Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 16th of
October 2024, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
I'm your host, Mike Robinson, joining me in the studio today,
Charles Mallett. Welcome to the program, Charles.
Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon.
And from Damascus with Vanessa Bailey, as usual on Wednesday.
Now, the Don Sturgis inquiry got kicked off on Monday as we
suggested it would, and well, a couple of interesting things
about it. But first we should make the
point that the Skripals were not there as expected.
There was a short statement read out in opening remarks on their
behalf. But let's just have a look at
what the inquiry itself says about disclosure of sensitive
information, or rather the protocol on measures to prevent
disclosure of sensitive information.
Because some of the hearings or the majority of them will be in
public, some of them will be closed sessions.
But what they've said here is that there will be two video
links to afford those not present in the hearing room with
access to the hearing, a live link and a delayed link, which
will be delayed by 5 minutes. Now that has since this, this
document was published, has been upgraded to 10 minutes.
So there's a 10 minute delay on the, on the YouTube feed.
And that's so that if somebody says something inadvertently
during the open sessions, they can quickly shut the YouTube
feed off and make sure that that doesn't go out.
If we put that back on screen, then it goes on to say the
public and media attending the hearing remotely will do so by
means of the delayed link. And they say that members of the
public and the media who are present in the hearing room may
not communicate outside the hearing room for the duration of
the hearing by phone, e-mail, instant message or other means.
But here's the real clincher for you.
This is the media operational note, no audio or video
recordings may be made of the hearing.
This includes screenshots if you're watching proceedings on
the YouTube channel. So now I haven't come across
this type of thing in an enquiry of this type before.
I don't know if you've got any thoughts of that, Charles.
Well, it's almost as though there might be something to
hide, but that couldn't be the case because it's an inquiry.
Well, the question is what kind of inquiry is it anyway, if you
want to follow along, since we're not allowed to show you
any video clips or footage from it, there is a YouTube channel
which is called the Don Sturgis Inquiry.
There are three videos there so far, but you've got to click on
the live tab on on the menu at the top there.
There's nothing if you when you arrive at the the home page for
that. So do follow along if you wish.
Now, what we should say here is here is a an ex a tweet from
Channel 5 News saying Don Sturgis, who died after being
poisoned in Aimsbury, was described today as an
intelligent and kind woman. I'm sure she was.
Her death, of course, was tragic.
But it's clear from the opening statements of all the barristers
involved in this that this is not an inquiry into her death.
This is is a propaganda exercise.
So the decision is already made about who's responsible.
It was of course Putin. None of the anomalies in the
Skripal case itself nor Don Sturges death are being are
actually being investigated. They are presuming that it's
already established that it was Novichok.
They're presuming it's already established that it was the
Russians that did it. And so it becomes a bit unclear
as to what the actual outcome of this or what the what the
purpose of this is, other than to reinforce the narrative that
Russia has carried out a chemical weapons attack on the
streets of the UK. But there are still many, many
questions. So this is the original
Wiltshire Police statement on a major incident declared
following ongoing incident in Amesbury.
And if we just highlight a little bit of text here, it says
it was initially believed that the two patients fell I'll after
using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated
batch of drugs. Now, of course, they go on to
say that the further testing is now ongoing to establish the
substance which led to these patients becoming I'll.
This was the statement from the police.
We'll see what the latest on the police position on this
statement is in a minute. But before we get to that, let's
just look at this article from the website of the Clinical
Services Journal. This is response unit called
Salisbury Hospital declares major incident.
And if we look at the text of this down here highlighted, it's
it's small, I appreciate it. But it says it followed an
incident ours earlier in which a man and a woman were exposed to
a substance in the city centre. But that wasn't the original
version of this document. Because if we go back to the
Wayback Machine and we look at what that paragraph said in an
earlier version of the document, it said it followed an incident
earlier in which a man and a woman were exposed to the drug
fentanyl in the city centre. The opioid is 10,000 times
stronger than that, sorry, stronger than heroin.
And that around the same time was sort of echoed in various
news reports. So this is Sky News, Amesbury
poisoning. Here's what we know about the
Novichok victims. And they quoted a friend of
Charlie Rowley and Don Sturgis who did not want to be
identified, saying we're all pretty serious drug addicts.
And if we're if they were withdrawing and it looked like
heroin, they would have injected it straight away without a
second thought. Now, I have no knowledge of what
actually happened that day, of course, because I wasn't there.
But my point is that none of this is being considered in the
inquiry, at least based on what was being said in the opening
statements. And just to bring the Salisbury
Journal on here, this is from today or yesterday.
Yesterday, sorry Don Sturgis inquiry police apologised for
overdose claim. So the police are now
apologising for that original statement.
So as I say, many, many questions still to be asked and
answered here, but this inquiry doesn't seem to want to do that.
Now the question then is, is what is the role of Porton Down
in all this? Because of course, as they had
to acknowledge in the opening comments in the inquiry, Porton
Down only a few miles up up the road from the from both these
incidents. And let's just consider the type
of things that happened at Porton Downs.
So this is from the Mirror. This is from 2019.
Almost 50,000 animals killed during military testing at
secret UK research base. So scientists have blown up
pigs, infected monkeys with biological weapons and poisoned
Guinea pigs with nerve gas. And so this article goes on to
say 50,000 animals killed between 10/20/10 and 2017, an
average rate of 20 animals per day for seven years straight.
