I was chatting to a cartoonist trend of friend of mine this
week and and he was saying that it's not looking good in the UK.
Well, a whole host of things going on in the UK in this area.
We've got the Online Safety Act, we can talk more about that.
We've got the use of the Terrorism Act.
I'm quite sure Charles will have a lot to say about that.
And we have the absolute determination by the government
to paint everybody that's critical of government narrative
as being a right wing extremism extremist.
And but Jeremy, what I'm going to say to you straight away is
we have been telling people that this was what was going to
happen since 2016 when the original online harms white
paper came out 2017. And we've been talking about the
rise of right wing extremism narrative not and we've been
saying that that was not real from about the same time.
And so, you know, none of this should be a surprise to anybody
that's been following the column.
We've got people being stopped from speaking out in reality,
whenever you know, it doesn't matter how misguided the people
who posted on social media over the the stabbings in the school
last August, doesn't matter how misguided some of those comments
were, in my opinion. People went to prison for what
they posted on social media and some people died in prison for
what they posted on social media.
At the same time, the British government released murderers
and rapists from prison to make room for these people.
This was a direct attack by the British government on the people
of this country in order to make sure that there was a chilling
effect on any criticism of government policy.
Now, that's aside from the other things that we've been talking
about, that this is real, it's happening and and you know, I
will die on the hill of everybody's right to say what
they think. I may not agree with any of it.
So what? That is the point of dialogue.
You can't have a dialogue if you're shutting, shutting down
freedom of speech. It's as simple as that.
And this is real. It's happening absolutely every
single day of the week. People are being arrested for
speaking out on topics that the British government does not want
people speaking out on. So the, so the, the, the two key
acts that are being used here are first of all on the Online
Safety Act, which I can say something about.
And the second act is the Terrorism Act, which Charles can
absolutely say something about. Yeah, I mean, there's, there's
that side. I think there's also the, the
Public Order Act would sorry, the, the Public Order Act 1986.
We've now got the Public Order Act 2023 as well that I think
another point to bring in when we're talking about how free
speech and discussion around it has flared up over the last
couple of weeks. We are also seeing how the
groundwork that was prepared surrounding what was described
as hate speech is coming into its own.
Because for a large number of people, there is enormous
confusion about what free speech means in the 1st place.
And whether or not something that, as Mike suggests, refers
to controversial or sensitive topics like events in Southport
last year. Whether free speech is somehow
bashed over the head by what's been described sort of loosely
and deliberately loosely as as hate speech.
And whether there's a way in which people can be led to
believe that there are certain things that just cannot be said.
And that is in a sense how the government are convincing the
masses that wielding the various pieces of legislation that they
have at their disposal can be done in a legitimate sense,
because people are already predisposed against much of the
language that people are putting out and then subsequently being
pursued by means of the criminal justice system for posting in
the 1st place. So as with all these sorts of
campaigns, the, the scent that's laid in the in the lead up to
this is now paying dividends. And, and I'm sure there are,
there are many other ways in which that could be articulated,
but I think it really does have to be noted that there is
confusion about what it means and the and the public response
to certain things now is, is knee jerk.
You know, the sort of, you just can't say that.
Well, why? Or rather, why not?
What they said was that, well, what Well, the person who the
person who died, and I'm ashamed to say I can't remember off the
top of my head, his name, he was a grat, sorry.
Peter Lynch. Peter Lynch Thank you very much,
Charles Right, right. So, so he a grandfather who
decided to come out on the streets following Southport
stabbings and he was carrying a placard, which I can't remember
exactly what it said, but something along the lines of the
police are corrupt, something like this.
He he he was not violent in any way.
He was not carrying out any sort of he wasn't assaulting anybody,
he wasn't throwing stones, he wasn't trying to set fire to
anything. He was just carrying a placard
which some people found was not acceptable.
And by some people I mean the police because they arrested
them. But he, amongst a host of
others, were prosecuted and ended up in prison.
And it was the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice because
in the sense that the the prison sentences that were handed out
to the people. There were other people involved
in this who had posted comments on, on social media, which may
have been wrong, accusing the the person who committed the
stabbings of being, you know, the implication was he was an
immigrant that that was, had just come into the country and,
and this had stirred up all kinds of I'll feeling in the
community and so on. The point is that that nothing
terribly horrible happened as a result of people coming out and
demonstrating because this was the first sort of major public
expression of the of the issue, the issues arising from
immigration and so on. A whole host of people ended up
in prison for that with with really pretty unpleasant
duration prison sentences for for simply posting something to
social media or carrying a placard at a protest.
And this is really unjustifiable.
But but, you know, this is this is just the latest sort of
iteration of the chilling effect on freedom of speech over the
last. Well, I mean, it's taken, it's
taken the British government a long time to get the online
safety legislation going. But now that it's started to get
going, you know, we are seeing what what they what they're
effectively doing is forcing the platforms to become government
censors. That's on one hand, they're
doing it under the guise of child safety because that's how
they're trying to sell it to the public.
But and as a result, we're seeing more and more
international platforms leaving the UK in total so that the so
that they're not falling under this regime.
