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Aug. 9, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
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Gender Debate: Free Speech vs Concerns 00:15:37
I am Rosanna Lockwood here on Uncensored Tonight.
Are gender critics akin to fascists?
That's what the SNP's Mary Black seems to be claiming.
A Scottish politician has accused bad actors of hijacking the debate over transgender rights.
Is she just trying to stifle free speech or does she have a point?
We're going to be debating that.
Now it is the killer mushroom mystery that is gripping the world.
We'll be live from Australia for the latest on how a woman's in-laws died after eating lunch at her house.
And he is the self-proclaimed hardest geezer and he's on a mission to become the first person ever to run the full length of Africa.
Russ Cook has had several setbacks since his journey began in April but he is back on track.
I'll be speaking to him later in the show.
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan uncensored with Rosanna Lockwood.
That is Piers Morgan uncensored to me, Rosanna Lockwood, in the chair for the big man again tonight.
Now who predicted Scotland would become the epicentre of the UK's gender debate?
Did you have that on your bingo card?
It is almost six months exactly since Nicola Sturgeon resigned as first minister citing a long-term assessment of her role.
But shortly before an investigation was announced into SNP finances, that's the party she was with.
And shortly after, she said this.
Are all trans women women?
You haven't answered that question.
Well, that's not the point that we're dealing with here.
Trans women are women, but in the prison context, there is no automatic right for a trans woman.
But there are contexts where a trans woman is not a woman.
No, there is circumstances in which a trans woman will be housed in the male prison estate.
Now, she did say it wasn't those sort of short-term pressures around those comments that caused her to quit.
But the SNP had been pushing legislation to allow Scottish people to change their legal sex from man to woman or woman to man simply by signing a declaration.
But ultimately, that move was blocked by Westminster.
And now, another SNP MP has come out on the attack on behalf of the trans movement.
Mary Black, she was once Britain's youngest MP in 350 years when she was first elected age 20.
She has been slamming people who intellectually criticise the extension of trans rights in society, saying they're bad actors, radicalising people online.
And get this, she described them as 50-year-old Karens.
Do you know what she means by that?
A lot of you apparently do because the word Karen was actually trending across X or Twitter or whatever you call it, social media in the UK today off the back of all this.
The idea of a Karen, I will mind you, if you don't know, it stems from an internet meme showing a white middle-aged woman who demands to speak to the manager.
The suggestion is that Karen is a closed-minded and overly privileged woman who abuses her privileges to get her demands met.
Now, you can understand then why many self-described middle-aged women with opinions on gender matters took offense at that comment.
Some pointing out that one day, 28-year-old Mary Black herself will be a 50-year-old white woman.
Something I can agree with Black on, though, is this response she gave when she was asked at this event.
She was speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and she was saying all this stuff.
She was asked what makes a decent person.
And she said, to me, a decent person is someone who tries to make others comfortable and accept them, particularly when it's a marginalised, oppressed group.
That's just human progress.
And to me, being decent is being part of that progress, not hindering it.
Now, definitely see the point she's trying to make there.
But what if she extended that logic to the many women she offended with her words?
You can't preach peace and then declare war.
With her name-calling and insults, Mary Black is feeding into the toxic public discourse she says she's against.
But that is free speech, isn't it?
If you really, really believe in intellectual debate and free speech, you have to hear it from all sides.
So short of everyone staying decent, which we're a bit far past at this point, especially on this show, then no one should try to shut Mary Black down for what she said today about Karens and bad actors, as much as Mary Black shouldn't try to shut down others for the views they express different to her own.
A right to be offended?
Yes, of course, everyone's got that right.
But freedom of expression and debate should never come at the expense of that.
Joining me to debate all of this, Talk TV contributor Esther Kraku in the studio and former Labour special advisor and co-founder of the left-wing campaign group Momentum, James Schneider.
Also joining us from New York is the former Conservative MP, Louise Mensch.
Thank you both, well, three of you, all of you, for making time this evening.
James, I will come to you first on this, if you don't mind, and just talk a little bit about those comments made by Mary Black.
Do you think it's all right for her to compare what she essentially said with gender critics, the people who are against the idea of extending trans rights in society?
She said the people who are intellectually debating that are akin to people who made same claims about race.
So sort of almost saying there's a sort of supremacy thing going on here, almost akin to fascists.
She didn't say those words directly, but that's the comparison that's been made, the Telegraph headlining that today.
Do you think it's okay for her to make those comparisons?
Well, what she said, or what she seems to have said, is that the media and politicians should leave trans people the hell alone, I think was her quote.
And in that, of course, she's right.
This, you know, in that quote you read out about being decent, there's this small, very small group in society that is marginalized and it is vulnerable and that is politically attacked again and again and attacked in the media again and again with scare scores, scare stories and falsehoods.
But what I'm interested in is not that itself.
