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Aug. 22, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:38
20220822_piers-morgan-uncensored-strikes-strife-and-the-roy
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Strikes, Strife and Sewage 00:01:52
Right tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored with me Jeremy Kyle.
Strikes, strife and sewage.
Now an NHS crisis looms.
Britain does feel broken.
We'll debate how to fix it.
A royal air farce as the RAF sidelines white men.
Why are our armed forces fighting culture wars?
And 25 years on, yet another Diana documentary investigates her tragic death.
The question, is it time to let the people's princess rest in peace?
So many coincidences, so many odd things that just don't add up.
95% of the ordinary people of this country believe Diana was murdered with my son.
Good evening, my friends, and a big, big welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
I am still Jeremy Kyle.
So today we discover train drivers, teachers, nurses, dock workers, postal workers, and now, would you believe it, criminal barristers, striking apparently is the new working in blighted blighty as a weird nation asks, if the British government can't be bothered to work, why should we?
Apparently, by the way, even the script writers have walked out here.
It says, insert next line and add simple joke.
No.
At least we do know our striking workers aren't lazing at the beach because today, apparently, 22 shorelines are now closed because of raw sewage as water companies take gross incontinence.
Sorry, I meant incompetence all too literally.
It's a joke.
The government has denied this is simply the latest attempt to deter migrants crossing the channel, although frankly, it might be more effective.
Now, if you are brave enough to take a dip in the dung, do you get that?
NHS Crisis at Its Limit 00:12:02
There's absolutely no guarantee that anybody will be able to nurse you through the stomachaches because NHS bosses say our hospitals are now facing a massive crisis too.
The government's planning a campaign saying don't go to A ⁇ E. If only they'd taken their own advice.
Apparently, GPs in England could even be asked to prescribe discounts on heating bills this winter, which is all well and good, but you'd have to wait until next summer for an appointment.
And as if that wasn't enough, draw a breath.
Today, economists warn that the UK inflation rate could actually hit 19% in January.
I had a joke about inflation, but I'm not going to do it.
Because yes, between the strikes and the sewage, the soaring inflation and the wage stagnation, the lack of energy and the lack of government, it really does, my friends, feel like broken Britain is happening.
So we're asking tonight, who is going to fix it?
Now, joining me now is Dr. Imika Okaroka and Naomi Issit, whose son, 18-year-old Jamie, tragically died after an ambulance took over 17 minutes to arrive.
Dr. Amika, to start with, thank you for joining us.
Cheers.
So many people talk about the NHS and they say it's a money pit, money gets thrown in, it's there for us, but it's not there.
Why is it so overwhelmed and how bad is it, truthfully?
Honestly, I think it's mainly multi-factorial.
There's so many things going on with the NHS that a lot of people don't realize.
I think you get like these, you know, sensationalist type titles of people waiting 17 hours to sleep like a doctor and whatnot.
But there's a lot of context you need to take into it.
So I think the NHS is obviously working at its limit and it has been for a number of years.
I think it's kind of bubbling to the brim now where we're seeing it manifest and patients are coming forward and these stories are getting more and more frequent and that's why everyone's wondering what's going on in the NHS.
Obviously as a frontline worker, I'm seeing a lot of the backlog coming in from COVID.
Obviously COVID was a big thing that hit the NHS.
We tried to adapt as well as we could.
But you need to know a lot of the elective stuff that we would have done during COVID that we had to push back for the emergency stuff, a lot of that stuff is being seen kind of now and it's all coming to like a brim.
I get that, and I also get, and I want to say right here and now, nurses, doctors, and everybody that works in hospitals do an amazing job, and we as a nation expect them to be there, the health service.
But I will take you up on one point.
There was an appalling picture in the mirror the other week of the gentleman in Cornwall who waited 17 hours for an ambulance.
His family put a tarpauling over him.
They couldn't move him from outside.
Now, if you said to that family with the greatest of respect, look, this is sensationalized headlines, it's not.
He waited 17 hours.
We're not criticising the people who are suffering.
What we're saying is this is not working.
The NHS, front of the mail today, we've got a breakthrough for cancer.
Further down, you can't get through on 111.
You can't get an ambulance.
You can't get to see a GP.
You would understand the people of Great Britain are not criticising you and your profession, but they're saying, what the hell's going on?
And I understand because everyone expects the NHS to be available at the point of care, which we are, and everyone expects a perfect health system.
In the event, in actuality, it can't be.
Your colleagues are leaving in droves?
Exactly.
So, one, you have the issue where you have the workforce.
So, for myself, as a local doctor, I try and fill in all the spots where there aren't doctors there, especially some of the spots where last-minute dropouts and things of that nature.
And it's difficult because a lot of the time I'm working, half the time we don't even have the capacity of staff that we should have.
What would a doctor on the front line say is needed to combat the problem?
Is it government?
Is it money?
Is it reorganization?
Because that big, that big argument for years is it has billions thrown in it.
Why is it not more effective without criticizing you guys?
Honestly, it's just not as efficient as we want it to be.
