Good afternoon. Today is Monday, the 16th of
June 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
I'm your host, Brian Gerrish, delighted to have Mike Robinson
with me in the studio. And we'll also be joined by
Diane, Rasmus and Mccuddy using video link.
And Diane is in the North East of England.
Well, for viewers that know UK column and how we tackle the
news, we often come in at a different direction.
So whilst at the moment the world is looking at war and more
war and carnage, of course, whether it's in Ukraine or it's
in the Middle East, Israel, Gaza and now of course with Iran,
we're going to focus on something happening in UK.
We think this is extremely important, it's to do with the
grooming gangs. But before we get on to that,
just a little bit of a summary of what we're going to cover
over all overall, because we've got the grooming gangs and
grooming as a whole. We're going to be having a look
at what's been happening in Canada with Mark Carney.
We're going to be taking a little look at Israel and UK
Israel relationships and we're also going to be looking at the
new head of MI 6 and a bit on censorship.
So a packed news today. Let's get started with grooming
gangs, and what better place to start than Rachel Reeves talking
about the issue? All right.
Last night Prime Minister said that there would be a national
enquiry into the grooming gang scandal.
It's going to focus on the race of perpetrators.
When do you expect that to start?
There will be the publication of the KC review this week and as
the Prime Minister said yesterday, we want to get going
with that as quickly as possible.
Now, in the last year since we came to office, when we came to
office, there were over 200 outstanding recommendations from
the J Review, which was a national inquiry which took
seven years. The previous government had not
been implementing those. We've been cracking on and
implementing those. Yeah, convictions are now at a,
a record high and the Prime Minister asked Louise Casey to
do a, a, a rapid review to see what else we could do, as she
has said, to make sure that these local inquiries that are
up and running work properly, that we have a national inquiry
alongside that. And we are accepting all of
Louise Casey's recommendations, including that one.
Prime Minister says he's read Louise's report from cover to
cover, read every word of it, and that has apparently changed
his mind. What is in her report that we
did not know before that justifies a change of heart?
Well, we'll see the report this week.
I haven't yet had a, a copy of the report.
Well, look, we'll see the report this week.
But the Prime Minister is saying even ahead of that, that he will
accept all of her recommendations, including the
need for a for a national inquiry to sit alongside those
local inquiries that are already ready.
But let let me just say this, Trevor, because with local
inquiries they they don't have the statutory powers and we need
to make sure that people are compelled to give evidence.
And that's one of the reasons, because people are not coming
forward to give that evidence. So a bit of stuttering and some
butts, but relax because we've had seven years worth of
enquiry. We're going to do more
enquiries. Those enquiries are going to
produce what? Not a lot probably, but we've
got it all under hand. All in hand as a government and
you can relax, people aren't coming forward.
Well, they're not coming forward because they've no confidence in
the state, they've no confidence in the police, they've no
confidence in social services. But apparently Rachel Reeves
doesn't really get what's happening in the country.
Let's just change the focus from those grooming gangs to other
abuse that's going on in Uki happened to pick this article
from the BBC particularly offensive and this is about a 15
year old girl child. Q strip search at her school by
officers in Hackney after a teacher's wrongly suspected her
of carrying cannabis. This is the actual main part of
the report. So she was basically stripped,
including her underwear, had to bend over and expose intimate
parts of her body while she was menstruating, the the panel has
heard. But apparently the police
officers that conducted this disgraceful event didn't really
understand that they were dealing with a child and it
didn't matter to them that there wasn't an adult to support that
girl when this disgraceful strip search was taking place.
Meanwhile we've got the BBC that's suddenly become active on
the subject of grooming gang survivors.
So while the BBC largely silent about Jimmy Savile, certainly on
the Holly Gregg case and hundreds of child stealing by
the state, suddenly now we've got grooming gangs.
The survivors are going to be interviewed by the BBC.
We'll talk in a bit about why we're interested in this change
of heart for the BBC. Here's the BBC also spinning a
story which was about Operation Midland.
So we've got Liam Britton's widow here saying that she's got
no closure after false abuse claims were made in that case by
Carl Beach. But when we get into the
article, something that's really interesting because misconduct
proceedings against the Met Police investing investigating
Officer Steve Rodhouse, who was the lead for Operation Midland,
have been quietly dropped. So you're led to believe that
basically this is really bad because the police have dropped
an investigation into their own man.
You get a bit more when you go into the story.
In a surprise announcement last week, the Independent Office for
Police Conduct said it was stopping the proceedings after a
large volume of relevant material was recently disclosed
to it by was recently disclosed to it by the Met Police.
Now I'm just going to say here that the BBC is failing to
investigate and reveal to the public just what that relevant
material was. We need to know because sources
that have been informing the UK column assure us this is more
detailed information of of abuse of children within that overall
remit of Operation Midland. The BBC so far not asking to see
that material. To understand why the
investigation against that officer was dropped, let's have
a listen to Dominic Cummings talking recently on the subject
of grooming, gangs and child abuse.
So obviously all over Whitehall there was mass cover ups of the
whole thing for the same reason that we've already alluded to
fear, fear of the political consequences of facing reality.
What I saw in 2011, I mean a lot of different things normally
Whitehall, the the store, the the cliche that it's a crock up
model conspiracy is generally true.
