Good afternoon. It's Friday the 18th of October
2024, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column NEWS.
I'm your host Mike Robinson. Joining me today by video link,
we have Mark Anderson from the United States and Debbie Evans
from Cornwall. Of course, now we're going to
get straight on with the situation globally with war and
so on. So let's look at the Middle East
1st and of course the news yesterday of the the death of
the Hamas leader Sinwar as a result of Israeli military
activity. As you can see there, U.S.
Central Command very excited about that.
But the narrative from people in the meantime has been, well,
maybe this event will finally require or encourage Israel to
call a ceasefire because they've achieved that goal.
Netanyahu very clear that he is not going to be stopping anytime
soon. In the meantime, but as we head
back to Europe and over to Brussels, the NATO defence
ministers meeting is going on because of course they are
trying to busy trying to work out how to keep the Ukraine war
going as Ukraine is systematically losing.
So this has been taking place yesterday and today, and of
course yesterday President Zelensky was there on the podium
with Mark Ruto. Good afternoon and a warm
welcome to President Zelensky. Dear Feloni, me here, it is
great to welcome you here in Brussels.
We last met in London after my visit two weeks ago to Kiev.
And of course, we spoke about Ukraine's most urgent needs and
how best NATO can continue to support you.
So as he mentioned, he was in Kiev a couple of weeks ago, then
he and Zelensky were both in London a few days ago.
We mentioned that last week and at that meeting, which the press
did get the chance to ask a couple of questions at not very
much though, Zelensky was giving a briefing to to Starmer and
Ruta about his great new plan for how Ukraine's going to win
the war. And these are the main points.
This again is being discussed at the defence minister's meeting
today and yesterday. Ukraine to join NATO, permission
to use long range weapons on Russian territory, containment
of Russia using what they describe as non nuclear,
strategic deterrence from within Ukraine's borders, Joint
protection by the United States and the European Union of
Ukraine's natural resources. I do wonder whether that they
would extend that to maybe electricity supply and so on.
And then finally and most interesting this, this last
point is when the war is finished, they are saying that
they want to replace some of the US, the United States troops
stationed across Europe with Ukrainian soldiers.
And I think that should give people pause and really ask why
would people want Ukrainian soldiers to be stationed in
their countries in Europe? We can talk about that maybe a
bit an extra. Mark Ruta had more to say.
It was the first meeting when we had Australia, Japan, Korea, New
Zealand participating in this format, a clear sign of our
deepening cooperation in the face of our shared challenges.
The war in Ukraine has shown that instability in Europe can
have far reaching consequences across the world and that
countries thousands of miles away, as far away as Iran, China
and even North Korea, can become security spoilers in our own
backyard. Our world is closely linked, and
so is our security. So there we go.
We get to see who the enemy is as far as NATO is concerned
anyway. Iran, China, North Korea, we so
they have brought Japan, Australia and so on into this
defense ministers meeting in order to continue building a
sort of dialogue with them in order to keep try to increase
the pressure on China in particular.
But clearly the war drums, the rhetoric is not dying in any
way, shape or form. And that again is echoed by our
Defence Minister, John Haley, who, if we just put him on
screen there, is over there speaking to his his Estonian
counterpart. Because Britain has signed a new
defence road map, as they describe it, with Estonia.
This involves cooperation on missile defence, but on other
things as well. So they're going to station the
British Army's 4th Brigade, held at high readiness, ready to
defend NATO's eastern flank, as they say, in addition to those
deployed in Estonia. And so they are going to lead
what they're describing as the new Diamond initiative to
integrate Natos missile defenses, while also pledging to
develop new long range cutting edge missiles, improving the
alliances collective air defence and offering opportunities to
the UK defence industry. So we keep building the war
narrative and this is starting to have an impact on the minds
of the young in Europe. And so this from Germany, this
is a survey run by Shell, I believe, asking for particularly
young Germans attitudes to various things.
And what they've discovered is that the fear of of a
wide-ranging war is at the top of the priority list. 81%
consider that to be the most serious threat that they see at
the moment. That's followed by economic
concerns with 67% describing a fear of poverty.
And, and way down the list actually are things like climate
and migration. So the war agenda on people's
minds, but the leadership absolutely determined to press
ahead with it. Debbie, let's move on then to
energy in the UK. And in some ways this is related
to to war, or at least to to the various excuses for war, climate
being one of them. Well, yes, good afternoon,
everyone. Lovely to be here.
And we're we're facing perhaps a winter of uncertainty and we've
got, what is it, 12 days to the budget?
Rachel Reeves, We've got energy costs soaring.
So not a good mix. But for you youngsters, this
wasn't this long ago. And for many of you, how many of
you remember this? Have a look.
How much is a? How much is a sack of coal now,
then? How much is a sack of coal now,
then? 15 Not bad.
No, that's all right. Good that.
Coleman always on the streets, remember, but not anymore
because as we know and as Charles Mallett has been talking
about recently, we've seen the early phase out of unabated coal
generation in Great Britain. This was the response to the
consultation back in 2021, the industrial strategy, and it goes
on to say that basically they were bringing forward from the
1st of October 2024, linking out or phasing out coal.
