I don't know how many of you watched UK column news on Monday
when I talked about the Sustainable Development Goals
and how they tie into scientific research and libraries and
universities. And so I had a comment from
Charles actually saying that he thought that this was
particularly interesting and useful information.
So he suggested that I go into a little bit further into some of
this with libraries for this talk.
So I've, these are things I've been aware of for a while.
There's some new things that I found this week.
I went far into this rabbit hole and I will try to keep it as
surface level as possible. If there's anything else about
libraries or education you'd like to talk about during the
question and answers, of course, I'm, I'm certainly happy to
address anything related to this.
So Sandy Adams and I have been, unfortunately, she's not here
today. It's actually her birthday this
weekend. So happy birthday to Sandy.
So she's away celebrating with her family, which is lovely.
She, she and I have been talking a lot recently about sustainable
development goals and, and education and in particular, and
how this all ties in together into the 2030 agenda.
So I'm assuming that most of you who are here, if you watch UK
Holloman, if you're here at this event, you are aware of the
sustainable development goals and our, our reporting, which
has shown that basically whatever they say is the
opposite is true. So sustainable means
unsustainable, right? So they are trying to unsustain
us at whatever level at the top that we're trying to talk about,
right? So if they're saying we're going
to protect life underwater, it actually means we're going to
kill the fish, right? So we have to really be careful
of what they're saying because it's inversion of language that
they use is actually they're they're doing the opposite
usually of what they're telling us or they try to make it sound
like it's really nice. And that's something that we
have to be really careful with is what's actually going on
beneath this language that they're giving to us, because on
a surface level it sounds great, but what are they really trying
to do? So I'm going to talk in
particular today about libraries and the the sort of the
globalist organization that runs libraries and how they have
contributed to these sustainable development goals.
In particular, Sustainable Development Goal 16 is the one
that apparently they see libraries fitting into under the
most, although they see libraries relating to all
seventeen goals and that we can all contribute to them as good
librarians. Well, not me anymore, but
previously other librarians that still exist in the system that
we are able to contribute to all seventeen goals because we have
such a role to play in education and knowledge and and and
getting things out to the world and access to information.
But what is actually going on underneath all of this?
So the short version of the title of Sustainable Goal 16 is
peace, justice and strong institutions, Which of course
sounds lovely, doesn't it? Sure who does?
Who doesn't want peace and justice?
And strong institutions. However, if you read some of the
language, and these are things, I know this is being recorded.
So if people need to see these details later, you can always
look at them later on, but they're on the slides anyway.
Goal 16 is about promoting peaceful and inclusive
societies. So inclusion means exclusion,
doesn't it? Right.
Think about myself. Think about what inclusion
actually means in this day and age.
Providing access to justice for all and building effective,
accountable and inclusive. Second word in the second
inclusive in the same sentence. Institutions at all levels,
people everywhere should be free of fear from all forms of
violence and feel safe as they go about their lives, whatever
their ethnicity, faith, or sexual orientation.
So we're talking about including everyone.
Just that's OK. It sounds good at a surface
level, but those of you who are aware of the sort of the
equality, diversity, sorry, equity, not equality, equity,
diversity and inclusion agenda that has perfaded all employers
and institutions in this country, you will know that it
is not all as nice and lovely as it sounds.
There are. I don't know how much you've
looked into the actual UN policies.
This is directly from the the United Nations website.
The targets and all of all of the sociable development goals
have these different targets and indicators and outputs and what
we want to do by 2030. So there are several of them
listed here. They have a lot to do with
violence and stopping violence, stopping abuse, exploitation,
trafficking. Again, that all sounds great,
but it's all about, you know, basically treating everyone the
same. So it's kind of this idea of
everyone is equal, which depending on what you call it,
there is academic debates about is it Marxism, is it communism?
Is it socialism? You know what, what is behind
that? But essentially, basically
saying that everyone has to be treated the same, which is why
they're funneling money from, you know, wealthier nations like
the UK, at least historically, to other countries in the name
of climate finance. And so there's channeling money
through, you know, City of London and, and the banking
system to Africa. And then African nations are in
another sort of less affluent nations in the past.