It's multifactorial, so it's basically a combination of all of it.
I think money obviously would help in so many situations.
So, social services and trying to get people out of hospital as in inter-social services to clear up beds so we can admit people.
And ambulances wouldn't have to wait in AE about three hours just to try and get a patient in the hospital.
I'll tell you something.
Still on the roads picking people up.
A lot of people saying about ambulances, and I'll give you a story very briefly to show years and years ago about with the ambulance service.
And the most shocking story was this woman, it was in Birmingham, she got heavily drunk at a Christmas party.
They had to send an ambulance to her, right?
She basically threw up in the back of the ambulance.
They took her to hospital.
Legally, she had to stay for eight hours.
She abused the staff.
They took 45 minutes to clean that ambulance out before they could get out on the road, right?
I'd fine her.
I'd charge her whatever it cost to get that ambulance out.
Are people going to AE for the wrong reasons?
Is that making it difficult?
Are they calling ambulances for the wrong reasons?
Because a lot of people will say the genuine people are missing out.
That's what I want to know, really.
The thing is, you don't want to get into that area of dissuading people to actually call ambulances and call 111 and come in when they need to, because we want people to be seen if they need to be seen.
And we'd always stick with we'd rather be safe than sorry.
I don't want anyone sitting there with a heart attack or a silent myocardial infarction saying, oh, it might just be indigestion.
I don't want to bother the NHS because that's not what we're asking.
But we are asking people to, you know, be sensible in situations where they think they can actually avoid putting themselves in risky situations where they wouldn't have to see doctors.
And let's be honest, 111 needs upgrading, doesn't it?
Because I'm utterly convinced, and if people don't like this, sorry, that it's a great, great concept, but it's now manned by people who are in a call centre or just reading a tick list because I have an absolute story of my own about my son.
And the person said, is he breathing?
Of course he's breathing.
He's crying his eyes out in front of me.
I just, I just, it's difficult.
Do me a favour, and I really appreciate it.
Let's cross to Cornwall.
Naomi Isset is a mother whose son tragically died of a heart attack after an ambulance delay of more than 17 minutes.
Naomi, thank you so much indeed for joining me.
Explain your story.
No problem.
Well, Jamie was just turned 18 when he actually, it wasn't a heart attack, he actually suffered a cardiac arrest during the night of New Year's Eve.
He was at a friend's house watching fireworks, no warning at all.
And he sat down on the ground, said he felt funny, and they realized he wasn't breathing and had no pulse.
His friend called an ambulance, called 999, and they waited.
I've heard the audio and they were screaming on the phone, Where's the ambulance?
Why is it taking so long?
The police turned up with no defibrillator.
He was screaming, Where's the ambulance?
Why is it taking so long?
The ambulance crew that turned up were amazing.
The casualty doctors were amazing.
The nurses were amazing.
Intensive care nurses were amazing.
But the ambulance just did not reach him in time.
And we lost Jamie on the 5th of January due to oxygen starvation to his brain caused by his cardiac arrest.
Naomi, first up, our condolences from everybody here.
Two questions for you.
And again, to the medical profession, and I so respect what you just said because they are doing their absolute best.
If the ambulance had arrived faster, do you believe that your son would still be alive today?
Yes.
If the ambulance had arrived in the target time set out by the ambulance service themselves of seven and a half minutes, Jamie would have had a 56% more chance of survival.
Even at 10 minutes, he still had a chance of survival.
At 17 and a half minutes, that poor ambulance crew on the way to our boy knew they weren't going to save his life.
They knew it was too late.
Who do you blame for this?
I think it's very easy to look at the medical profession, look at the government.
It's a combination of everything because to me, the reason we wanted to speak to you and the doctor this morning, this evening, is actually Britain does seem broken.
We don't seem to be able to get an ambulance.
We don't seem to be able to see a GP.
And stories like yours really resonate.
Who do you blame?
Well, this is the problem.
The blame seems to be moved from one person to the next.
You know, we were told by the ambulances that they can't offload patients.
There were 32 ambulances in the area where Jamie collapsed on New Year's Eve.
17 of them were queuing outside AE departments.
The AE departments say they can't get people onto wards.
The wards say they can't get people out into social care.
So the blame just moves around.
But somebody has to sit up and take notice.
He was an 18-year-old boy and he needed help, and he waited and waited until no help was ever going to be enough.
And we keep going back to is it money?
Do we need more ambulance crews?
Do we need more doctors and nurses?
But I think it's across the board that we've never blamed an ambulance crew.
We've never blamed a doctor or a nurse, and we never would.
All of the people that treated Jamie were the most amazing angels to us, but they just couldn't reach him in time.
And we feel just as sorry for them as we do for ourselves as a family because they can't do any more than they're doing.
But somebody's got to step in.
Money has to be put into our NHS to make these services more available.
And emergency health care in our town of Rugby, that ambulance had to travel 15 miles to reach our boy.
That's how long he waited.
Why are there not ambulances nearby?
Why are there not more health care provisions nearby to help him when he needed them?
Naomi, thank you for just a sec.
