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June 23, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:25
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Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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UK Summer of Strikes 00:15:00
I'm Piers Morgan on Censor coming up tonight.
First trains, then planes.
The UK summer of strikes now heads to the skies.
The shocking US Supreme Court ruling that means America's response to recent gun massacres is going to be to make it easier to carry guns in public.
We'll debate that.
Have our students become a militant herd of triggered crybabies?
One man's journey to answer the question that's stumbling an entire generation.
Please, if one person could tell me what a woman is.
You are not here for women.
We ask you to leave.
is that Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
The UK summer of strikes is now heading to the skies as hundreds of British Airways workers at Heathrow Airport voting on strike over pay.
I'm joined now by tonight's Piersback, Talk TV's international editor, Isabel Oakshot, political journalist Ada Santina and aviation analyst Alex Pacheris.
Well welcome to all of you.
We're starting with this.
Alex I want to start with you.
You're over in Doha where there's a huge airline conference and there clearly is general crisis and chaos across the world post-pandemic as these airlines try and get through this.
Alex can't hear me.
We'll come to the two ladies sitting with me now.
Isabel, clearly the airwaves are in turmoil.
We know this.
Through the pandemic, a lot of people got laid off, a lot of people left their work and the result now is utter chaos.
People can't get on holiday.
They're being cancelled at the last minute, not just here, but all around the world.
Now British Airways staff, check-in staff in particular, have decided they're going to go on strike, but it's particularly about one aspect.
They say their pay was cut by 10% at the start of the pandemic because of the huge losses the airline were making, that there was a promise they get it back.
They're now being offered a 10% bonus as a one-off payment, but not the 10% pay cut restored that they had.
And some managers, apparently, are getting the original cut restored to their pay packet.
What do you make of it?
Well, what I make of it is I can see why they may well be aggrieved.
I just think that the timing of this, just as it was with the RMT strike, is calculated to be as disruptive as possible.
This is what they do.
And, you know, for British people thinking that for the first time in two years, they might actually be able to have a half-decent summer holiday, I think that's absolutely for the birds because this isn't just going to affect BA.
I'm sure that it will soon spill over.
If it's true, and it seems to be, if it is the case that these BA staff had 10% lopped off their salaries, promised to get it back, now they're not getting it back because it's getting the bonus.
And other more senior members, managers included, have apparently had that money restored.
That seems to me very different to what's going on with the rail strikes, where they want another 11% on top of their current existing money.
This is about restoring something they were told would be a temporary cut.
Yeah, but at the end of the day, you don't always have to, your default position doesn't have to be to strike.
And I think that there must be...
But what if they're refusing to give them the money?
Well, then, you know, frankly, there may be other jobs that you have to look to.
I mean, how much can people take, you know, in terms of the great British public who have just put up with endless chaos here?
If there's a choice to fly a different airline, that's what I would suggest people do, just to avoid British Airways.
What do you think of this?
I don't think it's about the workers.
Sorry, I don't think it's about the British public at all.
It's totally about the workers.
I think it's obscene that we're even thinking about people going on holiday who are lucky enough to have a little bit of extra surplus money and can go on holiday.
And we're not talking about the people who have had not only 10% of their pay cut over the last year, but they're also not getting a rise in their pay with inflation.
I think that's frankly.
Lucifer's still got a job, you know, given what everything that the country has been through, they are still in their job.
How much of people have had to take.
They're not ever lucky to have a job.
That's ridiculous.
Like no one's lucky to have a job.
I think everybody's lucky to have a job.
I'm lucky to have a job.
I feel very lucky to have a job.
I think that companies are lucky to be a professional.
It's not a right.
It's not a right to have a job.
You've got to earn your job.
Once again, though, the airline industry, like the rail industry, got massive bailouts from the government.
Massive.
Yes.
A lot of the staff were put on furlough.
So the government would say, look, we tried to keep this industry running during an incredibly difficult time.
And now, you know, again, I think it's different to the rail straits.
It seems to be a very particular issue they're striking on.
And I think on the face of it, it seems really unfair.
I've got a lot more sympathy with these BA workers for the issue that they're striking on than I have with Mick Lynch and his RMT gang who are, I think, holding us to ransom.
No, but they're one and the same.
They're not, though, are they?
No, but they are the same.
One group wants an 11% pay rise, which I think is a ridiculous thing to be asked for.
But it's not a pay rise.
It's them avoiding a pay cut.
You can't give the entire country what is happening with inflation.
You can't.
We go bankrupt as a country.
Well, then you can't let the people at the top continue to make profit and continue to reap money for their shareholders.
Well, there are two issues.
I agree that the people at the top should be also taking a hit on this.
I agree with that.
But that's not going to cover 11% pay rises for the entire public sector.
No, but look.
Or anything like it.
People at the bottom are tired of having to make way for people at the top.
For 11, 12 years now, since austerity, people under 30 grand have been shouldering the burden for people on the top.
And they're fed up of it.
That's why they're striking.