We're seeing narratives in the press starting to come along
that the use of VPNs is increasing exponentially because
of the age assurance requirements as part of the
Online Safety Act. And of course, this is something
that the British government has been wanting to shut down for a
long time. So now what's what we're going
to see, I guarantee, is that we're going to see the idea of
using encrypted Internet use, using VPNs demonised in the
media as being something that paedophiles do.
And that in order to protect children, we've got to ban VPN
news in the UKI mean, the Chinese don't even ban VPN news,
but I guarantee that's what's coming.
The British government has been working very, very hard to try
to ban end to end encryption in chat applications, whether that
be WhatsApp or whatever, they're also working or Signal.
They're also working very hard. As you may know, they, they took
Apple, they decided that Apple had to remove end to end
encryption from their cloud storage platform, which Apple
challenged and is still challenging.
And so you've taking all these things as a whole, We have
really a very draconian totalitarian regime building up.
And the thing about the Online Safety Act, for example, is that
it's, it's so multifaceted. There's so many aspects to it.
So we're only really beginning to see the implications of it as
it starts to be rolled out. So although that legislation
became received royal assent a couple of years ago, it's taken
Ofcom this amount of time to get to the point of starting to roll
out the actual framework. So we've we've seen the the age
assurance framework start to be rolled out now.
And as a result we're starting to see not only as is being
presented in the mainstream media, pornography websites
using it, but we're starting to see the likes of Blue Sky,
Twitter, Reddit, all the major platforms starting to use so
called digital ID age assurance services.
And The thing is, they're use it, They're all using different
age assurance services. So that means if you are using
Reddit and you are using Blue sky and you are using Twitter,
then some functionality is going to require you to to, to
formally identify yourself with with these third party
companies. And each one, each one of these
platforms is using a different third party company.
And that in itself is going to put people off from using those
particular functions on on those particular platforms, which is
going to therefore in itself have a chilling effect on the
transfer of information between individuals.
So for example, in Blue Sky, they're requiring that you
identify or prove your age through a digital ID system.
I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but that
would be in order to, to use the direct messaging functionality.
So you can't even make a direct message between two people
without first proving your identity.
And so it's going to be increasingly hard to use the
Internet anonymously. And that in itself is also going
to have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.
So each of these aspects has a direct, real effect on people's
willingness to speak out. Yeah.
I mean, when you spoke now about the, the, the gentleman who was
gaoled, that's a, that's obviously a micro, a micro
issue. But it's a very big issue
because he committed suicide in prison, right?
He should have been in prison in the 1st place and he died there.
So, so you know that that that's, it's, it's not it's, but
he's only one of, of a, you know, hundreds.
That's my point, yeah. So what?
Yeah. So what else?
What I was actually alluding to is the macro, the the, the
trajectory. What actually is the British
government trying to do? There well it's clear they they
are trying to suppress all opposition, all resistance and
they are but it's not just them it's it's a whole.
I mean we've we use the term censorship industrial complex or
or disinformation industrial complex is term disinformation
that's used to describe anything which is counter narrative.
The the intention is to shut that down absolutely.
And the intention is to, to bring us to a point where the
only trustworthy sources that anybody is able to listen to are
the BBC and other formal mainstream media organisations.
And that anything else is not only untrustworthy, but it, you
know, anybody using platforms to to express a view or an opinion
which disagrees with with the official narrative could go to
prison. Yes, absolutely.
This is going in the direction of being able to crush or
eliminate any form of dissent. But but as well as that or as
part of the same package. This is very much designed to
force people into accepting all the things that he's just been
talking about and that that digital control system is is
absolutely enmeshed with all of this, whether it be digital
identity, in order to verify that you are who you say you are
in terms of being able to access these services and this that and
the other. And that that should be seen as
as part of the same thing. Because of course, once people
are rather if they are controlled by such a system,
then the whole thing is so much easier to run and monitor.
So that's part of it. And I think also, as I say, that
I think people would do well to consider how the obverse
situation can be made or turned to people's advantage.
And I've, I know I've spoken about this before in a sort of
asymmetric warfare context. But of course, if you are a
dissenting voice and you are choosing to engage in activities
that don't have a digital signature, then people aren't
monitoring that in the same way. The the the sole focus now is on
Internet, digital enabled, digitally enabled
communications. And therefore there's very
little effort going into monitoring people who are doing
stuff in a traditional pencil and paper or face to face
fashion. That's worth mentioning for a
couple of reasons. First of all, because you can
step outside of the surveillance network.
And also secondly, because my perhaps rather crass analogy of
the way in which concepts or constructs such as intent and
recklessness and responsibility are being dealt with on on the
various points of law is so significant.
Because with particular regard to say, user to user content and
that being the responsibility of the platform that hosts it.
The real world analogy that I would put out there is that this
is like telling pub landlords that they must surveil and
monitor and deal with all conversations that take place
under their roof during opening hours.
Now that's patently ridiculous and no one would ever suggest
that. And yet in in an online sense,
this is exactly what's being done.
So the way in which this is being dealt with from a
legislative point of view is, and I know I don't mean this to
sound like a whinge, but it is objectively unfair and therefore
ridiculous in terms of the language that's being used.
