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Feb. 14, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:11
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Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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UK Asylum Crisis Tensions 00:14:51
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored with me, Richard Tice.
And me, Isabelle Oakeshart.
Protesters clash with police as tensions over migrants turn violent.
Is it toxic rhetoric to blame for stoking these tensions or is it just the government's utter failure to grasp the extent of the crisis?
Overstretched and underfunded dire warnings on the state of the British military will debate whether the armed forces can still defend Britain and assess the threat from China as the US shoots down another UFO.
Plus, as teachers plan yet further strikes and schools battle a recruitment emergency, a lesson in how not to fix the mess.
We'll hear from the teacher who was fired because he wouldn't use a student's chosen pronouns.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored with Richard Tice and Isabel Oakeshott.
Protests erupted outside a hotel housing migrants in Merseyside this weekend.
On the one side, the so-called far right, many of whom are just unhappy that hotels are being taken over for migrants at vast taxpayers' expense.
On the other, the far left, who like nothing more than a scrap with the people they label fascists.
Many similar protests are taking place over the coming weeks.
It feels like this is just the beginning.
Demonstrations are planned in Rotherham, where 130 asylum seekers are housed at a hotel for an unlimited period of time.
Now the local MP, John Healy, that's Labour's John Healy, says the hotel is utterly unsuited to asylum seekers and that neighbours weren't consulted.
Surprise, surprise, now there's trouble.
Members of an unpleasant sounding organisation called Yorkshire Rose will gather to make their feelings known and they will be met by another organisation called Yorkshire Against Hate which is rallying its troops for a counter demo.
One week later both tribes are sharpening their spears for a hotel protest in Cornwall.
Well what could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot if events in Merseyside are anything to go by.
It all kicked off there on Friday night outside another hotel housing asylum seekers.
Naturally the left-wing media blamed the disgraceful scenes outside the Sweets Hotel on the quote far right.
So it's probably only fair to mention that the Communist Party was also there in force.
And yes the Merseyside branch of the Communist Branch of the Communist Party urgently appealed for all anti-fascists to join them at the hotel saying drown fascism in a sea of resistance was how they urged it.
You see, it does take two to tango.
And yes, this is the same Knowsley by the way where a couple of years ago 30 extinction rebellion protesters were arrested in September 2020, some waving placards saying refugees welcome here.
Do you see the link?
See what it's all about?
Maybe it's just worth pointing out that the UK is not the only place with this problem.
Let's look at Dublin, hardly the beating heart of the far right itself.
And Dublin has faced many similar protests for months and months now, involving plenty of decent, law-abiding people who are simply concerned about the impact of large groups of unknown young men of military age being transplanted into their local communities.
These fears are not unreasonable.
These fears are not illogical.
They're not unfounded.
I mean.
Just last week, for example, four asylum seekers supposedly children aged 13 to 16 time will tell if that's true or not were arrested for the alleged rape of a 15 year old girl at a school in Kent.
It's not fascist, it's not racist, it's not hateful to be worried about this sort of thing.
It really isn't what.
What happens when you get another 50,000 migrants coming here over the course of this year, hundreds more hotels needing to be requisitioned?
The real question is actually not which side is the worse than the other, but why on earth are we in this shameful situation at all and what are we going to do to fix it?
Well, I'm delighted to be joined by immigration lawyer Hajip Singh Bangal, plus TALK TV contributor Esther Kraku and political journalist Ava Santina.
I mean, this situation is going from bad to worse, and Hajjab was.
We've just seen that it's not just the UK.
We've you know.
We know it's happening in Dublin, we know it's happening in France, and many on the left are instantly saying it's just the far right, as though we've only got the far right here in the UK.
It's nothing to do that.
It's an utter failure of government policy.
You're right.
It's a total failure of the HOME Office and the people in charge to get a grip on the situation and to realize how to deal with this and how to fix it.
You're asking one of your questions is, how do we fix it?
We don't need to house asylum seekers in hotels.
We can let them work and pay their own rent, and they will pay their rent when their case is finished and decided, we take away that permission to work.
Alongside that however, we must process claims quickly.
I must deal with them in 15 days, 20 days, like we used to before 2010, before this government came in in 2010, and before that, in 2008, we used to send back 60 000 people a year.
That's more than the 50 000 coming now.
Last year that went down to 3 000 people and that's been slowly coming down over the years.
So in 2015, we sent back five and a half thousand people.
So it's been slowly coming down.
Is that HOME Office officials or is that a conservative government instruction or what?
I think it's a lack of political will, it's a lack of competence, it's a lack of trained staff, lack of funding, lack of funding, AVA.
I mean, come on, let's be honest, this wasn't far right.
This was concerned local groups in a labour stronghold.