And they quote to deliberately expose live animals to
compounds, simulated blasts and biological pathogens which are
known and indeed developed to cause extreme suffering and
death. Guinea pigs had a nerve agent
called VX applied to their backs to see how another chemical
known as bioscavenger would alter the effects.
Also used anthrax, mustard gas and other chemical weapons.
The article went on to say the beasts were shot in different
parts of the body with rifles. Army medics then fought to keep
them alive. Ministry of Defence defence the
practice claiming it provides doctors with vital training
which has helped save the lives of British troops injured in
battle. Pigs were also killed in
explosive tests at Port and Down as part of a research programme
to develop more effective body armour for troops serving in
Iraq and Afghanistan. And so my question is, what are
the limits that Port and Down staff are prepared to go to?
And is this inquiry going to investigate the possibility that
the Novichok, if there was Novichok, didn't come from
Russia, but in fact came from Portland down?
There are many, many questions to be asked around this.
The Skripal poisoning, alleged poisoning and the alleged
poisoning of Don Sturgis. And if you want to get more
background on this, we've mentioned it before, but we'll
keep suggesting that people read this the day of the Skripal.
This is by Tim Norman. Tim will be at our event on
Saturday, I'm glad to say, but the day of the Skripal is is
listing basically a timeline of all the mainstream media reports
around the Skripal affair with a view to you getting an idea of
the inconsistencies, the the gaps, the the problems with the
whole narrative. And if we put that back then
please. And then the other article that
I would encourage you one other article.
I would encourage you to read a script.
I'll a Russian web or a Roosey Webb and Alex Thompson here
asking about Porton down and asking some serious questions
about it. And also you might like to have
a look at Pablo Miller the the people working alongside the
real James Bond. Fantastic article by Johnny
Vebmore on the man, the MI six man who was in charge of the
Skripals or at least of Sergei Skripal while he was here.
And so we will continue to watch this inquiry with interest.
But just to finish it off, I, I was interested to, to notice
when the, all the barristers were sitting in the inquiry
room, this man. So this is Jason Beer KC and it
was this, you know, note that this is this photograph is not
from the Dawn Sturgess inquiry, by the way, this is from the
post office Horizon IT inquiry. And I was just fascinated by
this man because he must have, he's either a robot or he's AI
or he's got the brain the size of the planet because just
staggered by the number of inquiries that he is currently
involved with. So aside from being the lead
counsel at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, he's also
lead counsel for NHS England at the COVID-19 inquiry.
He's leading counsel for the Secretary of State for Levelling
Up, Housing and Communities at the Grenfell Tower inquiry.
He's the leading counsel for NHS England at the Thoroughwall
inquiry. He's the leading counsel for
Greater Manchester Police at the Andrew Malkinson inquiry.
He's leading counsel for counterterrorism policing SE at
the Don Sturgis inquiry. He's leading counsel to the
inquiry for the Jalal Uddin inquiry, and he's the leading
counsel for a group of undercover police officers at
the Undercover policing inquiry. And if anybody's been watching
any of these, if you've been following the Post Office
Horizon inquiry in particular, you see the scale of the, the,
the amount of paperwork that they've got to these guys have
got to actually understand in order to ask the questions
they're asking. You get an impression of the
kind of quantity of material that that you've got to know off
the back of your hand if you're running or at least taking part
in that number of inquiries. It's quite incredible.
Very, very remarkable in this day and age.
And what a what a credit. Amazing that people's brains do
still function. Some, some peoples, yes.
Okay, let's move on to the issue of war and nuclear war here.
And we're back in March, we were highlighting that Royal Air
Force Lake and Heath is hosting a bunch of new F30 fives from
the United States. And we were asking the question
in March whether that would include the return of nuclear
weapons. And it certainly looks like it's
heading that way. So I want to highlight this
article from the Federation of American Scientists.
And the headline is NATO tactical nuclear weapons
Exercise and base upgrades. So basically there is a nuclear
weapons exercise going on at the moment.
The Russians are particularly unhappy about it, as you can
imagine. And it's Co hosted by Belgium
and the Netherlands. It's includes Belgium, Denmark,
Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
The exercise coincides with major upgrades underway at most
of the nuclear bases in Europe, says the author of this article.
This modernization involves security upgrades, the
underground vaults that store the US nuclear weapons,
underground cables, and nuclear command and control systems and
facilities needed for the new F35A nuclear capable fighter
bomber. He says that several of the
nuclear bases in Europe have recently seen construction of a
special loading pad for use by the USC 17 aircraft to transport
nuclear weapons and service equipment.
And he says that absolutely, these silos are being or these
silos movies isn't the right word stories.
Vaults. Vaults are being upgraded at
Lake and Heath as well. So it looks very much likely if
we're not there already, they're coming very soon.
OK, let's move over to the Middle East and Vanessa and,
well, the latest atrocities. Yes, this is the latest atrocity
which happened in central Gaza in an area called Darrell Bala,
which has been receiving multiple refugees.
Sorry, just need to plug in from other areas of Gaza.
Oh, no, no. What's?
Wrong. It's.
Can you still see me? Yes, we can still see you.
We can still hear you. OK, I'll try to keep going.
We can't hear you anymore, I'm afraid.
And that has OK, Well, I'm afraid that has completely
frozen. So we do apologise for that.
