All right, so let's start off. Let's start off Sorry, sorry,
sorry, but hang on Charles, before you go any further, let's
just start off by saying we don't have rain this time.
Well. That, that is what I was going
to say. Speak to yourself.
Yeah, exactly. You speak for yourself.
We've got plenty here, but hopefully not audible.
And, and so this is unfashionably an apology.
I, I, I think not. Well, I was the one that was in
the room. The, the elephant zone last week
was very, very wet. Funnily enough, it wasn't
because the rain was hammering on the roof.
It was the sound of the rain rolling off the edge of the roof
and into the gutter. But that's neither here nor
there to an extent. I'm very sorry that it was quite
so loud, quite so distracting. Fun enough reading through the
comments, not everybody found it to be off putting.
I think some people were pleased by the sound and I think there
is something to be said for that.
I don't know if you can really recreate it in a, in an
electronic sense, but the but the, the sound of running water
is absolutely fantastic. But, but I'm not sure that was
quite what we did. So an apology, because for me in
that room, it didn't seem as loud as it subsequently came out
on the recording. I is my view.
I'll tell you something. It was nothing last week
compared to today because that has been, I mean, the volume of
the, of not only the rain hitting the, the, the roof, but
running down that gutter today was, yeah, it was off the
charts. It was amazing.
We had some pretty spectacular rain this morning.
That's a great thing. I mean, clearly global warming
is, is just destroying the UK. It's just, you know, it's, it's
getting so hot that it's raining.
I thought it looked look. The farmers, it's going to be
interesting. Charles, I don't know what your
thoughts are because farmers have been complaining because we
haven't had any rain this year so far.
And then over the last couple of weeks things have turned about
somewhat. But I can see it going the other
way over the next month or so. Yeah.
I think, I think that's the thing where we are at that time
of year where it's it, it does tend to go one way or the other.
It's, it's either a very wet period of the year sort of
comparably or, or, or it's far too dry.
But I think it I, you know, it raises a lot of really
interesting points, especially with arable agriculture and how
the particularly well for now, hybridization of crops and stuff
works. You see, say you take things
that are not interfered with at all.
So, so a lot of grasses that haven't been re sown or
whatever, so sort of hedge row grasses.
And you, and you see how things will respond according to nature
in the if, if it's a, if it's very dry, they will give out
seed as a, as a sort of control mechanism in order to, for there
to be progeny if they die off. And you know, similarly, if
there's enough water, they'll grow instead before issuing seed
and, and all the rest of it. Whereas you look at crops that
are hybridised and, and one, I think one example in the, in the
UK that's really interesting to watch is maize, which is largely
used for winter feed for cattle. And I, I can think of periods
here where, you know, it would definitely constitute grout in
drought in the, the, that period of time that the maze has been
in the ground, there's been no rainfall at all.
And yet it just keeps on growing.
It's, it's very, very odd to watch and it's just, it's
completely unreal. And you think, right, well, if,
if that's able to do that, what, what's it going to be doing to
the inside of a cow when, when it eats it?
And consequently, what's that going to be doing?
The condition of the meat, if it's going to be beef, or indeed
the milk, if it's going to be dairy and all, you know, all
these things just just remind us of how far removed we are from
nature in its natural state and how people have got so utterly
used to that, that it's, it's not even a consideration
anymore. You know, stuff just stuff just
grows and that's that. And I think in the UK, you know,
getting back to it, OK, it might, might appear boring for
people that aren't engaged with it, but actually it is
enormously relevant. We, we had a incredibly wet
winter, not the one just gone, but the, the previous one.
And, and there was it a real, real effect because it was bad
for both camps. I mean, you know, livestock,
terrible conditions because the ground was so horrifically
boggy. Or if you're, you're trying to
get anything in the ground to grow, it was just way too wet.
And but you know, the amount that was lost because it just
drowned was, was phenomenal. And that was a kind of, you
know, that was a reminder that I think the public did have some
sense of the the weather on this.
Of course, for anyone to say, oh, well, hey, that's the way
it's going to go because of climate change is ludicrous.
But I think people do need to be reminded of the way in which the
weather does actually affect stuff.
When I was in Poland and what do you call it, Netherlands,
Holland is just I think one of the provinces always get this
wrong. In 2023 though they were telling
me about the globalist attack on agriculture in in their country.
Is the same thing happening in the UK?
100% And it's fascinating because you know, Britain, as
everybody knows, Britain came out of the European Union a few
years ago and up until that point, all this sort of
industrialised farms that are effectively, you know, they're
not viable businesses in many ways they were reliant upon
payments from the European Union.
That is a common agricultural policy to keep themselves in
profit. And after we left the European
Union and inverted economists, the common agricultural policy
money stopped blowing and the UK government said that they would
replace it with various renate rewilding schemes and and
renaturization and all this kind of stuff.
And so farmers have signed up for that.