How would you feel if teachers go on strike?
I would totally support them.
Really?
I would.
Given how much time they have.
Do you not think that they are?
I think the pandemic a lot of them.
A lot of them did very little in the pandemic.
No, no, no, but that is obscene.
They were at home making packets, they were sending home information.
A lot of the time the schools were shut and they weren't doing it.
Some were.
I'm not denigrating all teachers.
Some were, but a lot of them weren't.
I had a son at university who didn't do any in-person classes for an entire year and a half, I think.
Yeah, that's fine.
But why is the conversation always, haven't the children suffered enough?
Haven't the British public suffered enough?
Yeah, but we never go, why is the government allowing people to suffer?
Why are they paying people abysmal sums of money and expecting certainty?
Because there also has to be a reality check, right?
We are in an unprecedented period here following this catastrophic pandemic.
Whatever the decision and thoughts about the decisions we took as a country, you know, in terms of furlough and so on, this cost a staggering sum of money.
The kind of money we haven't seen since World War II being shoveled around.
So once you take that position, these are extraordinary times.
I think the RMT, honestly, I'm not against trade unions.
I support the idea of a trade union.
I think a lot of times do very good work for their workers.
But when you are representing a group of people that includes train drivers, sometimes earning nearly 100 grand a year.
Okay, but actually...
And you're trying to get them all an 11% pay rise.
That is not, in my view, that is not appropriate.
A lot of the people who are striking, as Mick Lynch has explained, are on between £25,000 and £31,000.
They're not at the top of the pay scale.
We're not talking 60K salaries here.
We're talking about people right at the bottom.
But they're striking.
One of their main complaints and why they won't continue the negotiation at the moment is because they want an assurance that they're not going to be made redundant.
Normal people don't have an assurance that they're never going to be made redundant.
But if you're in the private sector, we'll come to the choice.
You don't.
You can go to the bank.
I think it's outrageous, for example, that the government has given the wink to the bankers, as they clearly have to say, you don't have to have cap your bonuses anymore now to come out of the European Union.
That kind of thing really great for people right now.
So we can probably all agree that that's wrong.
Let's bring it.
We've got Alex Rachera's back now.
He was cruelly, cruelly cut off.
So Alex, there's a slight delay on the line.
Let me just ask you, tell me about the British Airways strike.
Do you think from everything you've gleaned about this, it is a reasonable action for these staff to be taking?
It looks to me like it might be if what they're saying is what happened.
I think I share the same sentiment as you, Piers, and that's partly because what they're striking about is actually pretty clear.
The reality is that international air travel right now, in terms of recovery, is very much underway globally.
That is the picture now.
We are on track.
Now, there's a whole load of disruption attached to that.
But what the strike is actually about is the fact that these workers had their salaries reduced because of the pandemic, because the airline was sending emails saying that if we don't do this, we will not survive.
And we want to survive and you want your jobs.
Therefore, this is the action we're going to take.
Fast forward now to 2022.
You've got all of management having their full salaries reinstated.
You've got some figures in aviation being given bonuses.
But what we don't have is these workers who are on the front line every single day having their salaries returned back to the levels that they were.
And they even reject the term pay rise because they're saying this is not a rise.
This is actually what we were paid in the first place.
Right.
And is it true that managers are apparently, they've had their money restored and they're getting a bonus?
Yeah, that is true.
And, you know, this was just raised here in Doha, where I am now in Qatar, because over 150 airline CEOs were gathering for their annual general meeting.
And there were many airlines that were discussing how they're profitable and therefore they're being able to do the things airlines do when they're profitable, such as rewarding staff with bonuses, rewarding those execs.
Now, the picture at British Airways as to whether or not exactly that is happening remains a little bit unclear.
But what is very clear is that these frontline workers haven't had their salaries returned back to what they were.
And ultimately, that's something that they think they are owed understandably.
And I think a lot of people realise that.
Rail travel is unlikely, I don't think, to ever get back to what it was like before the pandemic, because many people have made change of life choices.
You know, I spoke to a cab driver down near my village in Sussex.
And he's...
Can you hear me, Alex?
No.
You're going again.
No.
Okay, we'll come back to Alex.
Sorry for the technical bridges there.
It's interesting, you know, just a local cab driver down in Sussex said to me that the amount of people commuting from Haywards Heath station, as it is down in Sussex, the big commuter line to Victoria, London Bridge, so on, has massively fallen off, as has the work, of course, for the cabs, because people just aren't going about working the same way they do.
Absolutely.
So I travel in from Oxford, station just outside Oxford called Oxford Parkway.
That has 800 car parking spaces.
Before the pandemic, if you arrived after nine o'clock on a Monday or a Tuesday morning, the whole thing would be completely full.
No chance.
Ever since the pandemic, we now have maybe a quarter of the car park is full.
So three quarters of that custom has disappeared.
And I don't think it'll come back if it's not back now.
When will it come back?
Whereas air travel, you might think, I think could come back just as strongly.
