Good afternoon, it's just gone. 1:00 on Monday the 14th of April
2025. Welcome to UK column News.
I'm your host, Charles Mannett. Joining me in the studio today
is Ben Rubin. Welcome to the programme, Ben.
Thank you, Charles. And via video link, Diane
Rasmussen Mcaddy from Edinburgh and Alex Creel from Moscow.
Now, among the topics to be discussed today are
geoengineering, Russia, local media and plenty besides.
But we're going to begin the programme with steel and the
state of emergency that the government have described around
the situation concerning the Jingyi Steel Company that
released British Steel, as it's been known, having taken it over
from Tata Steel in 2020. And the emergency measures that
the government have taken to ensure.
So they say, that the blast furnaces will keep burning in
Scunthorpe and that there will be the saving of 3000 jobs.
Now the government have put out a statement, as I say, to confer
upon us the idea that they, they are the salvation in this
particular circumstance, a statement from the Prime
Minister in which he concludes by saying a secure future, a
Britain rebuilt with British steel in the national interest.
We'll, we'll go on to qualify exactly what it is he might mean
by the national interest. But I think it's worth harking
back to the manifesto that they put out last year and to ask
what effect the committed £2.5 billion to steel has actually
had and whether this apparent crisis could have been averted.
But also, when considering the numbers on the very next line of
the manifesto was the commitment to the most pointless exercise
yet described by government, which of course was a £1 billion
commitment to the capture of carbon dioxide.
Now, the business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds has conducted
many interviews, of course, in the wake of this.
And I'm just going to play a short clip from his interview on
Sky News with Trevor Phillips, which gives us a bit more of an
insight into what might really be at play here.
Can't. I wouldn't.
I wouldn't personally bring a Chinese company into our steel
sector. You would not bring a Chinese.
I wouldn't. I think steel is a very
sensitive area. I, I don't know the Boris
Johnson government when they did this, what, what exactly the
situation was, but I, I think it's a sensitive area.
Areas. Sensitive areas?
What about nuclear power, for example?
I wouldn't want to on an interview make that kind of
specific determination. But I, I think we can't ignore
China. I mean, China's fifth of the
global economy, you know, what they do has an impact on us and
where we can have areas where we can cooperate in our mutual
interest. I I think that is a.
Good, but but there's a high trust bar now, isn't there?
Yes. So he was pushed further and
further during that interview, in effect to call out China as
being in some way a state threat to the United Kingdom and indeed
to the steel industry and how critical steel is as an overall
part of industry in the UK and a lot else besides.
Now, in order to qualify all this, I think it's worth
referring back to what Labour government put out last year
when they described their steel strategy, the plan for steel,
which was in the form of a consultation.
But within that, they said that as well as supporting our
mission of making the UK a clean energy superpower, steel is a
fundamental component in activities such as the
construction of wind turbines, manufacturing the next
generation of electric or autonomous vehicles, or building
the infrastructure needed to sustain our digital economy.
Now each of those things I think bears a little bit more scrutiny
and that's why we will go to UK Steel who have published a great
many documents on the steel industry of the United Kingdom
in the last few years. And in particular they refer to
the description of the offshore, what's called the offshore wind
boom. So it's interesting to note then
that they say in the last five years, admittedly of course four
of those have not been under a Labour government, but
nonetheless, in the last five years, less than 2% of steel
used in UK wind farms was fabricated in the UK and almost
none made using UK, sorry, using UK made steel.
Now that's just part of the story of course.
The other bit of it is that this has by and large come from
China. And again, there is this
enormous discrepancy between what the various government
organisations say and what they do.
And we refer back to the OFT quoted Richard Dearlove saying
that China presents state threat via these sorts of means.
And yet of course wind is never one area in which we're to
consider that China does in fact pose such a threat.
We go on to look further at UK Steel and indeed on the
electricity prices. And this is where we get perhaps
closer to the heart of it. And this this is a comparison
there with the UK circled on the right, showing that the cost of
energy in order to produce steel in this country is significantly
higher than France and Germany. And of course, this goes back to
the net zero agenda. And if anyone was in any doubt
as to its purpose, it seems now beyond any sort of contradiction
really, that the agenda play with net zero is to destroy the
means by which industry, economy and indeed the whole country can
run in a sensible manner. And we see this time and again.
So not only are we looking at an industry that relies on the
production of steel by the use of cooking coal, which of course
is something that the government shut down by not giving the go
ahead to a mine in Whitehaven which would have produced fuel
with which to run this plant because of net zero.
The government say they're still committed to net zero, but in a
worldwide sense. So whilst they can say that we
won't do it here, we will absolutely have to do it
elsewhere in order that we get put in such a vulnerable
position as this with of course a large quantity of coke and
coal having to come in from Japan as part of what's being
described as a rescue package. Now we'll just have a quick look
at the, the legislation itself because it is perfectly
extraordinary. As I say, the House Commons,
both Houses of Parliament met on Saturday, which hasn't happened
since April 1982 with the the, the, the then emergency relating
to the Falklands. Now I would like to draw
attention to this particular clause which gives powers to the
Minister of entering using force if necessary.
The premises were the specific assets are situated.
So effectively this is granting control of any assets pertaining
to steel. It also suggests in terms of the
intervention that this these assets are either to be used or
not to be used in a particular way, and indeed the consequences
are spelt out too. If these not adhered to, then
the person committing the offence is liable to be
proceeded against and punished accordingly.
Seems unnecessarily strong language when we're talking
about trying to rescue a business one step short of of
nationalising it. And this was articulated in
fact, or at least pushed back against by many people,
particularly in the House of Lords.
We've got Lord Moylan here who said that it is not in fact
nationalisation. It is in some ways almost worse.
It is the confiscation and control of a private company
with no safeguard guards and no sunset clause.
The other point made in the House of Lords, among among many
was why steel, steel industry, which has failed time and again,
Why should steel be propped up? And the reason I asked that
question, or at least amplify that question from the House of
Lords, is that of course, steel is certainly on the way.
And again, going back to the net zero agenda, the production of
electric vehicles use increasing amounts of aluminium as opposed
to steel. There's no, there's no evidence
really to support the fact that steel should be supported over
any other industry than than any other sorry industry.
