I think that we've all got too much pressure on ourselves at the minute to get it

right straight away and that's just never going to happen yeah I think that's right and I think we're sort of conditioned to look to other people to um to have the answers and that we're not powerful ourselves I don't know whether that makes any sense but like it's it's people like me or you know any politician or leader to be to be sort of like the powerful ones with the answers it should be our job to to help people to seize power themselves and to keep that power so I mean for example it's it's not just a case of, I mean, of course, I want a Labour government desperately and my constituency and working class people across this country desperately need a Labour government. But that Labour government needs to be one that puts power in people's hands

and allows people to have power in their workplaces and power in their communities not just one that delivers good things for people I think that's it's funny I'm actually just have you read Utopia for Realists I haven't no I should read that it's a really good book and I've just started just started reading it but the first chapter I'm really going off topic is all about universal basic income and it just talks about how like when you give people the power especially at economic power with no strings attached and kind of say like it's up to you they will always make a better decision than someone that's like a leader trying

to decide what people need and it's kind of like the same thing I know that's a really specific example of like giving people monetary power but it was so amazing to read and fascinating to read about how we as individuals do know what's right for us we know what we need and most people are inclined to do something that's beneficial when they're given the option but it's it's that lack of power as you say and kind of um too much control from leaders that think they know what they're talking about that strips people of that kind of ability to self-actualize what what what they want to be doing I don't know if that if you agree with that I just it felt like similar yeah I completely agree. I think that's a really good way of putting it. It's about, I think looking back at history as well, all of those huge historic victories, like the civil rights movement, even things that we take for granted now like having weekends which were won by the trade union movement all of those things have been won by people at grassroots level like stonewall

um well pretty much every every victory we can think of in history has been won by rank-and-file grassroots activists, not by benevolent politicians deciding to do something. It's been politicians that have come in afterwards and finally conceded because there was so much grassroots pressure wow that's it's such a good way of thinking at things like it I haven't really thought about it like that before but you're so right um I don't want to I don't want to stick on that too long because I'm gonna I've sorry it's because I could chat to you all day I'm gonna go on to your three things um that you wish you'd been taught in school because that's what we're asking

them in the season now your number one is such a good one no one else has said this and I think it's really important and you've said you wish you've been taught in a way that you can learn um I I love this I want to know exactly what you mean by that and like what your learning experience was like at school and I guess what you've learned about yourself in the years since then that's made you realize that you maybe would have benefited from a different style of teaching or learning yeah I think um this is it's probably something that I find quite difficult to talk about because I look back at my schooling and I I think about the way that I probably wasn't particularly engaged in my learning. And there was such a pressure to make good decisions and to get it right first time. without recognising that actually, yeah, even children have different things going on in their lives

and different things to think about that might not make it possible for them to always get it right first time. And then I think about some of my subjects that I really thrived in and contrasting that with like the lessons that I just used to mess around in or nap or would just be talking to my friend all lesson or not even turning up to the lesson at all and then I remember in contrast I was 13 years old and I went to the head of the languages department and said that I wanted to sit my French GCSE and he was like like first of all I don't even really know you because you never come in but also like what what makes you what makes you think that you can do that and I insisted that I really wanted to be put in for this and I got an A star at the age of

13 but then contrast that with all of those other lessons where I probably could have thrived if I was able to learn in a way that was accessible for me and I think that this is just the same for so many, so, so many children. And it can sometimes be to the extreme, like when you look at children who have been excluded and what proportion of those children have learning difficulties or autistic spectrum disorder or ADHD and how a traditional schooling environment just doesn't doesn't tap their full potential or untap their full potential it's so interesting because I think when I think about my life now I'm obsessed with learning and I love I will think of a random topic I want to learn about and I'll find podcasts on or I'll read articles and they'll just be like I'll get endless joy from speaking to people on the podcast whatever it might be and I've realized it's so weird because I was really resistant

probably similar to you at school I was I was quite smart so I would do the work but I was always kind of like messing around I used to get really stressed out about exams I hated revising and the same thing at uni anything with like exam, I couldn't almost think about the learning. So I was so preoccupied with this idea of doing well at the end that it almost put me off in a funny way. And as I've got older, I've realized that there's definitely something wrong with the exam structure because I love learning. It was never about the learning. It was about that huge pressure, as you said. And I guess the fact that a lot of it was about kind of remembering information rather than necessarily understanding it really fully

