Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 20th of
January just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column news.
I'm your host Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studios today
is Co host Charles Mallett. Welcome to the program, Charles.
Thank you. Bye.
And by video link. We are joined by Vanessa Bailey.
Now later in the programme, we'll be looking at the latest
censorship of efforts by Ofcom and their international
colleagues, child abuse in Israel and the reform of
policing. But we're going to begin today
with digital government. Now people across the UK could
benefit from faster, safer and more reliable public services as
leading British AI specialist. Join government to modernise
critical systems used everyday. From public safety to transport
maintenance. These are the words of Keir
Starmer's Digital minister Ian Murray.
So I'm sure we were all impressed by that.
But anyway, the effort is going to be underpinned by £1,000,000
from Meta and will be run through the Alan Turing
Institute. And the group of AI experts are
going to develop open source tools to what they describe as
tackle some of the biggest challenges facing public
services. Now this all comes part of the
new customer. Oh, sorry, I didn't show the
Alan Turing Institute there, but there we go.
And this all comes as part of the new customer first
initiative. And customer first, by the way,
spelled as one word, you know, without any gaps between
customer and 1st. And that's going to put modern
technology to work to cut out long phone queues, reduce
paperwork, and make it easier and faster for people to access
the services they rely on. These are all their words.
It's fantastic propaganda. But anyway, right there with the
with that quote, we get an idea of what this is actually about.
Because as we all know, the long wait times on phones when people
want to access the likes of HMRC or any other so-called customer
facing service provided by the state are a deliberate ploy to
force people to accept the digital panopticon that Shabana
Mahmoud is so keen on. So let's just remind ourselves
what she said when she was speaking to Tony Blair a short
while ago. AI and technology can be
transformative to the whole law and order space.
And she was was talking about the need to use AI and
technology to transform the justice system.
She cited Jeremy Bentham and his panoptic.
And now we're going to come on to what that is in a second.
If anybody doesn't know. And she was absolutely talking
about the idea of pre crime and using AI to to make judgments
and what people were going to do in the future.
But coming back to customer first for a second, it describes
itself as a new unit within the government digital service and
very much echoing Dominic Cummings of a few years ago.
They say they've been set up to explore a fresh way of working
in government and operating with the pace and some curiosity of a
start up. This is Dominic Cummings kind of
of language. And they said that their work
aligns directly with the road map for modern digital
government, which has just been published.
And once again we see statements from public, from politicians
delivered with not a hint of irony because this is the
comment from the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation
and Technology, Liz Kendall, saying when we came into
government, the Prime Minister made a commitment to the British
people that politics would tread lightly on people's lives.
So I'm just going to ask, do you all feel lightly trodden on
because I don't now. She went on to describe all the
benefits of the new panopticon for the sleep deprived parent
trying to sort childcare, the homeowner getting planning
permission, the worried patient looking for doc, booking a
doctor's appointment. She said that life is busy and
our role as a government should be to carry the burden in these
moments, not add to it. And so this plan sets out how we
do this by embracing AI, removing our dated IT, and
strengthening our cyber resilience in the face of new
threats. So let's just have a look at
what this brave new world has in store for you and for me.
So they're talking about managing health records,
appointments and prescriptions in one place through the NHS
app. They're talking about using the
gov.uk app to access personalized services and
notifications. Securely store and share digital
versions of important documents like your driving license.
Using the gov.uk wallet. Quickly and securely proving
your identity using the new digital ID.
Accessing simpler, faster digital services for tax,
driving vehicle and immigration. Using a new career service.
Bringing the support you need together to understand your
skills and use them to find or change jobs, but also benefit
from target targeted support to improve digital skills and
confidence and address data and device poverty.
This is incredible stuff. Access better care for children
because data will be joined up across services.
And if you're in business, it's good for you too.
As anybody that's already in business knows, you've had to
identify yourself to Companies House for example.
But this will mean that you can access government services with
a single secure login for businesses.
Now we've discussed one login before and how it's not in the
least bit secure, but we can talk about that later.
Manage and tax and customs obligations through a modern
digital first system. Sell technology and services to
government through simplified procurement processes.
Find talent faster using smarter candidate matching tools.
Quickly and securely verify your employees right to work through
a secure process. So, you know, we at the UK
column are warning about these kinds of things.
We have also been warning, as we did last week, about Palantir
and their complete access to NHS patient data.
And when the Electronic Frontier Foundation are warning about ICE
agents in the US using Palantir's health access to US
health data to run their operations, then we might ask
ourselves what the Starmer regime is building here.
Just what exactly is it? So let's just finish this by
reminding ourselves what the Panopticon is.
It's the idea proposed by the so-called philosopher Jeremy
Bentham in 1791 of a theoretical circular prison design allowing
a single central observer to watch all inmates without being
seen, based on the central inspection principle.
And it aims to reform behaviour through constant surveillance
and the psychological and the psychological internalized
feeling of being watched. That he described it as power of
mind over mind. So we're talking about a
cylindrical building with a central inspectors, large and
outer cells with light passing through so that there's
backlighting so that the entire prison population, as I say,
could be watched by a single guard.
Now he'd Bentham designed this for prisons, but he also
intended it for schools, for factories, for asylums.