We will come back to that in a minute if we can.
But let's let's let's. Go on.
Just go on through. We'll go on to a segment about
the latest update on the armoured vehicle capability from
the Ministry of Defence and indeed a recent announcement by
Defence Infrastructure Organisation that they've had a
fit out for a training facility. And I would venture that when
you're going so far as to mention how much the building
weighs at 226 tonnes, you might be skipping past some
information that might be a bit more pertinent and more
relevant. So this is put out by General
Dynamics who rewarded the contract for the Ajax family of
armoured vehicles which has been in the making for a considerable
period of time since 2010, being developed at their site at
Merthyr Tydfil in Wales. And effectively there are going
to be 6 variants of it at a cost of £5.5 billion to the taxpayer.
They're going to be the split across 589 vehicles and you see
here the different capabilities for different combat operations.
One of the things to note of course is that the fighting
vehicle has a 40 millimetre cannon with new ammunition,
therefore will not be able to use any of the ammunition that
warrior the previous infantry fighting vehicle or released
that that's still in service was firing 30 millimetre cannon.
But it does have sort of compressed ammunition.
So that should be a a space saving initiative.
But this has been going for an awfully long time now.
And it's so such a protracted period of time that in fact the
effectively the the scheme against which Ajax was drawn up
is now effectively outmoded. We go back to 2021 to look at
the UK Defence Journal talking about warnings being ignored
over safety issues. And this was something that
Jeremy Quinn, then procurement minister, reported to the House
of Commons about describing it as a vital invent, vital
investment. But he's been deeply concerned
about progress on this troubled project, which has been running
for already 11 years at that point.
He goes on to say that a review into it from a cultural
perspective suggests that the Army did not believe it was
potentially causing harm to people, especially from
vibration, as it was tacitly expected that soldiers can and
should endure such issues. Which is a damning verdict on
the Ministry of Defence and the British Army's treatment of its
personnel. We've now got defence equipment
and support talking about the innovative threat detection
system for Ajax. They are cagey on the detail of
this, exactly where it's come come from and who has made it,
but it's called Accusonic and it's meant to be able to detect
threats. Whether it will still be able to
do that by the time it's actually rolled out remains to
be seen. But they talk about the six
variants I referred to earlier and they're due this again going
back to 2018. They're due to come into service
in 2020 already. We're way behind that.
This is reinforced by the House of Commons document on it last
year, 2023, again referring to the troubled armoured vehicle
program. So when will Ajax be in service?
They asked at that point and the then Minister for Procurement,
Alex Chalk set a new timeline. We'll see if this gets stuck to
but initial operating capability between July and December next
year 2025 and full operating capability between October 2028
and September 2029. And just to put this in context,
in terms of the value of the contract as I say at 5.5
billion, I think it bears significance to look at Ukraine
and indeed the military and non military assistance being given
in the form of what's called support, UK support to Ukraine
and of the enormous figures involved in that.
We see that we are committed militarily to sustain a three
billion a year aid commitment, military aid, until 2030 to 2031
and for as long as it takes now. It's not clear at all how long
that will turn out to be or indeed what relevance, if any,
Ajax and all its variants will have on the battlefield,
wherever they may be by that point.
So this is where investment in our own defence capabilities are
going, but effectively at what cost when we set that against
the enormous sums of money that would be being committed to
Ukraine. And of course there are that the
safety issues with the personnel that have been involved in the
testing over not a prolonged period of time.
So particularly in relation to the the sound and vibration and
the effects thereof, there seems to be a lot of other teething
issues to be brought out with regard to this Ajax program.
Yes, OK. Thank you, Charles and Vanessa,
welcome back. Let's to the Middle East.
I'm so sorry. Israel does seem to be
interfering with our communications here and in
Lebanon. So this was the the latest
heinous massacre. As I mentioned, it was in the
centre of Gaza and Dar al Bala, right outside a hospital where
many refugees had gathered for shelter but also for treatment.
Many of them were on beds on IV. Israel bombed the entire area
and the videos that have been circulating are horrific.
You can see literally people being burned alive.
Nobody could get close to them to try and help rescue them.
Of course, there's no real civil defence capability in Gaza
amongst the Palestinians. And one of the bodies that you
can see in the multiple videos is of Shaban Al Dalu, 20 years
old, died along with his mother after burning alive.
Following Israel's attacks on the tents next door to the
hospital, he was a software engineering student who
continued studying and working hard throughout Israel's brutal
war in Gaza. And he had memorized the whole
Quran, so hardly what can be described as a Hamas fighter or
a terrorist. He was one of the victims caught
on video in the flames with his IV still attached to his arm.
And I just want to play a video that was put out by a young
Palestinian journalist in Gaza expressing how she felt about
the latest. The.
And there was very little reaction from Western regimes.
And in fact, this statement was put out by the US Department of
Defence on the deployment of 1/3 battery to Israel.
So effectively now what the United States is doing is
continuing in its ironclad guarantee of the security of
Israel, even while Israel is of course, clearly committing a
genocide. So let's just have a look at
what this means. So you can see there the key air
defenses, the Iron Dome, the Arrow 3, the Patriot, David
Sling and now the third which has a 3000 kilometre range.