Just to qualify that. The the other point to make is
in terms of jobs, we're looking at electricity and indeed why
electricity is not going to be more widely available in this
course to support the the constant roll out of artificial
intelligence and the need to support that.
And of course, we look at the Institute for Public Policy
Research, citing the fact that possible 8 million UK jobs are
likely to be lost in pursuing this agenda, which makes one
wonder just speculatively, whether we are looking towards
the state control of industries as a precedent in order to be
able to do things like introduce digital wages.
But I think there's a lot more to come out about this and it
certainly looks like it could be a SOP to America, with whom
we've been in lockstep for many months now since the Trump re
election and inauguration. And of course, to be seen to be
bashing China in order to attain perhaps more favourable
conditions than the 10% tariff that we have been given could
also be a large factor. There'll be a lot more to come
out on this and we're now going to go across to Diane to look at
behavioural change. Yes, hello, Charles.
Hello, Ben. Hello, everyone.
Today, it's great to be here. So last week was the United
Nations Behavioural Science Week.
If you It took place across 46 UN entities and there were 15
events throughout the week. Behavioural science, if you
haven't heard of it, if you actually can call them, you've
heard about it several times because of Brian's wonderful
coverage about applied behavioural psychology, which is
an example of behavioural science is part of what is
called UN version 2 point O. This was originally covered on
the 20 sorry the 31st of July 2023 edition of UK Column News.
If you would like to go back and get the basics.
But essentially the policy, according to the website of you
even 2.0 says that halfway to 2030 the world is not on track
to achieve the SDG. To accelerate progress, everyone
needs to rethink, refocus and recharge.
UN 2 Point O is a vision of a modernised UN system, cutting
edge skills and forward thinking culture that enable UN entities
to better contribute to the quest for the SDGS.
These ongoing internal transformations are designed
around a quintet of change. Now personally, I love music.
This is not a musical quintet, but the quintet that it defines
that are 5 steps to this change are Innovation Data Digital,
which includes helping with inclusive online education
platforms, foresight and finally of course behavioural science
enabling better choices. They call it Besci BESCI and
they have a hashtag that they use that's kind of their
shortcut. So what happened in Behavioural
Science Week? Well, they were all webinars
from as far as I could tell. I watched some of them just so
that you don't have to. I don't like to do that to the
viewers, but there will be a link in the show notes if you
would like to see some things. I've got a short clip from one
of the sessions that was called Getting Started with Behavioural
Science. This took place on Wednesday
last week. The speaker here is Sonia
Guerrero and she said she works in the education sector at
UNESCO, so let's hear what she had to say.
But we think that the behavioural science approach can
improve the uptake of data and scientific evidence for decision
making in education and we think that.
But we think that one of the first things we need to do is to
sensitise colleagues about this. So to get started, what we
decided to do was to begin with a landscape review of how the
behavioural sciences have been formed, the work of other
international organisations such as UNICEF, the World Health
Organisation and the World Bank. A very preliminary scan is
showing that behavioural sciences have been used within
education projects but used primarily for health
interventions. Still, this is this shows
potential that we can in fact use behavioural sciences and
education projects in particular around getting teachers to
change their teaching practises, which is a major challenge.
So for example, teachers might still be using some outdated
teaching practises such as asking kids to memorise content
which would appear in an exam. So what we're seeing here is the
use of applied behavioural psychology to change how
teachers teach, taking away the inspiration and the past that
they might have had up from teaching in the past, but
they're going to teach them how they should be teaching instead.
And also to make sure that students don't have to do things
like take exams because that's not fair to students, right?
We wouldn't want to make sure that they knew anything.
Another example of the use of behavioural science in human 2
point O is a behavioural change service called Verified.
Apparently this is quote, delivering science based
information in times of crises in an era of prolific miss and
disinformation. There's a bit of information on
the quintet of change website. It is UN initiative, but as I
said, it's it's got a part UN but also part this organisation
called purpose. And we can put a screenshot of
purposes hope page on the on the screen here.
It is apparently working hard to cut through the noise around
global crises and deliver critical fact based and
information. As they say here on the very
obvious black and white home page.
They use creative storytelling and campaigns to move people to
remake the world. Don't forget it.
Very large letters. Other partners of purpose
include the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller
Foundation. Of course, as I was looking into
Behavioural Science Week, I ended up coming across something
that I had never heard of before, which is the United
Nations University, or as I'll call it, You and Uni.
As a former professor who now watches what globalists do
instead of teaching at a university, I was surprised to
find out that You and Uni existed, so I decided to look
into it a bit more. Their homepage says they work on
evidence based solutions for a sustainable future, because of
course they do. Looking into a little bit more,
I found that the university encompasses 13 institutes
located in 12 countries around the world.
Their research and academic activities are aligned with
every sustainable development goal, which are people, planet,
prosperity, peace and partnerships.
So of course, this is all starting to sound familiar
because they say the same thing everywhere.
Their their headquarters is based in Tokyo.
They have institutes in 11 other countries.
Of course it's global students. If you want to be a student at
this university, you can undertake research that links
directly with the work of the UN and its agencies.
For example, you can get a PhD in sustainability science.
You can do a part time PhD in the Netherlands, you can get a
PhD in Innovation, economics and governance for sustainable
development and you can also get an MSC in Sustainability or
public policy and human development or the geography of
Environmental risks and human security.
And there are also non degree courses and other training.
If you want to know how much you would have to pay to do this, it
varies by institute. So just like me, you and uni is
celebrating its 50th birthday this year.
Here's a quote from the US Secretary General Antonio
Guterres, who's celebrating the birthday and on his website.
He said For half a century, university leaders, staff,
students and alumni have driven peace progress by bridging the
world's of education research and policy, by acting as a
trusted source for evidence based policy making, and by
uniting the world through knowledge and partnerships that
address our most pressing global challenges.
The United Nations University is truly multilateralism in action.
So I found this you, you, this you and you merit, which is one
of the institutes talking about their contribution to the
behavioural change week last week.
And that's how I found out about what was going on at the UN Uni.