What I would say is an examination of history is it is
always worth doing because it yields such interesting results.
And if you look at the definition of extremism as it
was updated in, I think May 2024 by Michael Gove, the wording is
not the same, but very, very close to the wording that was
used to eliminate or crush dissent by the Criminal Code of
the Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924.
And that is not a coincidence. So those things are important to
note and we'll come on to the to the intent and whatnot.
And the other thing I want to do just at this point is just to
give a perfect illustration of the way in which these things
are done in terms of their selling points to the public.
Now, I don't live in Plymouth and, and stay down here when I
do, which means I have rare access to a television set.
And I saw a programme which is on every day, I think it's
called Good Morning Britain and it's on ITV, our third channel.
And there's AI mean first of all, it's it's remarkable.
One of the presenters, A chap called Ed Balls, who was a
government, Labour government minister and he is married to
the current home Secretary, Yvette Cooper.
So straight away one would think there's a there's an enormous
issue there. Anyway, on the programme I've
just watched, there was a discussion around online
gambling. And online gambling as it stands
is the main reason that people choose to procure a digital
identity, it is to be able to gamble online.
So that's one rather remarkable detail, but statistically
absolutely true, far outstrips any other reason that people
apply for digital identity. Now they were talking on the
programme about online gambling being a problem.
People agree a lot of head nodding and this that and the
other and well yes, but you know, they're able to get round
it by using VPNs and this, that and the other.
And So what you do is you're predicted exactly the same way
in which the protection of children is being put out there
as the catch all for everything else.
But but that's what they're using for the online safety
thing to to eliminate people being able to use VPNs.
For example, one only needs site a problem like online gambling.
And you say, right, well, there's on that.
Let's get our sledgehammer. No more VPNs or whatever it is.
And and of course, I go back to the fact that this is being a
conversation that is being curated by Ed Balls, the husband
of the current home secretary. So it's very easy to see how
these things are sold to the public, both through the
mainstream media outlets and indeed parliament or government,
which frankly shouldn't be happening like that, as is
patently obvious. And yet I think he's been
presenting on that programme for some time now.
Remarkable. But yes, sorry to go back to
the, to the legislation on the, the terrorism side of it.
There are. Several ways in which this can
be manipulated but but in terms of free speech, that the part
that's been exploited in particular over the last two
years is anything that pertains to what's described as a
prescribed organisation. And that means an organisation
that's been prescribed by the Home Secretary within the UK.
Because obviously there are other countries that do do this,
but it's specific to the UK and an organisation prescribed is
one that is deemed to have fallen into a category where it
presents a threat that may be described as terrorist within
the UK. Now that is incredibly open to
abuse and has been abused many, many times over the years.
And one might say that the entire list really is something
of a fiction. Just to articulate what I mean
in terms of its potential absurdity, last year there was
an organisation prescribed with the name or the given name of
Teragram. Now no such organisation exists.
There is absolutely no evidence of that.
But what was perfectly obvious was that it was designed to
sound like Telegram, the social media app which was started by
Russian Pavel Durov and is widely reported by the BBC as
being a, a, an end to end encrypted site for conspiracy
theory. But basically the point was that
that the use of Telegram is absolutely synonymous with
people who are up to no good. They are probably right wing
extremists, which means they're probably terrorists.
And that's sort of how that's done.
And therefore, by creating an idea that there was a collective
out there called Teragram and that you were going to
prescribe, it meant that it was very obvious that if you were
considering straying away from the BBC and starting to look at
things like Telegram, you were definitely going down the wrong
track. So that's a, that's an aside on
the prescribed organisation thing.
But but this is where we get into the the most remarkable
cherry picking exercise because in sections 1, sections section
12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Probably not time to go into the specifics of the ACT itself or
or from whence it came, which of course is fascinating, as is the
more recent iteration 2006 Act. But the point is that once an
organisation is prescribed, it then becomes a sanctionable
offence to support it. There are lots of different ways
in which the terminology is used, but basically to support
or act to the benefit of that organisation.
And that doesn't have to mean that you give it money or you
necessarily go along and actually chip in.
But that can be going back to the where we started with free
speech. That can simply be a declaration
of support for such and such an organisation or as has been the
case in the last two years, choosing words that are then
reverse engineered by police in order to hand to the Crime
Prosecution Service to suggest that there is within that
collection of words and inherent support of a prescribed
organisation. And the.
The example that we use a lot on the UK, well actually 2 examples
that we use a lot on on UK column and I've cited certainly
a lot on the news, is that when the administration in Syria
changed and Jelani became the president of Syria as a
terrorist by virtue of the fact that he was the leader of HTS,
widely acknowledged and written down in Home Office prescription
lists as a subset of Al Qaeda. He was therefore the head of a
terrorist, a prescribed organisation.
And yet when the BBC through Jeremy Bowen went to talk to him
and very much offer the idea that he should be supported in
what he was doing rather than a critique of who he was and where
he came from, nothing was done. By the same token, Alistair
Campbell, former in a member of the inner circle of of Tony
Blair and obviously, you know, long standing influencer within
the Labor Party and Rory Stewart, the former MP and
soldier and probably one or two other things.