So we're all being treated equitably so that we all have
the same amount of nothing and we'll be happy about it in five
years. Yay.
OK, So what I want to focus on here, though, for my talk is 16
A, which is to strength. Well, there's 1610 and 16 A 1610
says ensure public access to information and protect
fundamental freedoms in accordance with national
legislation and international agreements.
SO16A in particular. 16 sorry, 1610, I've been up since 3:00 AM
16/10 is the one that the library associations, the
International Federation of Library Associations, which I'm
going to talk about in depth, directly contributed to this.
So what are they actually saying when they're talking about
access to public access to information?
Well, this has to do partially with their target 1610 and
sustainable development goals. So who has ever tried to do a
Freedom of Information request in this country?
How did it go for you? Was it difficult?
Not difficult. Well, that's surprising.
Anyone else wasn't difficult. Well, that's good because that's
not been my experience. And, and, and one of the one of
the things that is interesting about Freedom of Information
requests is that you have to hit a certain spots.
You guys must have done them much better than I have ever
done because you can't ask for too much because then they say
it costs too much money. You either have a threshold, I
think it's £600 which was set 20 years ago, which is still £600,
and if it costs more than £600 in staff time or resources, they
won't do it. If it's too broad, they won't do
it. If it's too generic, they won't
do it. We've been giving Freedom of
Information requests for libraries to find out what
they're doing in these decolonization projects and
access to information that children shouldn't be seeing
that I reported on consistently. And we get very vague answers
back from the universities and the libraries and they claim
that they haven't done this or they don't hold this or you've
asked for too much. It's the same with the Fidelity
Residential School cases. So maybe the things that I'm
doing are too controversial. Maybe you've done things that
are easier to answer, but here this was written evidence
submitted to Parliament around SDG 16.
These are media related organizations and they said that
in 2000 when the UK started using the Freedom of Information
Act or when they tried to put into place they had problems.
But although it was meant to be instrumental in speaking truth
to power, does that sound like a real government term?
Truth to power? And and it has been met with
fierce criticism from both government representatives and
civil society organizations for complexity and ministerial veto
power to block information requests, among other issues.
So if they decide that they want to block it, they they can
essentially, but they've tied this back to in this report,
Parliament on SGG target 1610, which is the one I read to you.
Fundamental freedoms vital for democracy and good governance,
such as freedom of expression, which we've been talking about
today on online safety and censorship and all of these
things and access to information which is ATI these are they are
curved, exacerbates corruption and allows for complete impunity
for violations of the law and human rights.
Consequently, citizens become disenfranchised and have a low
trust in government. Well, that's surprising.
A feeling of further decline in civic space and democracy.
The achievement of SDG 16 and other SDGS are severely impeded.
That's not good for them and any related initiatives can easily
be misdirected and fail. So this is what's going to
happen is if we don't follow these SDGS, then you know,
apparently civil society will fall apart.
So this gets into the IFLA organization, which is the one
that I mentioned, which is the International Federation of
Library Associations and Institutions.
This is the, you might have heard me if you've heard my
reporting previously on libraries Sillup, which is EU KS
version of this. And all of the National Library
associations fall under IFLA. So Sillup is the Chartered
Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
They took my charter ship away from me essentially when I when
I had to resign, when I was going through my cancellation
process. They have reciprocal agreements
with organizations like the American Library Association.
And actually, the reason that I'm allowed to be or was allowed
to be a professional librarian in the UK is because of
reciprocal agreements that kind of fall under these
international standards. So they all kind of work
together. And the last few and current
presidents of the American Library Association have been
Marxist, but but self declared Marxist lesbian was 1.
Emily Jervinski. There's also been the non binary
have been the last few Ala presidents.
So they're all right in the middle of of pushing that
particular agenda. The things that I talked about
related to the things that are they're being placed in front of
children. So here's what Ifla said about
Goal 16, SDG 16. The the entire name of Goal 16
is much longer than the one on the Pretty Little cartoony
graphic. Promote peaceful and inclusive
inclusive societies for sustainable development, Provide
access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and
inclusive, again, inclusive institutions at all levels.
And this is to realize access to information fully.