But as someone pointed out, and he wasn't the only one on X, the
Mutable this is that there are just 72 interceptors and if you
do the usual math of two interceptors per missile and
around 80% success rate, then it means that it will take to
overcome this is 28 missiles and they don't even have to be real
ones. Decoys will do Pathetic.
So you know, one has to actually ask, there's a hundred U.S.
military personnel. Are they acting as human Shields
for Israel in the case of an attack from Iran, if Israel
attacks Iran. So effectively they're there as
human Shields for Israel. At the same time, on the
question of Israelis expansionist policy, Balazar
Smotrich, who's the finance minister, provocatively claims
the future of Israel involves expansion as far as Damascus.
During an interview for a French documentary, Israel Extremists
in Power, aired by ARTE, Israeli finance minister basically said
that Israel has the right, under religious pretext, to expand its
territory not only towards Damascus, but also, of course,
into other countries in the region.
And as if echoing this, Lord Peter Ricketts, who was a former
national security adviser to the British government, went on the
BBC and said this. I think Israel has got to the
point now where they feel there are no constraints on them.
They have spent a year, they've still not done the job in Gaza.
They've had to go back into the north of Gaza, around the
Jabalia refugee camp there, I think for the third time, and I
think they're feeling that. They're effectively no American.
Pressure on them anymore? I think the Americans gave up
pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza. Which is.
Still nowhere near happening. They've accepted the fact that
Israel is now in South Lebanon and trying to destroy
Hezbollah's capability, and the Americans are reinforcing Israel
against the possibility of another Iranian strike as and
when the Israeli retaliation against Iran comes.
So I don't think that Netanyahu thinks there's any limit now as
far as what he can do in terms of political constraints.
I mean, the terrible casualty toll suggests that they are
really not prioritizing protection of civilians either,
and that while he's got momentum and he's doing it in Lebanon,
he's got to go as far as he can. Whilst the British government is
also not doing anything to stop it or prevent it.
And another shocking statistic that came out this week from the
UN Human Rights OCHA. Gaza is home to the largest
number of amputee children in modern history.
Just let that sink in and let's listen to the representative of
OCHA at the UN. Humanitarian partners report
that women and children are hard hit by the trauma of this war
each day. According to UNRWA, 10 children
are losing 1 or both of their legs.
Gaza is home to the largest cohort of child amputees in
modern history. Women are three times more
likely to miscarry and three times more likely to jot to die
from childbirth. And yet humanitarians are not
giving up. Madam President, we also remain
deeply concerned about the worsening situation in the West
Bank over the past year. Israeli military operations,
along with a rampant settler violence and house demolitions,
have led to sharp rise in fatalities, widespread
destruction and forced displacement.
So yes, dreadful situation. Yes.
And Vanessa, in the meantime, we've more war drums being
buying for war with Iran. I mean, you were talking about
that a second ago, but more and more voices sort of trying to
push for this. Yeah, absolutely.
This was something that I picked up on and wrote about on my sub
stack so people can go there. But this was an article
published in for Chatham House. Lasting Israel, Palestine peace
will not be possible without a new policy to neutralize the
Iranian threat. So who was this written by?
He's a former British diplomat ahead of mission in Burma,
Jerusalem, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia.
Sir John Jenkins, described as a Tehran focused policy.
He lays out the potential hybrid warfare plan, explaining that a
new paradigm is needed which centres on Tehran and its malign
influence. Ideally, this would mean a
change in Iran itself. An extension of the current
conflict to the country could destabilise the regime,
something the leadership fears in the light of its massive
domestic unpopularity. Which of course, is not true.
But let's have a look at how Peter Ford, who's a speaker on
Saturday, responded to this with some sting in his commentary.
Because he knows Jenkins, of course, from his time himself in
Syria. Peter Ford was ambassador to
Syria. He basically says Jenkins comes
from a long line of British diplomats who simply could not
abide the idea of a strong, independent Iran.
Iranians will never forget the British role in the overthrow of
the uppity Mossadegh and the installation of the brutal Shah.
Nor for nothing is Britain known as the Little Satan to Iranians.
That a former British ambassador could write a piece like this
without even pretending to be dismayed by the appalling human
suffering being inflicted on Palestinians and Lebanese, and
whose only glimmer of humanity comes in a reference to October
the 7th, is numbingly shocking. In the Westminster, Tel Aviv,
Abu Dhabi, Washington world in which Jenkins moves, however, he
will get a pat on the back for helping to condition British
public opinion for the coming war with Iran.
Because that is what his article is really about and why it was
commissioned. So chilling words there from
Peter. Absolutely.
And as you say, Peter will be speaking as part of the media on
Trial SEC segment of the event on Saturday.
So looking forward to that. Sticking with Iran, in a sense,
here we have the the fantastic David Lammy and Joseph Burrell,
his sidekick from the European Union, because as we know, we
have left the European Union and we don't have anything more to
do with them. While they were in their
statement, their joint statement talking about Iran, we condemn
Iranian attacks on Israel and supply of ballistic missiles to
Russia for use against Ukraine. And we're committed to sanction
Iranian regime on that account because we've got to make sure
that everybody understands that Iran is involved in both these
conflicts and therefore it is a target for the future.
But the other thing that I just wanted to mention very briefly
with these two was, of course, Britain's ongoing determination
to support the idea of European defence.