So just to see what it would be like if you wanted to be a
student at UN Uni, I've got a couple of clips from their
YouTube channel. This one is called from a
lecture called A Cup of tea for the SDGS.
So let's learn from this lady. So how the SDC could help
navigate these complex TT range and actually the SDG could help
T tells its story. They are the impact.
The SDGS are the impact that the tea industries and we as a tea
consumer working to achieve. So the success of achieving A
sustainable tea sectors actually hinge on our ability to balance
SCG 12, which is responsible consumption and productions and
in our effort to enable economic development or SCG 8 for the T
small holders and in a way that can conserve the life on land
which is SCG 15. So all of this effort should be
done within the effort to alleviate property SCG 1 and to
achieve food security and SEC 2 and to combat climate change
with this SEC 13. So there's your lecture.
If you wanted to know what kind of research they do before you
decided to apply, here's a video from February explaining a new
report called Disaster Risks 2025, Turning Over a New Leaf,
which was written by you and Uni's Institute for Environment
and Human Security. And it found that redefining
what we value is one of five fundamental changes that
humanity needs to make to shift towards a more sustainable and
resilient world. So let's watch this summary
video. The world faces many serious
threats. Climate change, pollution,
biodiversity loss, and inequalities, to name a few.
We know what needs to be done to change course.
So why aren't we doing it? The answer lies in society's
deeper structures and assumptions that create the
outcomes we see all around us. Take, for instance, spraying
aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back to
space. This attempt to limit global
warming is called solar geoengineering.
Some governments and companies are exploring it as a way to
combat climate change, but the actions of a few could lead to
negative impacts for others around the world.
Unpredictable weather patterns, food and water insecurity.
It's also a superficial fix that fails to address the underlying
causes of climate change. We prioritise our own benefits,
willing to accept negative impacts elsewhere.
To truly solve the problem, we need to look at how we interact
with each other across the globe.
When we move beyond self serving solutions and recognise our own
responsibility, the real solution is clear, batting out
emissions directly. By phasing out fossil fuels, we
have the power to change the world for the better.
Let's turn over a new leaf. So apparently we're going to
spray the skies eventually, and we're also going to phase out
fossil fuels, which we know. Kirstamer announced that last
week. I have a little bit more later
on in the news on geoengineering.
But right now, Charles, what do you think?
Would you go to you and Uni? Will have recruited to the
university in that segment down I'm, I'm guessing probably not
that many, but thank you very much nonetheless.
Now, Ben, you're going to take us down to the sort of local
level on a on a related note. Absolutely.
And the directly related note. Thanks for that, Diane.
That was fascinating. And I talk a lot about this
interplay between money and power, power and money, which is
what is projecting itself across us at the moment.
And the UN is all about power. And that word was actually used
several times in that video that you ended up on.
They're talking about power and essentially these tools, these
psychological tools, these propaganda tools that they've
developed around behavioural psychology.
Behavioural economics are lots of different terms for it.
Nudging essentially is the one that I think has probably got
most understanding across the the broader population.
They're all about projecting power and they're all about
ultimately transforming humanity to fit into their very, very
narrow understanding of what the world should be like, right?
And what you end up with these bureaucrats in an office in New
York, like the woman in the first film that you showed, you
think that they've got the the right and the capacity to
transform Everything Everywhere. It's really astonishing when you
get into it and it's actually Orwellian.
That's a great quote from George Orwell 1984, which is power is
tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again
in new shapes of your own choosing.
And I think there's a perfect summary of what we're looking at
here with these applied psychology approaches.
And this quote always reminds me of this fella, David Halpin,
CBE, who was one of Blair's top aides during his pomp.
Really, the Blair years, 2001 to 2007 and then also the founder
and CEO of the Behavioural Insights team, the nudge Unit,
which is where all most of this stuff came from, was certainly
where it was brought into broader use across government
and elsewhere. He's an interesting character
help. And I don't use that quote from
all well lightly, right? Because actually I've done some
deep digging on Halpern and one of the things you find out was
that he's a an amateur artist, a painter.
And these are the the types of things that he's producing.
You can see there at the bottom as an example of one of his
artwork. So he's very clearly into
tearing humanity to pieces and putting us together again in new
shapes of his own choosing, right?
You know, you know, he's a psychologist.
Maybe you should psychoanalyse yourself, Mr Halpern.
It's kind of terrifying, that image.
He also mentions in that same interview.
We'll put a link to that as you can go and watch it.
I'd highly recommend it. He mentions the debt that he has
to Cass Sunstein. He says that nudge is really
related and built on the ideas of Cass Sunstein, who is the
author of, amongst other things, Conspiracy Theories and Other
Dangerous Ideas and Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech,
which will become particularly pertinent when I come on to the
media in this segment later on in the news.
So this stuff's got absolutely everywhere.
The UN have clearly got their hands on it.
Alpen has been bragging recently.
This from the Haywood Quarterly, which I'll put again provide a
link to. I'd suggest going to read why
government needs a fresh nudge. So how happens really
resurfacing this stuff needs to double down on it and it shows
the enormous success of this initiative and how far these
ideas have spread across global government.
So not but, but primarily in the UK.
And actually, you can see at the top there, the UK has, to my
count, 83 separate nudge units running across various different
departments, including HMRC, Defra, Ofcom, HMCTS, the court
system. And this just demonstrates the
influence and power of this stuff ultimately, and the
influence and power of Halpern in particular.
He's highly active today. He put this out in January via
demos. Our old friends at Demos.
I think I've spoken about them every week for the past month.
Social Capital 2025, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, written
alongside Andy Haldane, former Bank of England chief economist,
and then he was the chief executive of the Royal Site of
the Arts, but he got booted out at the start of the year.
There was a total meltdown at the RSA.
Won't go into that right now, but I'd suggest going to have a
look at this. You probably don't want to read
all of it because essentially you've got 2 technocrats trying
to intellectualise and quantitatively measure something
which any normal human being would understand intuitively and
without explanation. Right?
This idea of social capital, the fact that we have a reputation
and that we interact with each other as human beings and that
trust is important. Apparently they need to write a
long report to understand that, right?