Knowsley is the safest labour seat in the country.
Maybe it's wrong to actually label the groups and say, look, actually these people are genuinely concerned.
Well, I think that's kind of a dangerous way to frame it, because Knowledge isn't really.
It doesn't really have the values that the rest of Liverpool has.
Actually, it has given birth to quite a big rise in the BNP over the last 20 or 30 years.
It's it doesn't represent the values that the rest of the city holds.
I also, but the facts don't match that.
It's the safest labour seat in the country.
Actually, we also can't prove that any of those people who were there or you know the entirety of the people who were there were actually from the area or were labor supporters.
Yeah, exactly.
They could have come from any Merseyside branch.
Yes, who were fighting against Ava, do you accept that the way this story has been framed by a lot of the left-wing media, The Guardian in particular, but it's not the only one, is that this was a far-right protest that spun out of control.
They didn't mention the fact that there were quite a lot of extreme left people at that place as well.
Do you accept that it took two sides?
I don't know how I'm supposed to accept that when I don't know where the people were from and I don't know the motives behind it.
I mean, I think the most obvious motive is that people turned up because there was an alleged assault that happened and people came to defend what they describe as English people against, you know, these asylum seekers, which is a really ugly way for it to turn out.
And I'm sorry, but that is narrative that is intrinsically.
But the thing is, I think the thing is, we have to recognize that when you have an influx of people that are not native to this country, and that's not to say that the UK is not used to immigration, of course we're used to immigration, we're a multi-sort of ethnic country.
But when you have an influx of a certain group of people that are not native to a particular region, obviously there will be social tensions.
I do think it's unhelpful to label the people there far-right just because, like you said, we don't know if they were far right and we don't know if the other people there were far left or whatever.
We haven't actually ascertained where they live.
I'll tell you what we have ascertained.
It is social tensions that has been caused by an influx of these people, which again comes down to club men and incompetence.
Because if we knew that they were here legally, if we knew that they could work, they could pay their rent, that they weren't an alleged hotbed of all these kind of alleged assaults, then the social, the sort of tensions, societal tensions, would have decreased.
But we don't know these things.
Right, let me just pick up on the point that you made about allowing them to work, which I think is actually highly controversial.
So I understand your point in the sense that if people are going to be stuck here for two years, it is patently ridiculous that they're sitting around twiddling their thumbs, no doubt finding other things to do.
The devil makes them.
They can't survive on £40 a week.
Of course you're going to drive them to crime or you're going to ask them how they're going to set their eyeballs.
But is allowing them to work actually the solution to the problem?
Because isn't that simply going to encourage more and more people to come over and won't there end up just being an amnesty for those people?
What was a provisio that I said, allowing them to work until their claim is refused or decided, which should be decided under a fast-track system?
If they know our case is going to be decided in 15 days and we can only work for 15 days and we're not going to be put up in hotels.
We're not going to get government handouts.
At that point, I don't think, I completely agree with you that their cases should be fast-tracked.
I think even Rishi Sunak has made this point, which is one of the few things that we're doing.
Well, we used to have it under a Labour government.
Exactly.
And then the Tories came in and decided in their wisdom to scrap the problem.
No one is arguing with the incompetence of the government in handling this.
I do agree with Isabel, though.
I don't think they should be allowed to work because I agree with you.
Their cases should be processed quickly.
I think being able to work in this country is actually a privilege.
And I think if you have so many people that aren't able to get the jobs that they want, come over here and then take government handouts if you're not allowed to work.
Not if we're processing them quickly.
Not if we're processing them quickly.
But Ava, do you agree with that?
But that should happen.
Do you not accept that actually if you allow people to work for months and months and months, possibly years, then it's going to act as an even bigger magnet and draw for more people to come illegally when acting.
We call it a magna.
We call everything a magna.
And look, this is not going to be news to you, Richard, because you know this.
You know that most people who come over here, if they are in hotels for two years, they do work.
They work cash in hand.
So, you know, I'm just saying it does happen because the Home Office takes so long to process them.
If I would do exactly what we're saying, what has been proposed, which is allow people to work while their claim has been processed.
And absolutely.
How do we track them?
It's a huge topic for the UK.
How do we track them?
It's one of our most press.
But they're working now.
They're working cash.
How can you track them being able to pay for it?
Because they'll have an insurance number and their employer will pay them.
Do you know how long it takes to even process a password?
You've got no choice.
Every asylum seeker.
You're processed the moment you come into the country.
Why can't you be given a number then?
Even more people coming every week, every month, because all of a sudden you can work here and the system will get even more swapped.
Well then the answer to that is carry on paying for them.
Let the British people pay for them.
We don't want that.
You can't have British people putting up people in hotels.
They've had enough of it.