And the reason for this, of course, is because the spectre
of a potential Trump presidency and Trump's attitude to NATO is
making everybody in on the European continent a bit
worried, shall we say. And it's they're attempting to
use this possibility as momentum to continue with their European
defence project, which really it doesn't seem like anybody in
Europe particularly wants because they keep trying to push
forward. I'm talking about the European
Commission here. It keeps trying to push, push it
forward. And the member states themselves
seem to be a little reluctant. But anyway, if you want the the
context for this again, I go back to the UK column website
and have a look for the the EU military unification page and
well, you'll get a timeline there of how this has built up
over the years. OK, and Vanessa, back to you
then and Syria. Now you're mute.
Oh, sorry, I have my fault. It's my fault.
Go for it. OK.
Yeah, We were talking about the closure of the border Rd.
between Lebanon and Syria and you and I, Mike, were talking
about the fact if we can just play the video, we can see the
damage that is still there. Lebanon, Syria.
And you'll be glad to know that I was actually going to try and
walk from one side of the crater to the other.
I was planning it all. And then the US influenced
officials in Lebanon shut it entirely.
So clearly, they don't want us to be able to get out of Syria
or for Lebanese to find refuge in Syria.
So I want to come on to an update on what's going on in
Syria. This is the director of the
Russian intelligence service, Sergei Narishkin, who's been
speaking about the agreements between Ukraine and the armed
terrorist groups in the Syrian Arab Republic, which are being
made with the help and blessing of the American and British
intelligence and with the tacit approval of the Turks.
He's talking predominantly about the northwest.
The Kiev regime is supplying terrorist organisations and
extremist groups with attack and reconnaissance drones in
addition to ammunition in exchange for recruiting its
militants and sending them to fight in Ukraine.
Russian intelligence has also monitored numerous
communications between Ukrainian military intelligence envoys and
leaders of the armed terrorist groups dominated by al Qaeda
active in the Syrian Idlib governorate, which represents a
fertile environment and a large incubator for them, and who
target on an almost daily basis the Syrian Arab Army and the
Russian forces operating on Syrian territory.
So I just want to he He also mentioned the training by the US
of terrorist forces in the Altarnev base on the border with
Jordan. But let's just have a look at
the video of the forces training in Idlib.
The fact that their faces are covered in the uniforms they're
wearing, despite they're wearing the headbands of various armed
groups, would actually suggest to me, and this is only
speculation, that these our foreign mercenaries or even
special forces from the regime change cartel.
But I just again wanted to show this map.
So the frontline now is extending in that northwest
corner. The Syrian Arab Army has been
moving heavy equipment and artillery and tanks to that
area, so clearly starting a new frontline.
What that does to some extent is leave vulnerable the southern
area, which I'd already talked about last week for a ground
invasion by Israel. And in fact, if we look at
recent reports both from Israeli press and from Reuters, so
Jerusalem Post was claiming that IDF tanks had crossed into
Syria. That has been denied by the
various governors in that area, Syrian in that area.
But Reuters has reported that Israel's demining near the Golan
signals wider front against Hezbollah, but also, in my
opinion, signals the possibility of an attempt at some kind of
land grab in the South in the near future.
OK, thank you, Vanessa. Thank you very much.
Now, uh, let's talk about gender.
This is related to warfare, as you'll see in a second.
But let's talk about gender because in Germany earlier in
the year they passed a piece of legislation which is called the
Act of Self Determination. This replaces the Transsexual
Act of 1980 on the 1st of November 2024.
So it comes into full force in a couple of weeks time.
The change of gender entry doesn't have to be permanent.
So basically you can decide if you're a male, You can decide
you're you're going to be a female today, but you're only
allowed to make that decision once per year.
So after a year you can you can decide to switch back if you
want. If you are a parent, well
basically your child cannot make their own decision until they're
14 years old. But if you want to make a
decision for them at a younger age then you can do that.
But once they're aged 5, then they have to be able to say that
they are happy for that change to be made.
And when you go to register that change, you've got to bring the
child with you. But as I say, from the age of
14, young people are allowed to determine their own gender.
If parents decide to oppose a 14 or 15 year old changing their
own gender, then that could be taken to the family courts for a
decision. And in the case of people that
are under 18, then they don't have to wait the year for the
for the if they want to change back, they can change as many
times as they like at any time. But what's this got to do with
warfare? Well, the issue for the German
government is whether somebody who's born and male and who may
be subject to conscription in the not too distant future would
be able to simply change their gender as a result of this
legislation and avoid the draft. And well, unfortunately that is
not going to be the case. So basically if you're born male
and you decide you want to be a female, then you need to be
making that decision at least two months before there would be
any conscription. Because once you pass that to
two two-month threshold, any attempt to change gender would
not be considered and you would be in fact conscripted as a male
and forced to join the military. So there you go.
What do you think? I think the positive I would
draw from this is that it is so absurd that it does at least
effectively turn the whole idea of changing gender into a
complete mockery, and I think that is a step in the right
direction. The rest of it is complete
nonsense. Yes, OK, thank you.
OK, let's move on. If you like what the UK column
does, support.ukcolumn.org is the place to go.
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website. And of course you can look at
any comments that are there. Now yesterday this interview
went out with Mark Anderson and Daniel knew.
Speaking of Daniel knew was speaking about his son's refusal
to wear United Nations colours while he was in the US Army.
Now a lot of people don't realise that the United Nations
doesn't have any military of its own.
It simply grabs hold of military personnel from member states.