And this is slap bang in the middle of the current Labor
Party agenda. It builds around some ideas
around the preventative state, which come from demos a couple
of years ago now, actually came out during the Tory government,
the last Tory government, which basically is just promoting this
idea that the state needs to be involved in absolutely every
part of your life. It's LinkedIn.
If we could just flash that back up on screen quickly.
If you see on the, the, the the cover page on the left, in the
bottom right hand corner of that, you can see local trust,
right. Interesting.
They've got to get local trust and also something called the
National Network for Neighbourhood Improvement, which
is a new initiative, a bit like 3 CI.
This is 3NI3CI in in in the climate arena.
This is, this is a counterpart, but it's all about social
innovation and it's also linked into, they love this sort of
this multiple of different organisations.
This is all linked into the same thing, right?
But they need lots of different things to make it look like
there's, there isn't a kind of monopoly on how this thing's
being pushed forward. It actually ladders up to this,
which is ICON, the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods,
and they're reviewing the current state of neighbourhoods
across England. This was launched in September
last year and essentially going out and asking a bunch of
questions. Again, I won't read them out in
their totality just to kind of with an eye on time, but
essentially what they're trying to do is to understand why
neighbourhoods are important. And in order to do that, again,
this is this kind of technocratic never leaves the
M25 kind of worldview, which is that, well, why do we need to
write 100 page report with a load of graphs in it to explain
why neighbourhoods are important?
Surely that's just blindingly obvious to anyone with a soul,
You know, like this is, is this, is this what we're looking at
here? Soulless technocrats running the
country? I think it might be who's in
charge of icon, right. So this is Baroness Hilary
Armstrong. She was a minister under the
Blair government's, so first for housing and planning, then local
government, then social exclusion.
She was also chief whip as well. So top Blair age, she's running
this, a bunch of other people in there with demos links.
So again, this is a demos proxy what we're looking at here.
And you can see on that image David Halpern in the far left
and also Sarah, dare I say far left politically as well.
And you can see on the sign in the background that you are in a
big local area. So this is another initiative
called Big Local, which is a continuation of the Big Society
agenda, which was based on the ideas of Saul Alinsky.
This is neo Marxist communist essentially, and they've mapped
out the whole country and there are a bunch of neighbourhoods,
schools of neighbourhoods that they've identified as being of
particular interest and these are the people that help and is
targeting. He is walking amongst them.
He has gone out into the field and he is exploring how he can
apply his ideas for reengineering humanity on the
poorest people in the country. Yeah, that's what these people
are doing. Yeah.
And really getting a grip around the nation.
And it's all about delivering the missions.
So there is no pathway to mission delivery without putting
neighbourhoods front and centre. Yeah, this is absolutely crucial
to the implementation of the change agenda.
They've got to get everyone in the country caught up in this
thing. It's a total centralised control
of our society, driven by Halpin and these organisations here.
Lots of talk of reform is in the political party which is
essentially A proxy for people who don't like what the states
doing. They talk about reform and
needing to combat it and control it, which is really odd given
this is supposed to be an impartial Commission.
NHS obviously. Front and Centre article here
which will link to the BBC which talks about an English
neighbourhood that claims to hold the secret to fixing the
NHS. And actually W Streeting has
come out and promised to turn the NHS into a neighbourhood
health service. So we're going to start hearing
this term a lot again for all the reasons that I've
identified. Interestingly, the neighbourhood
that they reference is in Birmingham where they can't even
collect the bins at the moment, which is posing a public health
issue. But apparently we've got to go
to Birmingham to find out what the future of the NHS is all
about. And ultimately for me, this
really ladders up to to some really hideous people and some
hideous ideas. And actually the best place to
go to understand it, I think, is this podcast which came from
Marta made, she's called the Anti Humans, which is a
harrowing listen. It's about 3 hours long and it
describes what the communists did in Romania, some of the most
violent and destructive actions in human history, where they
really were tearing human minds and bodies to pieces and putting
them together again in new shapes of their own choosing.
And that's what I think that we can see here, playing out with
these behavioural insights, techniques and this desire to
radically transform humanity. Yeah.
Radical it absolutely is. I hope we'll have time to talk
about that in extra. Thank you very much, Ben.
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Ben, you have something coming up.
Indeed, this is my side hustle, what I do in my evenings and on
The Saturdays. It's called Pattern.
We're building parallel systems of culture, governance and
economy, which means new businesses, new charities, new
campaigns. And I'm running an incubator
programme over 10 weeks. It's a structured process.
It's about unlocking growth. People who are launching new
things and want to participate in creating different options
for society. Come on down.
It starts on the 26th of April and it, as I say, runs for 10
weeks. I'm running the programme.
If it sounds like your bag or it might relate to someone that you
know who'd be interested, then you can find out more by going
to pattern18.substack.com and then also be a link in the show
notes. Great.
Thank you, Ben and Diane. A bit more on Dan Kleiman,
please. Yes, thanks, Charles.
I know we've mentioned this on the news a couple of times last
week, but since I'm here today, I want to specifically do a
particular kind of focus message about the importance of this
case. Dan Kleinman, I've interviewed
previously on UK column. He's being sued by the same
woman called Amanda Jones, who was the school librarian in two
different states for defamation. And Amanda Jones, some of you
might remember previously I did a review of her book called That
Librarian, which was her basically ranting about how
awful it was to have been attacked by these people, in her
words of that because they don't want these inappropriate books
put into school libraries. And, and so she's fighting
everything that she can possible and that is included.
She's sued more than one person now.
So Dan's legal fees he estimates will be approximately $200,000
because he's having to fight the same case in two different
states. And just to let you know, this
is not just AUS problem. We need to do more in the UK,
which I'm actively trying to do myself.
Here's one example of a book from the UK.
This is a book, if we can put this on the screen holding up
called Granddad's pride. Granddad and Gramps once meant
went to many pride parades and what happens when they bring
this little grandchild to the pride parade?
And that's a story about that. This book has won the British
book award and Waterstones children's book prize and it's
got protesters holding up signs inside this picture book for
very young children saying things like LGB with the T and
protect trans kids. So just to let you know, I could
go into much more, but I won't do it.