He as he talked about it and he was talking about maximizing
utility, productivity and order. And this is clearly now, this is
clearly now what is being built, what Mahmoud is talking about
being absolutely desirous of. And so this goes way beyond just
simple digital ID. It absolutely does.
And for a road map, it really is attempting to join everything
together. And I think really the way that
this should be looked at is through the lens of considering
why it is that they only suggest that there will be positive
outcomes. There is absolutely no
suggestion that this is a balance or a trade off, that
there could be any downsides. And I think that that should
really raise a, a red flag to anybody hearing about this.
The the idea that changing something wholesale is not going
to have any undesirable consequence is an absolutely
extraordinary and therefore completely unlikely outcome.
I think that that that's a big part of it.
There's there's no concession at all to the inherent
vulnerability of putting everything in the same place.
I think the, the idea that that setting this out and using the
sorts of language, as you say, that Dominic Cummings might have
been proud to have put together is just disingenuous beyond
compare because there are example upon example of systems
like this failing. And I think that, you know, the
the greater the, the centralisation, the greater the
danger if there is a failure. And I think that's one of the
things I mean among many that that absolutely are not being
talked about and presumably will not get talked about unless this
is raised as an issue at the at the local levels and is pushed
effectively pushed back uphill because there, there there is no
real debate or discussion about this I think.
I mean, we're going to be talking about China towards the
end of the program. And of course what we're
constantly seeing is people looking at China and and making
claims about social credit systems and so on and worrying
about what's going on over there.
No concern generally about because they can't believe that
this would be the type of infrastructure that's being
built here, but it absolutely is.
So, you know, we've got to, we've got to be aware of what's
going on in our own country and many people are, but but
limiting it just to digital ID is, is not going far enough.
Vanessa, I'd be interested to to get an idea of what kind of
experience people in the Middle East are having of this type of
policy Is is there or are there attempts in in Southwest Asia to
bring this type of thing in? Well, obviously apart from
inside Israeli prisons where of course there is a huge degree of
surveillance and dehumanisation. I'm not sure.
I mean here, definitely not. We might have just got biometric
in some of the passport offices. Some, generally it doesn't work
very well. UAE, of course, is has just
joined Pax Silica, which is the complex of all of the countries
involved in basically introducing AI, digital control
in the future, which has very much Israel at its centre.
So I would say in the Zionist block in the countries that were
created by Britain to support Israel, for example, like Saudi
Arabia, but particularly UAE, you might be finding it.
Yeah, but not to this level, no. Okay, thank you for that.
But of course related to this then Charles is policing because
obviously my mood was very clear that that one of the major
applications of this would be the idea of pre crime and and
getting the police 100% on board.
What What are what is the Starmer's vision for policing in
the UK then? Well, this is exactly it and and
I should say if you didn't watch Monday's UK column news then you
should of course, because Ben Rubin was articulating initial
thoughts on the idea of police reform because of course at that
stage no documentation had actually been produced.
It has now been produced and Shabana Mahmood, the Home
Secretary, has had quite a lot to say about it.
Here she is tweeting that today's reforms mark the biggest
shake up to policing in 200 years.
So what she's doing there in terms of setting the scene is
trying to invoke the spirit of Peel, who is credited, of
course, with starting the the idea of a sort of formalised
police force in the 1st place. Now I would put it that she has
not really read around the subject and to qualify that I
would just make the point first of all, that in her introduction
to the document, she talks about the suggestion that the police
is broken, but then counters that by saying that arrests are
up by 5%. And I think this articulates
the, the, the very centre of the problem.
And we'll just look at the first of the Pelian principles in
order to get an idea of what I mean by that.
Now the the first one is that the basic mission for which the
police exists is to prevent crime and disorder.
Now arrests are not by nature preventative, although as Mike's
just been alluding to, we will watch this space.
So. So the fundamental issue appears
to be that Shabana Mahmood and and others are confusing the
solving of crime with stopping crime.
And they are two very, very different things.
Now to, to move on from what it was set out by Peel all those
years ago, we'll, we'll look at the, the document itself and,
and just put a few things out from the executive summary and
indeed her opening remarks. And straight back to what Mike's
been talking about, really serious and organised crime is
growing and nine in every 10 crimes now has a digital
component. Now that's a very significant
point to make when one is suggesting that the answer to
that is further and further digitised.
They they go on to say and and I've pulled out just sort of
selective parts that I think are all merit some consideration.
We will modernise legislation such as the Public Order Act
1986 to ensure that the police are clearer about where the line
stands between freedom of speech and criminality.
Now we've seen that that line absolutely blurred and let's say
very much not likely trodden over the last few years.
What is it exactly they mean by this?
Of course the Public Order Act 1986 has the the more obvious
offences or or at least perhaps clearer offences of riot,
violence, disorder and a fray. But the controversial ones being
fear or provocation of violence and the harassment offences, but
effectively turning the offence itself into a subjective affair
because of course it's for the victim to report how they felt
about the particular incident in question.
Now with further digitisation, it's hard to see how this is
going to turn out any better for either apparent victims or
suspects in those situations. Now the document goes on to talk
about rolling out artificial intelligence, AI powered tools
and software to automate manual processes, saving the police
valuable time so that it can be redirected towards serving the
public. Again, to suggest that that is
simply a fait accompli because you can say that it will save
time and therefore there will be an outright benefit is a claim
that requires again much further investigation.
