Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on London's mayor rejecting criticisms made by Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump recently made the claim that London wanted to 'go to sharia law' under its 'terrible mayor', Sadiq Khan - a claim the mayor's office has quickly dismissed.

The US President made this claim in an address to the UN general assembly earlier today.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey says Sadiq Khan's team claimed they refused to dignify Trump's comments with a response. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kevin Gray, are UK your correspondent. Let's go chicken now
on what's going on? Gavin good Evening hither right now
this asylum seeker whose crimes led to the big protests,
we have a sentence.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
We do, indeed, yes. So he's believed to be thirty
eight from Egypt. Hadush Kabatu had only just arrived in
the UK illegally and was being processed as it were,
staying in a hotel in Essex. And he's now been
found guilty of touching and trying to kiss a school
girl age just fourteen, wearing a school uniform in a park.

(00:36):
He's been jailed for a year for the sexual assault
on the fourteen year old girl, laying his hand on
her thigh, saying she'd make a good wife, would come
back to Africa with him, and saying that she would
also make good babies with him. He also then tried
to touch on the thigh as well a woman who

(00:56):
had gone to see if he needed anything because he
was looking distress, and he tried the same tactic with her.
And he's now been sentenced to this year in jail.
He said, apparently he wishes to be deported, well, so
does frankly most of the rest of the country, I
would suggest, because his arrest, which upset the girls said,
she's constantly looking over her shoulder. Now obviously she told

(01:18):
the parents. The parents would spread on social media and
there were protests outside the hotel where he was staying,
and there was a wave of not just protests outside
this hotel in Epping in Essex, to the east of London,
but also around the UK where single male asylum seekers
who have arrived on the boat illegally with no idea,
we have no idea who they are are feared by

(01:39):
local residents. It is, as you can hear in every
sort of headline in the UK, one of the big
election topics I would suggest, come any elections coming up
over the coming months and years.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, hey, President Trump, but among the other things and
clumsy made it that you win. He's also seed that
what the London city of London wants to go to
sharia law? Any response from the MEA THEIA No.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
And it's rather interesting. He and the London Mayor, Sir
Sadiq Khan, have had quite a row over the years
on various social media platforms, and this time the mayor
is refusing to comments. So Donald Trump's quote was, I
look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible,
terrible mayor, and it's been changed. It's been so changed.

(02:29):
Now they want to go to Sharia law. But you're
in a different country. You can't do that. Well, Sir
Sadiq spokesperson said, we're not going to dignify his appalling
and bigoted comments with a response. London is the greatest
city in the world, safer than major US cities, and
we're delighted to welcome the record number of American citizens
moving here. So it is a kind of response without

(02:51):
a direct response about sharia law. Incidentally, there are actually
Sharia courts. Those are courts for Muslim people in the UK,
but they have no legal jurisdiction. The real courts, of course,
are the normal British courts, but people are uncomfortable that
these Sharia courts exist in the first place.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Anyway, Are the Sharia courts funded by the government or
are they just like a religious self funded thing.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
It's pretty much self funded. It's thought there were eighty
five in total, according to one think tank. Most of
the work dealt with is religious marriage arbitration, but they
may also rule on things like financial matters, but the
UK government very clear the rulings are not legally binding.
So it's a very sort of interesting and some would

(03:36):
say worrying aspect of our laws.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Absolutely. Now you've got nineteen UK grocery stores closing. What's
going on, Well.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
They're Amazon, they're owned by Amazon. Amazon opened these stores
as a sort of experiment, but it's not gone very well.
So they opened in March twenty twenty one and they're
going to shut down nineteen UK grocery stores less than
five years therefore, after they were launched. They are till
free sites. In other words, as you go around, you

(04:06):
effectively scam what you bought and that automatically deducts it
from your credit card. So the company says it's going
to focus on online deliveries in the grocery sector with
partners a couple of major supermarkets in those and it
said it's launched a consultation process on its closure proposals.
It began its first closure of the site a couple

(04:26):
of years back. It shut down three they're called Amazon
Fresh stores, and then it opened its first UK grocery stores.
I mentioned a couple of years earlier, but now they
are all on the on my off list as well.
It's a very tough market to break into the food
market here and the sales of it and the existing
four or five supermarket giants have a real stronghold which

(04:49):
even the independence I think struggle again sometimes m.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Hmm sounds like something we know a little bit about
here too, Givin, thank you for that. Givin Gray, a
UK correspondent Time Living Away from seven.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
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