Everyone needs both access and skills to use information
effectively. As outlined in the Lyon
Declaration on Access to Information and Development,
which is another separate but related document.
Libraries have the skills and resources to help governments,
institutions, and individuals communicate, organized structure
and use information effectively for development.
Now, when I became a librarian 25 years ago, I thought I was
just going to help organizations, people, etcetera,
find and access and use information.
I didn't know I was going to be doing it on behalf of the
globalists. So this was, I'm gonna just go
into a little bit of the history of showing how IFLA has been
instrumental for the past 10 years, actually a bit longer
around developing Agenda 2030. So this goes back to 2015 when
they were working on the 2030 agenda saying the new, the 2030
Agenda is an inclusive. How many times if we had, if we
had drinks in here, if your drink every time I said
inclusive, you guys would be on the floor by now.
Integrate a framework of 17 goals, spending economic,
environmental and social development.
By achieving this agenda, no one will be left behind.
Libraries are key institution to help achieve the goals.
So there's that inclusivity, there's the everyone ends up in
the same place. That's the the idea of, you
know, what they're doing of kind of spreading things around and
and so on. So we're we're kind of seeing
what's what's going on there sort of politically.
And they talked about access to information as being an
important part of SGG 16, which of course I believe in access to
information of any type, not just misinformation.
I am the antidote to Mariana Spring, by the way.
So what what they said as an example, in this 2015 report of
what libraries can do to promote SGG 16, they talked about
helping the World Bank, The World Bank Group's strategy to
extreme poverty by 20-30. The World Bank Group provides
both staff and the global community with access to
relevant information and services in order to foster
knowledge transfer, good governance, and economic
development. This was not about helping, you
know, illiterate adults learn to read.
This was not about helping children learn to read.
This was not about helping people use a computer for the
first time. The the kinds of things that I
thought that I was going to do when I became a librarian.
So this was the example that they showed of how they're going
to contribute to Agenda 2030 is by helping the World Bank.
That was kind of their case study example in this report.
So these are some slides that I just want to bring you back to.
These are from Monday's news, so forgive me if you've seen these
already, but just as a reminder of how this is actually playing
out now, like currently, this is from the University of
Strathclyde, which is where I used to work.
And they have this, every UK university has one of these sort
of, they call them information portals, where all the published
research and data sets now have to be deposited legally,
according to the UK government, that everything has to go into
the systems when you publish, when you publish the paper, when
you get grant funding, when you have data sets, they all are
required to go into this. And it's something called open
Science, which I'm going to talk about in just a minute.
What you see here is on the front page, the home page of
this research portal is the 17 Sustainable Development Goals,
right? You see all the little pretty
Carcini life below water, all the wonderful things we're going
to do because you have to, in this day and age when you do any
research for university in the UK, you have to align your
research to at least one sustainable development goal or
you are not allowed to do the work it is required to put into
the system. So here is this was the same man
I used on Monday, but he's a great example because he's doing
so well. This is Professor Paul Rogers,
who's actually professor of design.
Now, you wouldn't think that necessarily.
OK, so design sounds like a creative type.
Maybe, maybe Ben Rubin could work with him, right?
No, He's contributed, according to his profile on the university
research portal, he's contributed to all 17
sustainable development goals in in wonderful ways.
So that's. Yeah, I know.
And what they've done with some of my research that I deposited
into this system when I still worked for them, they've gone
back retroactively and added sustainable difficult goals to
research that I did when I was not even aware of what they
were. So that's how important it was
to them that I don't even work for them anymore.
And this was worked out, I did 5 or 10 years ago and they're
going back just to make the point.
This was one of the, So what happens is I said you have to
put individual pieces of, of your work into the system.
This is something a book that Professor Rogers contributed to
called Chronicles of Care, a design history of the COVID
virus. So he helped, did he help design
the virus? Was that like a, was it a vanity
project? Like what was this?
Right? So we over here you see that
he's contributed to SDGS 389 and 12 by doing this, this work and
this was a contribution and I think it was an entire book that
he edited and contributed to. It said the COVID crisis and the
design interventions that the authors have catalogued in this
book proved definitively that design does care cares about the
COVID virus. The authors documented this as
it evolved every day. Look at these dates from the 1st
of January 2020 to 31st of May 2020 inclusive.