This is absolutely the the theme of the document and and very
much follows Mike's report about putting out these totally
unqualified positives that seem to have veered so far away from
from the the status quo. It's to be very, very
questionable also in terms of the the control structures.
And this is what Ben was surmising on on Monday.
The police and crime commissioners will be abolished
and they'll be replaced directly with, sorry, with directly
elected mayors and where mayors do not yet exist, with policing
and crime boards made-up of local council leaders.
And this is said that the new system of police governments
will reintegrate policing back into the system of local
government in England, Wales, enabling greater collaboration
across local services. Now again, if one assumes good
faith, that could in some ways be the case.
However, just to qualify it a bit to reintegrate back into
local politics, it cannot really be what it sounds like.
Because of course, as Ben was intimating on Monday, partly
this is because the nature of local politics has changed such
an enormous amount in the intervening period.
But also because of the capabilities in data collection
and sharing between all the various agencies that will be
involved in this. And of course the the many, many
digital compromises and vulnerabilities that are
inherent in in doing any of that.
And we return to the Pelian principles because we look at
this one which says police seek and preserve public favour not
by catering to the public opinion, but by constantly
demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
Now involving police hierarchy with local politicians, given
the state of affairs in local politics, local democracy, if,
if we can still call it that nowadays, I would say again, is
another significant compromise. Now, of course, this document
has come out, it's making great claims to turn the police over
in in a productive sense for more than they have been in 200
years. Therefore, there's been
inevitable sort of commentary and response to this.
As far as police bodies are concerned.
There's been almost universal applause for the reforms as
they're set out, with the exception of the Association of
Police and Crime Commissioners. Now, given that I've just read
out texts saying they're going to be abolished, it would be
easy to say that that's sour grapes.
But in fact, I think we should look at the point they make,
which is there is also a risk the National Police Service
could stifle local innovation and restrict the ability of
local communities to shape how policing effects their lives.
And large regional forces risk weakening local responsiveness
and accountability while introducing unnecessary
complexity and cost. I should have said that the
which I'll come on to in a bit, but the one of the solutions to
the problem is the idea of the National Police Service, which
again and was talking about on Monday, referring to it as a
sort of rehashed version of the FBI.
Now we're going to look at, or rather listen to what it was
that Shabana Mahmoud said in the House of Commons about one of
the points that is bound to provoke, well, should certainly
provoke a fair degree more debate.
While some forces surge ahead with the results to show for it,
others are fighting crime in a digital age with analogue
methods. We will ensure that every force
is adopting the latest technology LED out of the new
National Police Service. This will include the largest
ever roll out of live facial recognition technologies across
England and Wales. We know this approach works in
London. In just two years, the
Metropolitan Police have made 1700 arrests, taking robbers,
domestic abusers and rapists off our streets.
When the future arrives, there are always doubters. 100 years
ago, fingerprinting was decried as curtailing our civil
liberties, but today we could not imagine policing without it.
I have no doubt the same will prove true of facial recognition
technology in the years to come. At the same time, we will launch
Police dot AI investing a record £115,000,000 in AI and
automation to make policing more effective and efficient,
stripping admin away to ensure officer time can be devoted to
the human factor that only a police officer.
So as far as she's concerned, job done, we've got computers,
they can do it, we can all step back and and that's that.
Now I, I think it's not quite that simple.
And and certainly in terms of the symmetry or indeed
asymmetry, she's suggesting that the answer to a digital threat
is a digital solution, whereas of course in actual fact to
pervade an analogue. Set up with a digital invasion
is impossible. And again, that's that's
absolutely being glossed over and again, relates exactly back
to what Mike's been reporting on.
Now the other thing is that again, exactly like Mike says
she's talking about about thought crime and pre crime.
That's exactly where we're going with this with, with live facial
recognition, because otherwise how would she be able to say
that that has delivered the effect that it has?
And again, concentrating on arrests rather than actually the
prevention of the crime in the 1st place.
Now, as you've just had us talk about the, the announcement of
the AI capability, she made the mistake of giving the, the
website address of police AI. And you'd think that somebody
might have just popped a holding page up there, but not so.
And since AI is heralded as the future, I did ask it to generate
create an image of the success that Mahmood and the proposed
National Police Service are pointing towards now as a sign
of things to come. This is what was produced, No
First Lance, you may not see much wrong with that.
And if you can't see it, I should point out that it's it's
sort of two and a bit. Police officers wearing an
extraordinary ray of kit, including masks covering their
face. Shabana Mahmood has been turned
into a journalist. And and then when you look more
closely, you'll see the police constable on the left of the
frame is missing his head. Now I was confused by this at
first, but actually I see that it is an accurate rendition and
I've taken advantage of the UK columns graphics department to
correct the image. So if we can just go full screen
again, please. Chris, this is exactly what's
being suggested. We are replacing the human brain
with a computer. We are surrendering the human
mind to the to the bias of artificial intelligence.
Now the answer proposed is in terms of the this this reform is
a national police service and you know, one should concede at
least that there are some sensible points made and they
say that as one force, it will be better equipped to share
technology, intelligence and resources to stop the growing
threat from crime that has become increasingly complex
digital online and with no respect for Constabulary
borders. Now I, I can talk a bit more
about this in extra, but there are absolutely great frictions
associated with having 43 constabuaries within England
alone. England and Wales I should say,
and there are absolutely efficiencies to be gained there.