I'd like to bring in Ed Burkitt as the head of energy at the Onward Think Tank for a reason.
I mean, we're talking to Ameka there, we're talking about to a person who lost a son, and the situation is that it's going to get worse as the winter goes on.
And you were telling my researchers, you think there's a 50-50% chance there could be blackouts this winter.
What will that mean for the NHS?
What will that mean for broken Britain, Ed?
Well, I think you're absolutely right.
There are going to be serious challenges with our energy supply this winter.
I think the scenario where we have large-scale blackouts across the whole of UK is extremely unlikely.
But there is a chance, a reasonable chance, maybe it's 50-50, that some customers somewhere at some point this winter will be disconnected because the continent of Europe as a whole just does not have enough gas and therefore does not have enough electricity in certain scenarios this winter.
And that's a problem across the whole of Europe.
So it's not just broken Britain as per your show tonight.
This really is a continent-wide problem.
The TUC believes nationalising the energy companies would work.
What's your view on that, Ed, quickly?
I think the question is, what problem are you trying to solve?
The energy suppliers, which is what they're talking about, nationalising, are not making big profits.
So you wouldn't exactly make any money that you could use to discount people's bills by nationalizing energy suppliers.
The profits are all with the energy producers.
And that's where the government's put in place a windfall tax.
Absolutely.
Mekka, pretty dire right now.
You heard Naomi's story.
You were shaking your head.
It's going to get worse, isn't it?
More people are going to be turning to the NHS if they can't heat their homes, they can't see a doctor.
This crisis is going to get worse, isn't it?
It is.
My condolences to Naomi, obviously, and her family.
And it's really unfortunate what happened to her son.
And as an emergency doctor, we know that what we call cerebral hypoxia are not getting enough oxygen to the brain and downtime when you've had a cardiac arrest.
Seconds matter, not even just minutes.
And obviously, the seconds are what make the difference.
And that's why we need these ambulances available on the roads in rural areas, in urban areas, everywhere.
Is it briefly?
I haven't got much time.
Is it money?
Is it reorganisation?
What is it?
What's the final line to the people watching this tonight?
How can we ensure that we can get ill people to hospital?
It's all of it.
I think money, obviously, first of all, but then you have to ask, where's this money going and what is it actually doing?
There's no point pumping money into the NHS and saying we've given the NHS this money billion, but people still can't get ambulances.
People still can't get social care because then you haven't really defeated the aim.
You haven't really actually reached it.
I'll tell you, Sammy, I've done this a while and you're the most honest GP and doctor I've ever had.
Thank you very much indeed.
Ed Burkitt as well from Onward and also Naomi, that tragic story, our condolences to you and your family.
Right, next on uncensored, a British supermarket chain faces criticism, not my friends, for charging eight quid for a tin of beans, but for selling non-vegan fruit.
Heaven forbid.
Boris Johnson's Political Legacy 00:07:20
We're going to discuss that and dive into all of today's debates.
We're going to bring Jesus Jonos forward because I cannot wait for this next talk TV legend Mike Graham and former London Mayor Ken Livingston live in the studio.
We're coming back in three welcome back my friends now another week another horrific story of knife crime in the UK.
Boxing hero Tyson Fury's cousin Rico Burton was stabbed to death in Manchester over the weekend at the young age of 31.
The heavyweight champion is now calling for tougher sentences for knife offenders and I'm delighted to tell you we're joining us live tomorrow night to discuss that story.
But sadly that story is an increasingly common one as violent crime and knife attacks rise across the United Kingdom.
More crime is being committed, fewer crimes are being investigated.
It's just another boulder on the mountain of emergencies facing Britain's next Prime Minister.
It's also the first issue I'm going to tackle with tonight's panel.
I'm delighted to welcome Talk TV legend Mike Graham.
This should be real fun.
And former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
Gentlemen, welcome.
You're in a bad mood because you've been waiting an hour and a half.
It was very long.
Get a grip, man.
Let's start on a serious note with knife crime.
You say, Ken, when I was London Mayor, I wanted to lock up any young person who had a knife.
I'm going to throw this out there.
I do not understand why we do not have stronger deterrents.
I would genuinely, hand on heart, if I found a youth with a knife twice, I will put him in prison for five years.
It weren't for acid attacks.
Why are we not stronger?
Well, I think the part of the problem is, I mean, if you look back, we had quite a lot of knife crime.
It was getting worse.
And it's mainly young men carrying a knife and very often killing the woman that they're actually living with.
And it's got worse.
And I think the simple fact is that I grew up in a world where virtually knife crime was a quarter of what it is today.
But we were part of community groups.
We had friends.
Now there's an awful lot of young men are lonely, not involved with others.
They get angry.
Well, they gravitate.
Community is what matters.
Absolutely, but they gravitate toward gangs, don't they?
Like, this is a national problem.
Are we strong enough?
No, we're not strong enough.
And part of the problem that we have now is very much connected to the drugs business.
We've got now massive drugs gap in this country.
If you're growing up on a housing estate in Tottenham, you know, you're not going to care that the guy next to you is working hard and he's looking after his family.