The one, the one big exception I would say is regarding child
abuse where there are actually multiple conspiracies constantly
and largely successful. I watched this happening
repeatedly in the Department of Education because the issue was
parked there by Gordon Brown and at balls.
So I had to deal with it when I was there, I would watch the
redacted documents and the actual unredacted documents
about lots of these cases and you could see that the redacted
documents are redacted entirely to hide the incompetence of the
of the system. Now what happened on the gangs
is that when Andrew Norfolk at the time started to try to
report the issue, the council went to officials in the
southern Department of Education and said we want to bring a
judicial review to have the courts suppress the times it's
reporting and not allow it to happen.
Some of the officials inside the DfE who routinely organised
cover ups on such issues were of of course very in favour of it.
But there were another set of officials inside DfE who agreed
with me that this was absolutely appalling and in fact we should
do the opposite. So what we ended up doing was
saying to Michael Gove, you should write to the council and
say that if you bring this judicial review, we will
actually appear in court on behalf of the Times, not on
behalf of you. That obviously blew up the
judicial review attempt by the council to keep it secret.
And then Norfolk could publish his piece in the Times.
Unfortunately, I think Norfolk died recently without even
knowing that this ever even happened.
But that's just one small example of of of something which
happened many, many times on the subject of a few decades in
Whitehall. Which is of course why the
system is absolutely desperate not to have an enquiry.
It's only bizarre if you believe the old ideas about how the
system works. It's not bizarre once you
realise that the people there are not operating on the
incentives or with the values that you think they are.
It's actually completely standard and completely normal
and completely unsurprising. So Mike, we had a bit of
discussion about this prior to the news.
I said I think what we're watching is a diversion.
This has been blown up to keep public attention in UK on the
grooming gangs and divert attention away from the Middle
East. You thought something more
serious was happening. I think this is a deliberate
attempt to incite feeling within the country and to effectively
bring people out onto the streets.
Destabilisation. Destabilisation, yes,
absolutely. I'm not talking.
I'm talking about the timing of it more than anything else.
Indeed so a lot to be discussed on this.
But is Cummings, does he really believe that it was all just
cock up in Parliament? I don't think he's not that
naive. Let's have a look at this very
short clip, which we've shown many times before, and see what
it says about the political system as a whole.
Anyone with any sense who was in trouble would come to the
witness and and tell them the truth and say now this, I'm in a
jam, can you help? It might be debt, it might be
scandal involving small boys or any kind of scandal which a
member seemed likely to be mixed up in.
They'd come and ask if we could help, and if we could, we did.
And we would do everything we can because we would store up
brownie points. If, I mean, that sounds a
pretty, pretty nasty reason, but it's one of the reasons is if we
can get a chap out of trouble, then he'll he'll do as we ask
forever more. So here's the reality,
blackmailing MPs, covering up the abuse of children so they
would do as the politicians wanted evermore.
This is the reality. Grooming gangs is a minor
subset. But I totally agree Mike.
This is about destabilising the country.
So strife overseas, strife in UK.
And just to just to clarify that that's we need to very strongly
make the point that when Brian says this is a minor subset he's
talking about in terms of the scale of the event.
Obviously for the people involved in the grooming gangs
issue itself, it is absolutely a major and we we're not
attempting to downplay that in any way.
It is. We're talking about it within
the context of the overall abuse system, and it's been going on
for generations. Yeah, thank you for that
clarification. My absolutely right, Diane.
Let's bring you in because of course, while child abuse is
covered up here in England, South of the border, north of
the border, we have fanethi case that UK column has been
reporting hundreds, thousands possibly of women abused over a
great many years. And what can you tell us about
reactions by the Scottish Parliament?
Well, yeah, thanks Brian, and hello Mike.
It's it's great to be here today.
I just wanted to basically cover the story today in particular
because it goes along with this overall story that we're
covering around inquiries and child abuse and cover ups.
And it just so happens that last Thursday, this debate for what
was in the finally on the the floor of Scottish Parliament,
which was a very long time coming after three years of the
petition for the Finetti Residential School abuse
survivors fighting for justice and inclusion in the Scottish
Abuse Inquiry redress scheme. So since 2022 we've been
fighting this UK column has been covering this for a number of
years. They've been denied justice
according to the redress scheme because they don't meet the
criteria, because they weren't abused for long enough, meaning
that they were only abused for six weeks, six weeks at a time
or that possibly because they were calling it a holiday camp
or a convalescent camp or something like that.
And none of that was true. So let's start by watching a few
video clips here. Colin Smith was the person in
Parliament who raised this, but for his constituents, and he
called this justice for the Nazi survivors.
So here's a clip from his opening remarks.
There's another one before the committee petition, P1979, but
once again the government dismissed it.
This message call for an independent national whistle
blowing. Office for Children and
Education Services dismisses call for independent
investigations into unresolved allegations.
This message called the close gaps in the child abuse enquiry.
Whistleblowers ignored, Victims ignored, Public bodies
protected. That's the reality of child
protection in Scotland today. Presiding Officer, the tragic
human cost of child abuse is incalculable.
The lost childhoods the last in trauma.
As a society, nothing should be more important than safeguarding
our children. But from Nathi, countless other
failures by the state expose the brutal truth.
We are failing victims again and again, every single day.
And another person who did an excellent job of of covering
what was going on was Fergus Ewing MSP, who is on the
petitions committee and he has been part of the petitions
committee, which they have been in unanimous agreement for over
a year now that this needed to go further.