But the problem is they don't have the stuff.
I sat next to a pilot on a plane the other day.
He was flying to go and pick up a plane to fly it.
And he said it's been really tough.
He was a big A pilot.
It's been really tough.
Everyone's feeling it now.
They've been working incredibly long hours to catch up with everything.
A lot of people, you know, found it quite, and I think a lot of people resonate with this.
He said it took a lot, having had, you know, maybe one job a month for months and months on end.
Suddenly they had to go back to full-time work.
And they've all found that quite a hard adjustment.
I think a lot of people felt like that, right?
Where you work from home, very different pace of life, something you're thrust back into normal life.
These things shouldn't be underestimated, right?
No, I agree with you.
And it's funny that I still have moments of trying to get my head around the fact that we've just come out of this thing.
I mean, it was a two-year hiatus in which everybody's lives changed for many people forever.
And, you know, those adjustments, I think we're going to continue to see turmoil in a bunch of industries as everything shakes down and it may not go back to how it was.
I'm Navy.
What we don't want, we don't want to return to the kind of 70s, 80s militant action by unions, do we?
Haven't we moved on from that?
I mean, in those days, there were 12 million people were members of unions.
People like Arthur Scargill had tremendous power because of the sheer volume of people he represented.
And they held the country a lot of the times around them.
Whatever the arguments that you take about it, and I'm not making a view about it.
I'm just saying that we have moved on from those times, haven't we?
We want unions to be more responsible.
You want governments to be more responsible and you want employers to be more responsible.
We don't want to go back to a national total strike, do we?
But I think the fever is there.
I think people are really fed up.
People are tired of bosses taking massive surplus, taking massive pay, the government not doing anything about it.
They're tired of it.
So the fever is there for a summer of discontent.
I mean, we've got, look, barristers now want to strike.
We've got rail strikes.
We've got teachers potentially going on strike.
People are upset and they're rightfully angry.
And look, striking is never the first port of call.
It's when you try to reach an agreement, which we are at with the teachers right now, that any of you trying to reach an agreement, which I don't think the government are going to even entertain.
And we are therefore going to see strikes.
It's the last port of call.
Okay, got to leave it there.
It's, you know, it took me, I don't know, an hour to do a 20-minute journey today.
I would imagine there's millions of people going through similar annoyances.
And there'll be a tipping point where people get sick and tired of it, particularly if they feel the action that's been taken doesn't feel right or legitimate or is being overblown.
And that's why I think you've got to take each of these things on their merit.
The BA action to me seems appropriate and justified.
Some of the RMT rhetoric they're using about what they want for the members seems to me over the top.
Whether that rebounds on the government or rebounds on the unions, I think is very much.
Or the employers, which of course it may rebound on the unions as we've seen.
I think it has to be hanging on.
But Mick Lynch, or the hood, as we call him on this show.
By the way, that clip of me talking to Mick Lynch.
I loved it.
It's now had 5.4 million.
I was here for that.
5.4 million hits.
Just for those who are still a little bit confused, obviously it was a bit of a wind up.
I didn't actually think the hood's a real thing.
He got a bit shirty, though, didn't he?
He got very annoyed while saying he wasn't getting annoyed, which is always the most quite calm, actually.
I thought he was quite diplomatic.
I actually think, to be fair to Mick Lynch, I think he's been handling his media duties with greater plum.
And I think he's rather enjoying all the attention he's now getting as this mastermind who is terrorizing the media world.
He is actually the hood.
Anyway, thank you both very much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Alex, sorry about all the terrible tech issues we've had with you over there in Doe.
How can we keep up the good work?
So it's the next.
Universities and Free Speech 00:14:56
Trigger warnings, safe spaces, preferred gender pronouns, restrictions on free speech.
Are today's students the most intolerant bunch of crybabies we've ever seen?
Debating that after welcome back to Piers Organized Sense.
So what is a university?
What is it?
I mean, it used to be a place that our bright young minds would go to to expand those minds, to be challenged, to take risks, to take part in rigorous debate with people who may implacably disagree with them.
And then maybe reach a point of consensus and go and have a beer together, have some fun.
That was what universities used to be about.
But look at what they've become.
They've become these cotton wool, bubble-wrapped hellholes where the enemy is free speech, where there's a charge for safe spaces, where everyone gets triggered.
What does that even mean to be triggered by something you might read or hear?
Certainly my generation doesn't understand what that means.
So what is going on at our universities?
Well, a shocking new report by the Higher Education Policy Institute, HEPI, revealed a dramatic and disturbing surge in support for censorship by students, safe spaces, protection from alternate viewpoints.
This is all among young students.
And of the thousand who were surveyed, nearly two-thirds of them, 61%, were opposed to unlimited free speech compared with just 37% in the exact same survey in 2016.
17% only said they supported ensuring unlimited free speech on campus, although offence may occasionally be allowed.
And a staggering 86% of them endorse the use of trigger warnings so they can be protected from coursework that might upset them.