I think trans people should be protected and their rights should be protected and so on and so forth.
But why is it that that's happening?
Why has it become such a major issue in the media and in politics when it's a very marginal issue?
It affects a very small number of people.
And if you look at all of the polling over recent years, not that many people care that much about it.
And I think the reason why it's become such a major political issue is to divide us because for the overwhelming majority of people, life is harder than it was 10, 15 years ago.
And so rather than the media and politics discussing how we can boost our pay, how we can reduce our mortgages in our rent, how we can reduce our bills, how we can finally tax the super rich to pay for our public services, we're having these kind of ridiculous culture war arguments which are super marginal.
And actually probably, if we had Mary Black here, the way in which she would say it would probably be quite decent and reasonable and the person criticizing her would probably be quite decent and reasonable and there wouldn't be such a fundamental row.
But she didn't, she made those points, but at the same time, Esther, bringing you into this conversation, do you think the words that she chose fed into her line about being decent?
Well, not really.
The thing is, one of the things that she said that I found interesting was she said these people trying to intellectualize the debate around trans rights, which I don't understand what the problem is.
Sorry, you want intellectual debates on an issue.
What is it?
Do you want policies to be created on the back of anti-intellectual debates?
That's ludicrous.
Anyway, but she said a lot of the people that fund these groups that are critical of gender ideology are far-right groups based in the US that are mainly sort of fundamentalist Christians, for instance.
Yeah, Conservative or Christian people.
Exactly.
And I think that's really not touching on the issue because at the end of the day, many groups are funded in many different ways.
You can extend that argument to many things.
I think one of the problems we have here is I understand the point that, you know, in the grand scheme of things, there are only like 10 trans people in the UK, really.
And so I understand what your point about.
It's a bit of a distraction.
But I think that is the trap that Labour has fallen into because people like Kiostana don't seem to understand the magnitude of the issue.
Because there are so many trans people that it affects every single person in the UK, but because when women, biological women, feel like politicians aren't taking these issues seriously, when you know issues, real, real, real issues like female shelters, women's sports, women's prisons, when they come into the debate, when you try and trivialize it and say, actually, this is a red herring, that's when people get really irate.
What most people want is just clarification on the law.
I completely agree.
Let trans people do what they want, let them live their lives.
But when it comes to public policy and actual legal clarifications on these matters, that's when it really, you know, it really stings because that's what most people are concerned with.
Most people don't think about trans people in their day-to-day lives.
Excuse me, most people have never even met a trans person.
But when you're talking about the law and the definition of male and female and what the implications that has for you know female prisons and shelters and all of that, that's when you need to take it seriously.
And I think we need to be very careful about trivializing that.
Well, and the legislation is what led to a lot of this debate within the SNP party and what Scotland was trying to get done.
That let's cross over to Louise Mensch in New York standing by listening to this.
A Britt, overseas.
So you covered this with an interesting perspective.
And well, first of all, could I say the producers, Louise, let me know that you are, I hope you don't mind me sharing this, above the age of 50, which I was actually quite shocked by because I thought you were quite a bit younger.
How do you feel about that wording that Mary Black used then to describe the group that you belong to, a white woman in her 50s?
Well, so flattering, maybe you should be the politician, Rosa.
I actually think that it's ageist.
And for somebody that considers herself to be a progressive politician, coming out and dismissing an entire class of women because of their age doesn't seem to me to be very forward-thinking at all.
It's not just ageist, it's also sexist, of course.
There is no male Karen equivalent.
It's just something that's flung at middle-aged women.
And she is obviously totally wrong.
Half of the strongest so-called gender-critical, I would call them gender-realist critics of extremist trans ideology are lesbians, but they're black women, they're Muslim women, they come from all sections of society.
JK Rowling, who's one of the most prominent of these opponents, lives in Scotland and, of course, has been a Labour Party supporter all her life.
So I think what she's saying is what she wishes was true, not what's actually true.
There's a consensus in society, I think, about the trans issue.
Most people think you should be polite and you should address people how they want to be addressed.
But we also recognize that you cannot change your biological sex.
And if people would just agree to that, agree to that consensus, you can't change your biological sex.
And some spaces should be reserved for people who are biologically women.
This whole row would go away.
I think, to be fair to the Labour MP in question here, she is 28.
SNP, sorry, SNP MP.
It's been a long day.
She is 28.
She's only a year older than me.
Unfortunately, we're part of that generation that uses those terms.
I'm not saying it was particularly wise for her to use that term, but I understand what she's trying to say because on the online speak context, Karen is just, you know, and I understand it can be seen sexist and all of that, but I don't think it's as egregious as it's being made out to be.
I think she just, you know, misspoke.
I think it was she, if she was probably in a more professional setting, she would have chosen her words more carefully.