And also they mentioned they're an enforcement authority which
will be designated to verify compliance.
And all of this of course has been confirmed by the BBC as
they confirmed that the country's last coal power
station, Ratcliffe on Saw has closed.
And again, Charles's has reported on this.
But what next? So the National Grid, well, the
national grid's gone green. And this is a little video to
show you who the National Grid. None.
So there we've got the National Grid and I think my question is,
is will renewable energy sustain US in winter?
So how sustainable are renewable energies?
And blink if you miss it, but in September this was announced
that the new publicly owned national energy system operator
is going to pave the way to a clean new energy future.
And this in essence, I mean, we'll be talking about it a bit
later in the news, but this in essence is going to bring all,
well everybody together. The electricity and gas network
are going to be under one roof. This is launched just on the 1st
of October and I wanted to look more into this.
But as I say, we'll come onto it more in the news.
But for now I wanted to see how sustainable we are.
So I went back to 2019 to look at the electricity supply
emergency codes. So what if we don't have enough
electricity? What powers do the government
have? Well, what they say is that they
can deal with an emergency or they can call an emergency code
in the case of a civil emergency, any natural disaster
or actually any emergency. And they say that they could go
on to look at unpredictability in the fact that the public may
be required to take measures. But what electricity codes can
be used? And if we go on to look at in
the documents a bit more, it says that they will make a
public appeal to to the members of the public.
Please, you know, can you restrain on your electricity
supply if there is an emergency or if we can't supply you for
whatever reason? So I'm going to just highlight
the fact that these emergency codes are in place.
And if you just jump to the next slide, I want to just highlight
this because if anybody is looking for the future and
prepping, and I'm, I must admit I am a bit of a prepper, you can
go to this website, whichispowercut105.com.
You can put your post code in. You can see what availability
you have in your area and it tells you to prepare.
So please prepare to care for other people around you and to
share any information you've got.
But we'll come on to a bit more about at it later in the news.
You'll see why. Yes, thanks, Debbie and Mark,
sticking with climate in a sense, but particularly the
media's continuing propagandizing, I suppose.
Oh, absolutely, Mike. In terms of getting rid of coal
in the UK, the question, of course, is why?
Well, our passive emissions, we're told time and time again,
are to blame for heating the planet.
So this segment I call mass media cartel alarmism.
One O 1, The Guardian, everybody's favorite paper 14
October. Trees and land absorbed almost
no CO2, we're told last year. Is nature's carbon sink failing?
Oh, no. Oh no.
Interesting. I'm not sure how you can even
measure that. Continuing with that, just
touching out a bit of this. It begins each day at nightfall.
As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton,
crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean
surface to feed on microscopic algae, then returning to the
depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy,
Earth's largest migration of creatures, they say, sinks to
the ocean floor. The waste does, removing
millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year.
Who knew in 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary
findings by an international team of researchers show the
amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed.
The final result was that forest plants and soil, as in that
category, absorbed almost no carbon, which seems to me, at
least at first blush, to be impossible.
But we can comment more on extra if we want to get into that.
Anyway, the 2023 breakdown, the Guardian continues, of the land
carbon sink could be temporary without the pressures of drought
or wildfires. That's very important to keep in
mind. Without those pressures, land
would return, they say, to absorbing carbon again.
But it demonstrates the fragility of these ecosystems
with massive implications for the climate crisis.
Reaching net zero is impossible without nature, etcetera,
etcetera. We'll keep going from there.
And Andrew Watson at the University of Execter or Exeter
in the UK, however you say it, he had this to say.
None of these models, of course models, computer models are used
in a lot of this to measure these things.
None of these models have factored in losses, such as the
wildfires in Canada last year that amounted to six months of
US fossil emissions. What's missing in all these
arguments? Well, let's move on and explore
it a little more. Reuters is hopping on board with
the Guardian. World's forest failed to curb
2023 climate emissions study fines.
And again, I they're not really very generous on describing how
they know how they can measure such things.
But the other angle, another kind of fresh line of inquiry
and all of this, here's the Arab News, a rather obscure
publication. Saudi Arabia, one of the driest
places on earth, takes major strides in cloud seeding to
combat water scarcity. And there's a link there that
people can utilize to read more about these things.
Now, this is out of Global News in Canada.
Could cloud seeding help Canada fight wildfires?
Well, we just heard from the Guardian and so on that
wildfires are a problem and that reduces carbon absorption even
more. But now we see that there's a
technology that could fight such wildfires, but you never hear a
peep about that from the Guardian.
You never hear a peep about that from Reuters, and this is also
from Global News. Cloud seeding, which can cause
precipitation by human intervention, is an old method,
but one that continues to be developed and explored.
Some experts say it has the potential to mitigate these
wildfires that are reducing carbon absorption, by the way.
But more research is needed which is fair to evaluate how
viable and effective it can be in the future.