and I was never good at memorizing something unless I could understand it to the nth degree I couldn't just kind of remember the pieces on the AQA biology book or whatever it might have been and it's interesting to look back no massively and I totally relate to what you say about exams I remember walking out of several GCSE and A-level exams just because I don't know I couldn't concentrate do you would you have like an a vision for um like if you could imagine what you think schooling should be like or how education could change for students that you think would be more engaging what would be your version of like a more utopian schooling oh this is such an exciting question so I think that we we really need to look

at the purpose of education and there's a sort of a right wing view a neo-liberal view I guess of what education looks like so children are taught in order to to work to get a job and to get a job that's useful to the economy, it's a very sort of narrow view of what education is. Whereas what I see education as being is a more left-wing view, would be education as a tool for liberation, for understanding the world around you, for being able to think critically and to really be empowered to change things in society. One of the things that my mum used to say to me, and I think this is an experience that a lot of first and second generation immigrants have,

is that she would always say education is the only thing that breaks a cycle of deprivation and kind of unpicking that I think I think she's right I also think that that shouldn't just be about individuals and individuals sort of doing well and then doing well enough to become middle class. It should be about having a universal system for everybody, no matter your background, that is good quality and gives everyone the same opportunities and the same chances not just to get on and to get a good job or to go to university but to to really learn and explore different ideas I completely agree one of the reasons I started this podcast was because there were so many things when I finished university that I just didn't understand about the world that seemed so much more fundamental than a lot of the lessons that I had had. And I suddenly, it was like my

eyes had been opened and I realized I didn't really know anything about our history or about our culture and you can feel quite bereft of knowledge in that sense which is funny because I'd had a full education and I was even sent to private school which I am I wouldn't send my kids to private school that's a whole nother story um because that's just where I've become politically aligned and but yeah that's a different conversation but it was it was just so fascinating even from such a privileged position and with university education everything I came out and I was like I don't know the things I need to know everything I've learned actually seems was quite superfluous beyond like learning how to read and write and like the lessons that I loved there was just so many things missing from my education, which I think would have been really crucial. And that actually leads us onto your second thing that you wished that you'd been

taught, which is a fuller curriculum, including black history, the climate emergency, and trade unionism. So I'd love for you to speak about that a bit more and also where your interests came from your activism side of things it was that all from your lived experiences and did that lend you to become more invested in learning about things like the climate emergency etc was that just around you and your family and the conversations you were having? Okay so yeah I think this this issue of a fuller curriculum is really important and I guess I've been kind of cheeky here because you asked me for three things that I wish I'd learned in school and a fuller curriculum sort of encompasses a lot of things but I think there are there are three gaping holes in the curriculum as far as I'm concerned and there'll be lots of other things as well like not enough focus on the arts which

in fact is that's a huge issue that that could be a fourth um but the three things that I had thought about was a decolonised curriculum that we don't learn about the full spectrum and the full range of British history or even world history so for example when we learn about black history we learn about black history, we learn about slavery. We don't learn about the Bristol bus boycott. We don't learn about the Grunwick strike, which is British Asian history. These are two examples of workers, black and Asian workers, coming together and resisting exploitation at work, resisting unfair and discriminatory employment practices and winning.

And then that's another thing that we don't learn about is trade unions. So it's no wonder that so many people of my age of our age don't know that when you leave school that you have a right to join a trade union and that goes for every workplace and I think that's just extremely dangerous because we're left to go out into this world of work that is kind of de-unionised, fragmented and just very insecure. So a lot of people will leave school to go on to part-time zero hours contract jobs be doing things like working for Deliveroo and just won't be aware of their workplace rights um and then the other thing which is really important and I'm excited to talk about actually because I'm working with climate strikers on bringing this to parliament is the climate and ecological emergency and the fact that that isn't on the curriculum yet

it threatens our very existence as people and as a planet. When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding

large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery, and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that is interesting is that it's young people,

schoolchildren in particular, who are too young even to vote, who have raised the issue of the climate crisis and made it a priority issue nationally and internationally. But yet this isn't something that they learn about at school, apart from in a very sort of piecemeal, ad hoc way, maybe a little bit in geography.