Now, we didn't start wearing masks until July, right?
Or they tried to make us wear masks starting in July because
part of what they talked about in this chapter is how they
designed the masks and all the stickers they put all over the
place. This was all part of their
design work and they wrote about in the book, right?
Then they looked at all of this care and caring for the point of
view of design, and by the sheer volume of design interventions
they have documented, illustrate that design is good in a crisis.
So 4 out of 17 goals hit. You know, there's your next
promotion case right there, right?
That's probably why this guy's a professor, Steven.
So, so go back to libraries. And so of course, libraries run
those systems. They manage all those systems.
I had colleagues that worked on that system at the University of
Strathclyde, including some of my former students that were
doing it for their placements and students that went to work
for them and worked for these systems.
So I know them very well. So IFLA, so we're just to
forward ahead here. This is from 2018.
IFLA now has a yearly Green Library Award.
And at the end of this talk, I'm going to reveal the winner of
the 2025 Green Libraries Award. I bet you can't wait for that.
So this is a report from 2018 talking about how, once again,
how are they now that they would have actually contributed to
developing how libraries will contribute to the St.
GS? What are they doing with them
now that they're in place? So this is a 2018 report talking
about their sort of yearly work that they do.
So this, this in 2018, they did a, a survey talking to different
people about what they should be doing with, with the SDGS.
And they are saying that since libraries are part of the
sharing economy, this can include purchasing books.
And as we'll see, a lot of the books that they're also
purchasing for children. I don't report on this a lot,
but part of the books that they're, that they're buying for
children is to scare them about the climate crisis, right?
So if they're not already confused about what gender means
when they're young, they're already worried that we're going
to die because the planet is going to boil and they're not
going to make it to adulthood. So this report just to some some
points from it. It says the green library
movement began in the 1990s with the focus on buildings,
sustainability literacy. So it's not just about reading
literacy. It's not just about Computer
literacy. It's all those now we have to
have be literate about sustainability, having knowledge
and skills to advocate for resilient social, economic and
environmental systems, working with children and young adults
in order to build the habit of sustainability early in life.
Right. So now we're the kids are going
to be terrified that they they can't open a package or throw
something in the bin. It's going to kill the planet.
University libraries supporting the research related to
sustainability, which we've just shown from those examples from
my former employer. So that's 2018.
In 2020, there was, this was published as a working group,
the European Libraries and Sustainable Assessment towards
SDG Indicators in European Libraries.
This was a committee that fell under IFLA, the International
Association. And so this was some interesting
points that came out of this. And this kind of ties into some
things that were mentioned in the news together with certified
information. So we can't have that fake
information. Certified information libraries
do store historical pieces of misinformation.
I didn't know that was allowed, right.
I should go back to the library world.
Anti revolutionary or revolutionary pamphlets
including falsehoods or overly distorted facts, Flat Earth
conspiracies or very simply obsolete theories that were
falsified by successive scientific advances.
Well, that's all part of history, right?
Just because somebody thought one thing and then we still need
to keep it documented. Metadata about these documents
are offered in a neutral way by library catalogs, which cannot
be considered in any way. Weapons against disinformation.
What does that mean? Secondly, however, information
literate they are and in libraries, information literacy
means this is how you determine what sources are useful to use.
The actually my very first job in libraries, after I got my
qualification, my first job title was, if I can remember it
correctly, instruction and information literacy
technologist, and I just thought I was going to be a librarian.
So I have this job title with 20 words in it.
So users are willing to come to a well informed and objective
judgement about societal, political or scientific events
should go through the following steps.
So first, you should access a library.
Good idea. Peru's documents, including fake
news. I thought we were throwing that
out because we're gonna look at it now.
Verify fake news against opposite truths.
So as as Rosemary Jenkinson, the author that that I interviewed
earlier this week for UK column Your Truth is the Wrong Wrong
Kind of Truth, which is the theme of her novel Verify faked
news against opposite truths or principle of falsification.
These conditions, never fully satisfied, are always time
consuming. I don't even know what that
means but I thought it was interesting.