He and Campbell went to Syria to meet Jelani to do a podcast for
their show called The Rest is Politics, which has a a large
audience. And they made absolutely no
secret of the fact that they were absolutely supporting this
man in his new or latest incarnation.
That is that by the letter of the law, the Terrorism Act 2000.
That that is there is no doubt that is in contravention of both
sections 1 and section 12 of the Terrorism Act.
And yet nothing was done. This was this was broadcast
absolutely all over the shop. But, but we see a, a long well,
an increasing list of people who have done acts that do not meet
that threshold being pulled to one side under the very much
nebulous schedules that are attached to the end of the
Terrorism Act 2000. And just to give a flavour of of
how that works, under Schedule 7, which applies at at ports,
you can be taken out of a queue whether you're coming or going
at, at an airport in the UK and you can be interrogated at all.
Well, the the phrase is detained and then examined.
You can have any of your communications kit examined and
you do not have a right to silence so that this is This is
a hardball approach to a problem that is in effect simply
confected by by deciding that your words mean something.
The, the, the gloves come off and people have absolutely no
recourse. And yes, as I say on on the
other side, the enormous inconsistency is that when it is
totally blatant, when there is absolutely support for or
actions that are to the benefit of a prescribed organisation
like HDSA subset of Al Qaeda, nothing is done because of the
people that are conducting that exercise.
And, and this absolutely goes to the heart of free speech.
And it also, I won't, I won't bang on, but this also links
directly to the provisions of the Public Order Act 1986 and
the question of intent and indeed how men's Rea and the and
the actors Reyes, which should be be side by side in terms of
commissioning of an offence are are not dealt with in a fair
fashion. How do you push back?
You keep talking, and with that, stop talking.
No, no, you do no. Well, I thought you were going
to go on and talk about well, because I mean, you know, we
again, we've had a couple of examples the the recent
prescription in this in this country has been Palestine
action, OK, people will say what they like about Palestine
action. The idea that it is, you know,
whether or not it's organic, whether it's this another, to be
perfectly honest that that is, is to a certain extent beside
the point because specifically the activities they've been
engaged in, which are, well, those that may have a criminal
sanction attached to them, are criminal damage.
Now, criminal damage exists in a couple of different ways as a
standalone offence, but you go to look at the Terrorism Act
2000 and in Section 1, serious criminal damage is amazingly A
qualifying characteristic for the definition of terrorism.
So it just goes to show how when this legislation is drawn up, it
is very, very obviously done. So in a way that means if you
want to throw the net over anybody for anything, you pretty
much can. And when you look at just off
oil Extinction Rebellion, all these little guys in their high
vis vests who've been running around the place causing
criminal damage on a much wider scale for a much longer period
of time. And yet having case after case
overturned because they're so well meaning.
And yet when it comes to Palestine action who are saying
that they're trying to prevent genocide, then there is
obviously an enormous inconsistency in the the the
particular act that tipped balance in so far as they were
then prescribed, was to pour red paint on 2 aircraft at Bryce
Norton and that is it. I, I think Jeremy, I'd like to
just briefly, if I can just talk a little bit about the
mainstream media and what's happened with it over the last
20 years. Because the mainstream media, I
suppose up until the Leveson inquiry was doing a relatively
good job relatively. It wasn't perfect by any means.
It was but but there was still some effort to hold politics to
account to some degree, to to a sufficient degree that certainly
the the wrongdoing of of certain journalists was used as a
mechanism for bringing in what was called the Leveson Inquiry,
which is headed up by Brian Leveson, a a judge.
And I suppose this was the first sort of major attempt by the
British government to get control of the narrative.
And similarly to, to what Charles has just been talking
about with Palestine action. And the fact that there there
already is, was, you know, if they wanted to prosecute people
for spray painting aircraft, that was the, the, the
legislation's already for, for that.
It's already there for that. They didn't need to create a new
legislation or use any, they didn't actually need to use
terrorism legislation for this. But, you know, one of the, the
things that was very striking about the Leveson Inquiry and,
and the freedom of the press, this is back in 2012 or 2013,
whenever it was, was that, you know, the legislation,
everything, all, the, all the wrongdoing that was done in, in
the phone hacking scandal, for example, was already illegal and
could have been prosecuted without the need for some kind
of big inquiry into how the press was going to be regulated
from that point forward. This was the first attempt to
sort of get, you know, and that failed And, and hopefully the UK
column had a fairly major part to play in, in, in how that
failed. And then, but nonetheless,
although the the inquiry failed and the the sort of regulatory
regime that they were intending to impose afterwards failed,
what was what didn't fail so much was that over the next
several years we start definitely started to see more
editorial compliance with government desires, let's put it
that way. And as a result, people started
in relatively small numbers, but enough sufficient people started
moving away from the mainstream press that it was starting to
have a financial implication on them.