More than a third of the students believe their teachers should be fired for exposing them to any material they find offensive, which is double the number in 2016.
39% believe the student union should ban all speakers who might cause offence.
And 76% want universities to get rid of any statues or memorials to historical figures they find problematic, which of course, by their yardstick, is now pretty much everybody.
You might remember the scenes in the BLM protests in 2020 in Parliament Square, where statues of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi all had to be boarded up, lest the mob come for them.
So my view is this is all completely nuts.
But I'm joined now by Larissa Kennedy, the president of the National Union of Students, who presumably...
Good evening to you, by the way.
Good evening.
I know you've had a tough journey from Croydon.
Every journey from Croydon is tough, right?
Look.
I have to say that joke with Susanna Reed.
You wish you went to the same school with Susanna Reed.
I did indeed.
Okay, well, I'll take that as a warning, a trigger warning.
Look, this report to me was incredibly damaging.
You're representing the National Union of Students.
What's going on at our universities?
Why have you all become the enemy of free speech?
Why do you all get triggered by everything?
Why have you all become such snowflakes?
Interesting that you want to position students as enemies of free speech when it's the very opposite.
In fact, this report shows that so many students are welcoming the idea of a free speech champion, but also are welcoming the idea that we can hold multiple truths, that yes, we have to uphold freedom of speech, but we also need to put in place protections to make sure that our campuses are a safe space for the evolving people.
What does that mean?
And if you want to ask what that means, it means that when you've got someone who has views that are obviously going to spark outrage, that you give a heads up to the people coming.
These are common sense kind of things that she's talking about.
And in fact, if I may finish my point, when you talk to people in local communities, when you talk to ordinary people and you talk about the real realities of these measures that students are suggesting, like giving a heads up to people or like, you know, helping facilitate protests and so on, people on the ground agree that these are just common sense things to avoid.
I don't know who you're talking to, but they don't.
I don't know who you're talking to.
Most people think this is all completely crackers.
What is crackers?
Well, let me go through it.
Let me go through crackers.
What do you need trigger warnings for about stuff you may read or stuff a professor may say?
Why do you need trigger warnings?
What happens?
You literally have this sound.
I think this is a pretty redundant.
Obviously, you don't do that.
I think what we're seeing here is actually what the report warns about.
It's people like you who are creating these kind of inflammatory, inflammatory headlines and responses to what is appreciated.
I just read the report.
No, no.
No, you've said that.
I'm just literally reading the sound played out in classrooms.
That's not what's happening.
No, that was adversity.
Look that if it was a joke, it wasn't very funny.
That was a joke.
You may not find my humor funny, but it was intended as a joke.
However, I do not understand the concept of a trigger warning for something you may read or hear at university.
The whole point of university is to be challenging, to be critical, and in fact it's no student challenge, it's students who are.
No, it's about learning to be critical of the things that you see and hear and absorb around you, and in fact, it's students who are standing up and talking, and the purpose of an education is not to produce.
Here's what Ricky Gervais said about free speech, and tell me if you think he's wrong.
If you don't believe in free speech with people who you disagree with and even hate for what they stand for, then you don't believe in free speech.
No, you don't.
But if you don't believe that freedom of speech has the legal limitations that it has always had in democratic countries when it comes to the Equalities Act and other forms of limits that have been always put on freedom of speech, then you also don't believe in freedom of speech.
You believe in freedom from consequence, and those are different things.
I don't.
I think, con.
I think you should be absolutely held to the fire.
There should be consequences what you say, and you should be challenged, and there should be debate.
What I can't get my head around is that 86 percent of students now want trigger warnings on course content which might upset students.
All we're really saying here is that it's going to note what's in the course.
That's called a bibliography.
What would you find too?
Are you against bibliography?
What would you find?
Are you against?
Let me ask you, I kind of let me ask you, what would you find too triggering to read?
Give me an example.
I can't give you a personal example, because it's not my personal opinion.
This is students who are just saying, tell me what i'm telling.
What's on the course.
That's what a course list is.
That's what a book list is.
That's what a bibliography is.
It's not a big deal, and the fact that you're making it into a big deal is exactly what it says in the.
What is a big deal?
You have bad faith actors, if I may continue.
You have bad faith actors um, who are stirring up division around this, when so many organizations, most of whom usually disagree, are saying this is a non-issue.
And then you have to ask the question, why do we have so much airtime on this?
Why do we have so many people pouring money and resources particularly so our government into talking about this?
And when you see it in the context of the policing bill, of all of the other bills that are coming through that are incredibly draconian, you have to ask the question, who is benefiting from this conversation?
Because it's not students.
Because students are welcoming freedom of speech and that's exactly what this report says.
It said they welcome.
No, actually says it actually says the complete opposite.
It says that, if you read it that way, of course it does.
No no, no.
The Daily Mail's report.
It was literally, actually.
I read it in the Times.
There was exactly okay.
There was the exact same survey done six years ago, same questions, and they published the results.
It shows language change.