But that's taking it at face value and of course ignoring the
very many pitfalls to centralisation, which I think is
what the APCC are trying to get at.
But they're pointing towards the advantages of procuring
technology, clothing and general sort of cost saving.
They're also saying that they can recruit another 13,000 more
neighborhood police and they are trying to separate those on the
beat from the admin burden. Again, would be a would be an
effective mood move, but only if done correctly.
No on vetting and personnel disasters.
There's plan to introduce a license of practice to practice,
which is going to be managed by the College of Policing.
But again, the the issue with this is it's not really made
clear how just having a license would actually enhance the
situation. So there's there's more to come
out on that and we look further. Again, to have the pillion
principle of maintaining the relationship with the public
gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are
the public and the public are the police.
Again, something I think that's been glossed over very much in
the reforms as their put forward now and I don't know if we've
got time to just share a quick video clip really just to to get
to the point of considering whether or not police are
actually thinking about what they're doing.
Catherine Gunn, who will be known to many of the UK column
audience, was stopped whilst coming into the UK recently and
this is a short clip of her experiences.
At the top of the metal stairway with three police officers.
And as soon as we stepped our foot out of the plane, we heard
them say, are you Catherine Gunn and my daughter's name?
And I was like, yes. And it was a shock to be asked
by police officers as soon as we stepped off the plane.
And so we went down the steps and my daughter was taken by a
female police officer to one side of the stairs and I was
taken by two other police officers, 2 male officers to the
other side of the stairs. So we were separated and then
basically the male police officers asked me.
They said we have been contacted by members of the flight crew
who were concerned about child safety safeguarding.
And I was like, well, what's the evidence?
There is no evidence. What the hell are they talking
about? And and they demanded that I
give them my husband's name, our address in Turkey.
And I was like, why should I give you that information?
What's like, I'm not being, are you charging me with anything?
But he basically threatened me with taking me to the Border
Force and dragging out the whole process if I didn't give him our
address. They didn't ask for any
evidence. They didn't ask for our
passports or anything. So Catherine's experiences
there, which could have been over in seconds if they'd simply
asked for passports, but there's the inference there was that she
might have been might have been involved in child trafficking.
And again, I just, you know, put it forward that there is a
reduced element of thought in policing in general.
And so just just to finish off the last point from the Pelian
principles, which is that the test of police efficiency is the
absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of
police action in dealing with it.
And it looks very much like Mahmoud's reforms are absolutely
meant to provide the evidence of dealing with it, rather than the
absence of crime and disorder. Thank you, Charles.
Vanessa, over to you then. And we're going to have a look
at Israel and child abuse now. Take your time.
Yeah, of course child abuse, as we've been demonstrating for
some time, as really systemic in Israel, not only against the
Palestinians, who of course are dehumanised beyond belief and
tortured in some of the most sadistic ways, but even within
their own society. And coming back to the police
issue, it's fascinating that the people who are being arrested by
the police in the UK are the people that are literally
exposing the crimes from within Israeli society.
So again, we have to question what exactly the police are
there to do in the UK and perhaps we can discuss that
further in extra, but actually this is a follow up.
This is a recent case where a cyber CEO was found guilty of
statutory rape, assaulted children as young as four years
old and multiple minor underage rape cases from him.
This is Itai Levy. We actually covered this story,
I think about a year ago, but now he has been found guilty and
convicted. And of course he was connected.
He was the CEO of Cornelius, which is a major cybersecurity
company. And again, of course, this
brings us back to the fact that of course much of the
cybersecurity, the data storage, the the Health and Education
Ministry of Defence information is going to be stored by
individuals that are certainly have their roots in the Israeli
spy agencies. But seeing to what extent this
sexual predator nature is prevalent in Israeli society, we
also have to start raising questions about this.
This was I think a few days ago, an IDF, so a military reservist
convicted in large scale online child sexual abuse case.
Content warning. Well, I am going to show the
content because there's a couple of things in there that I would
really like to discuss further in extra.
So let's have a look at what the case actually involved.
So apparently he used technology he found online that allowed him
to appear and sound like a woman during video calls.
During those conversations, he instructed the men to carry out
sexual acts against their minor children.
This is my first question. How on earth can you persuade a
father, a parent, to actually conduct or carry out sexual
abuse against their own children?
This included infants and very young children.
And to document the abuse and send him the footage.
It detailed a series of impersonations that led to
sexual abuse within families. In one case, he posed as a woman
while speaking with the father of a one and a half 1 1/2 year
old girl and directed him to carry out sexual acts in the
child's room during a video call.
In another case, using the alias Maria, he persuaded a father to
sexually abuse his young son, telling him the child would not
remember because of his age, prosecutors said.
Alfie also communicated under female identities with dozens of
other social media users, including minors, convincing
them to perform sexual acts on themselves, record the acts and
send the material to him. Investigators found more than
150 files containing child sexual abuse material in his
possession. I wonder where online safety was
in Israel? And then I want to come on to
the latest report from an Israeli human rights
organization based on the occupied territories but Slam
Living Hell. This is a follow up from their
previous report which was called Welcome to Hell, published in
August 2024. The Israeli prison system is a
network of torture camps. So let's have a look at what
they actually say. Now they do give content warning
sexual violence, and I will show a screenshot from the actual
report. You can freeze frame and read it
well, or of course the link to the report will be in the show
notes. But let's have a look at the
actual screenshot. Now, what this is talking about
is multiple cases of rape with with, sorry, it's very difficult
to talk about this with objects, human beings raping women and
men within the Israeli forces, by the way, conducted these
rapes and appalling torture, basically attacking people's
genitals, bringing dogs in to urinate on prisoners and so on.