And in fact, there were they, they seem to have, they seem to
close the, the application process a few weeks ago or a
couple of months ago because, well, whether it was there were
too many or whatever, but now they're looking at under the
spending review, maybe not even letting that programme run its
course. So, so farmers are, you know,
they're not viable as, as a business because of, of many
factors, not least the, the way that supermarkets have have
decimated, you know, the, their income.
But also just the, the fact that grain markets are
internationalised, globalised. And, and so they are trying to
sell grains at, at prices sometimes that, that aren't even
covering their costs or if they are covering their costs only
marginally. So, you know, farming by itself
seems to be, I mean, Charles, you can correct me if I'm wrong
about this, but it seems to, it seems to be that it's
increasingly unviable as a business, partly because we are
as individuals increasingly unwilling to pay, you know, for
food in a way that we once did. And, and you go back several
decades and, and the proportion of our income that we were
prepared to spend on, on food was that much higher.
But we've got used to what the supermarkets have done to the
farming industry, plus government policy has done to
the farming industry and we prefer to go on for foreign
holidays a year instead. Yeah.
I mean, I, I know we've we've talked about this before quite
quite closely associated with this.
I think if you, if you look at it the other way round and it's
the city, it would apply to any system or, or anything that
we've, we identify on a, on a, either a national worldwide
basis who does the system suit? And it's certainly not the
farmers, but but it does suit the grapefruit cartels.
So, so if you, if you look at what they're getting out of it
and then you reverse engineer from that point, then you see
exactly why we are in the situation that we are in.
And they they can only do what they do because government
steals money from people in order to it effectively pump it
back into the food industry. I mean, as I say, you don't, you
don't have to just apply this to food.
But for that to be able to happen, it means that people who
are trying to farm in I was about to use the word
conventional, but we have to be careful with that because of
what what has become conventional.
But, but, but that within itself that the, the sort of, you know,
the wider agricultural industry which incorporates the food
outlets, the supermarkets, all that kind of thing, but also the
chemicals and the pharmaceuticals and, and all the
all the other inputs that are contributing to it.
They all profit greatly from it. But they can only do that
because the exactly like Mike describes, the subsidy system is
an enabling process, a financial instrument in effect to
condition people to do a particular thing, which is not
to say that you can't do it outside of that.
We've again, we've talked about that before, whether in the UK
or or elsewhere, the conditions are very much against you and
you just have to think totally differently about what you're
trying to do. But but yes, I mean, you could
say this is part of a process of destruction of agriculture as we
know it. But actually it's that that's
part of it. The the other part, of course is
that it is, it is sweeping aside all of that in order that the
likes of craft and Cargill and and whatever can do what they do
and, and indeed how they play into all the rest of it.
And you look at those guys now, of course, they're all like
everybody else in the grips of AI and tech, you know what they
call innovation. But but frankly, it's just yet
more removal of people from the land and removal of people from
having any idea as to what food is.
But as I say, you know, we've talked about a lot before.
So, so yes, it's it's an intentional destruction, but
there is a but there is a specific purpose beyond simply
wilful sort of nihilistic destruction.
And we can't. Sorry, sorry.
I was just going to say, Jim, we can't.
We can't let that pass without just mentioning, you know, since
Charles has brought in the issue as the big conglomerates, you
know, the the gene editing plans, the sort of factory
production of food. You know, that part of the
reason that this is happening is, is undoubtedly because
there's an intention that food is not going to be produced on
the land anymore. It's going to be produced in
factories using organisms that have been genetically
engineered. Now they'll claim that in the
legislation and so on. They'll claim that it's not
genetic engineering or it's not genetic modification, rather to
use the correct term, because they say that the organisms that
are eventually produced are don't have any foreign genetic
material in them. But but they are the these
factory farmed products are factory produced products are
allowed to be developed using genetic modification as an
interim step. The claim is that the foreign
genetic material is removed at the end of the process.
But nonetheless, it's, it is. It is.
It is not, in my opinion, Charles, again, I'd be
interested in your thoughts on this, but it is not, in my
opinion, equivalent to selective breeding because it is
significantly more there's, there's more genetic messing
about going on than than can possibly happen through
selective, careful selective breeding.
No, I, I would, I would totally agree with Mike.
And I think, again, I know we, we have, I think covered some of
this before, but, but I, I, I think the other element to it
is, it is, you can't know. And, and, and it's, it's
staggering from a scientific point of view to suggest that
say, say something could be done in a, you know, in a sort of
hybridised conventional fashion that would take, say, 1020,
thirty years to achieve. And all you're saying is you're,
you're condensing that amount of time into a much shorter period.
And, and you're, you're overriding assumption in all of
that is that condensing that period of time isn't going to
make any difference. As though you know exactly how
each stage of that will turn out.
It's, it is utterly ridiculous and completely irresponsible for
anybody to put that forward for for two reasons, or at least two
reasons that that sort of I have on top of my head.
Now, first of all, you don't know how the Organism itself
will turn out to be, you know, compared with that process, but
also you don't know how it will relate to its environment, how
its environment will relate to it.