It shows a massive increase in the number of students who want to censor.
It's not censorship, it's about holding multiple truths and the fact that such a reductionist, diluted conversation around freedom of speech that even when you're saying, listen if I can, I can never finish.
What was the point of asking me all listen, because I wanted to hear your view.
So please let me share the view.
But if you say something, I know you're not used to debating at universities these days, so let me debate clearly.
You're not used to debating because you're used to just saying what you want to say and no one's allowed to challenge you.
That is not what happens at universities.
Well actually, we know less what's happening.
Universities and my was the last time you went to university.
Peers, when was the last time you were a student?
I was a student when I was uh 19.
Oh, how old are you?
That was a long time ago.
That is a long last time you being agents?
No, i'm just saying wow, that's a fact.
It was a long time ago.
Can you not be agent here?
Can you not be agents?
What i'm saying is, how can you know what's going on at university?
I'm just reading this report.
You're reading a report that says that students welcome a freedom, which is the higher education.
You're reading a report that says that students want to make sure that yes, there is freedom of speech, but also that we're enabling support for students.
Um, who can I ask a question?
Ask a question without you getting offended.
I'm not offended.
You can't offend me if you're trying to.
Okay, great.
Great!
Go ahead.
I'm not woman in this country.
You can't.
I don't want to offend you.
I want to give you my honest opinion.
You give me yours.
That is multiple truths.
Multiple truths.
Because last time I said, there's only one truth.
Facts are facts.
That's it.
That's not a very good philosophical outlook.
Maybe you should go to the speech.
No, maybe you should go to uni.
It's cool.
But anyway, if you answer your question.
Do you agree there's only one truth?
If you answer your question, what does it mean?
It means that it's both possible to enable freedom of speech, as our students' unions do day in and day out, but that it is also possible to make sure that we're hearing the voices of people who, you know, our campuses and our communities of education are often the homes of these students as well.
So when they're saying, I want to have the space to speak out about what's happening here, I want to have the space to protest.
I want to have the space to share alternative views.
That is them exercising their democratic right to freedom of speech, too.
That's all fine.
But let me bring in Theresa Purcell.
She's the former president of the Young Americans for Freedom in Buffalo.
Before we speak to Theresa, I want to just play a clip.
This is what happened.
She invited a prominent black Republican Lieutenant Colonel Alan West to speak at the University of Buffalo on a subject called America is not racist, why American values are exceptional.
During the Q ⁇ A session, protesters began chanting and banging on the walls.
West, who was the speaker, was escorted by police out of the event as protests continued outside.
Teresa, you were with West and the police escort.
You got separated.
The protesters chased you into a bathroom where you had to hide for hours as they shouted, go get her.
And we're screaming.
We've got a bit of footage.
We can't actually see you in it, but here's a bit of the footage from what was an alarming experience.
We're going after Teresa!
No!
You're a lawyer!
And the rest of our corporal!
Help!
No, just now!
Now, Teresa, I remember this incident.
I remember thinking, God, a young woman who invites a speaker is basically in fear of her life from a mob that is behaving in such a shameful manner.
What was it like for you?
And what do you think of this whole report that's come out in the UK about more and more students wanting to censor free speech?
Hi, Piers.
Thank you so much for having me on.
The overall experience was really terrifying.
I hosted Colonel West since a lot of colleges in the United States, and it might be similar in the UK, only host one side of the political spectrum.
They only host speakers on the left.
So with the help of Young Americans Foundation, I wanted to bring a conservative speaker to campus to talk about these important issues of race and American exceptionalism.
And I think that the report that came out recently that shows that college students are not supportive of free speech is very alarming.
And I saw this on my own college campus by just trying to host a speaker that they didn't agree with.
They tried to run me off campus and tried to terrify me.
And I was afraid for my life as over 200 protesters were chasing me.
And as you said, I had to hide in a men's bathroom and call the police as they were shaking doors and screaming, go get her, go get her, capture her, capture her.
We need to get Terese.
So overall, I find it really concerning that students don't value free speech as they seem to only value speech that fits their narrative and don't want to hear from the imposing side what Facebook College is all about is having those debates.
Right.
Well, thank you, Therese.
So Larissa, I'll come back to you.
I mean, I presume you find that footage appalling, do you?
What I find is that the ways in which we talk about footage like that is concerning and appalling.
They literally chased a young woman into a men's restaurant.
So what happened?
Howling, go get it.
I'm watching that.
From watching that, what I've seen is that a speaker spoke and students also spoke.
And they physically manhandled the matter there.
They found that handled.
And then threatened this young woman and chased her into a restaurant.
They were chanting protests.
Shouting, go get her.
They were chanting protests.
Think that's fine, their behaviour.
I heard, no justice, no peace, which is a very familiar.
You think that footage and what happened to her is acceptable?
I don't have a particular position on that footage because, first of all, it's not from the Uk and that's not my, that's not my territory, right?
But first of all, I would say it's a harmful to try and transpose an example from the Us onto the Uk because here our students unions are regulated by the Charity Commission.