But just please, if you can at all, give at least a prayer
request which Dan's asked for on his on his page or some money
please. Great, Diane, thank you very
much indeed. And now an investment for
Standing the Light, which is coming up the end of next month,
the bank holiday weekend, 23rd to 26th up in Cumbria.
It's a fantastic festival last year attended by UK column and
we will indeed be there this year.
So please do look out a ticket for Stand in the Light and also
a reminder that our event from the 5th of April is still
available. The wall to buy at the shop.
You can buy the recording of the live stream, which I really
would encourage you to do. An absolutely fantastic
selection of talks. And tomorrow going out at 1:00,
an interview I've recorded with Doctor Sam Bailey, a New
Zealander who has been persecuted by the Medical
Council of New Zealand and is now being asked for 150,000 New
Zealand dollars in effect as a means of attempting to censor
her. So that will be a very wide
ranging and fascinating interview.
I really would encourage you to take a look at that.
Now we are going to move to Russia, Ukraine, of course,
there's been an awful lot of talk controversy about the Trump
tariff sort of merry go round. And a part of that narrative is
that both China and Russia can indeed be dealt with by economic
means. And I think this is something
that we want to look more closely at.
Of course, this is on the heels of the report yesterday of an
attack in Sumi in North East Ukraine, which Donald Trump has
is seen to be speaking out, you know, very much as a as a
horrific and and regressable incident, always a bit unclear
as to sort of how it happened or or what happened.
And then we've got the sort of Witkoff and Kellogg duo making
overtures about how things could be resolved with rewriting the
the map and all the rest of it. But ultimately they keep coming
back to the idea that the the art of the deal is such that
there may be financial control exerted over both China and
Russia, either together or separately in order to bring
about the right outcome. Now, just that's a prefix to
that, I'm just going to show the map of government debt that the
International Monetary Fund puts up, just because it's fairly
stark that shown in orange is the United States and the United
Kingdom both with a debt of over 100%.
And with that in mind, we're now going to go to Moscow where
we're going to hear from Alex Creel, who has been digging into
this. And, and I think my my question,
first of all, welcome to the programme, Alex.
But my question to you is, with this backdrop, what exactly is
the likely effect on Russia of any sort of financial or
economic play from in particular, the United States?
Thanks, Charles. So right at the moment, there
are 38,000 sanctions against individuals and corporates in
Russia. That's a figure calculated by
the Kremlin. These sanctions have been in
place now for about over three years.
And in terms of, you know, export performance of Russia,
the effect has been essentially 0 and it's been 0 in dollar
terms. But what, what it's done is it's
just shifted trade. All of the trade that went from
Russia to Europe is now going from Russia to India, Russia to
Turkey and Russia to China. So I, I don't know if it's
possible to put the chart up, but even without the chart, you
can see, yeah, you can see just the contraction in the red,
which is the reduction in trade with Europe has been completely
compensated for by incremental exports to those three countries
I mentioned. So net, net, there's been no
impact really on exports from Russia.
So at this stage, I, I think it's fair to say that those,
those things have not worked. And of course, the Russian
economy on a GDP level continues to grow the, the revising the
number upwards and downwards, but it's somewhere about 4% GDP
growth in 2024. So, so far that hasn't worked.
And then also in, in the other charts shows the leaks in the,
in the, in the importing system. So this is a just a example
where you have Estonia, which is one of the most that at least
they're political leaders are the most pro war and anti peace
in Europe. And while they're out sort of
war mongering, Estonian businesses are quadrupling the
exports that they're making to Russia's neighbours in the CIS
countries. So they're now exporting 4 times
more to sort of Kazakhstan as Pakistan, Armenia than they were
before the special military operations started in 2022.
So you have another, you know, you have a, a porous system of,
of tariffs of, of sanctions over imports and, and there are ways
around it. So in dollar terms, those are
not big numbers going from €5 million a month to €20 million a
month. But again, it indicates the way
that the sanctions regime can be bypassed or evaded.
So I think there's going to be no, there won't be taken
seriously more threats of sanctions inside Russia,
although Russia is also working on trying to undo some of those
sanctions. Because in, in, in any one of
these transactions, the buyer is also benefiting.
So, you know, in the example of Europe, Europe now no longer has
access to cheap piped pipeline, Russian gas, and is now buying
expensive LNG imports from the United States.
So, you know, in every one of those transactions, the other
side is also losing. So Russia is trying to unfreeze
some sanctions on agricultural exports.
And that is something that's going to help a lot of countries
around the world if that's achieved, to get Russia back
onto the SWIFT system for a limited set of transactions.
Yeah, I mean, fascinating. And I think, you know, it sort
of harks back in in a way to the the opening report today about
steel. Because obviously it seems that
there's a very sort of clumsy effort by the British government
to demonise China in some way, even though in actual fact we
import over 60% of our of our own steel.
But nonetheless, there there is this sense of trying to apply
some sort of pressure on China. To to what extent do you think
these policies, discussions, all the rest of it are, are actually
pushing Russia and China towards one another?
Well, they, they clearly have done over the since 2022.
They're they're now joined at the hip, which was of course
always the sort of Geo geostrategic nightmare of, of
that union happening. And now they're very closely put
together. And I and I think, I guess the
rare earth minerals. Issue is, is now brought that
into focus because China dominates that sector.
And if you're fighting with China and with Russia, I mean
fighting politically and economically, then then you're
also in trouble with, with things like rare earth minerals.
So maybe the, the idea is to, to, to try and split them again
or at least put a little bit of distance between them.
It's it's possible, but I don't think it's going to work at this
stage. And in terms of the the United
States sort of approach this, do you think that there is naivety
or ignorance or sort of a combination or or something
entirely different? I think, I think it's just an
overhang of of imperial sort of obsession with imperialism.
I think in the early 90s, America decided they are the
single hegemon and they can dictate all the rules
everywhere, all around the world.
And I think, you know, things have moved on since then.
You know that, as you said, the, the debt charts, the
differential GDP levels, you know, economic power and
vulnerabilities are shifting, but they're still stuck in this
single. We are the hegemon and we can
dictate terms everywhere to everyone.