So let the asylum seekers let asylum seekers pay their own way, pay tax.
If an employer's going to pay their wages and pay tax, then let them wait.
You've given the right point, which is that actually 10 years ago, when the Labour Party was in charge, just over 10 years ago, 13 years ago, actually, it was being done promptly and efficiently and tens of thousands were being denied asylum and therefore they didn't need to work.
That's what we've got to get back to.
But look, can I just focus on the next 12 months?
I mean, already we've had 2,000 come across the channel in the first five weeks of the year in the depths of winter.
This is going to be 40,000, 50, 60,000.
It's another 400 hotels.
Heaven knows where they come from.
What's the mood going to be like up and down the towns of cities of this country over if that happens?
What concerns me is that it's ripe for the next election because I think we're in a really toxic space at the moment where instead of actually focusing on some of the, you know, the cost of living crisis which is being caused by the Conservative Party, and we are now blaming this on people who are trying to seek asylum, you are not going to be able to in the next 12 months curtail the number of boats who are crossing the channel.
France aren't on board.
We're not willing to put up more money.
It's not going to happen.
The only pressure that you could put on is onto the Home Office to process people's claims quicker.
Sorry, Esther.
I think one of the things to talk about in terms of how the public will take this is also the security element.
So I know we don't often want to talk about Shanima Begum and the fact that she's been banished, but in reality, right, 150 ISIS fighters were able to come back to the UK.
And in general, the public don't have a lot of faith in our internal security forces to keep our borders safe.
Can you imagine what the mood will be like when 40 to 50,000 more migrants come into this country this year?
I think it'll move past just being kind of an influx of these people that are unknown.
It will be a security issue because people are just saying, we don't know who these people are.
Harjip, 40,000, 50,000 won't matter if we're sending 60 back.
We've got to get these people returned.
That is not happening.
Have you any confidence?
None at all.
This Home Office can sort this out in a matter of six months, let alone one month.
They haven't been managed to do it in the last 12 years and they will not be able to do it.
And what's going to happen is you're going to have tensions build up.
But one thing is, whether you're far right or far left, you don't take a one metre wrecking bar to a peaceful protest.
Right, that's what's happening in the videos.
Right, so those people are looking for trouble.
And they are creating tension.
And to say that that was a peace, both sides are peaceful, you've got to not take the wrecking bar.
You know, I think the far right, far left debate is just actually a bit of a red herring.
I mean, because, yes, it concentrates on what's happening on those particular protests, but it doesn't actually enlighten us any about the broader picture.
Well, what we do know is that there are more demonstrations on both sides that are planned in the coming weeks.
That'll be months.
And as more and more people come, more hotels are occupied and indeed sort of requisitioned by the government.
I mean, I think this has got sort of terrifying potential consequences six to nine months.
It's a power cake.
It's a powder cake.
It's an absolute powder cake.
I have to say, I think the Tories utterly deserve to pay the price for it.
It is a complete disgrace.
They will.
We are in this situation.
And it's not a party political question.
No, but it's just an absolute reality.
I'm not sure Keirstarma's got any likelihood to improve it equally.
But he got more people deported under Labour.
Under the previous Labour, you're right, Harjip.
Thank you very much indeed.
I'd love to see you, Harjip, over.
And Esther, we will see you a bit later in the show.
So, next tonight, NATO says that the military is overstretched as the Defence Secretary launches a security view over China's spy balloons.
Rising UFO Surveillance Concerns 00:13:24
Can our armed forces really still defend Britain?
We'll debate that next.
And welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well, apparently, the UK is no longer a top-level fighting force.
That was the warning from one US general who said that the British Army is now a shadow of its former self.
And with the war in Ukraine raging, unidentified flying objects popping up here, there and everywhere, are we sure that Britain can really still defend itself?
We certainly don't have the boots on the ground, troop numbers having halved since the Falklands War.
And increasingly, we don't even have the infrastructure either.
We've cut back on tanks, we've cut back on planes.
We can't even apparently afford to replace them.
Well, joining us now are security expert, Dr. Sally Levesley, and former Pentagon Advisor on Defence, Elbridge Colby, and former head of the British Army, Lord Dannett, to talk about this very serious situation with the state of the armed forces.
Lord Dannett, if I can come to you first, thank you very much for joining us.
This situation with the state of the army in particular, which has had quite a lot of media debate over the last few days, I'm interested in how many men and women you think would actually be at the ready to serve now on the front line and the backup required if we had to go and defend ourselves.
What kind of numbers are we talking about?
Well, Isabel, I don't think numbers are really the issue.
It's our equipment and our overall capability.
I mean, there is no doubt that over the last 10-15 years, there has been a significant underinvestment in our military overall, but in the army in particular.