They have several measures in place that ensure that they uphold freedom of speech.
We have speeches speakers from across the political spectrum.
One in ten students in this survey said they wanted to ban uh, conservative speakers yeah, and countless students also similar numbers said that they also wanted to ban Labor and the Green Party and whoever else.
Why are they banning?
Why are they banning any of them?
If we're going to be honest peers, it's probably the president of the Total saying kick out Labor, the president of the Labor Society saying kick out TORY.
The numbers are small let's, let's not dwell on one.
Do you agree that nobody like that should be banned?
We should be hearing all voices.
Who's been talking about banning?
Who's been talking about banning?
Except the people who?
39, but in?
In reality, i'm not asking.
Let me finish.
39, you said it.
You asked me a question, i'm answering it.
39 in the survey.
Believe that students unions should ban all speakers who cause offense.
Why don't you want speakers to come and be offensive and then take them on and prove them wrong, damning them with facts?
Is that not what students were doing in the?
In the?
No, they were chasing women into restrooms and they weren't shouting, go get her protest chanting, literally.
So what they did?
We just heard a saying, she called the police.
So saying, no justice, no peace.
She literally had to call the police.
Okay, so you're saying something I disagree with.
I'm chanting no justice, no peace.
Is that a problem to you?
You can chant what you like.
What you can't do, what you can't do, is chase a young woman into a men's restroom and shout, go get her.
In an intimidating, threatening manner.
Both of those things are exercising freedom of speech.
Let me ask you, what is a safe space?
What is a safe space?
Again, this is the kind of thing, this is the kind of language that gets picked up by the media and spun into something that it's not an existence.
Your generation, your generation?
No, you've already made an ageist joke about me being so old.
I'm saying your, it wasn't an age, but you've been told an aged space mean.
First of all, let's clear the rest.
Is this a safe space?
It was not hell.
No, for either of us.
No, this is not safe for either of us.
Defining Safe Spaces 00:02:56
For either of us no, please no.
But first of all I want to clear the record because I did not make an agist joke.
I just said you went to uni a long time ago.
If you were pressed by it, that's you and your audience triggered my aging anxiety.
That's you and your audience.
I'm prepared to forgive that to your therapist.
But what is a safe space?
Are you suggesting I have mental health issues?
No, i'm suggesting you should talk to a therapist about your issues.
I think you're making a joke about my mental health.
I'm not.
Actually, i'm recommending that you should talk to.
You are triggering a lot of things here.
Stop clicking people, hey.
But serious question, i'm tired.
What is that?
What is a safe space?
A safe space is about producing somewhere.
It could be student-led, it could just be a group of friends, it could be whatever you make of it, but where you feel safe, period.
This isn't the name.
Why do you feel so unsafe?
You've just in this country.
Are you crazy?
I feel.
Of course I feel unsafe in this country.
You just said that that woman who was literally barricaded into a men's restroom that you were perfectly fine with her.
I did not say I was perfectly fine with it.
You didn't.
I said that the people chanted no justice, no peace.
You just literally talked about safe space.
Wanting it, you said she's a conservative thing, is not to support the other.
The alternative, that's not.
Please don't put words in my mouth.
I don't appreciate it.
What I did is I said that students chanting no justice, no peace, whether that's in the Uk, the Us or elsewhere, is them exercising their freedom of speech.
Okay period, that's what I said, full stop.
What?
What is your idea of free speech?
Final question, my idea of free speech yes, is people being able to express themselves, whether that's through speakers on campus, whether that's through protests.
You know students have always exercised freedom of speech.
You know whether it's the fact that N US was the first organization, national organization in the country to come out in support of Lgbt rights, whether it's the fact that students now speak so proudly in support of trans rights and black liberation and climate justice.
Students have always spoken about our campuses and in our communities.
If I may finish my point, you may last question.
You said, but now you're adding a number.
So when people are, you know, standing out on picket lines supporting the RMT or UCU or any other union, when they're doing that, students have always been at the forefront of students.
We've always faced backlash for it and we're not going to stop this.
In my opinion, you're the snowflake because you're so pressed about it.
I understand.
Would you allow Jk Rowling to come to any university?
What kind of question is that?
Would you allow, if I have power, to stop people from coming to uni?
Would you want her to?
But what?
You're the president of the NUS.
Would you want Jk Rowling what kind of question to come?
Should she be allowed to speak at university?
You answer it.
Then you tell me what kind of question is that you and I do not have the power to, as you know.
I feel, as you know, she's been the victim of a massive, relentless silence, her views about gender.
I feel like there's a misunderstanding of how these events run right.
The vast majority of speaker events in the Uk that are student-led are run, are run by student societies who are elected.
Simple question, and they go to their students who support, facilitate events.
Simply ask, how would you feel?
It's not for me to come onto campus.
What's your opinion?
Gun Control Debate 00:12:31
Well, i'm representing my members.
I'm not giving you nothing personal.
