Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 12th of
February 2025. Just after welcome 1:00.
Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host Mike Robinson,
joining me in the studio today at Charles Mallett.
And by video link, we have Vanessa Bailey and Sandy Adams.
Welcome to programme Charles. Thank you.
Very much, Mike. Welcome all.
We are going to begin with you and lethality.
We are, yes, lethality, the new buzzword deployed now at every
opportunity by the Ministry of Defence and those in the senior
command positions at the head of the Army.
This is not just being pumped out at the highest levels, but
it is also now being sown in the minds of all ranks.
Most obviously in the most recent edition of the British
Army Soldier magazine. A lengthy piece here details the
five things every soldier must do now to be ready for war.
This is not a subtle message and it ties into the wider narrative
about forced development and how the scaled back army will be
able to do more with less as it leverages technology and
enhanced manoeuvre capability. Or so the Chief of General Staff
says. This would appear to be a rehash
of the message put out by the last incumbent, Patrick
Saunders, who spoke of the need to be ready for war with Russia,
with the concurrent admission that we were in no way prepared
for it, Hence the need for what he was calling OP Mobilise.
Now General Sir Riley Walker is repackaging the same message,
most recently to the International Armoured Vehicles
Conference last month, which was really an extension of his
message to the Land Warfare Conference in 2024.
And then he was saying that the Army must be able to destroy an
opposing force of at least three times the same size, and that
the pamphlets on tactics to achieve that are being rewritten
to reflect the new capabilities on the battlefield.
But the problem with what Walker's saying is that barely
any of the technology of which he speaks is actually ready, and
he's had to fall back on the advantages of what's called
hybrid, citing the effectiveness of the Ukrainians at doing just
this. A questionable position to take.
I was looking at a recently published regimental journal
which contains several articles about the support of OP
Interflex which has seen over 50,000 Ukrainians trained by
British troops and one such described the utter chaos during
the instruction of basic platoon attacks and the questionable
interpretation of battlefield discipline and basic soldiering
using the muzzle of their rifle as a chin strap on a live range
being a particular favourite. So the propagandising of the
activities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is being conducted
at every level now. Alongside the armed forces
message of readiness for war is the cry for help from the
defence industry, said to be on the brink of failure, with
headlines such as this from politics Home Now.
The Strategic Defence Review announced in the autumn, is due
to be published this spring. It will have taken more than
seven months and the most likely outcome is that it will
articulate the strategy by which the defence industry lines its
own pockets as the government makes the case for an enhanced
readiness for war or even for war itself.
As an aside, a recent Sub Stack article contained an AI response
to the requests to produce a version of Strategic Defence
Review which took just 5 minutes, so it will be
interesting to see how much this diverges from the government's
own offering and the link to Keith Deyer's peace will be in
the show notes. Now.
Whilst the focus has on readiness has been more or less
exclusively confined to relations with NATO and the
situation in Ukraine, the suggestion of any kind of threat
has meant increasingly looking toward Iran.
As reported at the time, both Mark Rowley and Ken McCallum,
respective heads of the Met Police and MI 5, made completely
unsubstantiated remarks about the state threat posed by Iran
last year. This has been stepped up a notch
recently with the very close parallels to the fabrication of
the war narrative by the Blair government in 2002 and 2003.
Hamish Falconer, Minister for the Middle East and North
Africa, responded to questions put to him on Iran on the 14th
of January of this year, saying we are working urgently on
measures to take the necessary action to deter the Iranian
state from posing a threat to this country and the region.
He goes on to say it is regrettably true that Iran's
nuclear programme has never been more advanced and it threatens
international peace and security.
So he has effectively said that he he believes there to be an
imminent threat from Iran, specifically with regard to
their nuclear capability. Now at this point, it is worth
noticing that he is the son of Lord Faulkner, who by being part
of Tony Blair's inner circle, was of course implicated in the
fabrication of the case for war in 2003, especially with regard
to the advice that the Attorney General took and his change on
such much advice on the legality of that war.
Now it seems more than ironic, now of course, that the the Lord
Faulkner himself should be leading the assisted dying Bill.
Nonetheless, Hamish Faulkner's statement is an outright
corruption of the truth and he has no evidence or intelligence
to be able to back it up with. Firstly, the Congressional
Research Service in the United States reported this in December
of last year. According to U.S. intelligence
assessments, Tehran has the capacity to produce nuclear
weapons at some point, but has halted its nuclear weapons
programme and has not mastered all of the necessary
technologies for building such weapons.
The On this side of the Atlantic, the Commons briefing
paper on the subject makes constant references to the
belief that there is no credible civilian justification for the
alleged quantities of enriched uranium.
But it goes no further than saying that this amount would
theoretically be enough for four nuclear explosive devices.
So for context, in May of last year the government committed
£196,000,000 to Eurenco to, quote, produce advanced nuclear
fuel, a market currently dominated by Russia to help fuel
nuclear power plants at home and abroad.
This is part of the government plan to push Putin out of the
global energy market and drive down energy bills.
And of course, back in 2012, Gordon Brown offered atomic
expertise for countries not developing nuclear weapons
capabilities with the creation of what was called a the Uranium
Bank for the development of civil power programmes, and this
did include Iran. So whilst the intelligence
hasn't changed, the message certainly has.
And this concerns in some way the failure of the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal
from 2015 between Iran, the UK, China, France, Germany, Russia
and the US. And its intent was to limit the
the Iranian nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
So from that it seems that we're able, or rather we're meant to
believe that the only reason Iran might now not satisfy the
the conditions of this agreement is because it must be engaged in
the development of a nuclear arsenal.
Now, if this is sounding familiar, that's because it is
only this time Iran and not Iraq.