I think there's a few things I want to ask you about. So first of all, I'm going to start with trade unionism because I'm really not that clued up about it at all. And I wonder if you could explain a bit more about it because you're right, it isn't something we learn about. The only real conversations I've had before is when talking with friends who have had a problem at work and someone's been like, oh, you can join a trade union and none of us really understand how it works. And also, I think it can feel quite daunting because it's so unknown. So could you tell me a bit more about trade unionism and how it works? I think you're right. I think it is daunting.

And I think unless you've got a family member who's in a union or you have a sort of family history of people being unionized so for example lots of people in nottingham or nottingham shire come from mining families but then that generation is beginning to leave us and we're not equipped to enter the world of work with that knowledge of our rights so I joined a trade union when I was 16 I joined the GMB which is still my union now um and trade unions I think there's one of the things that you said was interesting about we're told to join a union when we have problems at work and I think it is important to to join a union if you have problems because your trade union is there to protect you to advocate on your behalf um and to to intervene in any issues like that. But there's a far broader purpose that a union has,

and that's basically every worker's right that we have, the right to weekends, not to be working every single hour of the day, the right to fair pay and a minimum wage. Yes, the minimum wage was introduced by Tony Blair's Labour government, but it was fought for and won by the trade unions. And it's only because workers came together through the trade unions that we were able to win any of those workers' and that's that's the really fundamental reason for why people should join a union that's yeah I never knew that and that's that sense of support as well it's so crucial and so many people would benefit from that um and I

definitely think it is interesting that it's not something that we are taught about it's not even spoken about that widely as as you said like unless something happens and then people think oh well this is kind of like a last resort thing that you could look to in order to help resolve an issue rather than something which could be your lifelong support network as as you've had um and in fact the next one more thing that is really obvious is furlough. Like everyone, this new word in our vocabulary that we've all heard about in the past year, the fact that that furlough was won was because the trade unions were pushing for it.

If it wasn't for the unions, we wouldn't have furlough, probably. Yeah, see, I didn't know that either. So many things, I just think, oh my God see I didn't know that either so many things I just think oh my god I don't know anything but um that's why it's so good to speak to people like you um so the next thing I want to talk about was was the climate emergency because I think that you're right it's definitely like my like our generation but I would say as you said it's even younger than that they feel so um passionate about it and I think that it's said it's even younger than that they feel so passionate about it and I think that it's because there's a real sense of injustice if you're like 14 15 that you're living in this world that seems so doomed and it's kind of like nothing to do with you it's like

you've been born into this world that's already on fire and I feel like that that's why it's so sad kind of that it is a lot of younger people that are rallying and lobbying and really trying to get together to create change and change legislation. When, you know, they haven't been alive long enough to, you know, let off enough carbon emissions. Do you know what I mean? It's sad. That's how it is. Yeah, it is. And we often hear politicians saying, don't we, that young climate activists are inspiring,

but we never actually see them, you know, actually being inspired to take action as a result. And that's something that needs to change. So one of the things that we championed in the Labour Manifesto in 2019 was a Green New Deal. And this isn't just looking at the climate emergency. It's also looking at tackling the massive unsustainable and growing levels of inequality that we're seeing. massive post-war scale investment in green industry green infrastructure green technology all to create green jobs and these are jobs that would be well paid unionized and would put money in people's pockets at the same time as tackling climate change

when you speak about these things in parliament or like when you're having these conversations as tackling climate change. When you speak about these things in Parliament or when you're having these conversations perhaps with peers, do you feel like there is kind of like a generational divide in passion towards the climate emergency or is there a left and right divide or is there not really? How does it feel when you broach that topic? Because I feel like everyone's obviously very focused on the pandemic and Brexit right now. But I mean, the climate emergency is really the most emergency thing we've got going on.

How is that now that you're actually in the space? Is it as it looks from the outside looking in? Yeah, completely. You're right. It is the biggest threat that we face and it's it's an emergency that's not going away um i think what what i see from inside parliament is to be honest a lot of greenwashing so i'm also a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, which holds the government to account on its environmental pledges. And we hear a lot about these sort of big showy schemes

that the government will introduce. But then when you look at where the money's going, they're never followed by the kind of investment that we need to tackle the climate crisis. And that's because this government basically just does not fundamentally believe in that kind of state investment. It believes in the power of the market. And frankly, it was the market and multinational corporations that brought about the climate crisis.