So this is a quite a powerful clip from Fergus Ewing.
This is a this is a palpable, egregious, serious injustice
caused to the most innocent girls in the country over a
sustained period of over 30 years for several weeks at a
time, has still not been redressed by either the Glasgow
Corporation or the Scottish Government.
Now I think the Scottish Government must take the lead.
We must accept the responsibility to do that.
How it is done is a mere detail. If it requires legislative
reform, that must be done. If it requires an executive
direction to redress Scotland, that must be done.
We cannot hide behind legalistic arguments.
The idea that these children were put there for a holiday or
rest, fight, care. What an insult.
But it's also, as well as an insult, factually wrong for
Nathie is a residential school the corporation advertised for
teachers. What do teachers do?
They teach in schools. So that argument is just an
insult to the victims. It is platitudinous, pedantic,
nitpicking, legalistic and I don't think 1 moment that the
current Deputy First Minister would seek to invoke or stand
behind that argument. The other argument is Mr. Smith
has said is that they ceased, they did not cease to be under
parental control. Are they really saying that the
parents consented to the abuse that their children have
suffered? What arrant nonsense.
What an absurd, absurd argument. The indisputable fact is that
these girls were sent there by Glasgow Corporation.
Glasgow Corporation owned the school.
They are part of the state. The state is responsible for the
abuse. The abuse that.
Now what I would like to say about what he just said was that
was a direct result of the evidence that I collected after
spending days and hours countless times, Mitchell
Library in Glasgow, in the national records of Scotland and
so on. And I want to credit him again
because if we go back to March 2024 when I was, I was cited
back in the Petitions Committee. Let's play that short clip from
Mr. Ewing. Thanks, convener.
We're indebted to Professor Dan Mccarry for submission of the
11th of March 2024 and just reading there from she states
the purpose of address for historical institutional child
abuse should be to benefit survivors.
Currently, the eligibility guidelines specifically exclude
survivors of short term residential school abuse.
This is unjust. So this weekend I caught up with
some of the survivors, particular Lynn Sheeran and
Sharon Cruden, who have been interviewed by Brian previously
as part of our series on the interviews with some of the
survivors. And I wanted to get their
thoughts on what they thought around what happened because
they were in the gallery on Thursday.
So let let's play their their thoughts here.
Just a minute please. I think that more Ms. BS could
have sat and stayed and listened to the debate.
The fact that the majority and them all stood up after First
Minister's questions and left was actually embarrassing to
thank them that not so long back there most of them were saying
that they stand by us and they'll help us and we'll fight
for justice, we're fight for redress and it.
Was. It was.
Shocking to see them getting up and leaving their seats and the
few that that stay fantastic. We appreciate your support
immensely but I just wish that more of them would have followed
through. But they told us a few months
back that they would help us and that in itself was quite
downheartening. And Shane, what do you think?
Yeah, I totally agree with the willing.
The fact that all these women had made their way, done
Edinburgh for this debate and just totally slapped his in the
face by doing that. I mean we can understand that
some of them have got other meetings to go to, to do stuff
like that, but not everyone, not everyone.
Just have a bit of compassion and heed it out at least.
And. Make a contribution and a speech
of a speech of some sort that's great in our favour.
We need, we need everybody on board here for support.
But just getting up and walking out was just an absolute
embarrassment at the end of. The day.
So I think this is an appropriate time to point out a
couple of screenshots that I took from the recording of the
debate. So if we can pull this slide up
on the screen, this was First Minister's Questions, which
happened immediately before the phonetic debate.
Then there was a short pause. They stopped the video
recording, and then we came back about 3 minutes later.
And what did we see? Just very few MSPs alone by
themselves. I think there are maybe 5 total
and in the entire floor. That's Kate.
Standing there by herself. And what I would like to do is
call out the the people who did stay and contribute.
So of course, Colin Smith, Alex Cole, Hamilton, those two were
together at Fernethi. They went to Fernethi with the
women a couple of years ago on a trip.
So they they know first hand exactly what it was like.
Of course, Fergus Ewing, who we just heard from Marie School,
Golden and Foisal Chowdhury, Makie Chapman, Monica Lennon, so
they all spoke in favor of the women.
And then of course, we heard from Deputy First Minister Kate
Forbes. And it's always been the first
minister or the deputy first minister for the last few years
who have been the ones denying the justice and saying, well,
these are the reasons why we can't do it.
So if we can just put Kate up here on the screen for just a
minute, here's what she had to say.
That she did commit to continuing close engagement with
survivors engaged directly with Glasgow City Council because
they do have direct responsibility for what happened
to the women. Look at how we could provide
greater levels of emotional support, see whether the
Scottish club abuse inquiry would cover for Nethi itself.
And she actually said in pursuit of the truth.
So what I see in her language is lots of empty promises that
we're going to talk, we're going to engage, we're going to
listen, we're going to see. She talked about how they will
be included in Phase 10 of the inquiry, which is going to be
looking at the provision of residential care for children in
establishments run by local authorities.
As for nephew was and what's very disappointing as well is
that not only were they not remaining in the chamber for the
debate, but we also saw very little press coverage of it.
We did see here on the 12th of June, which was the day that the
debate happened, a statement from Alex Cole Hamilton's office
who's been supporting the bill along with Colin Smith saying
that we need to open this up to the survivors.