Interesting. As we move along, this becomes
more clear. The Guardians reporting Mike is
being done under the banner of a long term reporting project
called the Age of Extinction. How's that for subtlety, right?
It's not like the climate challenges before us or or
environmental challenges or something more where we can all
get involved. No, it's the Age of Extinction
to cause fear, to cause uncertainty.
Another thing for the youth to worry about in Germany, another
thing for the our our youth to worry about around the world.
A little bit more about the Guardians Age of extinction
projects. Here's some other headline
samples. Collapsing wildlife population
near the point of no return report warns.
Again, you wonder very much about the accuracy and you see
very little about how they measure these things.
Another headline under the Age of Extinction project, Europe
was a leader on saving nature, but now Europe's backsliding and
that could threaten global progress and will continue.
This is from the Desert Research Institute in Nevada and it, it
has some interesting things to say.
Making it snow a brief I, I, I want to keep on that, that slide
there, sorry. Making It Snow, a brief history
and review of the science behind cloud seeding.
Clouds, those enigmatic formations of condensed water
vapor which drift above our heads and form rivers in the
sky. They can take many forms.
We tend to think of them as beyond human reach.
But now scientists regularly harness their moisture and pull
it to earth, bringing water to parched communities and
landscapes around the world. And I've also learned in recent
times, Mike, that you can even harvest fog, such as in northern
Africa. I believe that's where it's been
done. And fog can be brought to
condensation and put in pipes, and the water can be transferred
to communities. It's actually called fog
harvesting. But anyway, the main point is
these mitigation efforts to cut down on drought, to cut down on
wildfires are not being reported under the rubric of this
extinction project by the Guardian that other papers are
kind of aping and echoing. Anyway, all of this reporting,
this ongoing project about the age of extinction is happening
as the UN Climate Change conference is going to happen in
Azerbaijan next month. And I plan on tuning in, Mike,
to cover that virtually. I'm going to sign up.
Hopefully they won't kick me off.
And there's also two Brookings Institution events coming up, 1
today, later today, and another next week.
And I plan on covering those as well as best I can.
But there's a little more we can talk about, an extra that goes
beyond cloud seeding coming from a former CIA chief in the United
States. Hopefully, we can get to that
today. But back to you, Mike.
At this point, that'll do it. OK, thank you, Mark.
OK, let's move on. If you like what the UK column
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Now we're very glad to say that we will be live streaming the
Bristol event tomorrow. The details are on the front
page of the UK column website. At the moment the cost is around
£20. Unfortunately because we're
using AUS based provider that it's a dollar price but it it
works out at about £19.70 or so. Do join us for that if you're
not going to be there in person. I'd like to mention that a
couple of people have pulled out because they aren't able to get
to Bristol tomorrow. So there are actually a couple
of tickets. Available on the shop if anybody
would like to get a last minute ticket there, there are a couple
there on a first come, first served basis.
So if you haven't managed to pick up a ticket for the events
to come in person, then there is the opportunity and we hope to
see you tomorrow. Now, Mark, very, very briefly,
because we mentioned this on Wednesday, your interview with
Daniel New. Yeah, it's a really interesting
interview. It really zeroes in on what
globalism means and how the way your military is structured can
tell you a lot about what direction your country is going
in. And it also established very
clearly that the UN is a government, not just a debating
society or intergovernmental exchange.
So a very interesting, it explores many dimensions and it
kind of ties in indirectly with The Who report a guy coming in
today in a very general sense. OK, brilliant.
Thank you Mark. And also the interview that was
that that went out at 1:00 PM yesterday and the excellence
What's wrong with Scottish Education with Kate E Deeming
that's up on the website now. So Diane was speaking to Kate
about the Scotland's new Curriculum for Excellence, which
she says neither a curriculum nor is an excellent.
Now she runs a parents group for the Scottish Union for
Education. So if if that's of interest, go
and have a look on the UK column website.
Now let's move on to censorship and online safety because Ofcom
has published their progress update on implementing the
Online Safety Act. This is their countdown to
online safety as they describe it.
And they say two months out from online safety laws coming into
force, cause although the ACT was passed a year ago, it's just
coming into force now because Ofcom has been going through a
range of consultations and and recommendations and so on.
So they say Ofcom has warned tech firms they could face
enforcement action if they don't comply with new duties when the
time comes. So what are they talking about?
They're saying in the space of six months, we consulted on our
codes and guidance for illegal harms, pornography, age
verification and children's safety and submitted our advice
to government on the thresholds would determine which services
would be categorized and subject to additional duties.
And I've highlighted age verification there because this
is a key part of what they're doing.
They are, along with the United States as we will see in a
minute, using children's safety as the the main sort of Clarion
call for this whole thing. They went on to say Ofcom has
already secured better protections from UK based video
sharing platforms, including only fans and other adult sites
introducing age verification. So I thought we should have a
look at what Only Fans has done, just to to give you an idea of
what is expected in terms of age verification and where this is
likely to go. So Only Fan says that they use a
combination of technology and human moderation teams to verify
age and identity of creators and fans.