What you are going to want is a very nice BMW that you can buy as soon as you sign up to work with the drug gangs.
And you stab people as a matter of course because that's what they do.
And that's the problem.
If they solve the drug problem, you solve the knife problem.
The hot potato is stop and search, right?
Somebody said to me, it's wrong and it can be seen as racist weapon, but they got 5,000 weapons off the streets of London.
When I became the mayor in 2000, we only had 25,000 police.
I got it up to 35.
But the important thing, I brought back street patrols.
And that really had an impact.
Crime went down 25%.
If you have a copper coming around the corner every few minutes, you're not going to get involved in the sort of crime that so many kids do.
And a big part of this is about drugs.
And I was born in 94.
I grew up in that post-war world where, I mean, the only drugs were cigarettes.
Literally now, the drug trade has become global.
And it's appalling.
We need to crack down on it a lot more.
So stop and search.
And also, Ken makes a point.
More police on the streets.
Because police are now social workers and mental health workers that are actually committing.
Well, the two businesses doing the macarena, aren't they?
They're all dancing away going on the market.
You've seen that video online.
This is brilliant.
Four policemen doing the macarena and having a party.
I saw that.
But that's the point.
That doesn't resonate with people.
Let's move on to a subject that I'm sure I can't wait to ask.
Boris Johnson.
Got to feel sorry for him, Ken.
Booted out by his own party.
Three years, got Brexit done.
Watch his phone.
Got Brexit done, made the big decisions, rolled out the vaccine.
Come on.
I think the Tory party and MPs are already regretting getting rid of him, man.
I mean, they look at Boris and they think he's good at winning elections.
He beat me easily.
I mean, he beat Jeremy Corbyn easily.
Well, that wasn't that.
That was the main reason they wanted him.
The thing is, most Tory MPs realize he was pretty disastrous as Prime Minister.
He doesn't do the job.
If I look back, the eight years he was Mayor of London, he only initiated one project.
77% of Tory members still want Boris Johnson.
That's absolute rubbish, by the way, Ken, because what he also instituted, much to my chagrin, actually, was the Boris Bike.
You know, we've now got thousands of thousands of bikes on the street because of Boris Johnson.
No, no, you started that project.
When he defeated me, he then called them Boris Bikes.
Well, they were called Boris Bikes.
You would say that, but I mean, your own party kicked you out, you know, and you're saying that he's not good for the Tory party.
I mean, the last time I saw you, you were talking about Tori the Greens, for heaven's sake.
Yeah, but they didn't kick me out before I lost to Boris.
No, they kicked you out for different reasons.
They kicked me out of the allocations I was anti-Semitic.
Well, you are, aren't you?
No.
I mean, literally, the first woman I asked to marry me was Jewish.
Right, okay.
Did you mention Hitler to her?
Because you normally mention Hitler.
I mean, Hitler's the greatest evil in human history.
Yes.
He killed six million Jews.
My generation grew up recognising that crime is appalling.
But no, I've had 40 years of life.
I'm not just going to accuse him being anti-Semitic, I've accused of being corrupt, alcoholic, violent, tax-dodging, homosexual back in the days.
Everything.
The end of everything.
Serious question.
One of the things that I want to know about is we part Boris and we part the fact that the Tory MPs might be considering they go wrong.
What about the alternative?
What do you make of Keir Starmer?
Is he prime ministerial?
Oh, God, he is.
Keir Starmer will be our best prime minister since Clemet Attlee.
So better than Jeremy Corbyn, would it be?
Absolutely.
Then why did he get Jeremy Corbyn?
Because the alternative was worse.
But, I mean, the thing about Keir Starmer is he only came into parliament seven years ago.
Before that, his career was prosecuting rapists and murderers.
He's someone that does things and gets them right.
He's not very excited about it.
He didn't prosecute any of the grooming gangs, though, did he?
He didn't prosecute those rapists, and he didn't prosecute an awful lot of people that he should have prosecuted.
Jimmy Savile, for example, he didn't do anything about.
And he can't say that he was a great DPP, but then actually go, oh, yeah, well, that wasn't my fault.
I wasn't in charge of that.
I think he's been out of the way.
He's happy all his life.
He came into politics to do things, not to be a celebrity.
So what's he famous for exactly?
What's he done exactly?
Because he can't even land a glove on Boris Johnson, one of the prime ministers who was probably at his lowest ebb, and he couldn't win a point against him in Parliament questions.
Well, hang on.
He's massively ahead of Boris Johnson in the opinion of the Protestants.
He should be on the point of a general election victory.
Should he not be out of sight though, Ken, with respect, just briefly, you would think with all those own goals of Johnson and what's happened, I would have thought that the Labour Party would be as far ahead as Blair would have been.
Do you genuinely believe that he'll be the next Prime Minister?
We're well ahead in the polls.
If there's an election, Labour will win.
Every time I speak to people like Keir Starmer and I speak to the front bench, they say the following.
We K, we are coming from our worst position ever because of Jeremy Corbyn.