And we saw one other article in mainstream media on the Daily
Record which came out over the weekend, which featured Lynch
Sheeran herself, who we just heard from.
But that is all we have seen. So UK column has covering this
from the beginning and we will continue to do so until the
women get the justice that they deserve.
Mike and Brian. Diane, just one final question,
if we could. How many women does this affect
for anybody that hasn't been following this story?
Well, the school was open between 1960 and 1991.
The women were there for six weeks at a time and some of them
went more than once. So we could potentially
calculate thousands and thousands of women that were
affected. And we've had maybe stories from
about 200 women who are been in the survivor group, but we know
that there's many, many more. And so the campaign has involved
getting women to speak out if they were there and maybe not
even aware that this is going on because of the cover up, because
of the fact that it's not being provided anywhere except by us.
And we will continue to do so. So we need everyone to spread
the word to get more Glaswegian women who were abused and for
nothing to come forward. OK, Diane, thank you for that.
Well, I'm just going to reinforce this business of
massive cover up across governments of child abuse.
And of course, if our government is prepared to cover up wide
scale abuse of children, whether it's grooming gangs or it's in
residential homes or foster homes for children, or it's
north of the border for Nethi, If the government is prepared to
do this, of course the government is capable of
anything and that includes prosecuting malicious proxy wars
overseas. But the point UK column is
making here today is we have a vicious attack on our own
society, our own families, not in ones and twos.
This is happening on a huge scale and the government is
covering up that abuse. Now we are looking at the
country and saying this is to provoke unrest and violence in
this country and unrest and violence in this country is
going to be a critical issue to over and above what is happening
overseas on distant shores. So let's reinforce this.
This is just a few quotes from the Woods report sector expert
review of the new multi agency safeguarding arrangements.
This is back in May 2021. So this was the headline from
Community care. Social work isn't social work
isn't falling to bits. It has some deep challenges to
which we can provide remedies and if we get into this, I've
only taken a little bit of it, but it's the usual placitudes.
The resources for protecting children are under much stress.
The recruitment and retention and safeguarding profession of
safeguarding professionals remains a challenge across the
three statutory agencies. We just can't get the right
people. It goes on.
The report estimates the current shortfall in children's social
care budgets is 824,000,000. We can't get to grips with
protecting children unless another 824,000,000 has slapped
on the table. But it's the money circulating
around abused children which is funding the whole child abuse
industry in UK. People have got to start to
understand what's happening here because it is the government and
its agencies, committees and those conducting reports who are
wittingly or unknowingly contributing to the covering up
of abuse. Let's just continue through.
So the report went on and it said that Whitehall departments
need to demonstrate more effectively a culture of joined
up working to support local implementation of the new
arrangements to support their full potential to further
improve the safeguarding of children.
You can't further improve it because what we've got is the
abuse of children on a massive scale, producing income for a
vast number of people being covered up by the government.
This is about joined up thinking which is actually allowing
criminal activity. I'm describing it here as part
of an orchestrated, protective, protected, abusive multi agency
cabal. And if we look at this final
comment, it's talking about the leadership of the multi agency
arrangements. And of course, this is where the
problem really lies because there's no separation of powers.
We've got local authorities, we've got clinical commissioning
groups and we've got the police all working together in
partnership. So the moment we have abusers
operating in the system through the local authority, for
example, the local police are already implicated because
they're not watching from a distance to uphold law.
They are in partnership with the authorities abusing the
children. So this is the nub of the
matter. It's a national club with no
separation of powers. And Even so, this could not
operate without the facilitation of the family courts which hide
the abuse within secret courts. So if you want some further
proof here, we could jump to Australia.
This is back to 1997 when an investigation and a report came
out which was called breaking the code of silence and this was
about corruption and cover up, particularly of child abuse in
NSW, in Australia. So UK column today absolutely
pushing. Before we start worrying about
what's happening overseas, let's have a look at what is happening
in UK. And to our mind, we are being
attacked by our own government which is desperate to get social
breakdown because if that can be achieved, these new policies and
control structures are going to come into post.
Meanwhile, Mike, our illustrious leader Keir Starmer is out of
the country, having set the Dogs running over grooming gangs.
What's he up to in Canada? He's committing carnage now.
Yesterday, as Brian says, Keir Starmer met with Mark Carney in
Toronto. Well, sorry, in the West of in
the, the, the mountains in the West of of the country.
Now they began by what discussing what they described
as the grave situation in the Middle East and they said that
this with was with a view to de escalation.
I think probably not. They claimed to have had a warm
and productive conversation about Britain and Canada's
future relationship. Kearney confirmed that Canada
would ratify EU KS accession to the comprehensive progressive
agreement on for trans Pacific partnership in the autumn.
So that's this massive Pacific trade deal and they agreed to
set up what they described as a joint task force to quote
turbocharge progress on other areas of mutual benefit, UN
quote. So let's have a quick look at
what they were talking about South trade and semiconductors
is was at the top of the list. But aside from that, they
announced Quantum to develop secure transatlantic
communications based on quantum technologies.
That's because the Chinese have done this first.
So they decide they they've decided they want to get on this
bandwagon allowing us to connect our national systems and lay the
groundwork to create a truly global next generation network
with application across our financial and telecoms sectors.
Does that make you feel good, Brian?