The tools, policies and procedures we use to verify age
and identity are always evolving to reflect best practices.
And they're looking for things like a full name, a verified
e-mail address, postal address, date of birth, valid government
photo ID, standalone selfie, selfie while holding their photo
ID, Social media account handles, bank account
information and in the United States, W 9 and Social Security
number. Now those that's what's required
if you want to be a so-called creator on only fans.
But if you want to be a fan on only fans, you still have to
provide much of that information.
But then the question, if we just put that back on screen for
a second, then the question of how easy is it to do this?
Well, aside from whether you would be willing to hand over
that all that information to this organization, this is just
one typical comment from from Reddit.
It's so difficult getting it verified.
I rarely use XT or Insta. I'm not the kind of person to
post selfies every 5 minutes on Facebook.
Unless I find a way to levitate my passport in front of me,
they'll have to put up with my fingertips covering the edges.
Seventh attempt failed. And so where does that take us?
If people are why people are putting this amount of effort on
to getting onto that website in the 1st place, I leave up to
you. But nonetheless, if people are
having to to try 710 times to try to get verified for this,
where do we end up? Well, of course we end up with a
convenient digital government issued digital ID, which is
really what the end goal for this is.
And then coming back onto the issue of of common the report
and categorized services. They say that categorized
services will have extra obligations under the ACT, such
as giving users more tools to control what they see.
Because we've got to educate people on misinformation and
disinformation and make sure that they can then implement
that at a so they don't see inappropriate content.
And then they go on to say that categorised services will need
to be ensuring protections for news publishers and journalistic
content. We'll be talking more about that
at the Bristol event tomorrow. And the other thing that they
mention is that they, these categorised companies will have
to produce transparency reports and consistently apply their
terms of service. And of course, there could be a
a problem between ensuring protections for news publishers
and consistently applying terms of of service.
So we have to see how that will work out in the end.
But in the meantime, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago,
the pressure's starting to build on the idea of these categorised
services only being the bigger services.
Ofcom's recommendation so far is that category one services for
example, are really the only the biggest with with more than 4
million users on a daily basis. But a bunch of charities, sorry
if we put this on our have written to Keir Starmer really
begging for this limit or this size to be reduced to much, much
smaller providers of services. They're they're saying we've got
to protect children by, by making sure we capture smaller
forums where children might be coming into contact with content
that is not appropriate. And as I say, children being
used as, as we've mentioned for many years now, children being
used as the excuse for that. The UK and the United States
have just signed a new online safety agreement, new joint
government working group to protect children online.
So this is bringing the British model into the United States.
Now, how this is going to go, how this is going to work with
the constitutional protections on freedom of speech, we have to
wait and see. But in the meantime, in the US,
they are continuing to push this idea that children need to be
protected from bad material online.
And in order to do that, we've got to pursue things like age
verification and all the other protections that are provided
under the online safety legislation in the UK and in the
EU. Debbie, let's come back onto the
issue of electricity and whether blackouts are likely.
Well, yes, you know, we've got rising energy prices, like
soaring across across the board. And we've also got they're
saying that, you know, rising energy prices, people are self
rationing. They're turning their heating
off. Maybe they're not even putting
their heating on. They're not having hot meals.
This is going to have an impact on the NHS.
And I happen to pick up this story in The Telegraph this this
week, which says blackout prevention system mobilized as
Britain battles low winds. This was a surprise notice.
And it was issued by Niso, which we'll come on again to in a
minute. And it was aimed at the capacity
market. Now, they say that it was
triggered automatically, but it was warning that actually people
may need to switch things off early and there may not be
enough supply because basically we've got not enough wind.
Can you believe it? But we'll come on to not enough
wind. So Niso, who are these people
that issued this cautionary notice that got a little bit
misinterpreted? So they're the National Energy
System operator. They used to be the electricity
supply operator, ESO, and they call themselves a planner and
operator. And if we look more at Nisa, we
can see that they're apparently say that they're independent to
government. They're a whole system.
They take on a whole system approach.
They give impartial decisions and advice to government and
regulator. Sounds to me like a private
public park partnership, right? So, yeah, let's we'll have a
look at the shareholders. So this is the Department for
Energy Security and net zero with together with Ofgem.
And what are their primary duties.
So their primary duties are effectively threefold net 0,
efficiency and economy and security of supply.
But they also have secondary duties which are facilitating
competition, consumer impact, which is a little bit of word
soup to be honest. But are we going to have to turn
things off, whole system impacts, Are we going to have
enough to supply us and facilitating innovation, which
they're very keen to do. So here's the leadership team,
we've got the board, we've got the independent NISO board, but
we've also got a nice screenshot of the leadership team.
