One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up: A Memoir of Growing Up and Getting On

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the vitality of the book lies in its directness and conversational candour... An engaging memoir' --- The Sunday Times

Hill, Dave (23 May 2014). "Local elections: Labour wins control of Redbridge council for first time". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 20 April 2017. At one point in my life my mum couldn’t afford the Tube fares for me to get to and from school. So I missed school. And I think it’s very difficult for people who haven’t experienced that to really understand what that’s like, and how we solve it. The book isn’t a political tome. It’s not my vision for Britain. It’s not a policy prospectus. It’s a real life story that I hope helps to give people a window into what it’s like growing up in poverty, and also a sense of hope and possibility that while poverty is a trap, it is also a trap we can escape. And that’s the underlying message I hope that people take away from it.” Layfield, Luke (29 October 2004). "Architecture under threat at Cambridge". The Guardian . Retrieved 10 April 2020.I don’t want people to experience poverty,” he says. “I think people who haven’t experienced poverty don’t quite know just how suffocating and stifling it can be and the extent to which poverty is a trap; that it is very difficult to escape.

And I was worried about God. You know, fire and brimstone and going to hell. It’s taken me years to finally reconcile my sexuality with my faith, and I feel now at the age of 40 I am finally at ease with who I am, and with my faith and belief, and I don’t feel there is any contradiction whatsoever between being gay and being Christian, but it took me a long time to get to that point. I feel optimistic that we can find a way through that treats trans people with the dignity, the respect and support that they deserve at the same time as protecting the sex-based rights of women. And I’m sure we can find a way through, but I think we won’t do that in tweets. We will do that through good old fashioned conversations around the table.” What does he think now? He giggles. “It’s easy to make these pronouncements but you do have to work through the consequences to a tax and spending policy. Thankfully that responsibility is Rachel’s [Reeves].”Before being elected to represent Ilford North in 2015 Streeting was chief executive of the Helena Kennedy foundation, which helps students from further education to get to university, and head of education at Stonewall, the LGBT rights charity. At university, he joined Labour students and was elected as president of the National Union of Students in 2008. We walk across the road to another estate – greener, slightly more spacious. This is where Streeting spent most of his childhood. For his mother, it was an upgrade, but he found it gloomy and threatening. Did he play with the other kids here? “I wasn’t allowed to play out. My mum didn’t think the kids on the estate were a good influence.” Did it make him feel alienated? “Yeah. But she was probably right. It wasn’t safe. I was conscious when I started secondary school that some of those kids who were a bit older than me got into smoking and hanging out with people who were drug dealers on the estate.” At weekends, he stayed with his father in Dagenham. Both his parents went on to have children with new partners. He has five brothers, a sister and step-sister. Streeting was born in Stepney, London, on 21 January 1983. His parents were teenagers when he was born. [2] He has five brothers, a sister and a stepsister. [2] [3] His maternal grandfather was an armed robber who spent time in prison, and his grandmother became embroiled in his crimes and ended up in Holloway jail, where she met Christine Keeler (a key figure in the Profumo affair). According to Streeting, they "stayed in touch, they became friends." His grandmother was released from prison to give birth to his mother at Whittington Hospital. [2]