That's the other bit that nobody considers.
So you're you the, the knock on effect of altering a food chain
in such an incredibly abrupt manner by putting something
into, you know, whether it's a, let's say it's a breed of sheep
that has that has not gone through that 30 or 40 year
period and therefore it's environment has not adapted to
it. It hasn't adapted to its
environment. It's, it's an absolutely radical
change and, and the, the absurd position that people have on
sort of protecting the environment or this confusion
with sort of climate and nature and, and the, the conflation
and, you know, frankly the complete and wilful
misunderstanding of the situation.
But people are unable to sort of pull this bit out and realise
that it's, it's totally and utterly wrong.
It it just because you don't know, which is not to say it
definitely will be a disaster, but it's you can't possibly say
that it won't be. What I was going to say earlier
is one of the driving factors of all of this is of course the U
NS Sustainable Development agenda.
South Africa has about 80% of land that's used for
agriculture. The UK has about 71%.
Compare that to Hong Kong, which is 2%.
That's pretty much no agricultural land.
The first thing I would say, the first thing I would do, there is
question that statistics, 71% of Britain's land may be classed as
agricultural land, but that doesn't mean that it's being
used for agriculture. A lot of it has been, as already
mentioned, put into rewilding programmes.
A lot of it has solar panels and wind turbines on it and a lot of
it just simply isn't being farmed.
So, so you know, the, the, the, the better statistic for me,
Jeremy, is that I think we're 40% food independent.
So 60%. I think it's more than 60% now
of our food is, I could be wrong about that, but somewhere around
that region is, is imported. And, and so, you know, I think
that's to a large degree indicative of of the fact that
so many people have left the farming industry in recent
decades. Well, it depends.
It really does depend how you categorise it.
And, and, and again, just going back to the statistics, like
Mike says, they, they are terribly misleading because it
is that it that that percentage is classification by land use.
And that doesn't mean that any farming has to be conducted on
it for it to count as agricultural.
And and that's, you know, that's one thing from the last,
particularly the last year actually or a year and a bit, I
suppose about a year and a half now that that, that some of
those figures have fluctuated really wildly.
And you and you see the effect of these sorts of subsidies, you
see how incredibly effective they can be.
And the, the one set of statistics that sticks in my
head is that one of these, in fact, the scheme that Mike
referred to that was shut down and then, and then they've sort
of reneged slightly and, and, and opened it up again.
But the sustainable farming incentive, which was basically
meant to take land out of, out of production of food.
And, and you know, they say put it into nature recovery.
But of course that, that again is, you know, I don't know if
we've got time necessarily to go into it, but that, but that in
itself is such a gigantic con because in actual fact, what
they're suggesting is not treating the particular bit of
ground on its own merits. So it'll be, you just get a bird
seed, a little wild bird mix. So you're going to put in a
whole load of species into say a wildflower Meadow or or whatever
that aren't native to that particular bit of ground.
And we go back to the hybridising or genetic
modification of organisms. And you're, you are absolutely
disrupting that ecosystem by doing that because all the, all,
all the, let's say, all the butterflies, all the worms or
whatever, everything that relates to the plant species
that should be there suddenly don't know what to do because
the, the, what should be there isn't.
OK, You could say, well, if you're starting from something
that's just a, you know, a, a chemically treated field of
wheat, then frankly, what's the difference?
But that, but there is a difference.
And that in itself is done from a utterly wrong start point.
So the whole idea of nature, nature recovery is, is a massive
con in the 1st place. But but they, they started this
scheme and in the first instance it was unlimited in that if you
farmed 100 acres or 100,000 acres, it didn't matter.
You could put the whole of your farm into this scheme in that,
you know, one year you might be producing 100% of your, of your
land might be dedicated to producing beef or, or wheat or
whatever. OK, you should hopefully
wouldn't be doing that, but but still it could be.
And then the following day, you could say, right, we're into SFI
100%. And so the obvious question was
to to the ministry to, to Defra Also, what, what do you think
the effect of this is going to be?
I mean, if you're, if you're allowing people to de risk their
business to that extent, what do you think is going to happen?
Are they going to think, yeah, well, I'll tell you what, I'll
roll the dice and maybe make a bit of money on, on wheat or
barley or, or beans or something.
Or should I just take the cash and do a one hit and just sow
bird seed and doesn't matter how it turns out and, and Defra in
their infinite wisdom and arrogance said we don't expect
there to be any material change to the circumstance.
Go forward three months from the time that that question was put
by UK column to to Defra. After three months, they reduced
that drastically and said you can only put 1/4 of your land
into the scheme. And then a couple of months
later they received, they released the statistics and, and
what what's called the uncropped arable land.
Had increased by a factor of 107% over that time period.
So, OK, how much of an effect does that actually have given
that our relative sustainability or self sufficiency is so low?