And at some point that's going to stop working.
And I think that's what the last, you know, 20 years has
been all about really probably be what the next 20 years is
about as well. Yeah, well, obviously we will.
We will wait and see. Alex, thank you very much
indeed. Joining us, if you'd like to
follow more of what Alex does, then the best place to go I
would say is, is Substack be a link to his Substack Thinking
Coalition in the show notes and we'll come back to discuss that
more in extra. Now, Ben, we're going to go to
Charitable journalism. Indeed, local journalism, this
is the big focus. We talked about neighbourhoods
earlier. I've talked about local
journalism for the past couple of weeks and this really is
going to be a big focus for the next year or two, I think.
So just to remind you, we spoke about this report last week,
Public Interest News Foundation, Regenerating local news in the
UK. They see the current ecosystem
of news as delivering fragile communities victimised by
disinformation, leading to a withering democracy.
Democracy is dying, but we're going to move to this new model
with community newsrooms, whatever that is.
A new type of local council has to transform the state, right
and an empowered community, flourishing democracy, Big tech
much more tightly controlled through legislation and
importantly actually in the centre there as we'll get into
the involvement of philanthropy, rich people injecting money into
the media ecosystem. What could possibly go wrong?
Now I wanted to understand a bit more about where this report
came from and this entire agenda basically, and I've landed on
this organisation. She's the Charitable Journalism
project launched in 2022 and it describes itself as delivering
policy and evidence to protect and develop public interest
journalism. They love that term public
interest, which basically means for your own good.
I think actually they've sort of re engineered that to their own
ends. So this is newsrooms reading
from the bottom that work in the public interest needs support,
easier access to charitable status, importantly would help
them secure a sustainable future.
So this is a group of journalists, lawyers, funders,
academics and media people working together to protect
apparently and develop public interest journalism.
A few people just to show you what we're looking at here.
So William Perrin is involved now.
I've spoken about you for the past three weeks, William.
You're getting absolutely everywhere there.
This is the guy that was boasting about being
instrumental in establishing off COM.
He's absolutely involved in this still.
Samir Padania, who again I spoke about last week, he's on Perrins
Foundation and he's also linked into Open Societies, Nestor, the
International Fund for Public Interest Media.
Fascinating guy. Probably going to have to do a
bit more of an exploration on him over the coming weeks
because he's a big thinker in this area, really driving the
agenda. And then this woman on the
right, Kitty von Bertel, who is a trustee of the charity and she
is Co founder of Multitudes Foundation who I've spoken about
a lot previously, which is a political organisation.
It's funded by Daniel Sachs and Open Societies.
It's part of the apolitical network and it's express purpose
is to break existing power structures.
That's what Multitudes Foundation says that it's there
to do, to break existing power structures.
She's also involved in this organisation which is
illuminate. Well, she was involved at the
time that this charity was founded.
Right now, this is established by a guy called Pierre
Armadillo. He was one of the founders of
eBay, so French billionaire, and he envisions a future where
everyone has power to shape society against about
transformation of society. They're there to ensure that
people have the information rights and power to drive
change. They're involving themselves in
information ecosystems, promoting participation and
dissent importantly, but only dissent that serves their
purposes. And it's working across Africa,
Asia, Latin America. And actually, I thought that
this fund was only working across what they would probably
call the global S, but actually it is one of the vehicles for
CJP. Apologies, jumping ahead there.
And which is interesting shows they're working on the ground in
the UK. Importantly, right now we're
going to hear from George Brock, who is the chairman of the
Charitable Journalism Project, talking back in 2022 to the DCMS
committee Local News Inquiry. Why is it philanthropic funding
of journalism is less prevalent in the UK than other countries
like the US? Charitable Journalism Project
works on exactly this issue and we've we would like to see more
organisations, more local newsrooms to apply and succeed
as and registering as charities, which would give them a great
advantage. There is perhaps more money
sloshing around in the American system than may ever slosh
around in the British system. But if they're registered as
charities, they can take donations large and small.
There's a tax break and there's a reputational gain as well.
If you're a registered charity, obviously you look.
You're you're regulated. As far as I know, the Burngreve
Messenger is the only local news provider registered as a
charity. There's been some shift of
attitude on the part of the Charity Commission recently.
They've publicised the decision to register as a charity, the
Public Interest News Foundation, and they registered charitable
journalism projects as well. And we think that they are
starting to think more flexibly about this, but we would like to
see this opening wider and more publications go through.
It not wouldn't suit every local publication to do that, but we
think there are really quite a lot and our next project will
probably be to look at exactly what this number is.
We think there are quite a few local news projects which we've
gained from this and could you know strengthen that evidently
often or often very ropey finances.
There were more local newsrooms registering as charities.
Apparently news is not an industry anymore.
It's charitable. And this is a total inversion of
what it's supposed to be, right? Supposed to operate in a
marketplace and not be owned and controlled by philanthropic
wealth. Ultimately, the people that
these titles are supposed to be investigating and holding to
account, right? It's not just the state that's
the issue, it's the money side of the power money equation as
well. What else does charitable status
do? Well, first of all, it makes
them subject to greater regulation.
As we talked about Ofcom over the past few weeks, the Charity
Commission will also now be in the mix as well, right?
So that again is the method through which greater and
tighter control is going to be applied.
It's going to give you access supposedly to to free money.
So make it possible for big funds like Illuminate to inject
money into this ecosystem so that they can strengthen their
ropy finances, which was quite an interesting term that he
ended up, which is really the point here, right?
Which is why are their finances ropy?
It needs to do with this, right? It's the destruction of Western
economies in order to place more power and wealth into the hands
of a global 1%. That's the problem.
Yeah. And, and getting that global 1%
that has engineered this situation deliberately to start
giving money to local newspapers, it's not going to
fix the issue. It's going to exacerbate the
issue, isn't it? That's what's going to happen.
All right. And what else has been going on?
Well, Big Tech's entered the mix really importantly.
So here's some statistics looking at the advertising
revenues globally of publishers, TV channels, and Meta, AKA
Facebook. All right, so we can see that TV
has gone down about 25% since 2016.