But I think the overarching issue here is the legality of male and female, how that affects, you know, women in public spaces, for instance, and all of that.
That's really the crux of the issue, not whether trans people are being allowed to live their lives or whether people care about what you identify as on Tuesday and on Thursday or whatever.
What I'm getting from this actually, between the three of you, is quite a lot of consensus here that people do understand that it's actually a minority group issue.
People would rather trans people were allowed to get on with their lives than everyone else would as well.
But what happens is we do have this toxic narrative around it.
James, you were explaining first why you think that is the case and why this has got somewhat out of hand.
In that sense, then, how do you de-escalate it?
Do you think we need because the risk here is that you stymy intellectual debate if you say we just need to all shut up about it?
But then, as Esther pointed out, laws get passed and people think, I wasn't aware of that.
I wasn't aware that now so and so can use this changing room or that bathroom, and then they get quite concerned.
Do you think there is still a cause for this intellectual debate to happen about trans rights?
Well, if there were going to be a sensible debate that, for example, accepted that sex is in the Equality Act, that there's a difference between sex and gender, that's already in the law.
And what we're talking about is marginal cases, but that isn't what happens.
You know, the people who are most bellowing about female prisons are, of course, not long-standing members of the Howard League for Penal Reform.
They're people that, generally speaking, don't care about prisoners the rest of the time, but it's helping them make this particular argument.
So, I mean, of course, you could have a sensible debate.
You could have a serious discussion about it.
That isn't how our politics and media are set up.
Because the average person, yes, the average person may not be particularly concerned with the conditions of prisoners in prisons, but they understand that these kinds of things can trickle down into their own lives.
So, for instance, today it's having a male rapist in a female prison.
Tomorrow, you could have a male that's entitled to share a female bathroom with your teenage daughter.
There are real world implications.
I don't think it's fair to just say you must dedicate your life to this particular cause to care about that.
Actually, and this is the point that women have been making.
And I'm not trying to say because you're a man, you don't understand it.
But again, this is why it's important to not trivialize their concerns and use such callous language as this MP has, because you're stepping on a lot of people's toes.
I'm not trivialising the concerns, but what I'm saying is when you see the headlines like the one on the telegraph, which is not a quote, it's a scare thing, it's meant to generate a negative reaction, it's meant to make this debate more and more toxic and attach more and more division.
The purpose of that from the Telegraph and from most of the media, which is owned by billionaires, is to make us divided and not allow us to talk about things like how do we increase our pay and how would we tax the rich?
Because that isn't in the interests of most politicians and most of the media.
I want to go back to Louise before we run out of time and just say that some in the political circles were calling Louise on Mary Black to not only stand down, which I think she's planning on doing, but they're saying she was unfit for office off the back of these comments, that she doesn't have the intellectual capacity to carry forward legislation as needed by an MP.
Do you agree with that?
I don't agree that she doesn't have the intellectual capacity.
She seems like a very bright young woman, but I do agree that she isn't fit for office because she is willing to castigate and categorise an entire group of people that don't agree with her.
And as we all know, after the row about the trans rapist in the women's prison, most of Scotland doesn't agree with her.
So perhaps it's a good thing that she's stepping down.
I don't completely agree with the idea that this is just a controversy that's being created.
It is a real controversy.
People care about it.
I care about women sportswomen not getting gold medals because men are competing in their categories.
I especially care about gender, so-called affirming surgeries being done on minors who can't consent to a beer in the United States, for example.
They can't vote, they can't have sex, but somehow they can alter their bodies forever in ways that they're clearly not mature enough to do.
So I think we do, like Esther says, we need some clarifications from Westminster government as to what the law should be.
Deadly Mushrooms and Foraging Risks 00:11:41
And if the law was clearly defined, then all of this would go away.
Louise, Esther, James, thank you all for joining this conversation this evening.
It's been fascinating.
Well uncensored next tonight, the mystery surrounding killer mushrooms after three people die and one is left fighting for their life.
We'll have the very latest on that story that's engulfed a small Australian town coming up next.
Welcome back to Uncensored.
Now bringing you this tragic story that has gripped not only Australia but now the rest of the world.
Almost two weeks ago a family gathered for lunch in a small town in rural Australia.
A day later four people fell ill and within a week three were dead.
It is suspected that a deadly mushroom might have been served at the meal and that might have played a part.
Here's what we know so far.
48 year old Erin Patterson, here she is.
She invited her former in-laws Gail and Don Patterson plus Gail's sister and husband Heather and Ian Wilkinson over for lunch.
During the lunch she served a dish with mushrooms that Erin claims she bought from a local store.
It turns out that those mushrooms were not edible and likely were death cap mushrooms which are the most poisonous mushrooms in the world.
Now three of her four guests are dead from suspected mushroom poisoning with Mr Wilkinson fighting for his life still in hospital.