So the criticisms that have come from, I think, a still anonymous American general, and other criticisms have come are well placed.
And I think the only encouraging aspect to this is that Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, really seems to get this and is arguing the case as much as he possibly can, that particularly in the light of a vicious land war in Europe, we need to increase our overall defence spending and particularly increase our defence spending, our spending on our land forces, on our army.
I mean, you say that the numbers aren't the issue, and of course they're not the only issue, but the debate has long raged in defence circles as to the extent to which mass matters.
Isn't the situation in Ukraine an illustration that mass actually does count for something?
I mean, clearly, the UK wouldn't want to treat its personnel the way that President Putin treats the people that he conscripts into the armed forces there, almost as if they count for nothing and are utterly dispensable.
But in the end, if you run your army down to only a few tens of thousands, you may well have a problem in a situation where mass is important.
Well, again, you're absolutely right.
But I think we have to bear in mind that the United Kingdom, as a member of NATO, plays an important part in overall European security.
And actually, it's the role that we play with our other NATO-European partners and, of course, the United States in Europe, that is so significant.
But there is no getting away from, well, actually, the size of the army is falling to about 75,000 at the present moment.
When I was the chief of the general staff, it was over 100,000, and we were fighting two campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But again, it's not so much troop numbers that matter, although they do matter in some ways.
Is actually to make sure that those people have got the right equipment.
There's no doubt about the leadership, the training, the motivation of British soldiers, but you've got to give them the right equipment.
For example, you asked about numbers.
We're currently only planning to upgrade 148 of our Challenger 2 tanks to Challenger 3, the next generation of improvement, if you like, to that status.
Well, we've got well over 200 tanks.
So why are we not increasing from Challenger 2 to Challenger 3 well over 200 tanks?
And again, without being too specific, without being too much of a trend.
I guess that's why we need to...
I'd want to bring in Elbridge.
Of course, I mean, I won't.
Richard, of course, you're absolutely right.
I mean, I won't make too many examples.
I could go on for quite too long and I won't do that.
But you're absolutely right that we've got to increase the budget.
The defense budget is around about 2%, just over 2% of GDP at the present moment.
Last year, Boris was talking about raising it to 2.5%.
Liz Trust briefly was talking about raising it to 3%.
And Jeremy Hunt, the very spendthrift Chancellor, previously was talking about 3%.
So we've got to increase our defense spending.
That is for sure.
Well, let's bring in Elbridge Colby from Washington.
Thanks for being with us.
Let's discuss this extraordinary situation with the Chinese spy balloons, these other objects.
What is your verdict as to is it really China for all of these objects?
And what is going on?
What is going on here?
This is a bit of a shock to everybody.
It's a massive wake-up call.
What are they trying to do?
Well, there's a lot of questions in there.
The first balloon is definitely a Chinese surveillance balloon, a massive balloon.
It's the size of three American football fields, apparently.
The balloon, as well as the actual thing it was carrying, is a size of a couple of buses in American parlance.
So it was very significant.
The other ones, apparently, we don't know yet.
I was watching John Kirby this morning, the White House spokesman on national security issues, and he was saying they haven't even recovered much of it.
Now, a lot of this, a lot of the, I mean, technically unidentified flying objects have been brought down in some pretty inhospitable places in Alaska and Canada's UK.
Elbridge, we've got a clip of a US general with his own thoughts on this, and I think we can watch now.
I haven't ruled out anything at this point.
We continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.
Wow.
I mean, what do you think to that, Elbridge?
Is this for real?
Well, I think he's being careful.
I think if you were putting your prudent money down, the Chinese have initiated an enormous world-spanning, and particularly US and Asia, spanning South America, balloon surveillance and other kinds of sort of platforms that we may not know about.
I think you're right, though, that this is a real wake-up call to the American people.
And I think it's very important that British and European audiences really understand that China is felt to be, across the political spectrum, increasingly the primary threat to Americans' interests.
And that is going to have implications, including for our policy in Europe over time.
Elbridge, is it your instinct that all of these unidentified objects have come, their origins are from Beijing?
Or are you more open-minded than that?
First question.
And second question: I'm just a bit intrigued as to why it's taking so long to recover any of the debris.
Of course, I understand that these objects were flying over, in many cases, frozen wasteland.
That does seem a strange place to carry out a surveillance operation.
But I wouldn't have thought it would be beyond the powers of your intelligence military people to have recovered something more by now.
Can you shed any light on that?
Well, I am open-minded on your first question.
I think it's probable that it was, or at least the most likely explanation is that they're originated from China, but I don't think it's impossible they originated, say, from Russia or even maybe North Korea, or even that they're potentially private companies, platforms collecting things.
I think we are taking a different attitude towards unidentified flying objects that are entering our territorial airspace than we were even a month ago.