Absolutely appalling. I mean, I wonder what on earth
I'm reading when you go through that report.
And this is just a very short section of one of the videos
from the first report, Welcome to Hell, which as I said, was
published in August. So let's just play this.
I saw. Phil Montreal has certainly had
Al al asir Yeah letters. So again, as I said, you know,
with Britain getting closer and closer, every single political
party in the UK being friends of or having a section which is
friends of Israel, we need to really start wondering to what
extent they are aware of and are involved in what is going on.
Yes. Well, well done, Vanessa for
covering that because this is not something that we're hearing
from anybody else as far as I'm aware in the UK at least.
And so we need to have more insight into these types of
problems in that part of the world.
Now. Let's move on then.
UK Column, of course, only continues to operate with your
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There is a section on the UK Column website that you can find
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Any of the articles on the website, any of the podcasts
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And that helps us beat the censorship regime.
Now tonight, Jeremy is going to be speaking to David Vice about
Flat Earth, apparently. So join him at 7:00 for that.
We've got something to say about that just after the outbreak
here. And then the Silken Steel
podcast with Carl Zeiss going to be talking about Mark Carney and
his comments at Davos. But I just want to briefly
mention David Weiss being on with with Germ tonight.
Of course, Germ covers a wide range of topics and he is not in
any way restrictive about who he speaks to and we wouldn't
attempt to restrict who he speaks to.
But David Weiss I do have a bit of a problem with because of
course he, aside from the topic itself, he pushes forward a an
app, which is how he apparently funds his activities.
And well, this is Consumer Rights Wiki, which is run by
Lewis Rossman, who is a fantastic advocate for consumer
rights and for right to repair and so on, and is really the man
behind the the Clippy campaign, if anybody is aware of that.
But what this is pointing out, this is that basically for the
last number of years, Vice has been pushing out this app, which
people can get access to through their various phones and so on,
but that he is completely LAX with his security.
And therefore, people's personal information, their e-mail
address, their password, their location on the planet and so
on, is easily downloadable from the app.
Now, he's been warned about this for years and refuses to do
anything about it. So.
So I think it's just worth mentioning that because
obviously if you do support him using this app, you are putting
any personal information that you give at risk.
So that's just what I wanted to say about that.
Yeah. Good.
OK, let's let's move on to reform Charles.
Yes, no, it's the the weekly update which which started and
it has absolutely been worth continuing because there has
been yet another defection. And it just goes to show that
there is a theme that has emerged.
And here we are seeing Suella Brahman with Netanyahu proudly
showing her face graph on Twitter.
Admittedly, that was back a couple of years ago, but she
talks about strong relationship between Israel and the United
Kingdom. And if you've missed previous
updates on reform, you'll know that that is exactly the theme
that I have been referring to. And the question is, is in whose
interests? We've had Nigel Farage now going
to Davos, protesting, of course, that he's going to be pursuing
the idea of national sovereignty for the United Kingdom.
But in actual fact, everything is pointing in the other
direction. Here We have Bravman back in
2015 on a sponsored visit to Israel by the Conservative
Friends of Israel. And just to remind you what the
Conservative Friends of Israel actually do, they say that we
aim to ensure Israel's case is fairly represented in
parliament, and that means in the parliament of the United
Kingdom. Like what business?
Israel's case has been represented by parliamentarians
who are supposed to represent their constituencies, has not
made quite clear. Now Brothman, you may recall, is
married to Rael Brothman, who is also involved with the Reform
Party. And early last year, about a
year ago, was making overtures to the Board of Deputies in
effect to convince them that actually Reform was a natural
home for people of Jewish faith. And again, just for context on
this, it, it shouldn't be regarded as coincidence that
Suella Brotherman was home secretary back in 2023 when the
current conflict took hold. And I, I write an article back
then called home secretary picks aside for the police.
And I would encourage you to read it because what she did to
police there, first of all, was an abuse of her position as home
secretary in that she was trampling all over police
operational independence. But also she was absolutely
skewing the narrative completely in favour of Israel.
And this is where Reform is going.
Thank you for that, Charles. Now let's talk about censorship
for a second, because it's six months since Ofcom began
enforcing age verification in the UK, and the effect on
freedom of speech, of course, has been chilling.
Vanessa and Alex Creel have both reported on the misuse of the
requirements to censor on Substack.
And more and more people are choosing not to look at content
rather than to submit to the age verification regime.
Well, Ofcom has now announced that the Global Online Safety
Regulators Network just put that back on screen.
Chris, which is which brings together online safety
regulators across the world, has set out its views and
expectations on what they describe as the important role
age assurance pays in the global effort to protect children.
Now let's be absolutely clear about this.
It plays no role in protecting children.
This will come on to a second in a second now in the UK, age
checks, or they describe it as the cornerstone of the Online
Safety Act. And they say that their rules,
their rules, sorry, requiring sites and apps to have highly
effective age assurance have been enforced since July.
And that they're currently monitoring services compliance.