At the same time, the rise of Internet advertising, or the
replacement of Internet advertising over traditional
print advertising was starting to have a financial effect on
the mainstream press as well. So the mainstream press from
2014 to let's say 2020, we're starting to be increasingly
under financial pressure, partly, as I say, because of
advertising, partly because the editorial policy seemed to be
becoming more compliant with government desires.
And then 20/17/2018 or so, the British government was getting
sufficiently worried about the, the financial viability of the
mainstream media that they ran a review into the how they would,
how they could underpin the mainstream press.
And that was called the Karen Cross review.
And then COVID hit an inverted commas.
And before we knew it, the press was getting bailed out by these
massive advertising budgets that the British government was
pursuing in order to convince people that they needed to wear
masks and, and stay in their homes.
And from that point forward, really that was the, the, the
death knell of any idea of a fourth estate that actually held
or was there to provide any accountability for what
government did, because effectively mainstream press was
bought and paid for by the state from from then on.
And that's still the case today. So we have the totally compliant
mainstream media that is in no way highlighting any of the
issues that we're talking about today.
They're not holding government to account in any way for, for
what they are doing to, to, to, to minimise dissent that that's
on one side. On the other side, you know, I'm
visiting my mum in Northern Ireland at the moment.
We were speaking to a bunch of the neighbours here last night
and none of them is watching the BBC anymore.
And these are just ordinary farming people.
They're not, they're not watching the BBC anymore.
They're they're barely watching GB News anymore.
They're certainly looking to alternative media for their or
social media for the information that they had that they're
getting. And I just thought that was a
really interesting sort of just just a little data point because
you know, although these are just, this is just a very small
farming community in this area spread out of over quite a right
wide area. It's it's indicative perhaps of
what's going on in the country. So, so it's, it's fascinating to
me that that as we start to see these more draconian efforts to
shut down freedom of speech, as as government attempts to force
people into the arms of mainstream press, a controlled
mainstream press, it, it simply doesn't work because there,
there is a clear recognition in people that that it is a
controlled mainstream press and they're just rejecting it.
The, the, the danger is that as this effort to, to shut down
freedom of speech gains momentum.
And as I say, we're really only at the beginning of this
process, as draconian as it is already, it's just the
beginning. And as that starts to to be
rolled out over the next two or three years, most people, if
they're not already aware of the UK column or 21st Century Wire
or or the the other alternative media outlets that are out
there, if they're not already aware of those, are going to
find it very difficult, if not impossible to find those voices.
That's our challenge. But you know that that that is
our challenge over the next two or three years is how we
overcome what we've already seen in terms of the censorship
regime and shadow banning and all the usual things that we
talk about and are aware of. We've got that plus these new
regimes that are being rolled out.
So, so that's that's going to be our main challenge over the next
period of time. And we're going to need the help
of the people that are ready supporting us to overcome those
very severe limitations that are being placed on us.
Earlier I asked how you push back and what your response was
Keep talking. But the problem with keep
talking is that you just shadow band like on X for example.
You can keep talking, but you have no reach.
And that was already acknowledged by the CEO.
I forget her name now. What Freedom.
What? Yeah, Linda, Linda Yacarino, she
said. There'll be freedom of speech,
but not freedom of reach and. That's a great, great example of
the chair. And I'm not blaming you for this
because we've no evidence that it's your fault, but we were
just Kenny. Kenny was it could be your
fault. Kenny was just pulling together
statistics on, on viewer slash listener numbers the other day
and he showed me the, the spreadsheet and, and SoundCloud,
which is the, where we host our, you know, our audio only content
and sort of audio rips of the news programme and so on, was
only showing 24 views for a news programme.
And I'm thinking, no, no, that's wrong because it's usually, it's
usually thousands, right? And, and so I went back through,
I went back through all the postings on SoundCloud and the
day you started germ warfare on the UK column was the day that
the numbers fell from thousands to none, right?
So, so coincidence. I don't know what to make of
that. I apologise if that was me, but
I mean, but look, so I mean, one of the one of the obvious
solutions here is other than to keep talking, which obviously is
it's a, it's a truism is the idea of the parallel structures.
No, no, no, no, because, because parallel structures are written
into the definition of extremism.
That is extremist. You may not create a parallel
structure, no, but that's what look Jeremy, that's what
alternative media is. It's a parallel structure.
We are to a certain degree attempting to the UK column at
least is attempting to be in, in, in its presentation style as
mainstream like as possible. What we're attempting to do is
to make ourselves as familiar a format to people as possible so
that it's as easy as possible to for them to move across from the
BBC or Channel 4 News to UK column news.
That would, that would be that, that would be, you know, our
attempt to sort of be as as familiar as possible to, to the
average person in the street. This is something that that
actually a lot of people don't quite understand, but it's
something that we that we feel that that is important to help
people get from that mainstream news, those mainstream news
sources into other mainstream news sources.
So, you know, you might describe us as a gateway drug that I'm
quite happy to, to describe us that way.
Because, because if we can help people make that transition and
say to people, look, there's other information out there.
Now we might not be presenting all of that other information,
but there are people out there presenting other information.
And and so we, what we hope is that we can encourage people
into a broader information base than they have at the moment.