And if we even ended on equal terms, that will be a result.
You supported Jeremy Corbyn.
Well, I mean, Jeremy, I mean, I'd known Jeremy for 50 years.
He was a really great friend, and that's why I supported him.
But I do have to say he wasn't any good at the job.
He's a really nice guy.
When my wife met him, we were having a dinner together, he said, the nicest man I've ever met in my life.
But he was no good at running the machine.
It's a very interesting comment.
Conservative Condoms and Rats 00:03:02
Tesco Vegan Fruits.
I don't even understand what this story is about.
You know this?
Yes, it's something to do with wax, right?
Apparently, you know, when you put wax onto certain kinds of fruit and vegetables to make them look nice and shiny.
Do you do that?
Well, they do it in the shops, right?
Because they don't want you to buy a lemon that looks mankey.
They want you to have a nice lemon that looks all shiny.
And when they put some of this wax on, it turns out that it's made from the husks of insects or something, and apparently vegans can't touch it.
Are you a vegan, Ken?
Well, I gave up red meat about 12 years.
I gave up red meat, salt, sugar, butterfat.
Now, my heart profile is equivalent to someone 14 years younger.
How old are you?
I'm 77.
You look good for 77.
So you're not vegan, right?
Are you keen on vegans?
What do you make?
No, Mike hasn't got any time to vegan.
I still enjoy calamari.
So clearly, you still eat living things.
What about the newts?
How are the newts doing?
I don't eat my newts.
They're in the pond.
Do you get that?
My newts.
I thought that's quite funny.
Right, listen, this is also one of my favourite stories of the day.
It is a bit tongue-in-cheek.
Conservative condoms, apparently.
What do we know about this?
Well, they probably leak a lot, like the government.
Wow.
Apparently, there are...
I haven't got any information.
Where's Macabre with the names of all them on?
Because apparently there's lots of different information about condoms.
Complete silence in my ear.
Yeah, there's nothing going on.
What it is is that they've apparently come into conference season.
You know what the Labour Party conference and Conservative conference is.
They're all at it, basically.
I mean, forget about the policies.
They stay up all night, all night parties.
People wake up in the morning, the walk of shade.
Oh, there we are.
Right in the seafront.
They are.
Sure and stable, I think that's there.
Strong and stable.
Have we got any others?
The most honourable member we've got.
That's quite funny.
Do you have to have voted to leave or remain?
Does it matter?
What's the story?
What do you think of Conservative condoms, Ken?
I think every Conservative should be forced always to wear a condom so they don't produce any more bloody Conservatives.
There is one that says Labour isn't working, but this condom will.
Do you think there's a market there?
I just grew up in that post-war world where we're all told you've got to wear a condom or you'll get some terrible disease.
Which is when AIDS came along.
I mean, broadly, the surge in sales of condoms then.
Because, you know, your life was at risk.
Overall, guys, we've had a bit of fun.
We've also had the serious side to this.
Just for 30 seconds, when you look at broken Britain today, when you look at a person waiting 17 hours for an ambulance, when you know that you can't get a GP's appointment, you can't see a dentist, forget Boris Bashing.
Where do we go from here, Ken?
Because it does seem that we're in dire straits.
I have never seen my country in such a mess that we're in now.
And that means you've got to improve public spending, get more people better educated, make sure we get more investment, creating good new jobs.
Our level of investment is pathetic compared to what you've got in Europe and much of the rest of the world.
Mike?
I disagree with Ken.
I lived in the 70s as well, and it was a hell of a lot worse than the 70s when Labour were in power, and you had Leicester Square running amok with rats.
You couldn't bury your own dead.
Diversity Targets vs Merit 00:12:00
Everybody was on strike.
Right now, all we've got is a bunch of Marxists pretending they want more money when they're all paid 50 grand a year.
It's not a crisis.
Yes, they are.
£43,000 is the average salary of those people striking in Felixstowe, right?
They work for Unite.
They push boxes around.
They're very well paid.
People like nurses should be better paid.
That's what I'm saying.
I completely agree.
Do you think I agree about nurses needing better payments?
Ken, what do you make of Labour MPs on picket lines, briefly?
The Labour Party based on trade unionism.
But Salma said you can't be in government if you can.
I know, no, I disagree with him about that.
I think Labour MPs...
I grew up in a Labour Party where Labour MPs were on picket lines through all the strikes of the time.
And, you know, I went looking for a picket line to join when this started, but there weren't any in my area.
There you go.
Listen, gentlemen, what can I say?
You might be polar opposites.
I've loved it.
Ken Livingstone, thank you very much, Steve.
Mike Graham as well.
And coming next and uncensored, the RAF tonight criticised for sidelining white men.
We'll discuss that next with a former RAF sergeant.
That's coming after the break.
We're coming back.
Don't go anywhere.
Thank you very much, Anmir Priz.
Welcome back.
Do not forget tomorrow night, Tyson Fury on that sad news that his cousin stabbed and died over the weekend, talking knife crime tomorrow, exclusive to this programme.
We'll let you know more about that.