So here's a connection between what an examples from this
report of what libraries can do to put these into place.
So we have targets for SDG 4. So for example, by 20-30, I'm
sure all girls and boys have access to quality early
childhood development care and pre primary education so that
they are ready for primary education.
The library as an output has a book start, which is a program
to help with this. They work with daycare centers
and child healthcare centers. The outcomes is that children
score higher on language tests and they have a better
vocabulary. So you know, that would be easy
to sell to a librarian, right? Because, well, that all sounds
good, right? Like, yeah, let's help kids
learn to read. That sounds like a good idea,
but, you know, but then that turns into, well, we're going to
tell them how to not make the planet boil.
We're going to tell them they can change their gender or
change their species as long as we can get them to read and put
the material in front of them. Then the librarians are
thinking, oh, it's all part of the same plan.
It's all great and we're all going to be what we need to be
by 2030. So here's the online Computer
Library Center, which is OCLC is one of the major library
providers around the world. They actually own the rights to
the Dewey Decimal System, if that's what you think of when
you think of libraries. They actually own the Dewey
system now. They did a a survey in 2021
asking librarians around the world which SDGS they thought
they understood and which ones they could contribute to.
And they found for the most part 4810 and 16 and 17 were the top
ones. So that includes education, work
and economic growth, reduced inequalities 16 which includes
the access to information and partnerships for the goals.
And here's just some of the survey results of the
percentages of both public and academic librarians who thought
that they would be able to contribute to these SDGS.
So the the scores are actually pretty high.
And in the conclusion, they said whether explicitly or
implicitly, libraries are contributing to all 17 of the
SDGS. And in some cases, library
activities are associated with strategic planning for the
libraries. But for the most part, they are
just taking as part of their mission as library that
libraries themselves are contributing to Agenda 20-30.
But they should continue to plan for it.
IFLA has an Environment, Sustainability and Libraries
section. This is a large group within
IFLA itself, and they are the ones really focusing on showing
how libraries on the world are putting this into place.
Here's one example. June 2025, the Biblio Green High
School library in Italy. So what other imagery do you see
in there? Along with being green, we see
the rainbow, don't we? Right.
So that's a wonderful example. That is actually Greek
divinities. That was their way of teaching
Greek divinities to high school students was with the rainbow.
I don't know what that relationship is.
Seeds have changed environmental education resources from Spain.
So we see things like picture books, selling a a guide to
children's literature, the environment and the SDGS.
So we're teaching SDGS and and climate crisis to young children
through picture books, Climate change resources guide for ages
3 to 18. So on a little bit more recently
we have the tool Kit for Libraries development and the UN
20-30 agenda. Again, just telling libraries
exactly how they can do these things and put these little
programs into place within their libraries.
And this was just published last month, June 2025, an entire book
on libraries driving education for sustainable development.
So this is specifically promoting the UNESCO Agenda
2030. So that's the education part of
the UN. And there's an there's a 500
page book of ideas of how libraries can do these things.
So I just thought we would take a look at the table of contents.
Some of these chapter names are really interesting.
Empowering communities sustaining the planet.
The role of libraries of the introductory chapter library LED
for education for sustainable development, data information
literacy for sustainable development, arts based
sustainability from New York to Malawi.
OK, incentives for open science and advancing sustainability.
A German perspective. So what open science means is
that we're trying to make research available for free,
which is what what the UK universities are doing with
putting things into their repositories means that we don't
have to pay publishers to access a lot of things.
However, it's all agenda driven, right?
So if you do something really interesting or off the wall,
you're not allowed to share it because it doesn't align with
the SDGS, which means you literally cannot put it on the
repository. So it's free, but it's all
driven by whatever the government will fund, which
aligns with the SD, GS and so on.
Or other things that are talking about the climate crisis or
information needs of LGBT people in libraries, which is funded
all over the place right now. For example, public and school
libraries nurturing young environmental stewards, a
citizen science corner in an Australian school library.
So they're teaching children they can be scientists without
any scientific training. But only if it's going to
promote the green agenda. Creating green libraries in
Colombia, cultivating sustainability in Hungary.
Libraries striding towards a sustainable society in India.