Well, yeah, OK, maybe not that much, but the but the point to
be made is that the influence that is held by the food
industry and by the government by virtue of these sort of
crooked subsidies is phenomenal. And that and you know that will
will feel the the longer term effects of that in, you know,
over the next few years because to to undo it.
The point is that if you have gone into it and you've you've
created a load of land that that now cannot produce food, to
actually undo that and to start again in order to achieve some
sort of profitable exercise for your business is, is really,
really difficult. So it's a sort of, you know,
it's kind of a fudge every which way.
But, but I mean it, yeah, it totally and utterly happened.
And so, yeah, it's a it's a disaster.
But again, people don't have any idea because going back to the
Hong Kong thing, we just, we get around it by by importing food
and and then at the same time saying, oh, well, you know,
Russia is such a terrible threat.
Well, so in which case, why are we importing food?
It is a weird concept. If you grow food and then you
export it and then import, the whole thing is a very strange
cycle. It's a great demonstration of,
of how the, the whole climate narrative is internally
inconsistent. You know, we've got to stop
driving internal combustion engine cars because we're
pumping out all this nasty carbon dioxide and sulphur
dioxide and stuff. We've got to, so we've got to
change everything to batteries. But we're going to, we're going
to, we've just done a deal. The UK has just done a deal with
the United States to export product from the UK to the
United States and then to import product from the United States
to the UK. This would make sense if we were
producing different product, but it's the same product.
So please explain to me how this fits with their climate change
narrative. It's it's a lot in itself
demonstrates that the climate change narrative is a pile of
nonsense in my opinion. Because because they can't even
get their own story straight. And if you look at what's
happening here in South Africa, they are building huge, huge
forms of solar panels and, and wind turbines.
But yes, yes, they're up. They're building them in the
middle of nowhere. And at this stage, they aren't
connected to the central power grid.
So now this is beautiful for basically the technocrats, for
the UN, for the World Bank, because big loans are going to
get taken out so that they can start building the
infrastructure. No, but but that but I mean, you
know, at least let's let's say if you were to give the system
the benefit of the doubt and just look at it on on common
sense ground. You know, South Africa's
latitude means that that there is at least a case on the solar
side of it for it for it making some degree of sense.
You know, you have consistently a more consistent amount of
daylight and indeed you have more sunlight than the UK and,
and yet are, you know, the peak and through, I mean, OK, more,
much more acute further north in the UK that you go.
But you know, right up in the north of Scotland in the the
Northern Isles, the, the days in winter are absurdly short and,
and yet in the summer it's it's never dark.
So, so how on earth, how are you matching that power input with
the requirement, you know, no one on a, on just a common sense
basis. And I, and I say this as
somebody who has solar panels, but in a, in a completely off
grid capacity, because it makes sense.
And, and, and I therefore use energy around the delivery of
the, the energy from the sun. So I mean it, it makes sense and
it means sort of two fingers to the National Grid.
But but I would never suggest that because it works for me and
I can, I can think, OK, well, I can put that machine on now.
I can run that. Now.
I would never suggest that you try and run a country's grid on
that basis. Yeah, but that's totally crazy.
Charles But that's the that's the obvious difference.
I don't think any sane person has anti solar panels or
whatever. If you have them on your roof,
it's great, but that's not base load.
That's the difference. Yeah, but you see that the on
the roof things really interesting because that here in
the UK, Ed Miliband was talking about that just earlier this
week, I think it was. And you know, as though, oh,
it's a complete revelation, you know, finally common sense and
this that and the other. Yeah, OK.
But but but still when you look at the wiring diagram, how does
it actually work? Well, the way it works, unless
he is really suggesting common sense, which I doubt is that
the, the panels, the, the, the, you know, out the back of the
panel goes the cable out of the house and back into the grid.
So if there's a power cut, even if the sun is shining and you've
got panels on your house, you will not have electricity
because the power goes to the grid and it needs to therefore
come back from the grid as opposed to what I'm describing,
which is an off grid thing where you're able to store the energy
because you've got batteries. So in actual fact, this the the
idea, you know, this this sort of word that gets bandied around
about resilience. It is, is absolute rubbish
because because of that. So, so still you have this
central requirement and there was that was it Spain that had
the outage the other day? I forget, Mike.
I think you spoke about it on the.
News. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Portugal, but yeah, so you know, this the the the peaks and
troughs in terms of the, the delivery versus something like
nuclear. How on earth it would basically,
if it weren't for the climate narrative, you know, how on
earth would anyone have come out of a meeting and said, yeah, OK,
well that the let's go for the let's go for the form of energy
that's there's a load of like more than we can use during the
middle of the day and then absolutely none at night.
I mean, no one would ever have said, yeah, that's a good idea.
Yeah, but as I was saying, it's base load versus secondary
power. I mean, solar panels are
fantastic. Wouldn't turbines fantastic?
You know as as secondary, but they're not reliable.
But yes, I mean, it's fascinating, right?
This could be a shoehorn too far, but we just before we
started recording, we're talking about daylight saving and.
Yes, let's talk about daylight savings.