And it's not going to be solved by letting the market run free. When you imagine a future, I imagine all of those things that you said, but when you imagine what the first change is going to be, what is the first thing that you think needs to be changed? Is it, as you said, in the power of the people for a little small change to come from the individual? Or do you think that there needs to be legislation or I guess both? No this needs this needs change on a national and an international scale it's it's not something that is going to be solved by enough people shopping organic or even going vegan and I say that as a vegan this is something that governments need to tackle with that post-war record scale of investment um so one opportunity that we have

coming up it's not just an opportunity it's really our last chance is COP26 which the UK is hosting this year and we'll have an opportunity to to lead the way amongst other countries on climate and we need to be in a position to showcase what we've done and I'm afraid that the government's record is just very poor on on climate so we need to be looking very urgently at ways that the climate and ecological emergency can be managed adaptations and how we can mitigate the effects of this crisis, because the effects are happening now. You know, when we look at flooding and severe weather, food shortages, a lack of sustainable food production,

these are things that are affecting us in this country here and now, but even more are impacting people in the global south. And that's another big issue that isn't spoken about enough, is that this was a crisis that was brought about by multinational corporations, mainly in the global north, yet it disproportionately impacts people in the global south who have done the least to bring it about and are also least able to to change it because they don't have the resources

and this is just one of the reasons why the fact that the government's scrapping the department for international Development is extremely concerning. Because, you know, climate crisis is something that transcends borders, and our response to it needs to transcend borders too. Completely. And I think one of the biggest tragedies that's kind of like pushed forward by the media and in a lot of people's minds is there's this idea that the global south are the ones creating all of the CO2 emissions. And no one's really talking about the fact that we are consuming so much and lots of it might be produced in the global south. But it's actually because of our mass consumption that that's where you're seeing those really high numbers.

And there's that really skewed idea that it's not you're seeing those really high numbers and there's that really skewed idea that it's not us it's them um yeah and that's so damaging for people's idea of whether it's to do with immigration or whether it's to do with you know who's at fault when it's like north versus south and i think that that just creates more and more misinformation and people don't actually know what why this is happening or what how they or where they live is is creating or being part of the problem yeah completely and what a lot of governments aren't transparent and honest about is the extent to which they offshore emissions so basically like dumping our environmental damage on other countries it's awful and when you start to learn about it especially i've been learning about it through

the lens of fast fashion over the past few years it's something that I've really had a massive attitude shift on because I didn't realize not only like the garment workers working in awful conditions but the the carbon emissions from fast fashion and it's such an awful industry and that was a really good lens for me to try to learn about things because it's so close to home and we consume so much fast fashion in the UK and in the US and um I found that really fascinating and and petrifying to be honest um but I'm gonna go back oh sorry sorry no no you carry on carry on I was yeah I I completely agree and it's something that I've had a real reckoning with over the past few years as well and I've been really inspired by activists on Instagram and people encouraging to buy second hand

but also actually the committee that I sit on, the Environmental Audit Committee, before I was elected, did a report into fast fashion. And a lot of those things have come up during the pandemic as well, because there's such an overlap, as you've said, between damage to the environment and exploitation of the environment and exploitation of workers so if we just look at boohoo for example which massively exploits its workers as well as the planet and creams off this huge profit at the expense of both no it's awful and it's like it's it's also much more interlinked than you realize this is what i hadn't um fully got my head around but when every time I'm doing these episodes like especially Michaela Loach's episode she picked a few similar things to you and it sounded at the beginning like they were all three separate things it was about

um one of them was white supremacy one of them was climate justice um and I'm trying to remember what the third thing was now but they basically they all interlinked with each other they are innately linked and it's the same when you talk about like immigration and climate change and um it's just everything all of these policies which from the outside if you're not and this is something i never used to understand because i was never very politically engaged and i always used to find these kind of topics too scary and then once you actually start peeling back and getting learning more you realize everything is just linked to poverty austerity um and basically disparity and wealth is kind of