On the second one, I mean, General Donner would know more than I, but you know, this very demanding operations to recover things underwater.
I mean, we're having trouble, or it's taking some time recovering the original balloon, which is off the Carolinas, which is balmy compared to Lake Huron, let alone the Arctic Ocean.
Dr. Liji, can you give us your insight into what you think is going on here?
Why now for a start?
Well, it's not why now, it's now it's been understood.
And what we're seeing is America waking up to the fact that there's, in a way, been a Trojan horse campaign by the China.
Well, the Chinese have admitted that it's been their balloon.
But that type of program that the Americans have announced tonight that the Chinese have been doing has been using what is a Trojan horse.
It looks very simple, but the level of surveillance should be taken very seriously.
And specifically, what do you think they are looking for?
And is this just the beginning?
Are they going to be, are they over Europe as we speak?
The way in which we should look at them is in associating with the new weapons.
Now, what China and Russia and North Korea have in abundance is new forms of weapons which are highly maneuverable, super fast.
By the time you see them, they've got you.
Now, these balloons going over the missile sites in America may be helping the Chinese to practice a new form of entry targeting to destroy those missiles.
Okay, so hang on.
You're saying that they are going where they've been brought down, that is proximate to missile or military sites or installations?
Because I hadn't heard that before.
What we were told with the announced Chinese spy balloon, announced by the Americans, denied by the Chinese, is that there was a movement over one of the major missile silo sites in America.
That makes sense.
What about the other ones?
The other ones, I think we should look at the...
It's like space debris.
Until they have been found, everyone puts balloons up for various reasons.
But the fact that there is a program, the Americans now understand that America homeland, as we should understand as a nuclear nation here, will be being targeted and these close-to-the-ground, highly capable surveillance balloons may not just be communications, but may be doing the potential targeting that a new nuclear weapon may use in the future.
You're inferring that we should expect the same sort of spy balloons being over the UK and Europe, I think.
We may infer that if other countries have had them, but the main thing is to assume yes, and the answer is there's more close surveillance of potential sites than we may have assumed.
Let's bring General Dannett back in, if I may.
Can I ask you whether you think that it is likely that these unidentified objects may be over European or even UK airspace?
And if so, do we actually have the capability to down them in the way that the Americans have done?
I'm quite sure that that kind of surveillance is very widespread.
But I think let's put it in the context of, yes, of course, China you can describe as a threat, but I would actually describe China as a very aggressive competitor.
So it's trying to get information it converts into intelligence that it can use to its own advantages.
Now, your last speaker was saying, of course, these could be conducting surveillance operations over nuclear missile silos, but that's really why it's so important that the United States and the United Kingdom have got continuous at-sea underwater deterrence.
We've got submarines, no one knows where those submarines are.
You can fly as many balloons as you like over the United States, over the United Kingdom, but when our submarines are under the water, you don't know where they are.
So our nuclear assured deterrence is very much in place.
So I think we've got to see this in the broadest sense of the Chinese trying to compete with us for information, intelligence for their own advantage.
Indeed, well, thank you very much, General Danner, and for our guest from Washington and also from Sally Leafsee.
Thanks for that.
I mean, I find this all honestly quite scary.
It's actually, it's amongst the scariest things that we can sort of think of.
Yeah, I mean, these UFOs, it seems odd to think that it's happened so suddenly.
And what I haven't, I don't feel I've completely got a grip on is the extent to which they've been floating around lots of these things and we're only just noticing them.
Or is there a sudden escalation now?
And I have to say, I'm pretty skeptical that we've got the ability to both spot and deal with them in the way that the Americans have got.
Yeah, I mean it would be nice to think that we could leave and down them, but yeah.
Well let's see.
Disturbing Student Welfare Case 00:08:45
Okay, coming up next, a language teacher takes her own life tragically ahead of allegedly assaulting a pupil, sparking outrage amongst her colleagues for a lack of support.
We'll debate how the government stems the exodus of teachers from this noble profession.
Welcome back.
Thousands of schools across the UK are set to close again later this month in strike action over pay and staff shortages.
Education unions say lack of staff is now a critical problem for almost every school.
A third of England's teachers who qualified in the last decade have left and almost half of those remaining say they plan to quit.
As well as falling real-term pay and exhaustion, teachers encounter an unprecedented level of abuse and lack of respect in the classroom.
Take languages teacher Catherine Scowler.
Now this is a really disturbing case.
She tragically took her own life ahead of a trial for allegedly assaulting a pupil while she was trying to take away the pupil's mobile phone.
She was widely respected and well liked and it's thought that what happened was she caught the girl's hair while she was trying to confiscate the phone.
Naturally Catherine's family are absolutely devastated and her colleagues right across the profession are rightly furious.