And that they've opened 83 investigations into adult
websites as part of their enforcement program.
And that they have recently fined one service provider, AVS,
£1,000,000 for failing to have highly effective age assurance
checks in place. And this is because the
pornography industry is the poster child for all of this.
The justification which is supposed to make it acceptable
in the minds of the public. And in an effort to build
opposition to the policy, then the biggest porn site, Pornhub,
has decided to restrict access to its site to UK users from
next week. But as we've been reporting,
despite claims of plummeting viewer numbers of Pornhub here
in the UK, it's clear that people have been taking to VPN
use to subvert the age verification requirement, and
this has been recognized. And so the House of Lords has
decided to vote that age verification should be extended
to VPN use, confirming what we suggested was going to happen at
the time that VPN would become a target for political
interference. Now, this comes as an amendment,
Amendment 92 to the Children's well-being and Schools Bill
proposed and the amendments being proposed by Lord Nash.
Amendment 92 would insert a new clause titled Action to prohibit
the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom.
And it requires that within 12 months of the ACT being passed,
the Secretary of State must make regulations prohibiting VPN
services from being provided to children.
And that's described as under eighteens VPN providers may be
required to apply age assurance that is highly effective at
correctly determining or not the person is a child.
That Ofcom would be would produce guidance for VPN
providers and compliance and the government would establish A
monitoring regime with enforcement measures and
penalties for non compliance. But it's been pointing out time
and time again, none of this does anything to protect
children who are by far put at risk.
Far and away the biggest risk online is by adults posing as
children on websites like Roblox that have no age assurance
department to confirm that users are actually children.
The biggest risk to children is from grooming.
And these are the types of platforms.
Roblox is the type of platform where that kind of thing happens
as highlighted by Miller law on screen at the moment.
All this in the show notes, so do pay attention on the UK
column website to the show notes for this.
But then moving on from here, of course, Australia decided that
under under 16 should be banned from any social media useless
use. Recently, France has now decided
to do the same thing. So they've passed a bill that
will ban social media use by under fifteens in their case.
And this, of course, was championed by Macron as a way to
protect children from too much screen time.
So the National Assembly has adopted to that it will go to
the Senate and so on. And Macron very excited about
this. It's a major step apparently in
dealing with this. And then finally, I just want to
mention that, Oh, sorry, just before we get on to the finally,
we'll just mention, of course, this is absolutely happening in
the UK as well because the proposals are in, here's the
House of Commons library proposals to ban social media
for children. So this is coming to the UK as
well. And finally I'll just mention
what's been going on with TikTok because TikTok users are saying
they can't upload anti ice videos in the United States.
TikTok themselves are saying that this is as a result of tech
issues. The BBC covering this as well.
TikTok US pushes back on claims it's censoring content.
Now they're saying that this is because of tech issues.
It may well be. What I'll say is that if it's,
if it is genuine, then this is an example of the next step,
which of course is that content gets scanned before it's
uploaded and it's prevented from being uploaded in the 1st place
if it's content that they don't like.
What I'm going to say about purely anecdotal, I'll accept,
but our personal experience with tech Tiktok is that it is,
despite its claims that that that it's not censoring people,
it is the most censorious social media platform out there.
And so I'm highly skeptical about their claims that this was
just sort of some kind of technical accidental thing.
But so the the censorship regime moves on appears.
But let's come back to Vanessa then.
Vanessa, lots been going on, particularly in North East Syria
with the Kurds. Yes, I, I thought I but I'd
swing back to Syria because there is AI mean there has been
a lot going on for the last few years, but there is a lot of
clashes going on between the Kurds and the Jolani HDS Takfiri
forces. And it appears that despite the
fact that allegedly the Kurds fought ISIS in Syria for years
now the US allies say they've been abandoned.
And this is the general narrative.
Now, of course, from my perspective, having lived in
Syria, the Kurds, backed by the United States, effectively
occupied NE Syria and took control of the oil resources and
the agricultural resources. And in my opinion, were
absolutely pivotal to the fall of Syria by energy, depriving
the Syrian people and also depriving them of agricultural
resources from Syrian territory in the North East on behalf of
the United States. And, in fact, former Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad said this in 2019 in relation to the
Kurds. We tell those groups who are
betting on the Americans that the Americans will not protect
you. They will put you in their
pockets so that you can be a bargaining chip.
And he was always very clear, as was our leadership of the
Lebanese resistance, that the Kurds would, as they have
historically be betrayed by the United States.
Now, I just wanted to show, I think this is a map from 20, 19,
which shows the territory that then was under the control even
up to December 2024, that was under control of the Kurds,
which is the yellow section, the green sections in the north
there that are under the control of the Turkish military and
their proxies. But if we look at a very recent
map, this is January 2026. It's a little bit confusing, but
the two red circles there are basically where the Kurdish
forces and civilians have been forced to withdraw to, to as
they call it, Kobani and Hasika. So Kobani in the north and
Hasika in the North East, of course surrounded by the Turkish
proxies and now by HTS. And of course, surprise,
surprise perhaps for some is the fact that ISIS are now being
released. I'll come on to that.
This is a statement by Tom Barrack in the last couple of
days. So he's basically now saying
Syria has acknowledged the central government that has
joined the global coalition to defeat ISIS.
This shifts the rationale for the USSTF partnership.