usually the underlying catalyst in creating all of these issues i know that's very simplified but it paints a pretty miserable picture doesn't it but the good news is is that we do have the power to change this and that's what that's what I hope I'm doing from within parliament is amplifying all of those calls for change and all of the ways in which people are actually materially changing things even under the conditions that that we're currently living in under this government. So take last night, I was on a Zoom event with rent strikers. These are students from 50 campuses across the country who are withholding their rent and saying to landlords and university accommodation providers, we are not going to be treated as cash cows and we're

not going to line the pockets of vice chancellors on six-figure salaries. We're withholding our rent and we're saying that enough is enough and that everybody, whether you're a student or not, in a pandemic or not, has the right to decent, affordable and secure housing. That's incredible. And how did the talk go? Oh, it was brilliant. We heard from loads of rent strikers, including a couple of them on there were from Nottingham so I've been in close contact with Nottingham Trent University Rent Strike which is in my constituency and also the University of Nottingham Rent Strike so it was just massively inspiring and pretty astounding, actually, to see that number of people on a Zoom call. I think this is probably the biggest victory since, well, since the A-level results, which was a huge victory that schoolchildren won.

But before that, since the university student fees hike, which I was too young to remember, but well, I remember I was 13, but not in a sort of an activist way. It goes back to what you said right at the beginning about, you know people having power and being the ones to enact change like everything we've spoken about you just give an example after example where really it is the collective that brings about the change rather than those very few at the top yeah 100 i'm going to go on to your third thing now um which is how to cook properly and I think that is such a crucial one for loads of different reasons but what why do you wish that you've been taught how to cook properly in school so I am a terrible cook and I come from a family where everybody is very good at cooking we're all we're all like big cooks and big eaters apart from me

I'm just a big eater but I'm all for cooking and it's very much sort of like part of our family culture like we'll have family do's and everyone will bring food and even amongst my cousins like I'm well there are so my mum is one of seven so there are tons of us and in my kind of like cohort of cousins I'm the oldest and I'm also the only one who can't cook which is really embarrassing so like my younger cousins will look after me and cook for me if we're together and pretty much all I can do is like make drinks um but it would have been great to be able to to learn how to cook properly we did have some cooking lessons at school but I was I was always the one who'd forget my ingredients or who would remember really late on a Sunday night

and I had to like get them from the corner shop and some of the stuff that we'd make was just not like proper food so I remember that we used to make this thing called konzo cake which I've googled and what comes up on google is a bit different to what we used to make which was just like smashed up biscuits with chocolate and a freezer I remember we did actually also learn to make a rice salad and so like I'm I'm Indian and my mum's very particular about the way that she makes rice and at school we learned that you boil the rice for 11 minutes and then you drain it in a colander and I remember coming home like I knew it all and I was like mum mum you boil the rice and then you drain it in a colander and my mum just told me where to get off.

Oh my god this is so funny because this is an argument I have with my boyfriend I'm interested to see if this is how you cook rice. So the way my mum cooks rice is she drains it first, like rinses it off, and then puts a really specific amount of water in it and then boils it until it's cooked. Is that how your mum does it? So it's definitely correct to rinse it first. I know that this is controversial because it's the only correct way to do it and then you like lightly stir in a little bit of oil but be careful not to burn it

so the only time that I've tried to do this I burnt it but also undercooked it but I know theoretically how to do it so you rinse you mix in the oil and spices and then you put some water in but you don't put as much as you think you need to put in and the rice is ready when it's kind of like standing up on its end if that makes sense yeah that makes complete sense so that's basically what my mum does but she doesn't add spices and I need to do that um but yeah my boyfriend does the way that you did at school and I find it mind-blowing every time I find it really offensive because also I think it's such a waste of hot water because you boil water in the graves that's horrific I just don't understand because you but first we put the rice into cold water which you boil but then in order to rinse

it obviously you have to rinse it with hot water because that's otherwise the rice is going to go cold so just two sets of hot water which is a complete waste of electricity and also it just feels so wrong this domestic your boyfriend is wrong thank you so much that nothing makes me happier than being right I'm really pleased about that um but I guess taking it a bit more seriously the cooking thing is like a massive issue and I just wanted to talk about it briefly because I actually haven't spoken about this yet whilst we're on the topic of food um what what's been going on when with you in work with the whole school meals and the absolute shit show that was the stuff that was being sent out to families that were on free school meals um again that was individuals again campaigning for change but I haven't actually seen what's happened since then