And there's a lot of people and I'm not going to go through them
all. Please do go and have a look at
the NISO website. But we've got Finton Sly who's
at at the helm and we've got Katya O'Neal who's the chief
operating officer. So Finton Sly, he's been in the
business, so he's been in the trade in the industry for a very
long time. He was the director of the
National Grid ESO. Prior to that, he was CEO of Air
Grid Group. So he is industry and he's an
engineer. But here's a little bit of video
to introduce you to NISO. We're undertaking the biggest
change in energy for about 100 years to ensure that Britain can
thrive and that it's economy can go from strength to strength.
We need to make sure that we transform our energy system to
deliver clean power. What we need is a single
collaborative plan across the industry and to stop thinking in
siloed ways across different industry groups or different
types of factors. The heart of Nisa's mission is
ensuring that we are delivering for people, for communities, for
the economy and for society. Right across the business,
there's a team of really capable, innovative people are
hugely excited about the opportunity that NISO presents
at this inflection point in tackling climate change, which
truly is the challenge of a generation.
Fundamental to NISO is the ability to bring an impartial,
independent voice into the mix that can really take a whole
system's view on the transition, the challenges, the trade-offs
that need to be made and ultimately how do we get an
optimal outcome for consumers. So looking at the whole system
together, we'll create the opportunity for us to have an
efficient transition and a speedy transition.
That's why NISO is so important. The local environment will be
cleaner with less air. Pollution.
It'll mean jobs. And the opportunity for people
to see the benefits of a decarbonized energy system in
their locality. Now, what's going to be
important is that industry and government and other
stakeholders collaborate really closely as we move down these
paths. Because the answer today won't
necessarily be the answer tomorrow.
It's about ensuring that whole ecosystem comes together to
deliver for the country. Hope we get a lot of wind and
sun. But also on the board at NISO is
Doctor Paul Golby. Now Doctor Paul Golby was the
chair of Nats. That's air traffic control.
He was the CEO of EON non executive director of National
Grid. He was the chair of Costain
Group. That's a builders, quite a
history there, a part of the Channel Tunnel I believe.
And he's also a member of the Prime Minister's Science and
Technology Committee and the stakeholders of NISO as well.
They go on forever too, Ofgem, government, Crown Estate,
offshore wind developers, nature conservation bodies, political
representatives, technology providers, trade organisations,
and they've also got a lot of publications on their website.
So please do go and look. But what are they dealing in?
Well, they're dealing in a change energy landscape and how
they describe this is how are we, the United Kingdom going to
store, source and protect our energy and our, our environment
to make it all affordable because we're paying so many
prices. So yesterday we were relying on
fossil fuels, power stations, coal, oil, uh, oil, natural gas,
the Coleman basically. And today we are continuing
apparently to rely on fossil fuels, which is giving us higher
prices, which is why we have to look to tomorrow where we're
going to pay lower prices if we have renewable energy.
So we'll be looking at wind, solar, bio gas, hydrogen,
hydropower. This is all going to be
intentionally smarter and flexible.
Perhaps maybe you're not as cynical as as perhaps I am, but
but they also Niso have got a lot of roles because they're
also looking beyond 2030. So they've got a national
blueprint for a decarbonized electricity system in Great
Britain. And looking further into the
blueprint, you can see that the world is, according to them,
going to look very different. Now, the graph on the right,
although there isn't a very big distinction between the bold and
the slightly lighter colours. You're the bold colours are
basically 2023 and the light colours are 2035.
So you can see that the reliance on fossil fuels is shrinking,
storage is going to expand, onshore wind expansion, solar
expansion. So with all of this in mind,
NISO also forecasts for the winter ahead, which is what
we're looking at right now. So they published the outlook
for the winter ahead and their key messages that they look at
Katya O'Neill very, very generously gave a welcome and
said that she was was fairly sure that they could cope this
winter. However, if we look at the key
messages that they put out, they say they're confident they can
meet demand, They expect sufficient operational surplus,
although they do note that there's going to be low wind and
that there will be tight days. If we look at the preparations
that they're making for winter 2024 to 2025, they'll say that
they're continuing to work with government, with the regulator
of GM, national gas stakeholders to make sure that we've actually
got enough to go around. But have we?
And when we look at the generator availability on the
Nisa website, then they're hinting there that late October
to mid-december, there's going to be the lowest available
generator capacity and we're going to get low winds and
they're expecting high breakdowns.
So that's really filling us with a lot of confidence, right?
But also NISO control what comes through what's called the
interconnectors. So there's a whole big website.
Please do go and look at it. Here's the map on the right,
just to tell you where we're working with our neighbours and
where the pipelines are. But if we're looking at low
winds, how are we going to be relying on renewable energy?
So if anybody, he does believe the Met Office, I'm just putting
it up for reference. They are actually forecasting
that we get a cold winter, frost and fog, which obviously a cold
winter is going to mean you increase your energy supplies
because you're going to want to put the heating on, otherwise
you're going to get sick or get hypothermia.
But they're not forecasting winds.
And just to tie up this segment, also NISO are very interested in
the up and coming hydrogen strategy, which is a whole news
of its own. And if you want to go and look
at more of that, please do. Here's the road map.