No good. The next one on the list is
digital. And they said that this was to
mutually arrange, force nation building digital public
infrastructure. So that's fantastic too.
Next came artificial intelligence, which is they say
all about deepening and exploring new collaborations on
frontier AI systems to support our national security.
So this is actually about national security.
It's not about anything else. They mentioned an organization,
a company called Cohere, which is the Canada based Google
founded AI startup, which both Canada and the UK have memoranda
of understanding with. They then talked about bio
manufacturing, which is all about strengthening
collaboration to deliver economic growth and be better
prepared for future health emergencies.
So they're sticking with the the policy agendas as quick hard as
they can here. Critical minerals, again
attempting to sideline China. So this is all about finding
them, mining them and so on and all about infrastructure
production and processing capabilities.
And they had a whole section on enhanced defence and security,
including continued support for Ukraine, of course, intelligence
sharing, cybersecurity and border security.
This was all done in the run up to the G7 meeting which also
began yesterday in the Canadian Rockies.
This is not going to be the usual formality this time.
There'll be no joint communique. There'll be fewer round table
meetings in favour of one-on-one meetings, all at least as far as
the mainstream press is concerned, to get some consensus
for what comes next. The there are going to be extra
attendees there with leaders from Modi is coming from India,
there's going to be leaders from Brazil, Zelensky is going to be
there from Ukraine. There are going to be people
there from Australia and from Saudi Arabia.
Mark Rutte and Antonio Guterres are due to be there as well.
The mainstream media is presenting this is all this idea
of no communique and all the rest as being an effort to avoid
Trump getting in the way of things.
Oh, and we shouldn't forget Ursula von der Leyen because
she'll be there. And of course, her main priority
is consensus to maintain pressure on Russia.
And she said that last week. We put forward a proposal for
the for an 18 sanctions package. I invite all G7 leaders,
partners to join us in this endeavour.
And of course that's because that's worked so far, hasn't it?
Now the summit was supposed to be about this protecting our
communities and the world, building energy security and
accelerating the digital transition and securing the
partnerships of the future. Well, that's all been abandoned
in favour of this war, of course.
So as I say, Zelensky making a celebrity appearance.
As I mentioned, war with Trump over tariffs and also war with
Iran. Now while we mention Iran, the
Starmer regime decided to send more aircraft to the Middle East
to support Israel. Starmer has said that he sent
typhoons and air to air refuellers quotes for
contingency support across the region.
Does that sound likely to you? No.
No, I mean, there's not much more to say, is there?
Because it's it's it's much more than contingency support.
But anyway, you know, I'm going to say thanks to Patrick for
sending this over to me. We've got a short video clip of
former British diplomat Karen Ross, who made a statement on
this. Now, if you don't know who he
was, he resigned from the Foreign Office after the Iraq
War. But let's have a listen to what
he said about this deployment to the Middle East from Starmer.
Hi, I'm Khan Ross. I was head of Middle East Policy
at the UK mission to the UN. I was also head of the Israel
Palestine desk in the British Foreign Office.
Keir Starmer has just decided to send British military assets to
the Middle East, presumably to join the Israel Iran conflict on
Israel's side. Couple of things about this.
First of all, Israel's attack on Iran was illegal under
international law. It is not legal under the UN
charter to attack other countries unless you yourself
have been attacked IE self defence, and Israel was not
attacked. Secondly.
To join a conflict, IE expand the number of countries who are
part of that. Conflict is of course
escalatory. Starmer has repeatedly said he
wants to de escalate the conflict.
Actions speak louder than words. Britain is contributing to the
escalation of the Iran, Israel conflict.
Thirdly, of course, we shouldn't forget Gaza.
The UK government under Starmer is complicit in Israel's
Commission of war crimes in Gaza, and perhaps even genocide
by the deliberate starvation of the Palestinian population.
There should be a public inquiry into this complicity.
Now, the only thing that I might challenge him on there is the
idea of a public inquiry because as we're as we're making the
point today, these things have a tendency to be there in order to
cover up more than anything else.
But I don't know if you've got any thoughts on what he said.
Well, I think it's obvious. Something that I saw at the end
of last week was that one of the key spokesman for Labour friends
of Israel was actually saying that Netanyahu's position was
untenable and he should be removed.
So I think there is dissent in the Labour Party, but of course
Keir Starmer is installing himself as a dictator really
might, which is the key part of the problem.
OK, let's just have a break from Israel for for a moment and what
do we want to say to our audience?
A huge thank you to everybody who's recently joined up as a
member. Utterly brilliant.
We've had a number of people joining us over the last few
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Now we have been asked for more details on the UK column on
location in York. We're going to tease you at the
moment because we're going to keep exactly what we're going to
do under wraps for a little while longer.
But suffice to say this is a fantastic location.
So the event will be on Saturday the 18th of October.
We're very much looking for a full house because if we can
achieve that then we are absolutely dedicated to give you
what you've all been asking us for, which is a weekend event on
the 20th anniversary of UK Column in 2026.
So watch out for more details on this really good event.
Now I got some. Well, I got summoned for an
interview by Ben Rubin a few days ago.
There was a lot happening with the UK Column Studio, so Ben
wisely said let's go on to Dartmoor in the Rain and the
Mist and the Clag where I will interview you.
So we had an informal chat. I was interrogated by Ben Rubin
and we covered a lot of information in quite an
interesting environment. So join us for that.