Head teacher Catherine Burbel Singh tweeted in response, The daily abuse teachers receive across the country is what unions should be shouting about, but they rarely complain about behaviour and we all live in denial.
Well it is an awful case isn't it?
It's just unbelievable and our next guest sadly lost his job as a teacher when he refused to affirm a pupil's gender change.
Kevin Lister taught maths at a further education college but was sacked for not referring to a 17 year old pupil who was born biologically female but then chose to become preferred a male and use he him pronouns.
So, is cancel culture piling even more pressure on the already strained profession?
I mean, you might be wondering what is the link here between this awful case of the suicide in, I think it was in Scotland, and your case, which is clearly a very different set of circumstances.
And I suppose what both things play into are the pressures on teachers in our classrooms, the extent to which they're supported, and the extent to which, and I know this is something Catherine Birbel Singh, who tweeted about the suicide of that poor lady, feels very strongly about the shift of power in our classroom from the traditional setup where the teacher was the person in charge here and widely respected.
And hopefully, parents backed up the teacher to a point where you as teachers are often feeling besieged and as if you're the one that has to continually justify your attempts to bring discipline into a classroom.
Yeah, I mean, firstly, I don't know the details of this case, but my first comment on this is my heart absolutely goes out to the family.
This is an extraordinary, terrible, terrible situation.
Yeah, I thought what happened to me was bad.
Yeah.
What's happened to her is you know takes it on to many details, and I think because she had been charged, that will have limited the reporting on this case, so papers wouldn't have been able to say much.
I wonder and hope now that it is possible for the full details to be brought out.
Why was the decision taken to prosecute her?
Exactly what were the circumstances of her alleged crime?
Because I think we need to know, don't you, whether she received the right kind of support and what treatment was she on the receiving end of it?
I think probably the best thing I can do, the best comment I can make for her and for her family, and maybe even also for the students who were involved in this as well, is to compare it with the situation that I found myself in, which is what you're looking for, obviously.
And she sounded from the small bit I read in the article as a superb public servant.
She'd been in the army, she moved into teaching, she sounded someone who wanted to do her best for society.
She's gone into teaching with the best of intent and she's ended up in this appalling situation.
Situation that I was in was something similar.
I go into teaching because I want to do something good for society.
Now, I'm deeply concerned where society is going.
Our young people face a terrible future now.
The discussion you've just had, climate change and so forth is a bleak and awful situation.
So I wanted, you know, I go into teaching to try and encourage students to be able to equip themselves intellectually.
Quickly, what happened to you?
Yeah, so what basically happened to me is with that ethos of teaching, I then find I have a student in my class who decides to tell me by a text message basically that from now on she is now going to be referred to as a male name.
Okay.
I raise it as a safeguarding concern.
Fair enough.
I say, ask three questions.
I say, do we have parental consent?
Is she making an informed decision?
Is there a risk that she will take cross-sex hormone treatment and self-medicate?
Basically, you can buy all this stuff easily online.
And then how does that manifest itself with the college's drug policy?
Just to be clear, because I do think people will wonder this.
Did you have a problem per se with the pupil wanting to change their pronoun or was your concern more for their welfare?
It was entirely their welfare.
I mean, at the end of the day, what I expected is that the college would sit down with a safeguarding strategy, we'd have doctors, social care parents, and so forth, and we work out what's the best way forward.
actually happened.
So what actually happened was a college then said to me that they were not going to tell the parents within three days they had encouraged her to actually go about changing her name on the college system.
So they were not going to tell the parents at all.
They had this idea that they do not want to out any parent, any students rather, to the parents.
Is it a matter of record how old the pupil concerned?
The pupil was 17.
Right.
So over 16, at least it's not a 13 year old.
No, but I mean Ava, 17 year old wanting to transition, should the parents be told or not?
Well I think it's important to understand the context of this.
So you were given a very polite text message by this pupil who said this is how they would like to be referred to.
You took that into your own hands.
I think you are totally right to go and raise that as a welfare, as a safeguarding issue.
I completely agree with you.
You don't want any risk of people self-medicating.
However, what was actually your reasoning was not quite as valiant as you've laid it out here.
You actually don't believe in it on a fundamental level yourself.
You don't believe it in a moral level.
And I feel like I can say that because on your own Twitter feed, there are homophobic comments.
You have previously said that you don't believe that people, gay couples, should be allowed to adopt children.
So for you, this is actually a moral issue.
Kevin, you might have to let Kevin respond to that because Ava has just accused you of homophobic comments.
Can you respond?
That's not homophobic.
If two guys want to have a sexuality.
Please say it then.
Please do say it.
Yeah.
But it's not homophobic.
So Peter Butterberg was the...
He's currently running, or is one of the front runners as the Democrat presidential candidate.