These numbers run up to 2023. So it's a seven year period.
It's gone from 200 billion to around 150 billion big drop.
Publishing's even worse. It's gone from just under 100
billion global revenues to just over 50.
There's nearly a 50% drop in the publishing space.
And who's in the ascendant tech exemplified here by Meta.
You've gone from things around 25 billion revenue in 2016 to
nearly nearly 150 in 2023. And actually, it's surpassed
Meta's ad revenues, surpass the whole of the global fixed linear
television industry, all TV advertising.
Meta surpassed it in 2024, and it surpassed the publishing
industry in 2019. And what was the big driver that
really pushed it over the edge? It was COVID, wasn't it?
That's what happened. And what does your man George
Brock have to say about this from the Charity Journalism
Project? Well, he says in this article
from The Conversation, coronavirus is killing quality
journalism. Here's one possible lifeline.
He says the coronavirus crash should impel us as never before,
to look for new models, both editorial and commercial, and to
drive innovation, new ways of doing thing and imagination.
Upper gear. Never, as the saying goes, let a
really good crisis go to waste. That's a really interesting term
there from George Brooke. Sorry, not Greg Brock.
Look at me. I made a mistake on the slide.
And ultimately, I think this is, and I've used this term before,
I'm going to use it again. I think that this is what we're
looking at, right? The side effect is the intention
to COVID lockdown amongst everything else, by the way,
because I think the big tech was ultimately a way of destroying
the media ecosystem. COVID was a way of accelerating
that destruction and that was deliberate.
The side effect is the intention.
Yeah, CT, thank you very much, Michael Driver for that.
So much more to come on local media.
This really is the battleground where the the global agenda and
local people are going to have to have to slug it out.
So yeah. Absolutely.
And I mean, it's so stark on that graph, you know, seeing
that that leap up in 2020. Thank you very much, Ben.
Now, Diane, geoengineering, they will say they're not going to do
it. They don't plan to do it.
What are they planning to do? Well, I think we have some very
solid evidence of what they are planning to do and what they are
doing already. I want to start out by
introducing this by talking about a UKRI, which is the UK
Research and Innovation. It's a quango that controls the
majority of the public research funding in the UK.
UKR is non departmental public body sponsored by the Department
for Science, Innovation and Technology.
It is the largest research funder for public funding and
universities in UK. As I said, they ensure public
funding is invested in research that apparently will benefit the
whole of the UK and provide a clear return on investment for
hard working taxpayers. At least that's what they say on
their website. They have 9 different research
councils, mostly organised by subject areas.
They have one area that's called Innovate UK, which sounds like
one for been some of their recent funding and it's you
know, it's a lot of money, but some of the biggest projects in
recent years has been for example, the COVID AstraZeneca,
COVID jabs, clear energy projects, AI development and a
lot of work projects as well. So for example, one called the
Europe that gay porn built 1945 to 2000 that was awarded to
Birmingham City University for almost 850,000 lbs.
On the 4th of April there was a press release coming out that
said that £13.9 billion of research and development funding
had been unveiled to both in A to boost innovation and jobs and
growth and 8.8 billion of this was going to go to UKRI for
distribution to these 9 councils.
The Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle was quoted
in this press release and he said, quote, R&D research and
development is essential to fulfilling this government's
plan for change, whether in improving lives across the UK
and beyond through new life saving drugs, helping us build a
cleaner, greener future, or in exploring beyond our planet to
unlock new discoveries that keep us healthy, safe and prosperous
and much more besides. But actually, if you look at the
real numbers, the government has cut the funding for UKRI in the
new budget allocation with £300 million less than in the last
budget. And considering inflation,
that's actually a significant amount.
So that makes it interesting that in the Government announced
back in February that Professor Sir Ian Chapman had been
appointed the next CEO of UK RI with a renewed focus on economic
growth. Lord Balance, the Science
Minister, said that Sir Ian the new CE OS leadership experience,
scientific expertise and academic achievements make him
an exceptionally strong candidate to lead UKRI in
pursuing ambitious curiosity driven research as well as
innovations that will unlock new benefits for the UK's people and
drive our plan for change. We also thank Dame Adeline
Leiser, I'm hope I'm saying that correctly ahead of her stepping
down this summer, recognising her pivotal work in guiding UKR
I3 challenging times, notably during the COVID pandemic and
through the U KS return to participation in Horizon Europe.
So Horizon Europe is European wide public research funding
scheme that we had been taken out of for a few years because
of Brexit. Dame Leiser as we can see here
on the slide is predictably a World Economic Forum contributor
and her most popular piece for the WEF is called What should
motivate scientific research. Going back to 12th of March 2025
and UK Column news, Charles presented a really interesting
segment called the Net Zero Scam, now involves planetary
solvency and geoengineering. It started looking into the
Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge and I
had a feeling that this would be a good start to help look at
what actually gets funded by UKRI.
And of course view engineering is a topic of great interest to
our viewers. So as I said, there are 9
research councils within UKRI. One of them is called the
Natural Environment Research Council or I'll call it Nerk.
It funds a lot of climate change research at universities.
It announced last year that it would it would be funding for
£10.5 million from 2025 to 2030, a project called Modelling
Environmental Responses to Solar Radiation Management or SRM.
So that means blocking out the sun to keep temperature down
like we need at lower temperatures here in the UK.
These specific points under the funding would include climate
impacts of stratospheric aerosol intervention, which is spraying
with skies. I guess you could say that
climate effects of marine cap lab brightening using natural
analogues and mining of existing data to understand SRM and the
climate impacts of other novel or lesser studied SRM
techniques. So essentially they are going to
measure the cooling potential of these different options so that
we have a better idea of which, if any, should be explored
further. They said that they would only
be doing modelling and not actually applying techniques
with this funding. So talking to Professor Sean
Fitzgerald, who is the director of the Centre for Climate Repair
at the University of Cambridge, I really like this quote.
If we if those of us who actually know what
decarbonization might apply, he actually said in relation to
this funded project, I'll be so happy if we've decarbonized so
quickly that we don't need to apply this research.