Yeah, it's, I don't necessarily have a have a dog in the fight
exactly, but it is, Yeah, it is controversial.
Well, I'll tell you what, You start because you were the one
that brought it up. You say, you say your piece.
OK, so I I find the concept of daylight savings ridiculous, so
go on. As it turns, as it turns out, we
don't have that in South Africa. We don't even have multiple time
zones. Technically South Africa should
have two time zones, but we don't.
So we keep things really simple. If it's darker for an hour
longer than so be it. You know, just that's it.
That's the time. Mike, what?
What's I need? You were reluctant to
necessarily. I don't, I don't have, I don't
have a dog in this fight, as the saying goes.
I mean, my preference would be that we don't have it.
I also don't really understand what it's actually for.
Of course, I grew up being told all kinds of stories about that
it's beneficial for farmers and so on.
So. So maybe I should just pass that
straight back to you, Charles, since you are a farmer, is it
beneficial to you? OK, what's wrong with just
changing your lawn, that's all. Why must why must be done from
the government? Yeah, OK.
Well, that that that is you are absolutely correct.
I mean that that is ultimately what it comes down to.
But I, but the, the way I look at it is that, yes, it would be
perfectly easily, perfectly easy to, to simply adapt according to
the seasons. And OK, in the South of England,
it's, it's not so acute, but, but nonetheless, it, you know,
this time of year isn't very nearly Midsummer.
It is light. It's, it's light enough to be
outside short pretty shortly after 4:00 in the morning.
I mean that that is seriously early.
And then it's, it's easily light enough to, to walk around still
at 10:30 at night. And obviously the further north
you go, the, the, the wider that margin gets.
But if, if you think about what time the working day starts and
finishes and then what people, how people manage their lives,
the, the case for it sort of makes itself because, because
exactly like you say, people don't simply change their alarm
clock. So if you want, if you are
either in a professional, you have a lifestyle that means that
maximising daylight makes sense, then yeah, you're quite right.
You should just get up earlier. But but if, if you are going to
say right, well, it would just be helpful for people to have
daylight at the time where it's sort of more necessary.
Then my point is if we take the, if we take midday, the, the, the
Meridian as being the time of the sun at its highest point, we
are crazy in that we, we, we have such a short period of
time, generally speaking, before that and such a long period
afterwards. And so that's, so we've moved
away from, I mean, with the OK previously using candles, lamps,
whatever, but now with, with electricity, we don't really
move according to, to daylight. And so people, you know, people
that don't go to bed until sometime, I mean, OK, in, in
the, in the winter, it doesn't really make sense to manage your
day like that. So I think so that that's,
that's sort of how it's come about, if you see what I mean,
because we are choosing to spend a completely unequal amount of
our day at, at either end of it, if that makes sense.
I mean, it's crazy, but, but sort of now with where we are
necessarily. So I think the only way to
resolve it in the UK would be to to split it down the middle and
and have the the half hour like in is India is is on 1/2 hour,
Bhutan is on 3/4 of an hour and somewhere else is at quarter
past or Yeah. OK.
So, so, so that would be the, that would be the way to resolve
it because otherwise we'd otherwise, you know, if you, if
you do want to have broadly speaking, a day that we call the
working day that does best fit daylight throughout the year
without him to change the clocks, then you then you would
have to get, you'd have to do the half hour.
Just as. Unfortunate it looks like.
Sorry, I was just going to say unfortunate.
It doesn't look like we're going to have to worry about what Iran
does for another in another few weeks time.
But but anyway, that's a whole other conversation.
But yeah. What is the default time?
So right now you're an hour behind me and then the other
half of the EU two hours behind me.
So what is the UK's default time?
To GMT so it would be two we'd be two hours away.
So we're on now yeah. What's called British
summertime. I mean the, the history of it if
one's to believe it with, with John Harrison and his C clocks
it is is completely fascinating. But.
But but again sort of weird that well they're not weird.
I mean go when you think going back to that time people's days
did did start earlier and did not finish so late.
So so Greenwich meantime did make sense for those people then
it doesn't really make sense for the way that we operate now.
So yeah, you're right. We should, we should, if we were
to avoid daylight saving, we should just alter our, our lives
accordingly. But people won't do that in the
same way that, you know, we talked about food earlier.
People won't save food and therefore save money and not on
not waste. I mean, it does, you know, say
where do we, where do we start? Where do we finish?
But I, I, Jeremy, I don't get your complaint in some way.
I mean, I agree with it, but I don't necessarily get it because
of course, we don't even have to bother changing our clocks
anymore. That's all done for us.
So really we just go to sleep one night and we waken up at the
alarm the next day and and it's just happened.
So I mean, what's the problem? You guys are aware surely that
NATO and you know, which is driven by the US has for a long
time now I've been been trying to.
Find a way to Now, let me just stop you there for a second.