And the way, you know, we just feel that the way, that one way
to do that is to, is to be as familiar as possible in terms of
the formats that we provide. But sorry, I've completely
forgotten what. Oh yes.
But, but look, I, I'm not quite, maybe quite so pessimistic as,
as you're suggesting we need to be on, on this because just just
one example, you know, as cynical as people are about
petitions and so on, and people are right to be cynical about
petitions. They, they, they are in and of
themselves utterly useless. But there is a petition running
at the moment, which is to repeal the Online Safety Act.
And I'm not sure what the current figure is, but it's
something around half a million people have signed that already
and it's got another couple of months to run now as, as a, as
a, if you take the, the, the range of petitions that are ever
posted to the government petitions website, that is a
spectacular response from people.
So there, there is a broad recognition of how dangerous
this legislation is and people are pushing back against it.
And so, you know, the, the, the issues around shadow banning
and, and the lack of freedom of reach, these are, I think, much
better understood in the general population than maybe we think.
And I think that, you know, the more government is determined to
try to put the squeeze on, on voices, the more ordinary people
are going to turn around and say, no, this isn't right.
And they they will at the end of the day, be be willing to to
share and to tell people about voices that are providing other
narratives. Yeah, I think yeah, no, I was
just going to add a sort of, you know, real world example of we,
we talk about things being barometers.
I would absolutely agree. I think petitions, whilst they
get cast into the bin by government, they are an
excellent barometer because they enable people on the outside to
look in and think, right, OK, I, I'm not the only one.
I do see the problem here. And, and, you know, we've got to
keep pushing on this. Whereas if there's nothing.
And this was, you know, we go back to the, the last five years
when everything was shut down in the name of whatever it was
public health and, and, and people were made to feel they
were on their own. But a petition, it has to be
viewed in the context within which, you know, we want to own
it, which is that, that, that's a, that is a marker and that's
how it should be considered. But what I was going to say was
that sometimes with the, you know, like the SoundCloud
example, it can be very difficult to try to look at
figures and think, right, well, what does any of this mean?
What are people doing? What are people thinking?
I was this week at the North Devon show, which is a big
agricultural event in North Devon.
It's a it's a one day. It's, I have to say it's a plug
for the events. Fantastic.
I mean, amazing array of, of beautiful livestock, lots of
really interesting events and and all the rest of it.
Now I have to admit a a bias specifically.
Well, one of the specific reasons I went was because
Jonathan Marshall was performing.
Now he's somebody I interviewed for UK column, whether it was
end of last year or, or early this year.
I think it was it was earlier on this year, which I really
recommend you listen to. It's the the title of the
interview was was thinking with your heart, and he's he is he
performs an incredible show with Falcons and a beautiful black
stallion. Anyway, the point is that
Jonathan, as well as having this incredible sort of love of
nature and and a beautiful way of expressing it in his show, he
talks about all the things that are issues are wrong in terms of
anti human, anti nature. And yesterday the show the I I'm
not sure how many. I mean, the Devon show is big.
It gets it gets a lot of people there, but around his arena,
which is relatively small, I think there are probably 1000
people at each. He performed twice each his
performances and when he started talking about the various issues
that are very much pushing the agenda of destroying the
landscape or, you know, prohibiting sort of food
security or indeed any of the sort of woke ideology that's
crept into policy, legislation, everything else, there was
spontaneous applause all the way around the arena.
And that was from OK, you could say not a complete cross section
of society because obviously there are, you know,
agricultural shows do pull perhaps one demographic more
than others, but that but but the the the point is that that
was a that was a face to face communication.
That was a large gathering of people who quite clearly did
hold the same views. They saw the same things.
And yet are we going to see that reflected in our statistics on
our social media posts or are you going to be able to identify
that online? Probably not.
But the point is when you go out there and you talk to people
about it and of course, he, Jonathan, has has this amazing
ability to perform to large audiences and put these things
out there and see what sort of response he gets.
And every time he does get that response.
And OK, that that's just one isolated example, but the, the
point is that when you do do that, it, it is quite
astonishing to see what happens. So I go back to my earlier point
about this, this idea that the push for the clamping down on
free speech or whatever it is, you know, shutting down dissent
is absolutely part of the same thing of of curating the entire
digital infrastructure in order that people cannot do that.
But of course, you just step to one side and you meet up with
people face to face and it's a totally different situation.
And so I think just because people are turning away from,
you know, as Mike says, turning away from mainstream and perhaps
using turning to social media, that can be more difficult to
keep track of. But it doesn't mean that people
aren't in actual fact either aware or indeed dissenting in
some way, or indeed resisting. So I think we need to, we always
need to have that in mind, despite what we're obviously
going to be told. By and.
The government. Yes, and the the other point of
it just well, I've made two points here for just to finish
the point on the petitions, Jeremy, you know, a lot of
people are rightly cynical about petitions.
What's the point? I think petitions are a great
marketing tool actually, because they, they are, they can be used
to, to introduce a topic to somebody.
Look, this petition's here. Here's the issues.
Let's talk about it. Maybe you'd like to sign it.
It's a, it's a great way to, to get a conversation going.