This ain't personal.
Okay, i'm gonna.
I'm about to debate in a minute uh, this issue of what is a woman.
What is a woman what?
What's that got to do with the price of Brands, Piers?
I can't say that.
I literally told you i'm about to debate this guest.
What is a woman?
What do you mean?
Ask the next day.
I said, ask the next day.
You don't know what a woman is.
A woman is someone who defines us a woman.
Period, done anyone?
Next guest anyone?
Okay, i'm a woman, is that?
Yeah, I said next guest because that's not my second.
If I, if I say i'm a woman, I know you're trying to trap me and i'm not falling.
If I say i'm a woman, do you agree i'm a woman?
I said next guest because i'm not falling for it.
You're not getting your little clip out of me, your little audio clip out of me, without realizing it.
You may have just given me my little clip.
That's the point.
That's wonderful.
That ironically, is the clip.
That's wonderful because when young women can't actually say what a woman is, I think it's, I am a woman you're.
I'm a young woman who's very proud, i'm very proud of to serve a membership of students who support free speech, who work hard to make sure that our students, anybody who says they're a woman's a woman, who exercise their democratic right to protest and do so in a way that is in line with the law.
Larissa, great to see you.
I wish I could say the same.
Piers, goodbye.
Well, i'm sorry it wasn't such a safe space for either of us, but we got through it.
It's okay, it's over, thank god.
All right, enjoy your trip back to Groin.
Uh, i'm sensitive.
Next, the?
U.s expands the right to carry firearms in public across America, despite a recent shocking surge in gun massacres.
We'll discuss that after.
Well, the US Supreme Court has today struck down a New York law that would have restricted people carrying guns in public less than a month after the Texas school Shooting.
It comes as a furious row broke out between a Georgia representative and a British Channel 4 news journalist after she was questioned over American gun laws.
Marjorie Taylor Greene became aggressive when Siobhan Kennedy questioned her on the validity of a gun law, of gun laws at a press conference in the States.
It's our job to defend the Second Amendment.
We don't have guns in the UK, that is true, but we don't have mass shootings either.
Children aren't scared to go to Shaw.
You have mass stabbings, lady.
You have all kinds of murder.
I mean, not laws and nothing at the same rates.
Well, you can go back to your country and worry about your no-gun.
That's very kind.
We like ours here.
I'm joined now by Washington correspondent of the Channel Four News, Siobhan Kennedy.
So, Siobhan, I think you experienced what I experienced when I was at CNN, is that when someone with a British accent starts to go after Americans about guns or gun control, constitutional rights, it's a very hot potato and they get very angry very quickly about it.
And in a way, I guess we might feel the same if it was the other way around.
I don't know if that's the case, but certainly there was an element of surprise for me, for her immediately picking on where I'm from, my Britishness for daring to ask her about her views on gun control when it was the story of the day and legislation is passing through the Senate.
And she had some very strong opinions and she was hosting an open press conference.
So I was within my rights to ask her.
But interestingly, the week before I'd asked similar questions of Senator Ted Cruz on the day we had one of the parents of the Uvalde victims crying out, begging, she said, to act now.
I doorstepped him.
I asked him the same question.
I said, Senator, will you act now?
And again, the conversation came around to my Britishness.
Where are you from?
He asked me.
You're not from here.
So both of them, interestingly, used my Britishness as part of their defence to throw the argument back at me rather than answering my simple question, which is, what are you going to do about it?
Right, I mean, I used to have people screaming at me about 1776 and all the rest of it.
So I've been on this rodeo.
I mean, just from a pure factual point of view, the allegation she put to you, which is basically we have as many mass gun massacres, knife massacres as they have gun massacres, obviously the facts do not add up to that.
They've had more than 277 mass shootings in America this year, more than one a day.
We've had 235 homicides using a knife or sharp instrument in the year ending March 2021.
So there's simply no comparison.
You know, 90 odd people will die of guns in America today alone.
Exactly.
There are more guns than there are people in this country.
There is no comparison.
But she lashed that out using that example, which is what President Trump had done once, too, trying to immediately deflect and say, what about all your stabbings?
We simply don't have people going into supermarkets, Piers, do we?
Or into schools and taking out 20 people all at once.
That doesn't, of course, downplay the terrible incident in London Bridge, where still only a very small number of people were killed.
But that was the argument.
And obviously, I had to say to her, the two are not comparable, I'm afraid, Congress.
And they're not.
They're just clearly not.
Siobhan, thank you very much for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Well, I'm joined now by Conservative author and lawyer Anne Court.
Anne, great to talk to you.
Your first appearance of Piers Morgan on Censor.
Congratulations.
Thank you for having me.
Very nice to be here.
We couldn't be more implacabed on this issue.
And I've sort of over the years worked out that a British accent screaming at Americans about guns never goes down very well.