Are you sure about that? Is NATO, is NATO, is NATO driven
by the US or is NATO actually driven by the UK and and who is
actually producing the policy? That's a very good question,
Mike. I think, I think you'll, I think
that actually NATO policy is coming from, we might call it an
Anglo American deep state axis. Let's say there's this, the the
various intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic are
pretty much aligned. Not necessarily aligned with
with the current regime in the United States, not necessarily
aligned with the regimes in European countries, but
certainly I think largely aligned with the policy
objectives of the British Foreign Commonwealth and
Development Office. That's just my my view, Charles.
You may have a different. One, no, I mean not, not
significantly, no, I, I, I agree.
I, I absolutely agree. And I think the yeah, I mean,
the, the, the Iran situation, it is fascinating.
You know, the, the, oh, we cover it quite a lot on the news.
But the, the constant references to Iran being involved in
absolutely everything that pertains to a threat to us or a
threat to other countries in the Middle East.
I mean, it's, it's completely relentless from here.
And it's, it's, it's almost all unsubstantiated or it's the
product of very, very crooked intelligence, if that's really
the word for it, which I don't think it is.
I mean, it's phenomenal. And also the, the efforts that
are being gone to, to, to stir it up.
And I was just, I was interested.
We, we the, the actually again, going back to NATO is
interesting. The UK sent a an aircraft
carrier carrier strike group out from Portsmouth in.
Was it in May or was it in April?
I thought it might have been. Later sometime, yeah.
And they and they, I mean it was extraordinary description for
it. So it's a, it is described as a
combat operation, operation high mass.
So it's not an exercise, it's an operation.
And it was in conjunction, certainly in its first part
through the Mediterranean and then and then through the,
through the Suez Canal with a sort of NATO escort or, or
indeed sort of auxiliary vessels from NATO.
And now they've, they've turned W turned left, they're there and
I say they're in the western Arabian Sea.
So without having to make people get the map out, basically,
they're they're going round Yemen.
And of course Yemen now is is absolutely chucked in with Iran,
with Russia and everything else. And almost laughably part of the
remit of the carrier strike group is trade, trade relations
in the Indo Pacific. I mean, it's just hard not to
say. I mean, I don't mean to be
overly cynical, but but it looks very much like its primary
purpose is to be a magnet for fire to to draw fire to to
provoke some sort of incident and consequently, therefore
stimulate trade, trade in weapons and to fur.
You know, we've just had the strategic defence review
released here. All about the only thing it's
about is, is blowing everybody up with nuclear weapons and
industry and how everybody just makes packet and, and it just,
it is completely extraordinary how people, especially given,
you know, we're talking about people's memories.
We're not that far from how everything was cooked up and,
and and then utterly sort of twisted before the Iraq War,
2003, you know, to the point where George Bush was even
minuted in a meeting that Bush himself was talking about a
false flag shooting down of an aircraft.
You know, I mean, so we're almost in, in that sort of
territory now. It's it's totally perverse.
The reason why I I mentioned the US earlier is I don't know if
you're aware of the Path to Persia document that was
published in 2009 by the Brookings Institution.
I think it's really important to understand the role of these
think tanks, these policy think tanks and and so on because you
know they are effectively they and the media to some degree as
well are effectively an armed agents of the so called deep
state. So they are there to present the
ideas to the to governments initially and and then the
governments are representing these ideas to the people.
And, and of course, this is something another thing that
most people get a bit backwards is, is what the purpose of
representative democracy is? Because it's not about as I'm
sure everybody watching this. Well, no, but it's, it's not
about choosing individuals to represent our views to the
legislature. It's about the the so called
legislature representing the policy that has come from some
other place to the people and hopefully selling that policy
well enough that they get voted in the next time around.
So, so you know, this is another area where we sort of get, get
our, our, our view of, of how things work a bit crisscrossed.
But it's genius because if you're a think tank, you, you
don't have to take blame for anything.
No, no, no, we didn't do anything.
I just, you know, we just, we just presented some ideas.
Yeah. That's.
Exactly right, exactly right. I mean, we, Mike and I began
Wednesday's news this week with a, with a kind of extended
report on digital ID. And this is absolutely case in
point, you know, the, the, you look at the government's website
and what the, the, the data access bill, we're just going
through, well, it's effectively sort of gone through parliament
and, and in that, you know, in the, in the government's
writings on that, they're talking about a digital identity
that is not mandatory. And then just a few days ago, a
think tank very closely associated with the Labor Party,
Labour Together have produced a policy paper about something
called a Brit card, which they're proposing would be
mandatory, would be universal. But they they're, they're
selling it on the basis that it will stop illegal migration and
control overall migration. And and that is that, that is
basically that's it. That's that, that's their sort
of sole offering. But exactly like you say, they
just sort of toss it on the on the heap.
And and then and stand well back and and that's that.
And and then, you know, but of course it enters public
consciousness. It gets reported on.
Actually, I don't know if it has been reported on by the
mainstream, but well, I mean, sorry, it it, it obviously has,
but but anyway, so, yeah, the the point is, is valid.