Him and his partner...
Oh, Peter Butijudge.
Okay.
So him and his partner had arranged to have two babies delivered to them on the same day and they posted that up on Twitter.
That to me is basically child trafficking.
That's taking a child off a baby.
Well, that is child trafficking.
I didn't think I'd be talking about Pete Buddhij.
I understand.
I get your argument.
I do think that kind of the way you're phrasing it is a bit far-fetched.
I mean, we know kind of instances of child trafficking where people are, kids are literally ripped from their parents.
I think what they're doing is legal.
You may not agree with gay adoption, which is fine.
I completely understand that.
Brexit Trade Opportunity Lost 00:08:02
But I do think there might be a language issue.
I think back to the student, though.
I think the questions that you raised, I didn't see any hint of homophobia there.
I think he was perfectly reasonable in saying, what is this?
You know, is there a risk of self-medication?
How does that align with the school's drug policy?
And I think that's perfectly fair enough.
And I don't think his personal belief should have anything to do with that.
There are many people in this country, for instance, who would agree with him.
I don't think that has anything to do with the case of this individual support.
So asking to be support from the college.
You raised the safeguarding issue, and they've come at you instead.
Yeah, no support from the college at all.
So what the college basically did, and I found this out subsequently with a subject access request to Spinnenborough Council, was they instigated an investigation of me before they told me and then started a safeguarding accusation.
We should be careful not to go into too many details because also we haven't got the college here to give their sides of the story.
And I do find this really disturbing.
As a parent of three fairly young children, you know, the idea that they might raise this in a classroom and the school would take a decision not to tell me, I find that really troubling.
It just feels like there's a complete lack of support from the leadership in Kevin's school and in Catherine Scowler's school.
It just feels there's a lack of support.
Yeah, if we want good people to stay in the teaching profession and to enter it, they need to know that in a classroom they're in charge and that they, you know, and crucially that parents back them up.
Parents back them up, the unions back them up and the leadership back them up.
Well, next night, thank you very much indeed, Kevin.
And we'll see the pack in a second.
Next night we've got Michael Gove secretly meeting Labour MPs in a secret summit with discussions about Brexit's successes.
Oh no, failings.
Have the Tories not so secretly betrayed Brexit?
All of that after the break.
Welcome back.
Well, Ava and Esther are still here.
And we are going to Richard's favourite subject, which is Brexit, because apparently there was a secret summit at a place called Ditchley.
And this was full of, well, quite a lot of Ramonas, I would say, with a sprinkling of Brexiteers.
Some really big names.
Peter Mandelson.
David Lammy.
David Lamy.
We had Ollie Robbins, who negotiated the terrible deal that Boris signed up to.
And Michael Gofe.
I mean, who knows where Michael Goh stands on this?
I mean, we thought he was a Brexiteer.
And now who knows?
It's hard.
It really is hard to know.
So I'm a bit annoyed about this whole Ditchley thing.
Annoyed, I'm curious.
But as you know, for another reason, Ditchley's just around the corner from my house.
So we could have gone up there.
You were hoping for an invite.
Well, no, I wasn't.
I think we could have sabotaged it.
Ava, did you get an invite?
I didn't.
I didn't.
And I'm an arch Ramona, apparently, aren't I?
I know.
You're a Labour darling.
But seriously, I mean, this is extraordinary.
We've only been out of the transition period for two years.
And the government have, that's a question.
That is a very long time, though.
No, it's not.
That is a very long time.
Ava, give me a break.
Come on.
Right, we've only been out two years, during which time we've had a pandemic.
But already, already, the forces of Ramon are conspiring to essentially betray Brexit, everything that the country voted for, betray all those who voted leave, and work out ways essentially how to slip us in through the back door, the side door, without anybody noticing.
I mean, are you, do you think this is the right thing for a sovereign state to do?
I don't think that's what was going on at that meeting.
I think that was, I actually think that was probably more of a Labour getting prepared for government.
I think that that is part of their entire path.
Peter Manson being there.
Well, that is a question for, you know, tomorrow.
But what's important about Brexit is that it's not working in its current form.
Well, we can both agree on that, okay?
No, we can't actually.
No, we can't.
We can't agree that it's not working.
It's a great platform of opportunity that this government have refused to use.
You can't eat opportunity.
You can't trade in opportunity.
But equally, don't give it away.
Keep that opportunity and use it.
No one's taking it away.
We've got nothing left to give.
I actually think it's working now.
No, look, the point is, it's an opportunity that can be a great situation.
Which I think you should have.
This government has actually failed.
I would fail.
It's a great opportunity that they're not using.
Is that right?
Well, the thing is, I think most people that even didn't even vote for Brexit recognise that there is a lot of potential for the UK to grow, especially in the slump of the last decade or so.
