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Desert Island Discs

Dame Louise Casey, crossbench peer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.413.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Baroness Casey of Blackstock is a former civil servant specialising in social welfare, who has worked under five prime ministers. She has taken on some of UK society’s most difficult issues, including homelessness, anti-social behaviour and family breakdown, and has become known for her forthright views. She grew up in Portsmouth and her first job was working on reception at a branch of the Department of Health and Social Security in the late 1980s. At 27 she became the deputy director of the housing and homelessness charity, Shelter. In 1999 she was appointed head of Tony Blair’s new Rough Sleepers Unit, prompting the media to call her the ‘homelessness tsar’. She went on to run the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit at the Home Office where she became known as the ASBO Queen. David Cameron appointed her director general of the Troubled Families Programme in 2011. In 2016 she was awarded a DBE for services to families and vulnerable people. During the first COVID-19 lockdown she led the government’s Everyone In campaign which found emergency accommodation for rough sleepers. DISC ONE: Hanging on the Telephone by Blondie DISC TWO: What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong DISC THREE: G Puccini: La Boheme / Act 1: Che Gelida Manina by Luciano Pavarotti and Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan DISC FOUR: Love Train by The O’Jays DISC FIVE: Abide With Me by Shirley Bassey and the Morriston Rugby Club Choir DISC SIX: Danny Boy by The Grimethorpe Colliery RJB Band DISC SEVEN: Nocturne No 2 in E flat Discogs title: Op. 9/2 in E flat major, composed by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Daniel Barenboim (piano) DISC EIGHT: Quanta Qualia composed by Patrick Hawes, performed by The Self-Isolation Choir BOOK CHOICE: The collected works of Jane Austen LUXURY ITEM: A supply of wine CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Love Train by The O’Jays Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

0:04.8

Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.

0:08.4

Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take

0:13.2

with them if they were cast away to a desert island.

0:16.3

And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.

0:21.0

I hope you enjoy listening.

0:44.8

My cast away this week is Dame Louise Casey,

0:47.5

Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Now across Bench Pierre, she's worked under five prime ministers,

0:53.3

tackling the country's thorniest social problems, homelessness, poverty, crime,

0:58.1

anti-social behaviour and family breakdown.

1:01.2

Baroness might be the grandest title she's earned in her career, but it's by no means the first.

1:06.2

She's been known as the homelessness are, the respects are, the Aspo Queen and on occasion,

1:11.6

the ZAR of ZARs. Her outspoken style and pragmatic approach have always set her

1:17.1

apart. As one former colleague put it, there's no other civil servant I've ever

1:21.2

met that's gone down a crack alley to find out why someone's homeless.

1:24.9

But then she started at the shop end behind the counter of the DHSS,

1:28.8

the poverty she saw there in the late 1980s moved her to find a job where she could

1:33.2

offer hands-on help. She began working for homelessness charities and by 1992 was the deputy

1:39.0

director of Shelter at just 27. By the late 90s she was a government trouble shooter.

1:44.9

Under Tony Blair she led a drive to slash the numbers of rough sleepers. Under David Cameron

1:49.8

she ran the troubled families program. More recently she chaired the COVID-19

1:53.9

rough sleeping task force. Her everyone in initiative was credited with protecting over 14,000

...

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