The original purpose of SDF as the primary anti ISIS force on
the ground has largely expired. And in fact he goes on to say
that Jolani and the HTS forces will take control of the ISIS
holding camps. Meanwhile, of course, the
majority of Jolani's Takfiri forces comprise ISIS members.
So guess what? They're actually releasing ISIS
members from the prisons. I think there's 9 prisons in the
northeast holding up to 100,000 ISIS fighters and their
families. But then if we look at what
Lindsey Graham is saying, who's come slightly more to prominence
recently under Trump, he says it would be a disaster for US
reputation and national security interests to abandon the Kurds.
I will be introducing legislation this week designed
to impose crippling sanctions on any government or group engaged
in hostilities against the Kurds, the Save the Kurds Act.
So this is getting a little bit silly now because Trump has just
allegedly withdrawn the season sanctions on Jelani's
government, whereas now Lindsey Graham is going to bring in an
act to reimpose sanctions on the HDS government for the massacres
that are now being committed against Kurdish civilians in the
areas where HDS is advancing. Then let's have a look.
And this is, in my opinion, entirely what this is all about.
This is from U.S. central Command CENTCOM.
U.S. forces launched mission in Syria to guess what, transfer
ISIS detainees to Iraq. So what are they actually
saying? They're saying the transfer
mission began while U.S. forces successfully transported 150
ISIS fighters, held a detention facility in Haseka, Syria to a
secure location in Iraq. Ultimately, up to 7000 ISIS
detainees could be transferred from Syria to Iraqi controlled
facilities. Now, I'm sure this is absolutely
nothing to do with the upcoming potential aggression against
Iran. Trump is bringing in his big
beautiful Armada as he's described it.
And if we just move on, Trump is saying, I'm hearing that the
great country of Iraq might make a very bad choice by reinstating
Nouri al-maliki as Prime Minister.
Last time Maliki was in power, the country descended into
poverty and total chaos, nothing to do with the United States.
Of course, that should not be allowed to happen again because
of course, how Trump perceives it and how the region perceives
that Nouri al-maliki will be very sympathetic to Iran with
the upcoming aggression yet again.
He also says Trump make Iraq great again.
And I just wanted to include so the fact that ISIS is now being
transferred from Syria to Iraq. Russia is withdrawing its troops
from the Karmishly base in the northeast, and Jolani is in
Moscow today to discuss the movements and and the bilateral
agreement with Putin. I'll leave people to speculate
on exactly what that means. But I wanted to draw attention
also to the UK involvement in the ISIS camps in the northeast
because again, I'm sure people are probably saying, well, this
has nothing to do with the UK. In 2021, the UK provided funding
for the expansion of one of the ISIS camps in Haseko, northeast
Syria. Rather than repatriate British
nationals, the UK Foreign Office condemn them to a life in prison
in conditions that are described as inhumane by various human
rights groups, according to report in Defence One.
The effort will double in size the current facility at Hausiga,
a series of three converted school buildings that hold
roughly 5000 prisoners, according to British Army Major
General Kevin Cropsey, the coalition's deputy commander for
strategies. So Britain very heavily involved
in this also and a recent article, I think in the last two
days from Kit Clarenberg, where he talks about leaked documents
demonstrating how the MI 6 infiltrated ISIS refugee camps
and were involved in the indoctrination, particularly of
children in radical ideology. So as we've talked about the
radicalization of elements in the UK that would then be sent
to fight alongside Al Qaeda in Syria.
The UK apparently appears to have been doing that within the
ISIS holding camps that they are funding in the North East of
Syria to effectively be weaponized against wrist
resistance movements in the region.
Which we have formed for Vanessa with al Qaeda as well and HTS
over the years. Yes, OK, well, I'm sure we'll be
talking about that an extra as well, Charles.
Let's end, then, with China. Because of course, Mark Carney
was in China a week or two ago, and now Keir Starmer has gone.
It's Thomas Turn. He has announced on Twitter,
where else, that he has landed in China.
You'd be forgiven for thinking he's gone there in his capacity
as a postman or a Courier, he says.
He's I'm here to deliver for the British people, he goes on in
his press release to make a point of striking honesty, but
obviously an attempt to extract political capital and take the
high ground. He said or released.
It was written for him. For years our approach to China
has been dogged by inconsistency, blowing hot and
cold from the Golden Age to Ice Age.
But like it or not, China matters for the UK and it it it
does seem that he has hit it at the heart of the inconsistency
surrounding commentary on China, which is to say that people are
prepared to make damning criticism of the place whilst
remaining absolutely content to rely upon all the goods which
are imported from there. But Starmer himself wanting to
appear tough, banging the drum for national security.
He says, rather the press release says that he will be
clear that we will not trade Economic Cooperation for our
national security and he'll raise the areas where we
disagree with China so that the language sort of softened to a
certain extent. Now what one has to ask is, is
it coincidence that the BBC has chosen exactly this moment to
suggest Chinese military is in complete disarray with an
article here? China has purged its highest
ranking military general. Why now?
This is about the disappearance, in fact back in November of
General Zhang and he's the most senior figure in the Central
Military Commission. And to substantiate their
position, the BBC has quoted Lyle Morris from the
Rockefeller, Rockefeller funded Asia Society Policy Institute,
who speculated that there are lots of rumours floating around.
We don't know at this point what is true and what is false.