Green libraries as catalyst for sustainability in Slovenia.
Green libraries meet the arts in Spain.
Sourcing it everywhere. Academic libraries empowering
students for sustainable future. Information literacy and
academic libraries championing sustainable development and
academic libraries in East Africa.
Sustainability agenda. And this is a university in
Germany. Gottning University.
Inspiring a new generation and Spanish university library
sustainability education. Cultivating change student
driven sustainability projects leveraging open educational
resources from sustainable educational built in
Switzerland. Same thing over and over again
for 500 pages. And finally how we do education
for library information science students in the Philippines.
Are you all ready for the big reveal?
The 2025 winner of the Ifla Green Library Grand Scale
Project award. Everyone ready for it?
It was just announced last week in Kazakhstan, which is where
the annual conference was, right?
Who? Like I had all these former
friends of mine all over Facebook.
I had to go into Kazakhstan. I'm so excited we have the James
Baldwin Library SD GS inside a sustainable project in Paris.
It was the exemplified sustainable and inclusive urban
renewal located in a hybrid eco design facility shared with the
refugees home. It serves as a vibrant community
hub promoting reparative justice, which is that whole
idea of apologizing for who we are as as people in certain
countries. So that's that's important in
France and supporting marginalized groups, including
refugees. It's environmentally conscious
design features green roofs, solar panels and biosource
materials, earning labels such as I don't know what this means.
E plus, C minus and renovation. BBCA.
The library offers inclusive take a drink inclusive programs
for diverse communities. Take another drink.
Diverse, including deaf and LGBTQIA plus people.
Partners with organizations. While further operational
improvements are possible, the library stands as a model of low
carbon design and social engagement.
So that is the Green Library of the Year.
Yeah. The build.
Sorry. Yeah.
Such a beautiful building. If you like dystopia, it's
great. Yeah.
So just to bring us back to the
UN once again, and I don't know, not sure if we've reported on
this or not, but we probably should if we haven't.
The Sustainability Development Goals Report 2025 from the UN
was just released in July. So that's the latest update on
what we've been doing to promote SDGS worldwide, according to the
UN. At the bottom, without, we can
ignore all the language at the top, but at the bottom, Antonio
Guterres, who's the Secretary General of the UN says with just
five years to reach the Sustainable Development Goals,
we need to shift into OverDrive. Right.
So this is from again the UN page key message.
A decisive 5 year countdown starts now.
So as I've reported previously, we're really not doing very well
with them though, because it says here, just like I've
reported a few months ago, only 35% of SDG targets with
available trend data are on track or show moderate progress.
Nearly half are moving too slowly or making only marginal
progress while 18% have regressed.
So even though there's this huge push, I think the only positive
message I can bring out of this is that we're not doing very
well. But I think that's quite a
positive message actually. But they're still trying.
And this is just my last slide here and then I'll I can take
some questions. This is again there.
The which is interesting about this is that from that 2025
report on on SDG 16, which is the the 16-10 about the access
to information, peace, strong justice, strong institutions.
If you read the bullet points here, it talks a lot about
violence and conflict and access to justice and urgent action is
needed to protect lies and restore trust through peace
building justice reform and account.
So you know, it's all, it's all a lot of fear mongering
language. I don't really see anything in
there too much about access to information, although some of
the, the, the things I've read about this is that they're
talking about access to information includes stopping
the murdering of journalists, which really terrified me.
I don't know. I don't know if that was, you
know, but I thought it was interesting to say, well, if we
don't do this, we're going to the, the journalists are going
to be killed. So I don't know, I don't know
what that means. But anyway, so that's just my
overview of this topic. I know it was really quick.
I hope it was helpful to see because I think it's good to
take a specific example of 1 industry, the library industry
and show exactly how these things are being put into place
in one area. And I'm sure that we could do
1000 more because it's everywhere.
But with that, thanks for your attention and I'm happy to take
any questions. Thank you, Diane.
Very informative. Language is clearly very
important and I've noticed the Joe public start using words
like misinformation, malinformation.
And you've mentioned inclusivity.
Sustainability is one that's really struck with me walking
years ago through streets of London and every restaurant or
every advert seems to have that word sustainable.