They put a blue hat on and away they go.
But Daniel's son refused to wear the blue hat so that caused
problems. So do watch that if you if you
possibly can. It's on the website at the
moment. Tomorrow we have an interview
with Diane. He's interviewed Kate Deeming
from the Scottish Union for Education about Scotland's
Curriculum for Excellence. We've got a short excerpt.
Consent should not be taught to children, right?
Because children can't consent. But The thing is that consent in
and of itself is the wrong word to teach the kids.
Because kids cannot understand consequences, they've lacked the
developmental capacity to understand consequences, so
therefore consent is the wrong thing.
It also does not acknowledge the power dynamic which is inherent
in childhood, which is where children are beholden to please
adults. That's an evolutionary thing.
Children want to please adults. This idea of child LED is a lie.
It's a complete another lie because children will follow.
Children are people pleasers. Children will defer to the
adults who who kind of give them indications about what the right
think is, what the right answer is.
OK, so that's 1:00 PM tomorrow. Now, of course, on Saturday we
are hosting our live event in Bristol.
Everybody should have details of venue and so on, everybody
that's a ticket holder. But what we noticed today was
that there were people apparently selling tickets for
this on Facebook. And we just want to say that we
won't be, we won't be honouring any tickets that are sold via
Facebook because we have no idea whether those are genuine sales
or whether they're attempts to scam people.
This is very common on social media now.
So if you've bought a ticket for this on Facebook, please contact
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record of this, we can't allow people in.
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charge for the light for live stream access on Saturday.
But the reason for that is because it's costing us money to
run it. So we've got to cover our costs
on that. So we'll have details on the
website, on the UK column website later on today.
Now, I just wanted to mention that the alternative view live
stream, which was supposed to be happening on Sunday, the 10th of
November has now been postponed. This is smart cities in the
surveillance agenda update. Mark Anderson was taking part in
that long with paper King, John Kitson and David Dubine.
They're going to announce a new date for this in the next few
days and we'll keep you posted on that.
But tickets will still be valid for the for the future date.
And well, where does that take us then?
Take us to harvests. It does and to those of you that
have been watching UK column throughout 2024, this will not
be a surprise. But reported now that there is
considerably more data in the harvest across the United
Kingdom. This season has been abominable,
or at least that's the way in which it's being reported.
We have the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit here
describing it as being the second worst harvest on record
with fears mounting for 2025. And their analyst Tom Lancaster
says this year's harvest was a shocker and climate change is to
blame. While shoppers have been partly
insulated, Britain's farmers have borne the brunt of the
second worst harvest on record. Well, it might not just be
farmers bearing the brunt because it will lead to food
shortages in some way or other. It is clear that climate change
is the biggest threat to UK food security.
This is Tom Lancaster speaking again.
These impacts are only going to get worse until we reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions to net 0 in order to stop the warming
that is driving these extremes. Now, the reason he's saying that
is because he has drawn data from the World Weather
Attribution, which effectively ascribes everything that could
be considered negative to climate change, and by
extension, anthropogenic climate change.
In other words, man's activities emitting carbon dioxide that
have influenced the climate in such a way as to make everything
bad and we should pay for it. But he who pays the piper calls
the tune. The World weather attribution is
of course funded from many different areas, but
particularly from Imperial College and the Grantham
Institute. So I just thought it'd be worth
looking at what it is that they state their position to be.
They talk about their mission being to lead on world class
research, policy, training and innovation that supports
effective action on climate change.
Not in the least bit objective. Now the money behind the
Grantham Institute comes from this man here, Jeremy Grantham
of the Grantham Foundation. And he says when Malthus was
born there were a billion people on the earth, when I was born
there about 2.2 billion. And this has tripled in my life
lifetime. I've become a Malthusian after
my work on bubbles. His essay on the principles of
population simply simply makes the point that any animal
species has a huge redundancy in its capability in growing its
population. So Grantham there on effectively
one side of the fence with regard to population, His belief
therefore following that of Malthus, that an increase in
food production will lead in some ways to a sort of
depopulation event via famine or similar catastrophe.
Also providing funding to this organization, which is informing
these sort of catastrophic predictions in terms of climate
and how they'll affect harvest is Jeff Bezos and his Bezos
Earth Fund. Unlike Grantham, Bezos believes
that the human population should be increased, but his solution
to that is to create fake food. His Centre for Sustainable
Protein and obviously not launched today but when this was
announced, will develop innovative and evidence based
solutions through design, delivery and commercialization
of alternative food products. As I say, fake food, these are
not foodstuffs in the true sense the word.
They are not therefore full of nutrients that are available to
human human beings in so far as bio availability is concerned.
But he says that they're economically and environmentally
friendly. I think that's highly
questionable. Nutritious, almost certainly not
affordable. Well, we'll see.
And tasty. No comment.
But this is how UK column considered the other factors at
play here as opposed to just climate change and indeed just a
poor weather outcome. This is the 27th of March of
this year. Well, that's actually a huge
change from what they said. First of all, the other thing
they're going to be doing is they specifically that suit
protect food security and ensure we continue to produce at least
60% of the food we consume here in the UK to include a new
annual UK wide food security index to capture and present the
data needed to monitor levels of food security.
So this was pointed out to Defra back in January.
It seemed clear to UK column at least that this risk lay ahead.