it's the government's reaction to this has just been despicable. The fact that I'm even sort of shaking a bit beginning to talk about it, the fact that all but five or possibly six Tories walk through the voting lobbies to deny 1.4 million children food over the holidays is an absolute disgrace. And then when we saw the food packages that families were getting, and I asked the minister directly, I'm the vice chair of the school food all-party parliamentary group, and I asked the minister, why aren't families being trusted to have money not food vouchers and not parcels but money that they can buy their own food with

and why are people so poor in the first place what are you doing to make sure that given that seven in ten children living in poverty come from working families what are you doing to make sure that given that seven in ten children living in poverty come from working families what are you doing to make sure that not a single person is earning so little that they can't afford to feed their children and she gave me some sort of mumbling answer about um the government is actually making significant steps and but we're not seeing it on children's plates it was when when we saw the packages that were going out I don't know if you follow Jack Monroe who's also known as like the bootstrap yeah yeah I do yeah they're awesome yeah oh yeah they're amazing it's so good and that when they were sharing, they did like a thread and everyone was kind of sending them the packages.

And I was just aghast. Like, it's obvious. Some of these things would be like two slices of bread, an apple, a tin of beans and half a banana for two children for a week. And apparently that costs £30. It was just, I've never seen anything quite so enraging as that. And it's because also, I mean, is Boris Johnson giving that to his myriad children? Definitely not. It's just, it's really infuriating. Yeah, and it's just, I think it just reinforces this idea that though they might deny it the Tories have about people that if you're if you're poor it's not because of society's failing it's not because of structural failings it's because you have some kind of moral deficiency that made you poor yeah all that old

capitalist idea is if you work hard and you'll get you know you'll get there and it's like well that we know but by evidence that that only works if you've already got you know generational wealth and nepotism and all the other things that are going to get you to a position where you can actually sustain yourself from working um I just think that it was my neighbours who work extremely hard to my former colleagues who work harder than anyone I know to my brother who when he left school was working five minimum wage jobs you know they they all work a billion times harder than I've seen Jacob Rees-Mogg working in Parliament. Yeah. I mean, maybe the one good result from this will be that because we have just seen shit show after shit show, sorry for my spelling, with this government, that it might mean that in the next election we see a very different

result that's all I'm holding out hope for yeah we have to we have to make sure that we get this government out and that we we keep up that struggle for a better society because what we're experiencing at the moment with these growing levels of poverty and inequality, the climate crisis, the rise of the far right, it can't continue. I totally agree. I've absolutely loved talking to you been such a delightful guest I was wondering if you had anything that you want to oh good I'm glad you enjoyed it honestly it's been so lovely um do you have anything that you want to point people in the direction of whether that's anything you would encourage people to look up or join or read um and also where can everyone come and find you online?

Oh, okay. I would say if you're not already a member of a trade union, make sure you join one. There has never been a more important time. And have a look to see what's happening in your community, whether it's rent strikes, workers going on strike, mutual aid. That has really been the defining thing of this pandemic, I think, has been the solidarity that communities have shown each other. So I would get involved and support what's happening close to you. And what was the last question where you can find me on Instagram I'm at Nardi Wissam MP and my Twitter handle is the same I think my Facebook handle is the same and on TikTok I'm at Nardi Wissam but I mainly use it for scrolling but I might be posting some

content soon oh my god I'm gonna have to download TikTok to watch it. I had to delete it off my phone because it basically, I got in so many holes with it. I'd ended up on these like random videos, like 17 year olds doing dance. I couldn't stop watching. Like it's so addictive. So I had to delete it off my phone

because I would get in a scroll hole. Oh my God, the algorithm is so accurate. But also there's so many cool, like young, really young political activists doing that amazing stuff on tiktok yeah yeah it's incredible it is amazing um well thank you again for joining me and thank you everyone for listening um and I will see you next week bye thank you so much, Anoni. Bye. Bye. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning,

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