But I am curious about what is going on with the Supreme Court today, because although it wasn't a direct response to what happened at Evalde and Buffalo and these recent horrendous mass shootings, clearly the juxtaposition of what the Supreme Court has announced today, basically making it easier for Americans in states like New York and California to conceal carry guns, does seem to the rest of the world to be completely bonkers as an apparent response to what's happened.
Well, Supreme Court cases aren't responses to what was in the news last week.
I mean, this is a case that's worked its way up.
And everyone knew the court was going to come out this way.
It may be a shock in other places.
It wasn't a shock to anyone here because the court has repeatedly held, recently anyway, that the right to bear arms, it is in our Constitution, is a personal right that belongs to all Americans.
Yes, of course, there can be limits on that right, but one of them is not that you go to the government and the government says, well, you have to tell me why you need this gun.
You need a special need, and we will, in our subjective opinion, decide whether or not you can exercise this constitutional right.
So this is simply a restatement of the last Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment.
When you go and buy a car, when you go and buy a car or something, you have to go through all sorts of checks and you have to get insurance and you have to wear seatbelts and you can't drink and drill all sorts of restrictions Americans quite happily go along with for driving a vehicle.
Why would you object to people who, if they want to carry a gun around New York or California, that they simply have to go through various checks to get it?
Well, a few things.
Number one, would that guns were regulated as lightly as cars are?
You can buy a car and drive across the country in it.
You can't do that with your personal constitutional.
But you have to go through checks, and you have to go through checks, including.
You do go through checks.
You do.
You do have to go through checks.
You have to have a number of restrictions.
To get a gun, you have to go through checks.
And you have to pay an enormous amount of money.
And I hadn't finished your first point.
We also don't have a constitutional right to have a gun, which is kind of important.
This is a constitutional right.
It is more akin to voting.
And you do not have to prove the right.
You don't have to take out insurance.
You do have to do all kinds of things to get a gun in this country.
We do have essentially universal background checks.
You're being lied to about that.
Even a gun dealer who's selling guns out of his kitchen, if he sells more than one gun, essentially, he has to have a federal license.
And to have a federal license, you have to have a background check.
We're talking about very few sales.
Basically, you know, a widow selling her husband's gun to her cousin or her nephew or something.
This is to get those private sales between a single gun between two private individuals.
And by the way, this has nothing to do with today's Supreme Court case.
What you're talking about is universal registration.
But they're lying about this.
And as for your argument about, ooh, it's right after these mass shootings, well, you know, a couple things about the mass shootings.
Obviously, they're very dramatic, like shark attacks are, but they're less than 0.1% of all shootings.
90% of violent crime in this country does not involve a gun at all.
We do have a very demographically different country than England.
And in fact, the crime rate, the murder rate, the shooting rate would be far worse if we didn't have law-abiding armed citizens.
People using guns in self-defense successfully happens at least five times more than people.
Anne, I totally accept there are completely different cultures.
You know, when we got rid of all the guns after Dunblaine here, most people didn't have guns to start with.
It's a completely different situation to America where there are 400 million guns in circulation.
I do get that.
Let's have a short break.
Come back and finish this.
But also, I want to ask you a very simple question.
What is a woman?
We'll be back after the break.
Well, back to conservative author and lawyer Anne Coulter.
And one thing I want to talk to you before we move on to the big question of whether you're a woman or not.
And if so, what is a woman?
I just want to ask you finally about on the guns thing.
The thing about the Evalde massacre, which seemed interesting to me, was a lot of the cries from the right after these massacres is: if only everybody had a gun, if only there were more armed security at the schools, these things wouldn't happen.
There you had 19 heavily armed police officers literally standing outside the classroom and they let 19 kids get annihilated.
So that argument, if you take it from what happened at Evalde, it doesn't work.
I think it works very well.
It is exactly the opposite.
What's stunning to me about the Evalde policeman?
And look, the few things I think the government should be doing is protecting us, having policemen, yet and still, these are unionized government employees.
Can you imagine if this were the ACE security company, a private company, you have to protect the school and they behaved this way?
Every single one of them would have been fired.
They'd be bankrupt.
But this guy has been kept on, kept on, kept.
It's just assumed, oh, well, he's a government worker.
We can't fire him.
Which proves the point.
We can't rely on the police.
And no, we are not saying everyone should be armed, but those teachers who are armed, who have concealed carry, who can walk around grocery stores and restaurants with their concealed carry gun, they should be allowed to have them in schools.
And I would like to point out that of all the mass shootings in the last few decades in this country, 94% have taken place in gun-free zones.
Right, well, that's certainly not a problem.
He's looking at humans like a lobster tank.
We're running out of time.
That wasn't a gun-free zone.
It was a place with 19 heavily armed police officers who did nothing.
And they were gunless and absolutely false.
It was a gun-free zone.
Let me move quickly.
We're running out of time.
Do you identify as a woman?
Yes, because I can't open a pickle jar.
And Coulter, what a lovely pleasure to talk to you, as always.
Thank you very much for joining me.
Good to talk to you.
Come nicely.
That's it from me.
Whatever you're up to, make sure you keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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