Now Erin Patterson has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Joined now by Australian foraging expert Ingrid Button.
Also forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Barden who has worked on a mushroom poisoning case himself and Sky News Australia host Jenna Clark joins us.
First of all, Jenna, if we could go to you please, we want to talk to you a little bit about the details on this story.
I know you've been tracking it closely.
Just fill in an international audience and what they need to know.
Yeah, absolutely horrifying scenes in a small town in rural Victoria, Rosanna.
It's about 150 kilometres southeast of Melbourne.
So it's a very tight-knit community.
They all, about four of them, went to lunch, as you said, a couple of Sundays ago and three of them are now dead.
I have an update this morning.
Ian Wilkinson, who is one of the gentlemen who is in a critical condition, he now requires a liver transplant.
And there's news just breaking that Erin Patterson's estranged husband, Simon, his two parents, Don and Gail, passed away after that meal.
He was actually in an induced coma about this time last year after a suspected poisoning with an issue with his small intestine.
The Herald Sun, which is a local newspaper here in Australia, is reporting that they've seen social media posts which pertain to that.
So this story has got a lot of legs left to go.
It does.
And just one more thing, Jenna.
In terms of Erin's husband or estranged husband partner, he also got sick last year.
What can you tell us about that?
Yeah, so we have apparently twice last year he was quite ill.
He fell quite ill and was in an induced coma for 16 days and required acute surgery on his small intestine.
But in a social media post that a number of outlets have seen here in Australia, he did thank his now estranged wife, Erin, for her support during that time.
But then we have a headline on the front of the Herald's Sun today saying something like, she tried to poison me, but it's important to note that the Victorian forensic detectives are saying that Ms. Patterson has been questioned.
She hasn't been ruled out yet as a suspect.
And they've also been to a local tip and they've retrieved a dehydrator, a food dehydrator, which they're now testing for death cap mushrooms.
Yeah, I mean, because it must be restated here that obviously investigations are still very much ongoing.
And it's actually almost like a lack of information that is causing a lot of speculation to fill the void, as you said there.
We did mention that Erin, the lady at the centre, she's denied this strenuously all wrongdoing.
Spoke to reporters outside her house that she was actually distraught that these family-in-law members had died.
She didn't mean to do it, it's nothing to do with her.
She said, let's take a listen to that.
Just that little clip there.
You can see though, that terribly stressed obviously, but tons of speculation here.
But we'll have to wait and see the outcome of the investigation.
Let's speak to some experts then on this.
Uh, coming first to you Ingrid, in there in Australia, I gather you got up very early to speak to us, so we do appreciate that.
Uh, you are a foraging expert.
You specialize in mushrooms.
You're based in Australia, in fact, I believe, in the state where this is all taking place.
So how did you feel when you heard this story?
Because you're aware of the dangers of mushrooms, aren't you absolutely devastated?
To be honest and us in the foraging community have been waiting for something like this for quite some time it's really an atmosphere of uh sort of bragging around a lot of mushrooms and a lot of online identification of incorrect mushrooms.
Uh, so we're not obviously casting any blame there, but it is a really dangerous activity to go foraging, especially if you don't know what you're doing, and death cat mushrooms are really easily misidentified as three other mushrooms.
So they are also responsible for nine out of ten global mushroom deaths.
So this is not the first time this has happened and let's hope it's the last.
How easy is it to make a mistake when it, when foraging, you know you educate people on this?
Um, is it possible to make an honest mistake?
It is.
Uh, if you don't know what you're doing, as I said, it can be a really dangerous thing.
If you had have attended one of my educational workshops, you wouldn't have done so.
Uh, purely because we have three simple rules regarding foraging.
Number one, if in doubt, live a doubt.
Number two, white gills probably kills.
And number three, if it stains yellow or green, you should not be keen and death cat mushrooms are those specific mushrooms mentioned.
So if it's yellow or green and has a tinge on the mushroom, that is a clear sign that it is not an edible mushroom crikey.
I mean, I don't like mushrooms anyway, so not at risk of this, but the thought of picking the wrong one is terrifying.
Let's cross to dr Michael.
Uh now, to my understanding, you have worked on a mushroom toxicology case before.
I just want to tell the viewers as well some of the work you've been involved in.
You chaired the panel on reinvestigating the deaths of president John F Kennedy, dr Martin Luther King.
You've also been an expert in investigations on George Floyd, Jeffrey Epsteinojimpson, among others, and the host of your own HBO autopsy.
Just to give our viewers a little sense of who we're speaking to here, tell us a little bit about that mushroom case if you wouldn't mind, and how, how you go about investigating something like this.
Yeah, when I was uh chief medical examiner in New York City, we had a couple, a middle-aged couple, who had gone foraging uh in the woods for uh mushrooms, as they did a number of times earlier, and they picked up this in.