And he went on to be absolutely certain in saying that it's
certainly bad for Xi Jinping, for his leadership and control
over the People's Liberation Army.
Quite how he reached that conclusion remains to be seen.
They then asked associate professor from the National
University of Singapore, who again speculated completely,
saying that he'd heard rumours, everything from leaking nuclear
secrets to the United States, plotting A coup and factional
infighting. There are even rumours of a
gunfight in Beijing. So essentially the entire BBC
article based on nothing but circumspection.
The reader is obviously expected to come away with increased
suspicion of the Chinese state, and indeed they're to consider
that they're now very vulnerable militarily, despite the fact
that the people of Liberation Army still numbers over
2,000,000 men and women. Now whilst I'm not going to
claim to have the answers that the BBC couldn't quite grasp, I
can point out one or two things that they failed to collide
with. The first being that the 15th 5
year plan here shown on the State Council website begins in
March. And General Zhang has it's been
out of the public eye since November.
As I said, he's also 75 years old.
So like Starmer, perhaps it is time for a change, despite the
allegations of corruption and wrongdoing and all sorts of
other things. Which may indeed be the case as
well. Not only that, but the military
is looking to modernise. So again, is this coincidence as
the State Council announces that the regulations which will take
effect focus on accelerating the modernisation of military
theory, optimising the top level design for innovation in
military theory. So is that the sort of change
that one would implement with a 75 year old at the helm?
That is simply a question that I might put there.
Now, Starmer also referenced the relationship between defence, or
as he calls it, national security and trade.
And this is precisely what Trump's Board of Peace is is
bringing to the fore. And here's the news, the
invitation as published by the Chinese embassy in London.
All of which puts the spotlight on the relevance in the role of
NATO. Now, of the many commentaries
out there, I had a look at The Diplomat, which has an article
out recently published titled The disintegration of NATO would
not be in China's Interests. And what they're positing, among
other things, is that the the Chinese experts have argued that
NATO began looking for a new adversary after the Cold War to
justify its existence. Not not exactly a contentious
position necessarily, but of course the point to be brought
out of it is that the situation with NATO, which regards China
as a challenge rather than a threat, is 1 of stalemates.
So it doesn't. None of those present prevents
NATO from posturing. And we can consider the awkward
confluence of running military operations, as Luke Pollard
said, to boost trade. And we're looking here at the
Carrier Strike Group, which set off from the United Kingdom last
year, touring the South Pacific region with it's occasionally
just composed of United Kingdom vessels and aircraft and
occasionally with other NATO fleets.
But what they did do whilst they were there was to boast that
they transited the South China Sea.
Of course, no actual engagement with China.
But to refer back to Starmer's point, which is that one so many
are so determined to ignore, of course, the United Kingdom
imports more from China than any other country except for the
United States and Germany. So as things stand, the United
Kingdom is much more dependent upon China than China is on the
United Kingdom. Now, UK column is going to be
doing more of what we should, which is finding out for
ourselves. So we'll hope to be able to
break new greater insight on this in the coming weeks because
Mike and I will be in China for the latter stages of the Stalmer
visit and we'll be able to talk a bit more about that in extra.
But for now, Mike, what do you think about the UK's attitude
towards China and I suppose especially in light of the
comments of Mark Carney and so forth?
Yeah, I think UK has demonstrated absolute
schizophrenia with respect to China for a number of years now.
We have, we have produced the China report from the House of
Lords. I believe we have decided that
Huawei is not appropriate because it's a national security
threat to it's not appropriate to have that on our 5G networks
because 5G networks are used for dual use these days.
And of course we don't worry about the fact that our 5G
networks are often heavily polluted with it's really unit
8200 inspired hardware. So you know, if we're worried
about countries stealing data, which countries is it that we
should be most worried about? And so, yeah, there there seems
to be definite efforts to try to demonise China while at the same
time keeping relations there. I suspect Britain and and Carney
probably represents this policy as well, is very keen to do
anything that it can to split China away from Russia if if
that's, you know, if that's how they view the the major threat.
Yeah, well, that was it was actually one of the things that
the article in the Diplomat went on to to refer to.
But of course, the line that they take is that is that Russia
is is acting, you know, in the sort of mainstream sense in
terms of the aggression and and whatnot.
And and what, if anything, do you think Starmer will come away
from China with? Well, he'll come away with
absolutely nothing. Yeah, exactly.
So hence the use of the word deliver rather than.
Yes, bring back. Yes, exactly.
Yes, yeah. So we'll we'll see what happens
there. But as I say, we should have
some more commentary on that by next week.
So that brings us to more or less, I think the end of the IT.
It, it does indeed, yes. So we, we do have to finish
there for today, unfortunately, but with much more an extra if
you're UK column member, if you're not a UK column member,
maybe you'd like to join us and that helps us do what we're
doing. And you can join us for extra
anytime. We are hosting a news programme.
I want to say thank you to Vanessa and Charles, of course,
for joining me today. And for everybody that's been
watching, don't forget, if you want to look at the
documentation behind the stories that we've covered today, have a
look in the show notes. But we'll be back in a few
minutes on this stream if you're AUK column member.
Otherwise, don't forget the interviews this evening, an
interview going out at 1:00 PM tomorrow.
News again, 1:00 PM on Friday. We will see you then.
Bye, bye, bye bye.