The, the way to, to answer your original question was what do we
do about it? The way to deal with this is to
talk to people and, and, and, you know, we choose to talk to
people in an online format, but we're also talking to people in
real physical events. Increasingly.
We're going to the Hope Sussex festival in a couple of weeks.
We're, we're going to, we're, we're having our own event in
October. But you know, just again, the,
the, the conversations that I was listening to last night,
people are talking to each other.
People are looking at what's going on in the world the to
some degree finding it scary, but they're talking amongst
themselves and they're coming to conclusions now, whatever the
source of information that's bringing them to those
conclusions increasingly not the mainstream, but, but they people
aren't stupid and they're, they are absolutely coming to the to
largely the right conclusions at the end of the day, which is
why, you know, as as Charles is talking about there, you know,
when these issues are, are discussed in a public forum, the
response is generally good because actually they've already
had conversations along these lines, whether it be in, in, you
know, in private homes or in pubs or whatever it happens to
be. So, you know, we just, we need
to be, we need to be talking to each other and we need to be
engaging with, with each other. What we don't need to be doing
is, is, you know, going in with, you know, size 10 boots and, and
kicking people in the head with information.
We need to be just having conversations and, and, and
first of all listening to what what the other side of the
conversation is, what they're thinking and then that then
approaching it that way, in my opinion.
I decided to join social network Nost Noster.
I don't know if you've pronounced it like that in OSTR
this week, because apparently it's a decentralised alternative
to to X and it's smooth and it's fast and it looks great and it
seems to have a lot of people using it, but it's just really a
bunch of nerds talking about Bitcoin.
Now, well, look, look, Bitcoin. Crypto currencies are not a
parallel solution. Crypto currencies are digital
currencies and you've got to, I think people have got to start
recognising this. If if anybody thinks that there
is going to be a, a digital currency out there which is
going to be able to be used anonymously and freely, they're
they're mistaken. We're going to have to provide
ourselves with local solutions to our local problems and using
these big digital networks is not the answer.
You know, the, some people are making lots of money by
investing in Bitcoin. That's that's something quite
different to what you're talking about.
You know, local issues are going to be solved locally and, and
there are no answers in that because, because we've already
seen what Trump has done. Trump has Trump has banned the
Federal Reserve from any further pursuit of central bank digital
currency, but he has replaced that with his stable coin idea.
So he is building a central bank digital currency that's outside
of the central banks in private hands.
And now, of course, we know that the Federal Reserve is, is, you
know, de facto a private bank, but it has the perception of
being, you know, publicly owned. It's not really private.
It's not really public either. Yes, exactly.
Right, so, so. But the point is.
The point is, you know, if anybody thought that that that
said that that Bitcoin or some form of cryptocurrency was going
to be the, the, the answer to, to CDC, This is already
demonstrated that they're not. I mean, gold isn't even the
answer either because first of all, you can't, you can't chop
up your gold coin and to buy your your next loaf of bread
anyway. But you know, if you think back
to the Second World War, what was almost the first thing that
Roosevelt did was to ban gold. So, you know, you know,
basically can't confiscate people's gold.
Gold is not is not a useful thing here either.
We've got to find local solutions to to these things,
whether you want to call them tokens or whatever.
But but they're the people have played with various local
currencies in the past and I suspect that's probably where
we're going to have to go because, you know, we're not
going to be buying if it gets to that point, you know, we're
we're not going to be buying things with any kind of freedom
using any of these digital solutions.
I I do. Know what?
Well, look at. Look at the look at the other
big, big sort of Nexus of, of attack.
I mean, the only thing people really need in life is shelter,
food and water. And in the United Kingdom, those
three things are under attack in the strongest possible sense
that the, I, I would say much of the, much of the protest and the
sort of sensationalised campaigns are, I think wilfully
to miss the point. There's been huge amounts of
attention on the inheritance tax for farmland.
I'm not, I, I should say very clearly because this this is a
persistent theme here is that I will prefix something by saying
that I'm not saying that I'm dismissing concerns around it.
So for anyone thinking I'm dismissing concerns around it, I
am not. But the point is that there are
bigger and much more fundamental issues at stake.
And also one only has to go back to 1991 when there was
inheritance tax in exactly the same way.
So I think for anyone to imagine that that this is sort of a new
idea is, is, is being misled the way in which it's being done is,
is dreadful and very cynical, especially when it's only
reckoned to yield £500 million in a year, which is what the NHS
would take only three days to sorry, not three days, one day.
The NHS would spend that in a day.
This sorry. But but to come on to the point,
if people are producing food and water, why they're going to want
Bitcoin in return. So if we're getting to that
stage, then we have to be thinking about things that are
not held by digital means, I would say.
And I think people are forgetting the the fundamentals.
This might be an analogy too far, but when one thinks of how
the Roman Empire it sort of it superimposed Christianity onto
existing belief systems and at that same time it was the
countryside dwellers who were demonised in the that.
That's in a way why the word Pagan has a derogatory sort of
connotation to it. Because as always, the people in
the countryside do actually hold the power because they are the
people that can, they have the means to create shelter, food
and water. And we mustn't forget how
terribly important that is. I, I will be dealing with it in
a, in a longer format, but I just had a letter back from the
ministry from, from Defra about exactly this issue.