In this case it was a white mushroom, but it can be green or yellow or even brown, which turned out to be the Amanita Phaloides mushroom, uh also called the destroying angel, and the difficult part of it is the.
Toxicology doesn't usually help the.
It's a history, it's a delayed action Mushroom.
That is, a person doesn't feel the symptoms, liver damage, kidney damage, for maybe 12 hours, 24, 36 hours.
When they become sick, they become sick with violent vomiting, with bloody diarrhea, and whatever the toxins are in the body get metabolized.
So when they die, there isn't much chemicals to work with.
And it's the history of eating the mushrooms, how they obtain the mushrooms, and that helps in determining whether it's an accident or homicide or suicide.
Any of them could happen with deadly mushrooms, with this mushroom.
But what's interesting is how the preparer of the mushrooms obtain the mushrooms.
And the symptoms, the chemicals, the poisons, start damaging the liver and the kidneys right away, but it isn't symptomatic for a day or so.
And that's why it's so difficult to find it from a chemical point of view.
And as Jenna laid out to us the details on this story at the start, you know, investigators still piecing together all they know, but they're not telling us yet with regard to how the mushrooms were obtained, if they were directly a cause of the deaths of these people, who ate them and at what times.
I mean, how likely is it that they can get a clear answer given the information that has been made available that we know they've got so far?
Well, it would depend on where she obtained the mushrooms.
It's unlikely that she got it for the local store, and the only people who were injured were the people, the four people involved.
And a part of it, as already been mentioned, the treatment for the severe poisoning is liver or kidney transplants.
You know, there's no antidote for the toxins, but it depends on the detectives finding where the mushrooms came from, whether it could have been foraging accidental, because these are beautiful-looking mushrooms for people who are unfamiliar with what they look like.
They look like prize mushrooms to us non-foragers like myself.
And they can cause severe life-threatening deaths.
And it's the most common mushroom, I mean, amanitophiloides in the United States, in India, in England, in Australia, that causes death.
I actually want to come back to Ingru quickly and ask then the likelihood you think of whether it was possible this did get into a store in the town where she lived.
You took the words out of my mouth.
The likelihood of that occurring is pretty much impossible.
So, first of all, all mushrooms supplied to shops will be from the mushroom farm.
They are grown in a different medium.
These particular mushrooms, death cap mushrooms, amanitophiloides, require a host tree, particularly oak.
So the likelihood of them winding up for sale would have even needed to be through a third party, through some sort of suspicious purchase or sale there.
We have seen a lot of Facebook posts and sales with people using other people's photos and selling mushrooms that way.
So it could have been from a disreputable source, but the likelihood of you buying the incorrect mushroom from the supermarket is nigh on impossible.
Securing Ascension Island Borders 00:14:53
I really strongly would be absolutely shocked if that was the case, to be honest.
Thank you both for showing your expertise us this evening.
Jenna, thank you for reporting just quickly.
When can we expect further updates?
Do you know?
Probably within the next couple of hours, Rosanna, we're expecting Victoria Police to hold another press conference.
Wonderful, thank you.
I'm sure we will be back to you when this story develops.
All three of you, thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
Uncensored next tonight, the SAS hero of the Iranian embassy siege, Rusty Furman, joins me live here in the studio.
We'll be discussing the current Iranian threats within the UK, plus whether it is right that the government is considering sending migrants to the isolated Ascension Island.
We'll have all of that next.
Welcome back to Uncensored Me, Rosanna Lockwood in the chair for peers.
Now, ministers are reportedly considering sending asylum seekers here in Britain to a remote island over 4,000 miles from the UK in another ploy to stop the boats.
This volcanic island, Ascension Island, it's called.
It was used as a strategic military base during the Falklands War and the RAF do continue to operate there.
Now, this has been described as a radical Plan B for if the Rwanda scheme was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.
So is it a real possibility or just a rumour?
What is life on the Ascension Island actually like?
Will it be safe?
Do people even mind that at this point?
Some quarters seemingly not.
Joining me to discuss all of this, Rusty Furman, SASB Squadron veteran who spent time training on that island back in 1980.
There's a picture of young Rusty there.
He also played an integral role in the Iranian embassy siege of 1980.
There it was, the famous picture of the man without the gloves during that famous siege in London.
A lot of our viewers will remember that.
Good to have you in the studio, Rusty.
Thanks for the invite.
Well, you know what?
We just wanted a conversation with you generally because it's always interesting to talk with a man that's had the career you've had, but particularly off the Ascension Island proposal because you've been there.
First off, just what's it like?
Well, it's a long time since I've been there, obviously 1982 when the Falkland Island conflict was on.
But it's big and spacious and I think the migrants would love it there.
Do you really?
Absolutely love it.
Yeah, have a whale of a time, you know, with the ocean there and everything.
What's there to do?
Nothing.
Yeah, right.