So the Centre for Climate Repair is one of the major recipients
of this £10.5 million of funding.
So it's worth noting as well to go back into looking at the
history of where this all came from.
There are some government statements that we can see.
So these will links will be in the show notes.
Under the Coalition government a few years ago, there was a
policy paper published stating the government's view on
greenhouse gas removal technologies, which is really
what they're saying this all does.
And solar radiation management, it's said, quote, greenhouse gas
removal and solar radiation management are terms describing
a range of technologies that aim to counteract human caused
climate change by deliberate large scale intervention in the
Earth's natural systems. They are sometimes referred to
as geoengineering or climate engineering.
And they said in order to deliver on the commitment that
was made by the UK by signing the Paris Agreements, the UK has
legislated for net 0 emissions by 2050.
As we know, the Committee on Climate Change have made it
clear that greenhouse gas removal will be essential to
realising this target. So they think that they will be
having to use these techniques to offset remaining emissions in
the sectors where it is most difficult to cut them.
Specifically, the Comedian Climate Change Report, which was
published in 2016, talks about what need what need to be done
specifically, and it said that solar geoengineering proposals
include spraying reflective particles into the upper
atmosphere, stratospheric aerosols that again spraying us.
This process occurs naturally during very large volcanic
eruptions such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
Now I have a video clip here that mentions this Mount
Pinatubo eruption. It's from a seminar by the
Centre for Climate Repair, which is the organisation we're
talking about that received part of this 10 minute 10 and a half
1,000,000 lbs of funding at Cambridge University.
This talk was given on by birthday the 28th of March 2025.
The seminar was called Climate Interventions.
Colon a distraction or in a necessity question mark.
This portion that we're going to see was from Hugh Hunt.
Hugh is the deputy director of the Centre for Climate Repair
and a professor in the Department of Engineering at
Cambridge. He starts here talking about
another scientist called John Shepherds.
Let's hear what he had to say about John and about spraying.
Sadly I never met him but he he died a while ago.
John. 'S not dead.
Just point of information. John's not dead, he's happily
living in Snape. Well, that's news to me, really.
Oh, sorry, John, can we edit that up?
Oh, really? OK, fine.
Well, that's a bit embarrassing. Oh well, John.
OK, well, so John famously wrote at A at a conference this thing
which has become known as the napkin diagram.
And I've got a napkin here and I drew it out.
The napkin diagram. Funny, if you Google napkin
diagram this is what you get. You know you get this thing
about geoengineering. Napkin diagram says that
temperature on the left hand side, time on the horizontal
axis. Business as usual, BAU.
We're going to, things are going to get pretty bad pretty quick.
Emissions reductions alone, as Oliver was saying, is not going
to happen quickly. Carbon dioxide removal, you
know, again, that's going to take a bit of time to.
To to get going, but we're going to need to do it.
But whatever happens, we're left with this, this hump, this
overshoot as it's called, where we want to be able to do
something like solar radiation management to keep the
temperatures down. Emissions reductions alone is
not enough. Now I was involved in this SPICE
project, as Sean said, stratospheric particle injection
for climate engineering. Where we learnt from 1991, Mount
Pinatubo erupted in the. In the Philippines and caused a
degree of cooling or thereabouts for a year or thereabouts.
Could we imitate that in some way?
And so our spice project was looking at how we might use a, a
tethered balloon, perhaps to put some stuff into the stratosphere
to, to imitate the, the active effect of the volcano.
So the good news is John is dead.
The bad news is that he was involved in a project called
stratospheric particle injection for climate engineering.
But as I said, they're only apparently only doing modelling
of blocking out the sun with this particular project.
But what would it be look like to apply this actual research?
So I've got another final short flip here from Douglas Mcmartin
at Cornell University talking about blocking out the sun and
spraying the skies. In principle, you could do
something in space that's prohibitively expensive.
Almost certainly marine cloud brightening is the next most
frequently discussed idea. The picture here is of ship
tracks off of Europe's Atlantic Coast.
So that's formed by the pollution from a ship
interacting with water vapour in the atmosphere to form a cloud.
And you could. In principle, do that with by
spraying salt water into the clouds as well.
The this is less well understood.
It's actually one of the biggest uncertainties in climate science
is how clouds and aerosols interact.
Stratospheric aerosols spread globally, so it's inherently a
global solution. Marine cloud brightening is a
little different in that you could do it in a much more
targeted regime. That doesn't mean the effects
would stay in a specific local area, but they could certainly
be focused there. And in fact, Australia is
looking at this right now for cooling the Great Barrier Reef.
There's a third idea, which is cirrus cloud thinning that's not
actually reflecting sunlight, but avoiding trapping more heat.
Cirrus clouds actually trap heat, so they warm the planet.
And if you could thin them, that would allow more heat to escape.
That's currently very uncertain, but it has similar governance
issues. I don't think we need to say
just look up to see that they're spraying the skies because we
actually don't have evidence that ever whatever we see above
us is actual spraying the skies. But we can see that there are
plans for this. And in case of interest, the
Centre for Climate Repair is having a big conference on the
26th to the 28th of June this year called Arctic Repair 2025.
The main topics will be who decides, ethics, governance and
public perceptions. Above the clouds, stratospheric
aerosol injections. So there it is, the way ahead,
the future of Arctic repair, bright ideas, marine cloud
brightening and other interventions.
So I'm wondering what those other interventions will be.
I don't know, Charles. Maybe I should go to the
conference and find out. Do you think they would let me
in? That sounds a very good idea and
that will be a fine note to finish the news on today.
We have run out of time, but it does seem an awful lot of time,
effort and money to throw out something that the government
insists it's not going to do. But we will have this and plenty
of sides to talk about an extra. So if you are a member, please
do stay on to join us for extra. Also, if you are able, please
tune into the interview with Sam Bailey tomorrow at 1:00 because
that really will be of great insight into an extraordinary
situation. And otherwise, it just remains
for me to thank Ben. Thank you very much indeed for
joining me in the studio. Diane and Alex by video link and
you will all remain on the line for extra.
So please join us again and otherwise we will see you for
the news on Wednesday. Thanks very much indeed.
Bye bye.