And I got in touch with them and I asked them specifically
highlighted there in the red box, what is the minimum
permitted area by hectare of the utilised agricultural area and,
and as a percentage of that, the croppable area.
So the, the, the area that's actually using used to produce
food. What measures does Defra have in
place to avoid a significant reduction?
Defra replied at the time to, to clarify that there was no upper
limit on the funding available for any of those schemes.
Not all that land is likely to be suitable and so on.
So quite clearly, as I said, you know, disingenuous from the
start, they didn't qualify that at the at the outset.
And then they went on to say that they do not expect this to
change as more farmers sign up to our farming scheme.
So Defra in effect have been massively caught out by this,
and indeed that does seem to be the case.
I will just reinforce effectively what's turned out to
be a not altogether impossible prediction to make from the
agricultural land use statistics most recently provided on the
26th of September of this year, in which the Defra reports that
the utilised agricultural area, which I was just talking about,
has decreased by 1%. But that's of course a
misleading figure. I should state that this is for
England and not the whole of the United Kingdom.
Arable crops within that down by 6.4% and underlined here.
The uncropped arable area has increased by 100 and 7%.
It's gone up 581,000 hectares. That means that all that area is
now not being cropped and this is a direct result of the
environmental schemes that I was referring to back in late March.
Wheat yield down by or sorry, wheat yield down by 11 percent,
also down by 26% and horticultural crops down by
three 3.2%. This was entirely manufactured
by the environmental Land Management schemes that were
made available to farmers who decided they would rather de
risk their business. So here we see that the area of
uncropped arable land has increased by 100 and 7% to
581,000 hectares. Of this area, 276,000 hectares
were left as bare fallow and the remaining 305,000 hectares were
left for environmental benefit. Well, I think again, that's
highly questionable and at what cost.
And I just leave you with the consideration that the red arrow
there pointing at the massive population increase that the
United Kingdom has seen over the last two years in particular,
and indeed, of course, its projections, which are never,
ever mentioned in any of these statistics provided by
government. So food shortage, as I say, in
some way or other, seem extremely likely in the near
future. Now, a topic we've been covering
for many, many years is constitutional issues, and the
House of Lords is a very key part of that.
Now, of course, in 1999, Tony Blair decided to enact a piece
of constitutional vandalism and removed the majority of
hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
And of course, many people think that this is a good thing
because the House of Lords, say, is completely undemocratic,
particularly when you've got hereditary peers in there,
they're unelected and so on. But that's misunderstanding the
role of the House of Lords, which is there to hold the House
of Commons to account to some degree.
And when you pack the House of Lords, instead of hereditary
peers, you pack them with party representatives, then of course,
who is actually getting held to account?
And the answer is no one. And just to make sure everybody
understands the situation with respect to the House of Lords,
the House of Lords since the Parliament Act 1911, I'll just
read the the text from the Parliament website here.
The Parliament Act 1911 effectively abolished the power
of the House of Lords to reject legislation or to amend it in a
way unacceptable to the House of Commons.
And most bills could be delayed by no more than three
parliamentary sessions or two calendar years.
And so the best that the House of Lords can do as it stands at
the moment is to delay things. But the whole point of the House
of Lords is to amend or make suggestions and to to place
limitations on the power of the House of Commons.
And of of course that, as I say, is impossible if you don't have
people that are actually independent in it.
So the having hereditary peers in there was not necessarily a
bad thing. We can put this back up on
screen now. The work of Tony Blair from 1999
is now being completed by Keir Starmer with the House of Lords
Hereditary Peers Bill, which is now getting its second reading,
which will get the rest of them out and will only leave the
Parliament the party stooges in place.
Absolutely. And I I think well, I mean new
extension of of the blast policy as you say and proper instance
of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
But also I think that one another thing that's lost hugely
in this is of course, for hereditary peer to sit in the
House of Lords, they have to have gone through a process of
election which does put them in a different category from all
the people who are stuffed in there, whether or not they want
to be and indeed are there to effectively perpetuate the
narrative. And the other thing, of course,
is that in reducing or at least eliminating hereditary peers,
the likelihood of getting a, a proper geographical spread of
people represented is further reduced.
And also there's the by extension, the consideration of
what place the monarchy has in this country.
If if if the House Lords is being released, hereditary
appears being described as indefensible on the basis of
having had an accident of birth which has put them there.
The next subject on the agenda, surely, is why do we have a
monarchy? Good question.
Yes. Anyway, that will take us into
effectively yet another instance in which net zero must be
challenged or questioned. And this is with the
announcement today or in fact possibly yesterday.
My apologies that Google have gone in into a plan to put a
nuclear clean energy agreement in with Kairos power.
Always worth looking at the words Kairos of course being the
ancient Greek word for seizing a critical moment.
Indeed, I think they probably have done, but we go on to have
a look at what they say, which is that the grid needs new
electricity sources to support AI technologies that are
powering major scientific advantages.
The agreement helps a new technology to meet energy needs
cleanly and reliably. So note, it's for AI
technologies. Absolutely no mention that
nuclear might be used to provide power for people, but they offer
a clean round the clock power source that can help us reliably
meet electricity demands with carbon free energy every hour of
every day. Advancing these power sources in
close partnership with supportive local communities
will rapidly Dr. the decarbonisation of electricity
grids around the world. And I've highlighted or rather
put in bold the particular text there because of course the
undertone is very much that the supposed push for renewable
energy in the form of particularly solar and wind
power is for naughty because of course it cannot be relied upon
round the clock, which has been pointed out from the start.