Absolutely. It's absolute though, aside from
that the, the, you know, the government should be lied to us
and and aside from the the whole Brit card discussion which is
not settled yet. Literally about 30 minutes ago I
received an email from company's house in the UK demanding that I
verify my identity digitally for future use on the company's
house website. So, so that's absolutely
mandatory and, and mandatory digital ID is here, no matter
what the British government might say in their denials, it's
here already. Yeah, staggering.
What? What's the where?
Where is it at in South Africa on that front?
I think you, you, you might find that we are very far behind.
And that's thanks to having a very inept state.
We have a, you know, pretty much a failure of a government, which
is beneficial in, in many ways. It's depends on what, what hill
you want to die on. But if you, if you want chaos
like we've got that is accompanied by a sense of
freedom. But if you want less chaos and a
lot more control, then it is accompanied by things like
digital ID and, you know, and and and more central governance.
Yeah, it's a really, it's an interesting point because I, I
do agree and I think, but, but what I would say is qualify that
with, with what, what 1's perspective is.
Because, you know, the reason I ask about South Africa is that
there are a lot of organisations, you know, the UN
in particular and the African Union.
And then all the funders of that, you know, the, the, the
crew of wrong and philanthropists who are
desperate to give the impression that that Africa really wants to
embrace the tech revolution and that that digital idea is
absolutely happening. And but you're bridging the, the
tech divide and all that sort of stuff, the digital divide.
And, and then and then, you know, you talk to somebody who's
there you who says no, I mean, it's, it's really not.
And, and then then, and I would agree, you know, on the, on the
sort of the idea that that the UK, let's say, which is a
smaller landmass, a more dense population, a better established
series of sort of urban spaces, insofar as the, the connections
and, and lines communication stuff are, have, have been more
enduring. But actually, I would say that
going back to the, the oil, I mean that the oil can is looking
quite empty. The, the, the way in which a lot
of this stuff is supposed to work is now quite far removed
from the way in which it actually does work.
And one can point to both sides of the fence, I would say, you
know, whether it be the state, the sort of government systems
or indeed the, you know, the other side of it and and what
corporations promised to, I mean, Marks and Spencer, for
example, you've got because what what's Marks and Sparks in South
Africa? Woolworths is it?
Woolworths, I think, yeah. OK, so so they, they had a, some
tech, you know they they were hacked or whatever it was
ransomware I think a couple of months ago.
They are still not trading online after more than two
months because they were knocked sideways.
The, the vulnerabilities in all of this are absolutely vast.
And I know I sound like a broken record on this, but it's very
easy for the UK, for the British government to give the
impression that we are this extraordinarily in your, you
know, well oiled machine. And, and the truth is, is, is
not at all like that. And also the, the, the distance
that we have to come. I mean, I remember, just as an
anecdote, I can remember shipping a vehicle back into the
UK. It was only 10 years, in fact
not even 10 years ago. And it's quite an unusual thing
to do as an individual. Obviously there are a lot, you
know, hundreds come in. Well, I should probably not so
much anymore, but but hundreds come in commercially and that's
fine. But in order to get it through
customs, you have to have a code allocated to it.
So you look down all the codes. And anyway, I spoke to the, the
civil service department in, in Manchester that were meant to
run this and no one there had any idea how you're supposed to
do it. So I filled out the form and it
said code, you know, for import or whatever.
In the end, I just made it up because I knew that that they,
they weren't going to know any better, but that something
needed to go in the, in this series of boxes.
So that was the first point. The second point was right,
we'll say how do I get it to you?
Have you got an email address that I can attach it to?
No, no. Can you fax it?
And this was, this was in 2015, I think, and, and fax was the
only way you could communicate with this outpost of Revenue and
Customs to do with vehicle imports and exports.
So I'm not saying that they won't have evolved since then,
but the, but the idea just because they say, Oh yeah, we've
got a one government login now and in 5 minutes you'll be
having a Brit card. It's just, it's really not it.
It's not that simple. It's not that straightforward.
It's not that well oiled. But I mean, just to add to what
you're saying, right, I, I don't know what the geography is like
where you guys live, but is it fairly easy to leave your home
and take public transport and go into the city?
Is a is a quite easy. Well, we're like you go first.
Well, I live in the city, so that's, that doesn't apply.
But but I would say, I would say that as a general rule, public
transport is vastly lagging behind where, you know, the the
climate change proponents would want it to be.
If, if, if there's a plan that people will be taking any kind
of transport at all, of course. But but bus services are
appalling, trails that train services are appalling and
vastly overpriced. So.
So the answer is that the public transport at this point is not
fit for purpose. OK, but at least you have public
transport. If I were to now leave my home
and just go to the shop to the to the closest shop, I don't
think I can unless I have a car. I'm just thinking I can maybe
get an Uber but that seems excessive.
I don't there is an that's it. I'd have to take an Uber or
walk. That's it and it's and it'll be
a long walk. If, like in the UK, you rewrite
your planning law predicated on the sort of post confected
pandemic behaviours and you say that everybody is going to be
working from home, then then you don't need public transport.