But next, the Royal Air Force is in the firing line for its politics again tonight.
First, its head of recruitment quit after refusing to follow orders to sideline white men.
Now it's been accused of artificially inflating its diversity, to hit government targets on female and ethnic minority recruits.
So the question is, does positive discrimination have any role to play in modernising British defence?
Or should we, in fact, stick to fighting?
Because that's the whole point.
I'm joined now in the studio by Dr. Afsal Ashraf.
He was a senior officer in the UK Armed Forces and actually, interestingly, was head of training management at the Royal Air Force.
And also, down the line, former SAS Sergeant Chris Ryan.
Welcome to you both.
Dr. Afsal, I'll start with you.
Yours is an incredible story because you started by saying that you were discriminated against and then went really the whole circle.
Tell us your view on this.
Well, I haven't talked about being discriminated against.
I came here to talk about the issue that's in the news.
That's what I was asked to do.
But when I was asked, yes, I was discriminated against.
I have documentary evidence.
But that's not something that bothers me.
I had a fantastic career in the Air Force.
It was just awesome.
And that's why I didn't take the matter further.
The point here is the issue has been around for over a quarter of a century.
25 years ago, I was invited to help with recruitment of ethnic minorities.
I didn't take the job up.
They're still struggling with the recruitment of ethnic minorities simply because there is no way of retaining and developing the people we actually do recruit.
A huge amount of money, a huge amount of resources.
Some very good people have been recruited to help recruit and improve recruitment.
And what we're seeing here is a desperate attempt to meet figures rather than look at the strategy, look at the policy, look at what the causes are.
And we've got 25 years of data plus.
So for me, teach me something here, because you say you've got the RAF, one of our most important facets, and they want to increase all races, all creeds, all colours in.
But what you're saying is that it's actually gone too far.
Whilst you understand the need for that, you talked about that, and I completely agree with that.
It's now at the point that we seem, unless I'm missing the point, to be discriminating.
I don't even want to say about colour, right?
To me, it's are we missing out on the very best people for the job in this blind sort of desire to let's get 10 people here, 10 people there.
What about the best people?
That's what I worry about.
I think that the best people are recruited.
The selection processes ensure that.
The big problem here is that this whole issue is being politicized simply because people are desperate to meet their own targets.
And the problem is that in order to meet those targets, you need to make the career attractive to the people you're the group that you're trying to attract.
Before I bring Chris Ryan in, is there discrimination now against white men?
There is.
If the story is true, then there is.
Do you think the story is true?
I don't know.
I mean, the contradictory story, there's one aspect of the story saying that that is what's happened, and the RAF seems to be denying that that is what happened.
The point is that if it happens, or even if it's perceived to happen, not only is it illegal, it is very dangerous.
And in all of this, there's sort of national security to consider.
Let's go to Chris Ryan, former SAS sergeant live in Plymouth.
Chris, welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored Without Him.
Chris, what do you make of this?
Are we getting to a point where in our quest to tick every single box in the United Kingdom, we're missing out on the best people and putting our, well, our national security at risk, fella?
Good evening, Joey.
Yes, you are.
But first of all, I'd like to say the group captain who resigned should be applauded for her courage and doing the right thing.
Now, going back to recruitment, you cannot force people to join our armed forces.
It's down to the individual who has a desire to join that unit.
And if you're just picking people up off the street because they fit a certain demograph, you are not going to get the best people for the job.
Interestingly, James Heapey, a good friend of mine, the Armed Forces Minister today, reiterated that the government has asked for this improvement in diversity.
To you both, though, firstly, Afsal.
How do you achieve diversity if you're favouring candidates over ability?
How does that work?
Well, it won't work if that's what you're doing.
Do you think that's happening?
No, I'm not sure that that's what's happening.
You see, when I was asked to join, the primary driver wasn't a diversity driver.
It was actually the fact that the Air Force was struggling to recruit, as indeed the other forces were, but the Air Force was particularly struggling to recruit people in the technology field where they felt by opening up to an untapped area of talent, they could increase the talent that they needed.
So the problem isn't diversity for diversity's sake.
It is because there is a need to get the talent, the best talent, from all aspects of British society.
I get that.
And if I can bring Chris back in, of course, we want the best talent from every part of the United Kingdom, as Dr. Afsal says.
But to me, unless I'm missing the point, unless this report doesn't seem to be true, but there seems to be more coming out the whole time, we are now missing out on some of the best talent in our quest to tick boxes.
And you say about the group captain, there is a frustration.
How do you see it?
Do you think I'm speaking truthfully there, or do you think that this is being built up?
Do you think it really is an issue?
Well, Jeremy, you've got to remember, our armed forces were embedded in two campaigns for over 20 years.
This career path may not be what a young man or woman wants to do now.
Now, the regiment has always suffered, or the SAS has always suffered for low numbers, and they've always been on demand.
And this whole thing is you can't force anybody onto selection.
You know, you've got to, first of all, make the package attractive.
You know, these young men and women aren't paid very well, and they're expected to put their lives on the line.