I do agree with that.
However, there are very few people.
I don't even think there's one person in this country that would say Brexit as it is now has been a resounding success.
I will make the...
Would you, Richard?
No, that's not what I'm saying.
I think we can agree that we've got a platform of opportunity that this government has chosen not to use.
And already people are trying to essentially betray it through the back door without having given it away.
Be that as it may, I think we can all agree it hasn't been a resounding success.
I will mention that Michael Goh.
I think the key thing is...
Well, it could be, yes.
I mean, we could be optimistic.
So what potentially as many as 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit may feel is that there is an absolute plot here.
I mean, let's look at what Nigel Farage tweeted.
I don't know if you spotted this earlier, Richard.
He was tweeting that there is a plot, basically, make no mistake, to sell out Brexit.
The full sellout is underway.
Now, Nigel, you and I both know Nigel well.
You know, he's obviously prone to see a plot and a conspiracy, quite understandably.
He's been on the sharp end of plenty of those.
But it does have a point, doesn't it?
Oh, completely.
I mean, I think that's what it is.
I think it's sort of preparing to essentially sort of completely lose that opportunity.
I think that's unfair.
I think that's unfair.
And I'm aware, I'm familiar with Nigel's.
I think that's unfair.
I think that's a bit sensational.
And I will say this.
Gove's defense, I think he's usually been, he's a very unpopular figure in Westminster.
He was seen as the one who backs that Boris and all of that.
But actually, if you look into sort of his premonitions back in the day, he's actually been right on a lot of things.
He could see the failings of Boris before Boris was even made prime minister.
There are a lot of things that he has made a point of that have actually happened.
I think this is more bipartisan.
I think this is more bipartisan.
I think this is more bipartisan common ground because no one can agree that Brexit has been a resounding success.
It could be that the Labour Party.
Oh, I agree with you there, but I don't think cutting taxes.
Are you out of your mind?
Cutting taxes.
That's how you grow.
Not even four months ago.
That's not happening to the economy.
It won't actually cut the way.
Because you've got to cut the mountain of wasteful government spending, say where you're going to save the money, and then you cut taxes for the least will offer.
Cutting government spending is not going to recoup any of the GDP that we've lost due to Brexit and exiting the single market.
It's not going to happen.
Absolute nonsense.
You've got to grow your way out of this crisis.
You cut taxes.
That creates growth.
We can't grow because we're not linked to the single government.
We can't grow if you tax away evermore.
It's not available to us in the entire world.
The EU is not the only trading.
Let's be clear.
You've just had AstraZeneca, a British company, announce they're making a manufacturing plant.
They're building it in Ireland because we're being increased in the US.
You're going to put all of your chips into the AstraZeneca basket.
That's absolutely insane.
You've got right now, you've got Europe not willing to trade with us.
You've got US not willing to trade with us.
You do realise last year.
You've got a sinkhand deal with Australia.
We are absolutely at a loss here.
You haven't realised that our trade to the EU has increased since 2016 and since 2010.
And how much are we now paying on that?
How much are suppliers losing by having to charge for imports and exports?
Small suppliers are going out of business every single day.
And for what?
To fulfill a dream of a few Brexiteers?
To fulfill the opportunity of manliness and being a sovereign.
There is no growth.
There's no growth here.
I know.
No, she's wrong.
Oh my gosh, you've got him.
Honestly, I'll never hear the end of it now.
We want to talk about something more light-hearted, which is the weird and wonderful outfits at the Brits.
Now, I'm not sure that you were exactly glued today.
Gender Neutral Fashion Debate 00:01:06
Of course, I mean, I was, you know, I've probably got one of these outfits in my wardrobe.
I really hope not.
That's something I don't know about you.
Sam Smith, come on.
Very quickly, he looked like a toilet plunger.
Absurd outfit.
But, you know, at least he was happy.
Ava probably celebrates that.
No, it's a piece of art.
I thought he actually looked fabulous.
It got everyone speaking.
Do you know what made me really sad, actually, was the amount of people on their armchairs at home tweeting about how much they hated it.
I don't have anywhere to go.
I don't think about Piers' tweet.
I think we have to see Piers in this outfit.
There we go.
I'm very glad that you didn't mock us up in those.
That would have been a sight for sore eyes.
Goodness me.
So you're sort of pro these gender-neutral awards.
Is that the right way forward?
That is such a huge question.
And you've got five seconds.
You've got so much.
See, already did that.
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
I think that, yeah, it's sad that people can't acknowledge women unless they have to.
Okay, that's a yes.
I'm definitely not for these gender neutral audio.
Quite enough of that.
Well, that's it from me.
And that's it from me.
Whatever you're up to, keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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