It'll take you right through to the mid twenty 30s onwards.
So a big agenda. And should we be prepared for a
cold winter and perhaps a dark winter?
Possibly. Yes, I think there's quite a few
things to unpack in that for extra.
So I'm looking forward to that a little bit later, Debbie.
Now let's move on to health issues.
I'm going to start off with with this story from the United
States. It's quite horrific.
So this from this is from NPR. And the headline is horrifying
mistake to take organs from a living person was averted,
witnesses say. So this is what they say They're
they're quoting a, a nurse. He was moving around kind of
thrashing, like moving, thrashing around on the bed.
And then when we went over there, you could see he had
tears coming down. He was crying visibly.
So this is somebody that had wheeled into the operating
theatre in order to remove his organs for transplantation.
So just keep in mind this. He was crying visibly because
I'm gonna show you an article from the UK column website in a
few minutes later, in a few minutes, which which we'll come
back to this point. Anyway, this article goes on to
say the procuring surgeon, he was like, I'm out of it.
I don't want anything to do with it.
It was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.
So the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time and she
was saying that he was telling her that she needed to find
another doctor to do it, that we were going to do this case.
She needs to find somewhere else.
And she's like, there's no one else.
She's crying, talking about the coordinator because she's
getting yelled at. So the article that we published
on this topic was back in 2018 was by Doctor Mike Williams.
It was entitled No Time to Die. And I just wanted to pick a
couple of bits out of this, because he's saying that fresh
organs are good, the dead ones are bad.
That, of course, is a problem for those in the medical
profession that want to remove organs as fresh as possible.
How can they justify that? The solution to that problem
came partly from advanced procedures to artificially
maintain a breathing body once pronounced dead.
The other part of the problem was solved by defining a new
criterion for death, brain death.
He mentions that a quite gruesome part that I hadn't
understood was, well at least sorry, at least an anesthetic as
administered to the organ donor prior to removal of their
organs, right, just in case. And he says, well, he then shows
a screenshot of a discussion on a nurses forum.
And he goes on to say, in case you missed, that no anesthetic
is given, only drugs to maintain the body and one other a
paralyzing drug called a non depolarizing blocking agent.
Yes, a drug to paralyze you while you take the organs with
no anesthetic. And the point is that sometimes
that paralyzing drug isn't fully effective and sometimes people
are still flailing around as described in the article from
the United States. I just want to highlight this
paper, which Mike Williams sites in his article entitled Brain
death. Should it be reconsidered?
Because a large part of what Mike Williams is talking about
is this definition of death. And so just wanted to highlight
one part of this because it says also during during the early
stages of organ removal lachrymation effectively crying.
It's it's tears basically. Obviously there's other things
involved in crying, but nonetheless is a common
phenomenon. So what this scientific paper
saying it's common for tears to be coming from the body as the
organs are being removed. And so the point that Mike
Williams was making in 2018 and the point which is again being
reiterated by this article from the United States is, is our
definition of death correct? And I think there are lots and
lots of questions to be asked around that.
Sticking with health, then, Mark bring us up to date with what's
going on with the World Health Organization's pandemic treaty.
Well, that massive treaty is not done yet and they're they're
meeting next month to continue on that.
It's been kind of lingering amid their bureaucracy.
Anyway, James Roguski, the noted researcher on WHO and the treaty
and the international health regs, he got with me recently,
he sent me this. I condensed it down a bit.
It's an announcement WHO action item on the pandemic treaty.
The Who seeks to reach an agreement regarding the proposed
pandemic treaty by November 11th.
I encourage you that's anybody reading and hearing this to
speak out against the treaty ASAP.
He's even suggesting please record a video expressing your
opposition to the Who's proposed pandemic treaty agreement.
If you're so inclined. Feel free to record whatever you
wish to say. Speak your mind.
There's no time limit to your video.
Post a video on the on the video hosting platform of your choice
and send Roguski the link so he can include your video in an
upcoming article. Anybody either side of the pond
that wants to do this can do that.
There's the link there, a sub stack link to Raguski's website
and his phone number. He doesn't mind me giving this
out. And he asked, he asked that
people text him first. 310-619-3055 is a Skype handle.
Is there James raguski.substack.com?
That's his column. So that's how people can get a
hold of him. But what's he talking about?
What's The Who actually up to? Well, this is it.
Back on 20 September 2024, The Who announced government's
progress on negotiations for the pandemic agreement to boost
global preparedness for future emergencies and they basically
laid it out here. Substantive progress on the
draft agreement, increased involvement of civil society and
non state actors, and a commitment by all parties to
sustain momentum towards the pandemic agreement were the
hallmarks of the 11th meeting of the intergovernmental
negotiating body, which comprises the 194 member
governments of The Who. And that 11th meeting ran in
September in Geneva. But now the 12th round, which is
what Rogoski's talking about, Mike, the negotiators will
resume discussions at that 12th round between the 4th and the
15th of November. Rogoski feels that'll be around
the 11th of November, possibly that they'll finalize this
treaty that we've been watching for such a long time.