From that side, it comes back down to you cannot force people into our armed services.
Now, I served alongside a number of guys of colour, and I'm telling you now, they would be affronted if they thought they were given something and they didn't deserve it, or they didn't work for it, or they weren't capable of that position they held.
Now, once you start doing this with the figures, it is absolutely wrong, and it just does not work.
What the government should do is make the package more attractive to bring young men and women into this, into this military, into our military.
Based on what you've heard, Afsar, and I completely get what you're saying.
You know, one doesn't know whether this is genuine or not.
We live in a world where it seems to be about diversity targets, but on the ground, yours is a very interesting story.
We started by saying that you suffered discrimination, you were honest about that, and yet you got your head down, you carried on, and you said I had the most awesome 25 years.
When you look at the military today, would you join again?
I would.
But I want to come back to what Chris has said.
I think he's made some very good points.
One is, if the story is true, this group captain deserves a great deal of praise because no matter what the issue is, people should stand up for what they believe is right.
And I think this is something that she deserves a great deal of applause for.
The other thing that Chris has said, which really deserves to be taken on board, and that is that any person, colour or whatever, deserves to know that they have achieved it on merit.
And elite organisations, whether the Royal Air Force or the SAS, it is difficult to get in.
It is extremely tough to get in.
If I tell the stories of the people that didn't make it with me, you know, through bone fractures, through epilepsy, stress-related epilepsy, so many people didn't make it, and I did.
And I wouldn't want to be a token.
And in those days, of course, there was none of that tokenism.
There was none of this diversity issue.
Do you think that very quickly, both of you, final question?
Do you think diversity is important?
Absolutely.
Do you think the drive for it has been done in the wrong way?
You both talk about how people of colour, absolutely, who have served and quite rightly would feel affronted.
And I completely understand that.
But do you think there is any part of in this quest for diversity that they've taken the wrong path and we are missing out on people?
Yes, Honor.
They have taken the wrong path in that they're looking at discrimination and recruitment at the front end.
It doesn't really exist.
99% of people in the armed forces are not prejudiced.
It does exist at the very senior level because you get a pinnacle there where there is high competition.
I didn't experience any prejudice for the largest part of my career.
I noticed it when I looked at my files and stuff and my performance at the top end.
And that is where it gets difficult.
If we had, like we have politicians, members of the House of Lords, leaders in business and elsewhere, of colour or females in the armed forces, then we wouldn't have a problem.
And 25 years ago, we could have grown a lot of talent.
I'm not talking about myself, but there were several, only a very small number of officers of colour who were extremely talented.
Why didn't they make it?
Why didn't we have air marshals, females and of colour?
That's the question.
If they address that question, you will solve the recruitment question.
Astel, thank you very much.
The Diana Conspiracy Theory 00:08:31
Final word from you, Chris.
Your overall view of this summit up.
Jeremy, Jeremy, joining the military, whatever branch, it's an organic thing and you can't cook it.
You can't change selection.
I'll give you one example.
In the late 80s, a commanding officer was under pressure to bring more men into the SAS and they tweaked selection and made it easier.
And what that meant was there was a number of guys joined the SAS who weren't capable of that position.
And sadly, some of them were killed.
As I've said, there's a process of joining our military and it shouldn't be tweaked no matter who you are or where you've come from.
Completely agree, Chris Ryan, a former SA Sergeant in Plymouth and Dr. Afsal Ashraf.
Thank you, Brown Major, joining us.
And next on Uncensored, my friends, a new documentary.
Tonight Untangles conspiracies around Princess Diana's death.
There are still questions apparently to be answered after 25 years.
We'll speak to the former spokesperson for the Al-Fayed family, Michael Cole, along with Fired Bog for Tom Bauer.
That's next on Uncensored.
Don't go know.
We're coming right back.
Welcome back to Uncensored.
Now, Princess Diana's tragic final hours remained the subject of much speculation and scandal even 25 years on from her death.
Channel 4 is the latest to enter the fray with a four-part documentary investigating Diana's death in Paris, which examines two police investigations into her passing.
I think this, have a look at this actually, just start like this.
There's so many coincidences, so many odd things.
It just don't add up.
85% of the ordinary people of this country believe Diana was murdered with my son.
Why would someone want to kill the Princess of the World?
It's very difficult to defeat a conspiracy theory.
So do these aimless inquiries shed important new light on one of the royal family's darkest hours?
Or is it finally time to let the People's Princess rest in peace?
I'll be joined shortly by Fired Bog for Tom Bau.
With me now is royal commentator and former spokesman for Mohamed El-Fayed, Michael Cole.
Michael, thank you for joining us tonight.
What do you make of this new documentary?
Good evening.
I didn't watch it.
I chose not to watch it.
I didn't contribute to it.
I declined the invitation.
I took those decisions because I didn't think it would elicit anything of any substance that was new.
This morning, a very famous TV household name who was on television even before I joined television in 1967, he said to me, nothing new, Michael.
And I did read the comments by Christopher Stevens, the very distinguished television reviewer in the Daily Mail today.