Because I've challenged them on their relationship with three
documents that have been published recently concerning
what they're calling national security or resilience or
defence or any of these things. And all these three documents
are saying the same thing, which is that if there's a shock,
we're not prepared for it from a food point of view.
And OK, I don't believe that government has any business in
farming in the 1st place, but the fact is that they do.
And they are deliberately creating a situation where
people are not producing food that is in any way going to be
sufficient for a nation that needs to feed itself.
If the wheels come off, we are totally and utterly reliant upon
imports from elsewhere and the creation of fake food, which is
not conducive to managing a society that's under pressure.
So I think all the conversations around where to invest money are
to a certain extent academic because they only deal with a
system that is able to cope to a certain point.
And beyond that point, it won't matter because those things, the
way I see it, that those things simply won't exist.
And currency will have to be in some hard form.
And, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's gold or silver or
whatever it is, but it will be used to buy or to have access to
shelter, food and water. And I, I don't mean to sound
apocalyptic about this. And and that's not where I'm
really going with it. But the point is, I think
there's a, there's a huge amount of sort of over complication of
all of this just because we're in a system at the moment which
see feels like it has a, a strong degree of artifice to it.
Because, you know, again, Bitcoin, I mean, what's the
point? What is the point in having
Bitcoin? Because if you if, if it's
whatever it is 100 and something $1000 a a Bitcoin and you sell a
Bitcoin, well then you then you've got the money.
But. So, So what use is that if you,
if you don't believe that money's any good and equally if
your Bitcoin is worth 100 and something $1000, well say what
if you're not going to use it as money, you're only going to use
it as Bitcoin, doesn't matter what it's worth relative to
something else, does it? So the, the whole thing is, I
would say a little bit sort of short term is for the moment.
I mean, if you, if you want to invest in that, make some money
in terms of currency in your own country and then spend that and
acquire other things, fine. But just consider what it is
that you're going to acquire. Because if it doesn't, if it
doesn't actually physically exist, it's not really very much
point in it would would be my view.
I don't understand Bitcoin either.
Yeah, I I, I also don't quite get it.
I mean, I get it, but I don't get it.
Yeah, I mean, well, it's it's this, you know, this is the sort
of it's an interesting thing the the the whole nature of of well
in considering something either to be an asset or an investment
or an asset from which your your yielding return or, or whatever.
I mean there, there, there's, there are a lot of different
ways of looking at it, but but I would say that that if we are
projecting a future where there is going to be like we started
with, you know, there is going to be some sort of digital
control system which will by and large, if you're a dissenting
voice prohibit you from doing what you want to do, well, then
don't be part of it. Have the things that people do
fundamentally need. So if you're going to invest in
Bitcoin and, and make in effect millions of say, pounds or
dollars or Rand or whatever, well then go and buy something
useful with it, like land, like food, because that then becomes
your currency and that will never stop being useful.
But you know, maybe I'm oversimplifying, I don't know.
I don't know what to make of of crypto, Catherine Austin Fitz
tends to argue that it's a way in which to get people into the.
Sort of stable coin matrix and I think she's right, I mean as
you. I, I, I think German Bitcoin
created the, you know, the idea of a blockchain.
I I think Bitcoin was it, it was a way for central banks to pilot
certain technologies without openly piloting certain
technologies. That's yeah, digital ID but but,
but no, just a, a digital currency this and and and how
you, because if you look at at how well, not because of, but,
but if you look at how central banks are developing their,
their central bank digital currencies, it's not dissimilar.
They're, they're, they're using distributed blockchain like
database structures that this, this is, this is an architecture
that they're, that they're replicating to some degree.
So, so you know, when, when did, when did the original white
paper for Bitcoin come out 2008 or something?
So we've had, you know, that couple of decades of, of
development of, of blockchain technology that that was done
and lots of well meaning people were involved in helping develop
that. And that that's, that has
allowed the central banks to, to look at what worked, what
doesn't work, how it scales, how it doesn't scale and these kinds
of things. So, so in terms of a, a research
and development platform, it has been absolutely fantastic for,
for central bank digital currencies.
And that, that's, that's my view of what it, what it was in the
meantime, of course, it exists and it has enabled all kinds of,
of tech billionaires to be created because people that,
that mined Bitcoin in 2008 and 2009 are now billionaires.
That money is being used for so called philanthropic work, which
of course is, is pushing the agenda as well, the various
agendas as well. And, and, and of course it's,
it's also, you know, one of its major roles is, is undoubtedly
to be used as, as finance for all kinds of Black Ops right
around the world. So, so it, it's a gift that
keeps on giving in many, many ways.
And, and of course, lots of people are going to absolutely
reject what I've just said because they believe in Bitcoin
and other cryptocurrencies as being some kind of bastion of
freedom. I I I strongly recommend that
people reconsider that position. OK, I'm looking at the time on
that very uplifting note, Mike and Charles I, I really do hope
that the 24 people listening on SoundCloud are doing this
conversation.