So what makes you think they'd love it?
So that's what they're doing here, isn't it?
They've come here and they don't do anything apart from collect the money and get housed.
Why not go there?
Put the barges off all the way around the Ascension Island, 88 square kilometres, put it down there, loads of room, very much like their climate, not far from Africa, 4,000 miles from us.
I defy them to get in a dinghy and come from Ascension Islands to the UK and make it.
Now, that is a view that people in this country do share.
I appreciate that.
I'm not here to tell you you're wrong.
I have a different opinion of how we should handle migrants, particularly given that the Rwanda scheme, which is failing through the courts at the moment, it was found that the cost of sending one migrant to Rwanda would be £169,000 per migrant, which is £63,000 more than keeping them in the UK.
I'm not saying keep all migrants in the UK, but we do have to have a better scheme for processing rather than just sending people elsewhere, surely.
Yeah.
Well, let's process them down there.
Take them down there.
Okay, at the moment, we've got our borders to secure, right?
The two things that Sawella Braveman are letting go are the very two things he's in charge of.
The force areas should be kept secure and our borders.
But we're letting people in who aren't, you know, they could be from anywhere, any background, predominantly fighting male age, all coming across here.
Why not send them there, process them there properly?
I didn't mean stay there forever and a day.
Process them, and then when you're ready, bring them in and have a system that works.
Does that not sound astonishingly expensive and complicated to you?
Because getting everyone over there, a processing center.
Currently, there's 800 people living on the island.
They're not even citizens.
They're not allowed to be.
This is a British overseas territory and they're temporary residents, essentially.
There's barely any buildings.
There's barely any infrastructure.
As you said, there's basically nothing there.
So you want to set up an asylum processing centre over on Essential Island?
Yeah, let them go there.
Set up a bit of an infrastructure for them.
I say they're not going to be there forever, but don't bring them here.
They're fighting all the way around the UK.
People don't want them.
Bring them in when they're ready to come in, as many as you need, but don't overdo it.
Give our borders a rest and give somebody else the pleasure of having the vigrants.
I mean, it's still our work.
It's a British overseas territory.
It's not handing them over to a different country.
Rwanda's scheme is handing them to somebody else, but also ensuring there is housing and jobs.
Essentially, we'd just be creating an offshore processing center in the middle of the South Atlantic.
Yeah, but that's fine.
Rwanda, if they don't want them, they're not going to go there, are they?
Rusty, I don't think you and I are going to agree on this one at all.
That's why I'm here.
Yeah, it is.
That's why I'm here.
It is why you're here.
I just find it interesting from a military man, somebody who has been so involved in logistics for so long, that you think that would be a rational proposal to this situation.
How many migrants are there?
I mean, thousands, tens of thousands all the time.
A lot of people in this country would agree there is an issue, controlled immigration is an issue in this country.
Well, let's try and help it.
Let's see if it works.
Let's not rule it out.
You know, if it's going to cost that amount of money to get them there, then it can be processed properly.
Is that not better than maybe making our borders not secure?
I think a lot of people would agree with secure borders, whether or not you want to do that in the South Atlantic on a tiny island at great cost to the British taxpayer.
Look, let's talk about something else as well while you're here.
I wanted to bring you in on, because this is on Iran.
We just talked about the Iranian embassy siege, and over the weekend, we learned that Suella Bravman, the Home Secretary, their office believed there is a real issue in this country with regards to Iranian spies basically recruiting within organized gangs because they're finding it much harder to get Iranians in that have malicious intent after the Salisbury poisonings.
You were involved in the Iranian siege back then.
How concerned are you by this?
Well, I mean, Iran is a big problem.
I mean, a lot of people know that.
But what can you do about it?
You've got the government and the foreign officer, foreign office, sorry.
They're not together on this.
You know, if you want to get to the bottom of it, there's a split in the government and the foreign office.
And it's all down to do with, it's all to do with not wanting to upset the Iranians.
Now, you can't have it both ways.
You can have your borders secure because, let's be honest, we are an island.
You can have them wanting to, and I think the last count was 15 credible threats against people in the UK from the Iranians.
We don't do anything about it because we don't want to upset them.
What about for once?
Go back to the Falklands, get proactive and deal with it before something happens.
Not wait till it happens and then deal with it.
Some of this split you're talking about is home office ministers.
Some of them have been pushing for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be described as a terrorist organization, but others are pushing back because they're worried, particularly from the Foreign Office, that that will affect diplomatic ties in the United Kingdom and Iran.
And you're saying get harder on that.
Call them terrorists, everything else.
Can you understand that that would make things very difficult when it comes to things like negotiating weapons and nuclear armament agreements and the return of hostages?
Yeah, I fully agree with it.
I've been through it all my life.
But what I do find is when we had a leader who led, they dealt with it.
Which leader was that in your mind?