And he described the program as trashy, cynical documentary with sound bites strung together.
So maybe I made a good decision, but the reason I found it and find this all very, very, very sad is that it's distressing.
I knew all three people who were killed that night.
I knew Diana for 12 years.
I went around the world with her.
She occasionally phoned me.
She occasionally asked advice.
We weren't close friends.
She didn't ask me out to lunch, but we had a good professional relationship.
Dodie was always in and out of my office when he was in London.
And I knew Henri Paul.
Henri Paul drove me around in Paris.
I always got on with him very well.
So those were people I liked and admired.
And like Mohamed, who is still in mourning after 25 years, I miss them.
And I think it is a shame, if I can put it as lightly as possible, when this old ground is raped over for very little purpose on four consecutive nights on a terrestrial channel.
What is achieved?
You know, Jeremy, I would sit here and talk to you from now until the anniversary next Wednesday, if it achieved anything, if it brought them back.
And of course, it won't do that.
So what are we doing here?
I'm all in favour of honest journalistic endeavour.
And I do believe that information will come out in time.
Is this the right way of doing it?
I think if I can jump in, I agree.
I think many people would quite rightly say it's distasteful.
Others would say that maybe there are still questions.
I'd like to cross now, if I can, to fire biographer Tom Bauer, who joins us now.
Tom, what's your take on this new program?
What's your view, sir?
Well, my view is simply this, that the whole controversy was actually created by Mohamed Fayed, and I must say, my old friend Michael Cole, because the whole suggestion after the death that Princess Diana had been murdered by Prince Philip and MI6 in some gigantic conspiracy in Paris was utterly outrageous by a shameless man called Mohamed Fayed and his acolytes and spokesmen.
I was amongst the very, very first, if not the very first person to arrive at the Ritz, courtesy of Mohammed Fayed, shortly after Diana died.
And I spoke to all the hotel staff at the Ritz who had served her and Dodie in the hours before they then bid them farewell from the Ritz and to their fateful deaths.
And I can tell you that that dash by the car, Henri Paul, the drunken driver, speeding through Paris, was approved by Mohamed Fayed.
The staff at the Ritz told me that they heard the conversations between Dodie and his father, approving that ridiculous escapade.
And the idea that anyone could have plotted to murder Diana, which is what Mohamed Fayed perpetrated for 10 years afterwards, and why we have these programs now, is absolutely outrageous.
There was actually no way that anyone could have plotted an assassination attempt if they even had the motive, which they didn't.
And so it is a tragedy affair.
What's awful about the four-part series now is that it regurgitates all of Mohamed Fayed's rubbish.
And not only rubbish, but damaging rubbish.
It defames so many good people, not least of all Diana, because he came up with this ridiculous idea.
He had her last words, which was a total fantasy.
So what's really shocking about this series, and in the end it's just television, so who really cares, is that it took 10 years for a proper inquest.
10 years before Diana's death was subject to a judicial inquiry, which was an outrageous amount of time.
And when Fayyed actually turned up in court with his lawyer, Michael Mansfield, they didn't have a scintilla of evidence to present which justified their long campaign that Diana had been the victim with Dodie of an assassination attempt.
Tom.
And that it was all over.
Tom, thank you.
I just regurgitates all that.
I just want to bring Michael back in.
Not much time, Michael.
Your response to what Tom has said.
Briefly, sir, please.
Well, it wasn't Muhammad's fault that there was a 10-year delay, and there were four coroners appointed until they got to the one who they thought would be.
Did Mohammed al-Fayed, in Tom's words, peddle untruths and falsehoods about it?
And is the very reason that 25 years later these programs have still been made?
He's entitled to his opinion.
He believes that his son was killed, and he was killed because the establishment did not want the mother of the future king to be marrying a Muslim.
And that's what he believes, and he's entitled to his belief.
And on the anniversary, he'll go down to Dodi's tomb and he will sit there for a couple of hours listening to recorded prayers from the Quran.
And then he'll go back and he'll have afternoon tea with his children.
He is still in mourning.
He's a man bereft.
He lost not just his son, but a very good friend.
And the allegations that Tom is blithely throwing around, I could answer every single one of them, but we don't have time.
We don't.
Mourning a Lost Friend 00:00:46
Tom Bauer, final word from you, please.
Briefly, and I mean very briefly, sir, 20 seconds.
Well, all I can say is he's had 25 years to prove his conspiracy, and I think it was shameless and cowardly of him to accuse Prince Philip of orchestrating the murder of Diana and the rest of the people in that car.
It was shocking.
He was a drunken driver driving recklessly, drunk, and sadly, Princess Diana wasn't wearing a suit.
Tom Bauer, Michael Cole, thank you very much indeed.
I think you two prove.
I think the country and the world is probably still split.
Thank you so much for watching.
That's it from me.
Do not forget, tomorrow night, live on the show, Tyson Furrow joins me live.
Tyson Fury talking about his cousin who was stabbed and a lot more.
Don't miss it.
And Justice Pierce says, wherever you are, make sure you keep it uncensored.
Have a great night.
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