That'll be going out at 1:00 tomorrow.
Now, Diane, you've also flagged up this, the Scottish People's
COVID-19 Inquiry Conference. Can you tell us a little bit
more? Yeah, sure.
So this is a reflection by Professor Richard Enos, who's
the chair of Common Knowledge Edinburgh, who organized this
event which we held back in February.
I'm also on the executive committee for Common Knowledge
Edinburgh and I spoke on the media lies and the media
campaign that went on at the time in 2020.
And I just want to say that one of the most important things he
highlights in this article, which will be part of the
series, we've got all of the talks from the conference, from
other people as well who spoke on the day and including the
statistics who that actually proved according to the
information itself, that in Scotland there was no pandemic
and there was no COVID as we were told that there was.
So there's very important information in those videos and
I would urge everyone to watch them and share those as well.
These thoughts from Professor Renos are very, very
interesting. And the next questions that need
answering, as you said in the article, is who needs to be held
to account to what happened in Scotland and of course around
the world and what do we do about?
It excellent. Thank you for that.
Also tonight we've got German warfare going out.
What happened to journalism with Lara Logan?
That's at 7:00. Really interesting series and
German doing some really good work with UK columns.
So if you haven't seen any of that before, log in tonight at
7:00. And also we want to remind
people that June 26th to the 29th is the Sounds Beautiful
festival in Wimborne, Dorset and we will see you there.
More details on that in the coming days.
Now where? Where, where do we want to go
now? Well, let's reconvene with the
subject of Israel. So we have, yes, Rachel Reeves
talking about UK's involvement in this whole disastrous affair.
Let's listen to what she had to say.
Well, exactly. But as so as a point of
principle, and I understand you don't want to talk about
anything operational, we can't predict what's going to happen
in the future. But as a point of principle, we
are allies to the Israelis and there could be a situation here
where we are asked to deploy assets in their support and we
would definitely we would have to consider that, wouldn't we?
Well, what we've done in the past, as you know Trevor is help
protect Israel from income coming strikes.
So a defensive activity, so. Paul, if I I'm just simply, I'm
not going to. Rule anything out at the at this
stage, Trevor, it's fast moving situation, very volatile
situation. But we don't want to see
escalation. We want to see de escalation
because there are it's a very volatile part of the world.
And of course what happens in the Middle East as we know often
has repercussions around the world.
We've already seen in the last few days, for example, oil and
gas prices begin to go, but that has consequences for people here
in the UK. And so we do have an interest in
de escalation in the region and that is what we are urging.
But just one final thing on the issue of Iran and Israel.
The Israelis have made it pretty clear that part of what they
want is regime change in Tehran. Do we support that?
I've got no time for the Iranian regime, for the suppression of
the oppression of their own people.
And we have serious concerns, which we've expressed on a
number of occasions about the Iranian nuclear program.
But we want to see de escalation.
At the moment we are not trying to ramp up the rhetoric.
We are very concerned about the developments in the Middle East
because of the implications here at home, but also the
implications for the Middle East.
Just an incredible interview overall because of the things
that she didn't say, the weasel wording.
So we've been providing intelligence material to Israel,
which has clearly allowed Israel to conduct his aggressive
attacks on Iran. She's trying to sell that as
defensive. We're apparently putting jet
aircraft out in the Middle East in order to, quote, protect our
people. I'm not sure how that works.
So, Mike, it's truly obscene what the British politicians are
doing at the moment, because they're helping to ferment these
wars overseas and then holding up their hands.
It was nothing to do do with us. But she did admit what the UK
government is really after and that is regime change in Iran.
We don't like the government of Iran, therefore they need to be
removed. But of course many countries in
the world say we don't like the government of UK.
We'd rather they were removed. But we can't have that stance
because of course it's only the British government and the
Western governments which are right.
The hypocrisy Mike is breathtaking.
Absolutely off the charts. Off the chart, and I'd like just
to remind us, our audience, the UK column for a very long time,
this goes back to 2011, was warning about David Cameron's
personal stance on Israel. He he was to be quoted saying
that basically his allegiance to Israel was unshakable.
And we pointed out that meant automatically that UK came
second. And I believe that that is
actually absolutely the case. But of course, he didn't just
talk the language. He went and walked the walk.
Let's have a listen to that. We'll have a look at this little
clip from Middle East, Middle East Eye that was talking about
what what Cameron's been up to. But while the US and Israel have
long rejected the International Courts Authority and are not
signatories of the Rome Statute, the the UK is and is bound by
the court's decision to arrest the Israeli leaders.
Yet according to former staff working at the ICC prosecutor's
office, David Cameron warned Kareem Khan that the UK would
would withdraw from the ICC and defund the court if it was
forced to make that decision. In a heated phone call, Cameron
reportedly told Khan that going ahead with the arrest warrants
would be like dropping a hydrogen bomb and that it would
make the ICC look like it was losing the plot.
Khan responded to Cameron's threats of withdrawing from the
Rome Statute, saying that if it were to occur that it would have
that it would have to accept that the rules based system
would be dead. Cameron replied saying that Khan
was making a huge mistake and that the world was not ready for
this. A month later, Kareem Khan went
ahead with the charges, indicating that then no unknown
figures had attempted to intimidate him and his team.