Margaret Thatcher.
Yeah.
Okay.
So in my day, we had leaders who led.
I'm afraid that the leaders we've got in this country, I wouldn't follow them out of curiosity.
None of them.
Okay.
We need to be harder.
And you know what?
Everybody's sliding down this scale of saying, oh, what if?
What if we upset them?
What if we do this?
Well, you know what?
That's why we have a military capability.
You know, we've got to deal with stuff.
I want to ask you about that because the British MOD has confirmed it's going to cut troop numbers from 82,000 to 73,000 by 2025.
Obviously, you've got the war happening in Ukraine as well.
What do you make of the current state of our armed forces here in the UK?
I'll tell you what, it's as bad as I've ever seen it.
I personally wouldn't join the army again, but that's just me.
But the fact is, they're cutting the numbers.
And my opinion, when if you ever want to get me in here and talk about the EDU, European Defence Union, which nobody wants to talk about, because we're involved with all the other countries, they say, oh, the European Union, the European Union, no, it's the European Defence Union.
I can tell you that now.
But it won't come clean on that.
So they're thinking we've got all the other countries with us.
We can make ours smaller, but we still need to defend our island.
That is the problem.
What makes you say you wouldn't sign up to the army now if you had your time again?
Because I've seen how they're treated.
I've seen how they prosecute veterans 40 and 50 years after they've gone and served for the country.
I've been alongside them.
You know, I'm a patron of three charities, you know, and I've seen it close and I don't like what I'm seeing.
Nothing.
I hate it.
Is there any hope at the moment, given the governments you see coming, anybody in government that inspires you to think that we'll get defence sorted in a way you would like?
It might be interesting if they could get some ex-military involved.
But at the moment, in my opinion, the civil service runs it all.
You know, we haven't got anybody that can stand up.
Nobody wants to stand up and be.
Can Wallace isn't the man that you would look to?
Sorry?
Ben Wallace?
Maybe, but he didn't want to do it.
So Ben Wallace is one.
I'd like somebody like Tim Collins or somebody like that that I've served with.
You know, somebody who's got a bit of credibility.
And I've served with them, so I know.
But that's just me.
But it's got to be somebody, more than one, I'm afraid.
It needs a clear-out.
It needs to start and be a bit like the Iranians.
It needs to be a bit more aggressive.
We'll take some inspiration from the Iranians.
Didn't think we'd end there.
Look, Rusty Furman, thank you very much for coming in, speaking across a range of topics this evening.
Interesting stuff.
Arn's censored next tonight.
He's been held at gunpoint, kidnapped, and even chased by men with machetes as he's intempted to run the entire length of Africa.
Russ Cook, aka the hardest geezer, will join me live to tell me that despite not even being halfway through the journey, he is not giving up.
Well, welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncent with me, Rosanna Lockwood.
Now, my next guest is the self-proclaimed hard geezer, who, sorry, I had to say it like that, who is attempting to be the first person to run the length of Africa.
That's 9,320 miles.
And not every day has gone to plan.
Let's take a look.
Drone's gone.
Drone's gone.
So what are we thinking?
Bad ideas are up.
I'll get in, lads.
Two lads came storming up the side of the van, another one on a motorbike and cracked open the door and proceeded to point a gun in all of our faces and tell us to give them everything we had.
Well, the hardest geezer, Russ Cook, does join us now.
Russ, where are you?
Hi, everyone.
I'm currently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Okie dokie.
And we've just seen a bit of a clip of some things that have happened to you along the way.
I've just got one question.
Why are you doing this?
Yeah, people ask me this all the time.
I sort of say, you know, I've lived some experiences before that didn't feel very meaningful to me.
I've spent a lot of my time, a lot of my life before thinking, you know, what is the point in being here?
And part of this mission is that I'm going all guns blazing to try and make a difference, try and make something meaningful of my life and live life to the absolute fullest.
Certainly getting some experiences, good and bad, running the entire length of Africa, yeah.
Well, look, good for you is what I can say to that.
And, you know, I did sort of say why you're doing this with a grin on my face there because I cannot imagine anything possessing me to do what you're doing.
And it's because I couldn't.
It's extraordinary, the physical undertaking you are doing.
I mean, it's not all been bad, surely.
Tell us some of the things that have happened on the way that have inspired you to figure out what the meaning of life might be.
There's been so many things that have inspired me.
I think, you know, one of the things that really stands out is there's been so much kindness from so many people that really didn't have any reason to be kind to us.
They're just, you know, just showing us, you know, showing support for what I'm trying to do.
And, you know, countless people have taken us in and cooked us endless meals and tried to sort us out with loads of help logistically, you know, just to get the mission done.
Loads of people have joined me to run.
We've had multiple people running their first ever marathons.
You know, there's been so many highs throughout the journey so far.
You know, it's incredible.