I won't get into all of these. There's a couple quick quotes
from whose sources this is from Nina Jamal, head of pandemics at
a global animal welfare organization.
There's a growing urgency, she says, for an effective pandemic
agreement that does not only prepare us for the next pandemic
but helps prevent it, including the One Health approach that
we've learned so much about, not all of it positive.
And there's one other thing. I believe this is precious.
Matt Soso, an African lady, the intergovernmental negotiating
body Co chair from South Africa. She said there was progress on
the fundamental areas of the draft agreement between these
11th and 12th rounds or or yeah, these rounds that they're going
through, including research and development, regulatory system
strengthening, One Health, pandemic prevention technology,
supply chain networks and a new system for increased access to
pathogens of pandemic potential and sharing of benefits such as
vaccines, diagnostics and treatments.
Following nearly three years of negotiations, countries are now
focused on the remaining and most critical elements of the
draft treaty agreement to protect the world from future
pandemics. And she even goes on to say that
every country will maintain its sovereignty and will will
maintain their control over National Health decision making
under the UN system. That is something that we have
to watch very carefully. It's very easy to say, but
according to the UN philosophy and the the overall way that the
US system works, that's something that they can slip out
of pretty easily. So there's a lot of lip service
toward national sovereignty. It's not necessarily real, but
that's the latest Mike. People can get involved through
Ragusi's suggestions and that treaty that many of us haven't
heard about in a while. This is what they're trying to
do by the 15th of November, no later.
Yeah. Thank you, Mark.
Thanks for that. Debbie.
You've got some health news as well.
Yeah, there's so many health stories to cover.
I thought I'd just cover a few today on the news.
So let's look at the government pledging further, say, action to
strengthen patient safety because we do definitely need
that. Apparently, patient safety is at
the heart of the government's plans for healthcare reform.
And Doctor Penny Dash has done a report, has written a report
into CQC and how she's identified that they had
significant failings which hampered its ability to identify
poor performance in hospitals, care homes and GP practices.
What they're wanting to do is to restore public confidence.
However, the report was so bad that Doctor Dash has been asked
to conduct two more reviews to look at patient safety.
And she's going to be looking at also the Care Quality Commission
maternity program. She's going to be speaking and
looking into the National Guardians Office, Healthwatch
England, our very own Henrietta Hughes, patient safety
commissioner, health services safety investigation body.
I didn't know there was one of those watch this space and NHS
resolution. So not good news, but we knew
that all along, right? And then another news, another
news from Sky who have conducted their own investigation and are
reporting sexual misconduct now. This article is really quite
troubling. It goes on to say that they're
in with the paramedics. There seems to be a culture of
groping, misappropriate jokes, some have been threatened with
rape, pressured into sexual acts, 1 even attempted to take
their own life after being locked in an ambulance and
sexually sexually assaulted by a colleague.
And shockingly, 1/3 of female surgeons are saying they've been
sexually assaulted by a colleague and 2/3 sexually
harassed. So this is not good when it
comes to whatever we're seeing in the NHS.
It's bad enough with patients, but we see what's going on with
staff too. Moving on to COVID very quickly
because there's a new XEC variant that seems to be causing
great concern. It's a hybrid of two existing
variants. I say that in inverted commas,
but of course it gives the authorities a really good excuse
to tell you to grab a jab. And let's stay on jabs for a
minute. Thank you to ack Kieran Russ on
X who sent me this asking if Bedford Hospital has violated
the Nuremberg Code 1 by financially incentivizing people
via methods of coercion. Please go and have a look at his
ex. But let's blow that image up
because it says it's true. Do you know you can win £250?
Because if you've had your flu jab, you'll get put into a draw
where you could win your £250. But don't worry because if
you've you've already had the jab, if you can prove that
you've had it and show your evidence, you can still enter it
into an e-mail. I'll leave that for our audience
to decide what they think of that.
And then anybody would think that Eli Lilly are doing the
United Kingdom a favour because they're launching a real world
study, which basically means an experiment on the on the British
public to see how to this turns this.
I was dreading saying this. I've been practicing it, but
it's obviously not worked. Turns a pad tied.
I'm terribly sorry. I have honestly been practising
it, which is a medication that was designed for diabetics,
diabetes two. It's an injection again, it's
been proved by the MH. It's been approved by the MHRA
and now they want to use it on benefit claimants because they
say that because Britain has become a lazy place and people
have got fat. It's it's it's the sickness
bill, the PIP, the disability rates have gone shooting up and
here you can see economic activity and we're streeting
getting his getting his two penneth in saying that basically
it's a significant burden obesity.
Nobody is giving any credence to the fact that there are a huge
number and increasing of vaccine injured.
And if you're interested, please do go and look at the Ed Dowd
interview that we had on the column.
Who says that you know, when he's he analysed the PIP and
disability claimants and we've looked at it before soaring
because of vaccine injuries, but now we're going to give an
injection for obesity. When we talk about that on extra
too. So and quickly on to the World
Health Summit because the World Health Summit has taken place.