You know, you people will ride their E scooters or or some
other very dangerous device And and you know that sort of that's
what you say or you just you don't bother.
But no, I mean, I would, I would agree with Mike.
The area that I live in is, is rural.
There are bus services, they do run, but to suggest that you
could just, you know, manage your day in a sort of convenient
sense according to bus timetables is ridiculous.
I mean, I think. Sorry, go on.
No, no, I mean I was just going to say like like sort of trains
or whatever. I mean, if you're, if you're
ever wanting to make a return journey anywhere, I think in the
UK now, as a, as a rule, when they devise the timetables,
it's, it's more or less a given that, that either it's
deliberately designed so that you can't get somewhere and back
in a day. Or that if you can, you've got
about a 7 minute window before you have to get on the, on the
bus or the train coming back. Or, you know, or that a
connection will always just miss or mean a sort of an 8 hour
wait. So yeah, it's, it is a disaster.
And actually just, you know, we can't joke about this.
The other, the other thing is going back to where we started
the because of this and because of what what there isn't in the
rural environment, it, it means that there is, and you've talked
about this in South Africa, but people do have to be able to do
stuff for themselves and therefore they are dependable.
And as such, they are independent or more independent
and dangerous. And so that's why there is such
continued push to get them off the land and to push them into
areas where they can be more easily managed and controlled
and, and, and, and generally deskilled.
So I think that's it. That's the thing.
But the other, the other thing, I mean, you know, what a joke on
the climate thing. So trains in the UK, if ever you
take your bicycle on a train, there is a little sort of
compartment where you can hang your bike up.
And I can remember first starting to do, you know, take a
bike on a train, I don't know, 3030 or more years ago.
And there were three you had to book and there were three little
hanging hooks. So you can take a maximum of
three bicycles on an intercity train, which can seat goodness
knows how many 100 people. And the last time I did it,
which admittedly was probably a couple of years ago, guess how
many hooks there are on the train now?
Still 3. So.
So this whole idea that we are doing everything we can to get
people into more efficient and, and, and sort of, you know,
modes of transport the better for the environment or whatever.
The whole thing's just just complete nonsense.
So I go back to the sort of perspective thing, you know,
from the outside it might look like that because you can
produce glossy videos and glossy pictures, but nothing's really
changed. It's just got worse.
But that's maybe a good thing because it's hold on.
It's a good thing in the sense that it shows that the agendas
are not really succeeding at the pace that we keep thinking they
are. Yeah.
No, no, I mean, you're right. I think, I think, I think 1
takes that I suppose it's yes, it's difficult to eliminate the
the sort of potentially positive thoughts where you think, well,
hang on a minute. I think, you know, if one does
believe people of an older generation or older generations,
I think there was a time where public transport, for example,
did work. It was efficient, it was clean
and it was organised and and it was affordable.
But somehow in these times of intense progress, we are no
longer to able to achieve that. So yes, it is a it is a, well
you know what is it? Is it a failed agenda or is it a
deliberate agenda? No, it's what it's what I was
alluding to earlier when Nick Hudson said that you have so
many competing interests even at those levels that you end up
with a lot of slowdown. I think that's right.
I think that's sorry, I was just going to say I think that's
right because, you know, so many people present the idea of of
this unified enemy and it doesn't exist.
A. Few years ago I decided to take
my wife for lunch to a beautiful little seaside restaurant, maybe
about 45 minutes car drive away from here.
So maybe an hour to an hour and a half in the train.
So I thought, well let's be different, let's take the train.
Well, it was a tragic experience to the point that we had to get
somebody to come and fetch us on the other side and drive us
back. One of the stops along the way
when we got off to to change trains, the security guard came
to came to us and said, Are you sure you want to be here?
We said, OK, why? So we're just changing trains.
He said yes, OK, I'm going to stand with you until you get on
on your train because this is not safe.
Well, I, I think we, we started in an interesting place with
the, you know, the, the, the, the land and removing people
from it and how, how you know, the, the, how all this stuff
connects back to itself. And exactly like you're talking
about, you know, why, why would a train service have ended up
sort of being like that if it, if it wasn't in some way all
related to, to what's going on? And, and, and I think I go back
to my point of, of just looking at who these outcomes do
benefit, because there is, you know, that there is always a
benefit somewhere. And I think it's, it's, it's up
to us to, to keep an eye on that and therefore sort of react
accordingly and, and, and in a way, you know, go, go in the
opposite direction and, you know, do as much as you can to,
to sort yourself out, as it were.
And and, and just make sure that your life functions and, and OK,
you know, your training experience.
Obviously a shame because wouldn't it be nice if it did
actually work? But you just make a plan and,
and you get on with it. Let's stop changing the time
twice a year. I've got a sound effect for
that. Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Mike Robertson, Charles Mallett, Thank you for joining me in the
weekly banter.