It's great to hear.
Tell us a bit about the remaining journey.
You've got you're in the DRC at the moment.
You're going to make your way around Western Africa up through up to the north.
Kevin's Charity Marathon Journey 00:02:48
How long do you reckon that's going to take you?
What are your concerns about that part of the journey?
Honestly, your guest is good as mine at this point because I thought the whole thing was going to take 240 days.
I'm currently 110 days in and we're not even halfway.
I'm not even close to halfway yet.
I've got to go through some Central African countries and then obviously, like you said, we're skirting around to West Africa and up north.
So, I mean, if I'm done by next February, I'll be a happy boy.
Incredible.
So all my girlfriends, you'll be happy as well.
Russ, how do people support you?
How do they watch your journey, your progress?
How can they donate to any charities?
So I've got a give star link which can be found in all of my social media buyers.
We're raising money for the running charity and WaterAid.
You can find me on any social media.
It's all at Hardy Skeezer.
At Hardy Skeezer, you are a hard geezer in my estimation.
Certainly.
Russ, well done.
Signing out there in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Coming to the studio now with Esther and Kevin, who are listening in on that.
Yeah.
Kevin, I'll come to you first.
But Esther, I know you're going.
What an engaging bloke.
Right.
Right.
I mean, look, I know there's a climate emergency, but no one would have a go at him if he drove rather than run.
Gotta remember Forrest Group.
Forrest Gump, you know, he goes out running and can't stop.
What a brilliant fit.
It's like people swimming the channel, climbing Everest 20 times.
I just want to see what happens.
I've got a charity.
I'm glad he's not one of those valley girls who are like, I'm trying to find myself.
I'm in the Congo.
But the fact that he's doing this for charity softens it.
I do have to ask from the perspective of somebody who has family that are from a West African nation and he's going to be running up through West Africa.
I saw him just running through my back.
I said, oh, he's that hippie.
Is he lost?
Anyway, I would highly recommend Mosquito Repellent and Sun Cream.
But all the best.
You support it broadly.
Because it's for charity, not because I think he has not lost his mind.
Let's move on to talking a bit more about charity and everyone's favourite charitable philanthropist, the Duke of Sussex, who is currently in Japan, in Tokyo.
He's given a speech today to a crowd saying he actually prefers Tokyo to Montecito, he reckons.
He's had Kobe Steak for dinner and lunch.
And he's going on after this to Singapore to play in a polo match.
And you know what?
When I was looking at this story today, I was thinking if he's trying to bore us all into not talking about him, he's doing a pretty good job because I failed to be moved by a lot of what I was seeing.
And, you know, he's on a charity tour.
That's what he's doing.
He's raising money.
I mean, Kevin, do you have a view on it?
He can't win, can he?
If he goes on it, we all have a go at him.
Shakespeare, Royals, and Cancel Culture 00:01:53
If he doesn't, then he's just lazy and back home.
I'd rather he went around making money for charity than he did for himself.
I mean, I always think it's sad about him, the missed opportunity of what they could actually have done in the royal family, Harry and Megan.
I always think it's a huge missed opportunity.
And, you know, if their aim was to do good and to be charitable people, I think there was no greater institutional vehicle that they could have done that through than the royal family.
But at the moment, he's just a boring man traveling with his boyfriend.
Esther is a British Republican.
I'm thrilled.
He's gone over because I thought he could have revitalized.
And that's someone who doesn't even like the Royal Family.
So, you know, but I understand that.
At the moment, he's well, I was just thinking he was very bright.
But at the moment, you know, he's doing boring things for his boring wife and I wish them boring well.
And people are continuing to talk about him as we are there.
So, you know, maybe he's the winner in all this.
Look, let's finally talk about this Shakespeare being banned in schools in Florida.
This after ruling by Governor Ron DeSantis, apparently, Romeo and Juliet, too raunchy for kids.
What do you make of this story?
Because it's interesting, isn't it?
Often the left get accused of cancelling things, but now we've got this going on.
Oh, look, the right is where cancelled culture originated.
It's been there all the time.
But look, it's ridiculous.
What a strange question.
Shakespeare.
Yeah, Shakespeare.
He is bored.
He is raunchy.
But Ron DeSantis, look, I thought he's supposed to be for free speech and liberty in the States.
He's not.
I mean, it's just ludicrous.
Absolutely.
Esther, too raunchy, Romano?
What a strange progression.
I mean, yes, I understand, you know, okay, you don't want to teach your kids gender ideology because that should probably be in the domain of the family and the home.
Fine.
Shakespeare, one of the greatest playwrights in history?
I mean strange.
Okay, well that is it from us.
Strange.
Oh god, we've had bravery and we've had boredom.
Whatever you're up to tonight, make sure it is uncensored.
Definitely not boring.
We'll see you back same time tomorrow.
Good night.
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