It's just finished. They're very proud of it. 3500
participants, 140 countries, 380 speakers.
And they're ever so proud of themselves because they've had
loads of views on social media as well.
They've had 65,000 views on the The Who website, 21,000 views on
the WHS. But it was a donor event.
This was a donor event. So let's actually use the
correct language because as you'll see, this was a WHO
investment round. In fact, it was a begging bowl.
So here's a few of the speakers who said what?
Naveen Rao from Rockefellers, he wants to transform global
health. What a surprise.
We've got Jeremy Farrah, WHO chief scientist, formerly of
Sage, author of spiked, and of course, Welcome.
He's been in CEO of Welcome. He's talking of the importance
of trust. I think that might be a bit
difficult, Jeremy, if you're listening and Bill Gates, he
wants to bring together everyone's expertise who can
pool resources to beat global challenges.
And you know what, I'm just going to flip through the next
few slides, Mike, because I'm probably going to get breathless
telling you the amount of names. So do go through them quickly.
So we're looking at all of the WH as partners.
We've got strategic partners, we've got general partners,
we've got premier partners, we've got supporting partners,
We've got we've got SEPI, Siemens, Welcome, GSK, Roach.
I mean, honestly, just flip through the slides because it
goes on and on and on. Rockefellers, WHO we've got the
Club of Rome, we've got civil society academia involved, we've
got Mckinsey's involved. There's their press, their media
partners. This is just one huge big
begging bowl for The Who. And just to prove my point,
here's an article from Reuters saying that the World Health
Organization are absolutely delighted because they've we've
now received 1 billion in pledges for their next budget.
And of course this is going to be membership for all the
countries participating in The Who.
So that's what we've got to look forward to.
And on a final note, I'm sure many people have seen this
story. Blue Nose Day.
So whilst The Who are raking in the money and telling us all
that energy is going to cost a fortune and making us rely on
renewables, this school was planning to turn off the heating
to teach children about climate change.
So they were saying to parents, ever so sorry, we're going to
turn off the heating. I'm very glad to say that
they've now decided to do this in the summer term, not in the
winter term because of parents backlash.
Over to you. Thank you, Debbie.
Thank you. Now, very, very briefly, the
government has decided that because the prisons are too full
and because a lot of the pressure on the number of prison
places that are available is being caused by people that are
are on remand, then the best thing to do is to give
magistrates the part of increased sentences.
So in the past, magistrates have only been allowed to give
custodial sentences for up to six months and from now on they
will be able to give custodial sentences for up to a year.
And what that means is that the lesser cases that are where
people are sitting in remanded prisons, they can be taken out
of the prison, sent to the Magistrates Court in order to
get their custodial sentence to be sent back to prison again.
And that's apparently going to reduce the the pressure on the
prison. So if somebody could explain to
me how that works, please do write in.
Where does that take us then? Debbie, we've got a final video
clip. We have indeed.
And finally. So for those of you abroad in
the United Kingdom in the late 60s and early 70s, we had a
situation comedy called Till Death Ostu Park, which featured
a family in the East End of London called The Garnet Family.
I'm going to show you a little clip of Dandy Nichols talking to
Eunice Stubs. Those are the actresses that
took play at took part talking back until death of Stubart.
And I'll just remind you actually that Tony Booth, Lord
Blair's father-in-law, also was an actor until death of Stubart.
But for now, and finally, it's over to Dandy Nichols and Eunice
Stubbs. Christmas ain't, but it used to
be. Nothing is unless it's me
getting older Things was cheaper though.
Not cheaper. You could get 5 cigarettes for
Tuttons then. They didn't make them with fives
anymore, did they? Well, you never see them.
People smoke more I suppose. Yeah, people do seem to be
smoking more since the cancer scare worry I suppose.
There was none of that then either.
What? Cancer was all TB then.
They could cure that now could they?
Yeah, I suppose as soon as they can cure cancer and think of
something else to worry us with. My Uncle Wilf used to say he
reckoned it was the government used to give us all these
diseases. They put them in our food.
That's what he used to say. You can taste it in the water
sometimes. That's chloride.
Well, there you are. They put that in to improve the
water. Well, don't improve the taste.
My Uncle Wolf used to say the only time they've got any use
for us, the only time the government's got any use for us
is in a war. Rest of the time.
He used to say we're an embarrassment to him.
Yeah, he used to say that they only need so many of us to do
the things that need doing, and the rest they'd rather be
without. So they spray out food, put
things in the water to keep us down.
Well, I do it to rabbits. He used to grow all his own
food, everything well he could. He only had a window box.
Over to you, Mike. Well, there's nothing I can say.
I mean, it's amazing how aware people were even then of what's
going on and it yes, you bring it back and it's more
appropriate than ever. But anyway, we'll leave it there
for now. Stick around for extra.
We're going to be a little bit short on extra today because
we've got to get up to Bristol. So but stick around for extra.
We'll be back in a couple of minutes.
See you then. Bye bye.