And we just add to that, of course, the US has actually
taken out sanctions against him and other members of the
International Court in order to bully and threaten them into
silence. So who's who is our government
working for? Is it the population of UK or is
it an overseas power that at the moment is demonstrating it can
be particularly aggressive? Should we be looking to our
intelligence services to help calm down the situation?
Oh. Absolutely, absolutely.
Let's just look at where we are with that.
So Keir Starmer announced yesterday that Blaise Metrovelli
CMG is going to be the first ever female chief of the
Security Intelligence Service. She becomes the 18th chief of
the organization's in the organization's history and of
course no one as C So she has operational responsibility or
she will have very shortly for MI 6 and is the only publicly
named member of that organization.
She will supposedly be accountable to the foreign
secretary. She's currently director General
of Q Branch, responsible for technology and innovation in MI
6 and has previously held a director level role in MI 5.
And she succeeds the Bilderberg attendee, Sir Richard Moore, who
leaves the service, uh, towards the autumn.
Umm, So what do we know about her?
Uh, let's, uh, see, she's a 47 year old.
She's a career intelligence officer who joined the Secret
Intelligence Service in 1999. She served as second secretary
brackets political in Basra in 2004, which puts her right in
the heart of the Blair regime and of course linked therefore
to the Iraq war. And then last January, she was
an attendee at this organization, at this event at
the Deshi Foundation on Transforming Democracy, all
about how so-called democratic states can best use AI and
thrive. She's listed in the conference
summary as Director General, Tech and Innovation at the
Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.
Interestingly enough, because of course they don't want to, they
didn't want to identify her as MI 6 at that time.
Now you can watch last Friday's news programme for a report by
Mark Anderson on the Ditchley Foundation.
So she was made a Companion of the Order in Saint of Saint
Michael and Saint George last year.
So let's just have a quick look at what she said when she was
given this job. Here she is.
I'm proud and honoured to be asked to lead my service.
MI 6 plays a vital role with MI5 and GCSQ and keeping the British
people safe and promoting UK interests overseas.
Which of those two do you think is the highest priority?
I would suspect my kids UK interests overseas
overwhelmingly. Yes, but this narrative about
keeping people safe keeps coming back.
Of course, as she went on to say, I look forward to to
continuing that work alongside the brave officers and agents of
MI 6 and our many international partners.
I mean, what are your thoughts on this?
Well, our international partners, I'm going to say
straight away, includes Israel right the way across the
intelligence field. We're embedded with Israel and
have been since Francis Maude, Conservative MP, announced this
to the nation. We're in partnership with
Israel. We we are an ally of Israel.
Never debated in the House as far as I know.
And she's going to work presumably to promote Israel's
interests. I may be a bit hard here, Mike,
but I think I think reality is coming to the surface.
Well, I think it's fascinating that she began her career
effectively under Rich Richard Dearlove and was subsequently
posted to Iraq immediately after the Iraq war.
So she was part of that cabal and clearly not going to be
doing anything to de escalate any events in Ukraine or the
Middle East, I would say. No, because British interests
lie in destabilizing these areas and regime change so that the
natural assets can be raped. That is the meat of it.
And Theresa May, of course, several years ago was, was
obviously talking about a sort of Operation Barbarossa 2025 in
the UK being able to get its hands on the resources in
Ukraine. So it's pretty obvious what's
going on. And I for one would say that to
me, our security secret intelligence services and
security services are not protecting the nation state in
any shape or form. She has got nice hair though.
OK, let's move on with that comment.
We better. Well, of course, alongside with
the state dictatorship comes censorship.
So Diane, you've been absolutely taking the lid off how
censorship is working across the country and also of course, how
the library and the educational system is being used to groom
particularly children and young people.
What have you got for us? Yeah, thanks, Brian.
So last week I was in Buckingham at the University of Buckingham
doing a talk that I was invited to to present by Professor
Dennis Hayes, who is the director of Academics for
Academic Freedom. And I've interviewed him
previously on UK column. This this was called In
Defensive Libraries. And I added the subtitle They're
burning books again because they actually are.
And I just wanted to thank everyone who came out to see my
talk. We had a mix of friends of the
University of Buckingham as well as members of UK Column and in
some cases some as far as 80 miles away to come see me.
So what's actually happening here is what I realized is
hypocrisy. And this came out of some of the
discussion that happened as a result of UK Column members
asking me questions after the end of my talk.
And what I'm going to talk about is, as people know that have
watched me previously talking about the sexualization of
children when it comes to the library content that's been
being provided to children as young as primary school age,
which of course includes as young as children in
kindergarten, so 5 year olds. One thing that's important to
note is that notebooks are actually censored or banned in
the UK or in America. But the librarians both in the
UK and in America under the American Library Association, as
well as here, the Chartered Institute of Library and
Information professionals, which sort of booted me out of my
profession originally, they are basically saying that we have to
put this in front of children because it's inclusive, it's
diverse, and so they need to see these things.
So just as a reminder, here's a couple of examples.
We have, for example, in My Daddy's Belly.
This was a book that says it's the story of a transgender dad
giving birth, obviously meant for young children.
So how confusing is that going to be?
Another really shocking example is here.
There's basically a glossary in a book that's called This Book
is Gay, and you can look at this class to read yourself and you
can see that for, at least for me, there are words that were
defined that I've never even heard of myself.
And this is also been found in primary schools in the libraries
throughout the West. If parents want to do this for
their children, that's fine. But the issue is that the state
is putting in front of their children without the knowledge
of the parents because the parents aren't being told what
they're being provided from school.