And that will never change regardless of how many battery
energy system storage systems are put in place in all the
wrong sorts of areas. And again, the idea they're
going to be supportive communities, well, maybe, but
but why would they be supporting such thing without some sort of
financial incentive? Also, this is effectively
possibly in line to to compete with Bill Gates's foray into
providing small scale nuclear power.
I spoke about this back in 26th of June and his initiative
Terror Power. But of course, Gates is seeking
to derive, as with many of his projects, a sort of health
initiative from this using isotopic advances in cancer
treatments. And then the other thing which
pertains in some ways to Mike's piece earlier about lake and
heath and and storage with regard to nuclear substances, we
have the issue of geological disposal, which is sort of
rearing its head again, which involves placing radioactive
wastes deep underground within a suitable rock formation.
The rock formation provides long term protection by acting as a
barrier against escape of radioactivity and by isolating
the waste from effects at the surface, such as climate change.
Of course. Now I've spoken on a number of
occasions about things going on underground and the government's
apparent obsession with this. We had the tunnelling equipment
by His Majesty's Government Communication Center in
partnership with DSDL. We've had focus on tunnels being
used in Lebanon and indeed the MOD providing training for
tunnelling of one sort or another.
So as well as of course the future cities, documents
suggesting we might all be living there one day.
And now we have, going back to June of this year, the future of
what's called the subsurface and the ironic subtitle there.
What would happen if we turn planning upside down?
Apparently exactly what the New Labour government has just done
in the last few weeks. This is the vision for use of
the subsurface. Subsurface which looks
extraordinarily complicated, confusing and disorganised.
But they say that the report sets out available evidence on
current challenges and trend related to the subsurface and
explores how we might evolve in future and what we need to do
now to prepare. So all somewhat ominous.
They look at the 2040 scenarios and they say that they're a tool
to help policy makers, but they are not predictions.
However, they can't help themselves from looking towards
worst outcomes, which they identify as being threefold.
First of all, net 0 targets being at risk.
And of course the inference here is this.
This will be only because of planning barriers that there
will be climate change adaptation under pressure and
also technological change will have fallen behind due to
regulatory barriers. So effectively what they're
advocating for is a free for all in which anyone can do anything
they like in the name of preserving the net zero goals.
However, their AI machine has generated some dystopian images
of what happens if things do not turn out as expected.
Which is effectively looking very much like things today, but
with the extraordinary addition of what one assumes to be
electric vehicle charging points that no vehicles can actually
get to. So, well, that does not look at
all to be better and I know where my virtual money would be
going if I had to predict from this side here which outcome is
more likely if we are to pursue this underground agenda looking
towards 2040 or 2050. OK, Vanessa, let's finish with
you. We began with with war, and
well, let's end with war. I think a very important point,
this is from Eugene Debs, who was a presidential candidate
back in 1918 in the United States and who gave a speech
called The subject class Always Fights the battles for which he
received a 10 year prison sentence under the Espionage
Act, which sounds very familiar. So what does he say here?
Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own
corpses and there will never be another war on the face of the
earth. I think very sage advice there.
But let's have a look at his speech where he says wars
throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.
In the Middle Ages, when the federal Lords who inhabited the
castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine
concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their
power, their prestige and their wealth, they declared war upon
one another. But they themselves did not go
to war. More than the modern feudal
Lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war.
The federal barons of I'm sorry of the Middle Ages, the economic
predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars
and their miserable serfs fought all the battles.
The poor ignorant serfs have been taught to Revere their
masters, to believe that when another's their masters declared
war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall
upon one another and to cut one another's throat.
He goes on to say they have always taught and trained you to
believe to be it's your patriotic duty to go to war and
to have yourself sorted at their command.
But in all the history of the world, you, the people, have
never had a voice in declaring war.
And strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in
any age has ever been declared by the people.
And here let me emphasize the fact, and it cannot be repeated
too often, that the working class who fight all the battles,
the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working
class who freely shed their blood and and furnish their
corpses. Have never yet had a voice in
either declaring war or making peace.
It is the ruling class that invariably does both.
They alone declare war, and they alone make peace.
Yours not to reason why yours, but to do and die.
This is their motto, and we object on part of the awakening
workers of this nation. This was from 1918.
He was arrested and imprisoned. But I think very prescient
words. And just to add to that, this is
from Mazen Kumsaya, who's a Palestinian environmentalist
factoid. The Jewish state was 7.2 million
Jews received $17.8 billion in one year in military aid from
the United States taxpayers via the federal government to
support genocide. That is $2472 per person for a
year. Triple that if you count the
other US aid in Florida now with two hurricanes received in
federal grants, 22 billion per year for its 23 million
residents. That is $956 per person per
year. Let that sink in for those
voting for either side of the same coin, the duopoly serving
lobbies in US elections. So I think 2 very pertinent
points for us to end on. Yes, thank you, Vanessa.
We will talk more about that an extra in a few minutes.
If you're a UK column member, join us for that.
But we have to finish there for today.
So thanks very much to everybody that's watched.
Thanks to Charles and Vanessa for taking part, and we'll see
you in a few minutes for extra. Bye, bye, bye bye.