Do you know how these keywords get into the system so quickly?
So they seem to go from nothing to everybody is talking about it
like a buzzword, sort of where it comes from and who's driving
that. I mean if it were me, I would
actually look to Brian. I know Brian is not until 5:00,
but I think it has a lot to do with these behaviour change
plans that, you know, the starting with the Mindspace
document and Behavioural insights team is that they have
found ways to use language to change behaviours.
And obviously the word sustainable sounds great, but
actually when you look at it, it's, it's, it's nothing to do
with that. And, and, and so I think using
these words over and over again, especially when they mean the
opposite of what they're saying and inverting the language, but
we hear it all the time. It's kind of like how we, you
know, we were hearing stay home, save the NHS.
This is, I think it's the same program, honestly.
It's just different words and and a different way to terrify
us and to submission. Yeah, makes sense.
Thank you. Yeah.
Good question. Up to a few years ago, the
libraries were a scene of Drag Queen Story hour.
Yeah, going on like every 5 minutes.
Oh yeah, suddenly over the last, I'd say 1 1/2 years, a sudden
stop just before the election, Actually before the general
election here last year. Nothing really.
Not during the general election, not I think there was one or two
after the general election, but then nothing at all.
And the libraries have not been a focus for that.
And I think it's because they, they've probably done, they've
probably got that programming in quite successfully by it being
able to have those drag queen story hours in the beginning.
They knew not many will turn up. It's probably the people, I, I
think it was parents who were paid to turn up to, to actually
bring their kids to that and and so on.
I think it was is part of a a wider agenda of just getting the
message out and programming that way.
I, you know, I wonder if it was a bit of trying to normalize the
whole thing, like the, the, the wider issue, because I work
consistently with, I hear from parents who are concerned.
I work with groups like the Scottish Union Free Education,
which I'm on the board for Protect and teach, who's worked
Kathy Mudge with Protect and Teach has been on with me on
the, on the channel and, and we still meet every couple of weeks
because we're working on these Fois to see what the libraries
are admitting to. But we also have some, some
moles that are coming in and leaking us book lists of the
books that are still in the libraries.
And that doesn't seem to be stopping.
I think parents are not aware of it.
And, and when a parent does become aware of it, they usually
get in trouble with the school. That happens frequently, right?
Like you don't have the right to say what your child is reading,
right. And the other thing that's
happening is, I think with say, the increase of electronic books
and how they're accessing books, that they're not going to be
sitting on the child's kitchen table, right, Because they're,
they're in their iPad or whatever they are.
So it's it's more more difficult and a lot of the free books that
are on Amazon Kindle, for example, a lot of these are
books are available for free, including I always use the
example of the boy who wanted to be a deer, which says it's a
picture book saying, oh, look, he decided he wanted to be a
deer and he told his family and his parents were happy for him.
And now he's a deer and life is so much better.
And they're so inclusive, right? So it's, you know, maybe that
was a way to, you know, kind of get that internalized within
parents minds. And I mean, you do see the
videos of the smiling parents who think it's great that their
kid is twerking on the stage with these people and you like
what's what is going on in their minds, right?
But yeah, I think it's it's something that now that it's
kind of been accepted and rainbows are everywhere and
every month is Pride month now. And it's now acceptable to put
this in front of your children. So.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so.
No, absolutely the and and and she's talking about the just
repeating, but as Charles asked, the gradual does that decline of
civil society that has happened over the past several years.
And I would actually say that, and I, I mentioned this to
Charles in a meeting a few days ago when I was working on this
talk. This idea of openness and open
science, I think contributes to it as well.
Like it sounds great once again. Oh, let's let's have access to
information that's wonderful, that sounds great.
But on the other hand, the information that is accessible
is controlled and captured, right.
So that means that if you can't, if you can't literally put your
work into the system and you work at a university and you do
the kind of research that I would do if I was still back
there and it wasn't allowed, it wouldn't be open, wouldn't be
available to anybody because I wouldn't be allowed to do it.
So it's very disingenuous. And but that's, that's how
they're controlling language and controlling access to, to shape
this narrative that they want. Absolutely.