This, as we know from work done by Hugh McCarthy, which has been
published on UK column in recent times.
This is actually happening according to guidance provided
by globalist organizations such as the UN and the World Health
Organization, which states that children are sexual beings from
birth and therefore should be exposed to this content.
On the other hand, university and national libraries are
actually censoring and they call it decolonizing.
But actually what it means is that they are destroying library
collections and catalogs. So I have just a short clip here
from the University of Leeds library just as an example of
how they define decolonization in the library.
A question that's often asked is what does it mean to decolonize
the library? So here's a video to explain
what that means. First, let's start with the
definition. To decolonize something is to
identify, challenge, and revise or replace assumptions, ideas,
values, and practices. The reflector colonizers
dominating influence, and especially a Eurocentric
dominating influence. But why does decolonization
matters to the library? Decolonizing the library
encourages students and staff to challenge unconscious biases
that have been formed by a fixation on Eurocentric
perspectives, narratives, and knowledge systems.
Put simply, So that again is the University of Leeds that is on
YouTube if you want to see the entire video.
So what we're seeing is that British, Western European,
so-called Eurocentric content, it needs to be moved aside in
British libraries to make room for the prioritization of
content that is not British, Western European.
To I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with adding
different voices from different countries and different
perspectives from around the world.
But what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing is that academics in
this country are experiencing that some of their long standing
materials, basic textbooks, research materials are being
removed from the library by the librarians, from the catalog and
from the collection without the knowledge or any discussion from
the academics. And that to me is censorship.
So when we combine that with the fact that librarians are pushing
sexualization materials in front of primary school children and
that they're removing materials from university age, people who
are of consent to, in my opinion, can be anything they
want to, I just find it that's just a staggering example of
proxy of what the librarians and library associations are doing.
Thank you, Diane for that. Now, Brian, we're going to
related censorship topic, but I want to bring this on screen.
This is Kitchen counter blog from Blogger Alistair Kitchen.
You'll find it on Sub Stack now. He was detained last week upon
arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne,
where he lives, having been held in custody for 12 hours.
He says that the United States border officials told him it was
because of what he has written in the past on pro Palestine
protests by university students in the United States.
He said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and
stopped was stopped and interrogated by US Customs and
Border Protection officials during his stopover in Los
Angeles. And he said it was he was
clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons.
And he said that the the staff there spent 30 minutes
questioning about his views in Israel and Palestine, including
his thoughts on Hamas. Now, this is very important,
very similar behaviour to that of the British counterterrorism
police at British airports. Except of course, in the cases
that we're aware of, at least people weren't deported
afterwards because they were mainly British people.
But anyway, I've got to mention that they were waiting for me
when I got off the plane in in New York recently, not with the
same outcome. And we'll talk about that a
little bit more in extra. But anyway, getting back to to
kitchen, he said he had cleaned up his online presence,
expecting ad hoc digital sweeps before he went on on holiday or
to to the trip to New York. But he was not prepared for
their sophistication. And because they basically it
didn't matter that he had cleared his digital profile in
the meantime. They had clearly historical
information. And he's he is alleging that
this sophisticated approach from them is almost certainly
facilitated by Palantir. And he has said that if you're
deleting social media 48 hours before your flight to the United
States, it's already too late. He said that his phone contents
were immediately downloaded on threat of deportation and but
that in retrospect he should have denied the search and
accepted immediate deportation. He said in a general he was too
compliant, too trusting and too hopeful.
So this is is clearly something which is transatlantic in nature
and I think it's a very negative and very totalitarian approach
that both governments seem to be taking.
Well, it's it's a window into what the governments really are,
be it in the US or here in the UK, Mike.
So at least this stuff is coming up to the surface.
Any idea we're in a democracy is completely false now in 2025,
and this is just another example of the sorts of pressures the
state is going to put you under if you dare to disagree with the
state. I think it's that simple.
Diane, let's finish then with a story from the Daily Mail.
Yeah, so this is something that a lovely UK column member sent
to me early this morning. This was in the Daily Mail over
the weekend about the Bilderberg meeting happening in Sweden
right now. And it says that if you read the
article further on, it sort of talks about how they infiltrated
the 2018 Bilderberg meeting, the first time an undercover
journalist ever managed to do so, gaining insights about the
meetings in her workings. Now, I think that our own Mark
Anderson would have something to say about that, because he's
been covering the Bilderbergs for much longer than that.
I'm even going back to Charlie Stilton, who covered the
Bilderbergs for The Guardian starting in 2009.
So I just thought it was a really, really kind of darkly
funny example of one of the wives that needs to be
interested in front of us. Yes, yeah.
My comment on it is this is more signs of the mainstream media
trying to adapt to, to look like a new media.
So they are sliding across the BBC's doing this, Times Radio in
particular putting out material which has got a slightly amateur
tinge to it because they are so desperately worried about the
exposure. So I, I think there's a lot in
that article. Diane.
I think that brings us to the end of today's news.
Diane, Mike, thank you very much for joining me.
Huge thank you to our audience, wherever you are in the world.
And once again, a huge, huge thank you to everybody who's
taken out membership and is helping to fund UK column and
help us do what we do. We couldn't do it without you.
Thanks very much for joining us. Bye bye.