I've overwhelmed everybody. I'm sorry, Charles.
I'm going. To ask you a question, Dan, a
quick one in the well, no, OK, let's put it the other way
around. In terms of predictions.
If, if we consider that the course is not being stuck to
now, how do you anticipate 2030 panning out in terms of the PR
splurge on what's happened and and why?
I know it's a big one, but perhaps just pick out the
specifics from this. How?
How will it be marketed, right? Well, I, I think that's an,
that's a really interesting question because this open
agenda, they're using technology and, and, and I guess Mike would
use the word technocracy to promote this openness.
And as the technology increases, the, the more control that we
get. And I think that's what we're
getting to is we're going to have five more years of, of more
control. If we look at, I always say,
like if you look at what happened in 20-20, that would
not have been possible even 10 years prior because we didn't
have the technology in place to do that.
So five years later, they've advanced it even more with all
of this because now we've had five years of what we've had the
last five years. And now Antonio Gutierrez saying
we're going to accelerate for the next 5 years.
So I think it's going to be, it's going to be control in the
name of openness, right? So again, they're inverting
language. And what we're seeing at the,
what I've been speaking about in, in different talks about
libraries I've done in different places over the summer is that
we see this with children, how they're, they're, they're
putting this in front of children in the name of
inclusivity. Well, the decolonization stuff
that I talked about frequently means that they're destroying
and, and getting rid of the Western history and civilization
and culture and, and putting these other things into place in
the name of inclusivity. So they're doing all of this
too. And, and they can use other
digitization products and technologies and advances in
computing and faster Internet speeds to put this all in front
of us. So I think the next five years,
if they do accelerate, I mean, I still think that even though if
they're going to accelerate, they're still going to fail
because we saw how badly they're doing.
But they're certainly going to try.
And I think it's on each and every one of us who are here
today to do something that you can, however small it is, talk
to your school, talk to your local university, see what your
children or grandchildren are reading.
And if you don't like it, you have to say something.
Because if we don't, they're going to just continue to run
over us. But we're we're, we are much
larger in numbers than they are. And I always say that's strength
in numbers. So I think we just have to spend
the next five years pushing back.
I don't know if that answers your question, Charles, but
yeah, can we get the mic back there, please?
Because I'm not sure I can hear over the over the techno beat.
Hi, I've noticed over this summer they've been ramping up
the climate change narrative with the amount of heat we've
been having recently. I noticed on like a day like
this may be a bit cooler. They don't ever mention it.
It's always for in 20, three, 2425° we're in the heat wave.
So what I wanted to ask was, do you think that they've been
successful with this propaganda that you're getting from the BBC
day in, day out about? It we, Brian and Ben and I were
just talking about that a couple of weeks ago in the news about
the red heat maps. You know, when it's 23 and it's
bright red or it's, you know, verging on purple, whatever it
is. The thing is though, is that I,
I think if they're trying to get to the children, which clearly
they are, which we can see through the libraries that the
children don't have, the memory that we have is that they will
think 23, Oh my God, bright red. We're going to, we're going to
boil because they don't remember that it's actual, you know, as
as Charles has said before, an actual summer day in Britain.
That's, you know, that's what we expect this time of year.
But if we can get to the younger generations, which are the ones
who are getting to the most terrified, they don't have that
history to remember that that that's what it's supposed to
feel like in July. So that's what I'm afraid of.
And now that we're starting them with, you know, age 3 and
younger with these picture books about sustainability and climate
change in addition to the LGBT agenda, then this is what
they're growing up with because they, as you know, Patrick was
saying earlier, they don't remember anything different.
Sorry, yes, Brian says. Home education.
Yeah, I don't have children, but if I did, I would certainly do
that myself because I wouldn't put my if I had children, I
wouldn't put them through that. I guess I do home educate my
children because I have two dogs and they never leave the house
without me. Does that count?
I think that will have to be the note upon which we end.
But it's a very +1. And Brian's quite right to bring
out the the value of home education, which of course, is
the way to get round all of what Diane I think is talking about.
But Diane, thank you very much indeed, not just for a wonderful
talk. It's coming all the way here
from such a long a long way away.
Thank you.