Coincident with all of this, with these developments, is the
startling, the inaccurate portrayal of the threat
assessment. And that's been the announcement
of the sentencing of Daniel Khalif on the 3rd of February.
He was sentenced to over 14 years, 4 offences under the
Official Secrets Act 1911 and the Terrorism Act 2000, as well
as a prison escape during the time he was held on remand.
And the counterterrorism account of the case sounds very much
less than robust, using phrases such as the finding of a
potential improvised explosive device, which could have been
just about anything. The circumstances around the
case are flimsy at best. Caliph, as a 22 year old Lance
Corporal with the raw signals, was said to have passed highly
sensitive information to the Iranians after first appealing
to the security services to operate as a double agent.
But it turned out the messages supposedly from Iran had been
created by him, making the entire episode look rather more
like a fantasy than a reality. Nonetheless, the narrative point
about this story is that it concerns an apparent subversion
by Iran of a member of the armed forces.
And of course, we've seen the Trump administration making its
intentions very clear towards Iran.
They are being seriously compromise their economy and
indeed, from the American point of view, to align with the
strategy of the state of Israel. The UK's statistics on trade
show a significant drop in import and export with Iran
during the last 12 months. So going back to the the
military side of it, really Walker's insistence that we're
getting set for doing more with less, I think the question
remains, which is who would fight such a war?
And that takes us to conscription and national
service, both of which were aired in the public forum during
2024. And it's gone quiet, at least
for now. But in March of that year, Lord
Minto said, my Lords, the government have no plans to
reintroduce national service or any form of conscription in
answer to a question on that subject.
But there seems little doubt that this narrative will be
given more and more oxygen as 2025 unfolds.
And the UK column will of course be keeping a very close eye on
it. Thank you, Charles.
OK, and let's move to Finessa and welcome you to the
programme, Vanessa. And Trump has already been
mentioned. So let's talk about Trump and
Gaza. Yes, Trump continues his
disgusting dismissal of the Gazan people and his latest
meeting with King Abdullah the Second in Jordan Trump pledges
to take. Not by Gaza.
I'm not sure whether that's worse or better in meeting with
the Jordanian king. And let's just play the video of
what Trump actually said. The US would buy Gaza and today
you just said we're not going to buy Gaza.
We're not going to have to buy. We're going to have Gaza.
We don't have to buy. There's nothing to buy.
We will have Gaza. What is that?
No reason to buy? There is nothing to buy.
It's Gaza. It says it's a war torn area.
We're going to take it. We're going to hold it.
We're going to cherish it. We're going to get it going
eventually where a lot of jobs are going to be created for the
people in the Middle East. It's it's going to be for the
people in the Middle East. But I think it could be a
diamond. It could be an absolute
tremendous asset for the Middle East.
And you're going to have peace. It's going to bring peace in the
Middle East. Gaza, the way it is right now,
every 10 years you're going to have the same thing happening.
I've watched it so long, all the death and destruction of Gaza.
I mean, you know, again, I don't think I really have to add to to
my previous commentary about Trump's statements on Gaza,
which are clearly aligned of course with the security of
Israel. Now initially King Abdullah the
second did seem to to bend the knee and was talking about
bringing 2000 injured Palestinian children to Jordan.
The statement that he late later put out, he reiterated Jordan
steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians and
effectively what he did actually was to pass the problem over to
Egypt. He basically said, look, you
know, he's effectively against the displacement of
Palestinians. He'll do what's best for the
Jordanian people. Of course, more than two million
Palestinians in Jordan from the original Nakba back in 1948.
But he's passing the problem over to Egypt and saying that
he'll wait for Egypt statements and for the meeting or the
summit on the 27th and that of course Egypt to host emergency
Arab summit to discuss the serious Palestinian
developments. Trump is doing the strong
tactics of pushing Jordan and Egypt to take displaced
Palestinians based on the fact that both countries, of course,
are completely in debt to the United States and to the Gulf
states, and in Egypt's case, certainly, and in Jordans, to
Israel itself. Hamas delays the next prisoner
release, which is supposed to be on Saturday at midday, over
Israeli violations as mediators warn the ceasefire collapses
imminent. Israel has still been bombing
areas of Gaza and preventing the return of Palestinians to their
homes in the north. So let's have a look at how
Trump and Netanyahu's. Netanyahu's messaging is
completely, of course, in lockstep over what will happen
if at 12:00 on Saturday, the hostages are not released.
So for Trump. Well, I would say this, and I'm
going to let that because that's Israel's decision, but as far as
I'm concerned, if all of the hostages aren't returned by
Saturday at 12:00, I think it's an appropriate time.
I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break
out. I'd say they ought to be
returned by 12:00 on Saturday. And if they're not returned, all
of them not in drips and drabs, not 2 and 1:00 and 3:00 and 4:00
and 2:00. Saturday at 12:00 and after
that, I would say all hell is going to break out.
And I don't think they're going to do it.
I think a lot of them are dead. I think a lot of the hostages
are dead. I think it's a great, it's a
great human tragedy. What's what's happened, how
people can be that mean to do. I'm speaking for myself.
Israel can override it, but from myself, Saturday at 12:00.
And if they're not, if they're not here, all hell is going to
break out. And, of course, Trump has taken
off all the freezes on supply of weapons and heavy duty
munitions, including bunker Buster bombs, to Israel,
potentially in preparation for this.
And of course, Netanyahu. So it's pretty much the same
thing. The ceasefire will end if Hamas
does not return hostages by Saturday at noon.
And he is threatening already to return the troops to the north
of Gaza and to resume war with even greater alacrity than
before. So this combined with what else
is going on in the region, which I'll come on to into in my next
section, does suggest that there is going to be an escalation.
Yes, indeed. Thank you, Vanessa.
Thank you. We'll talk more about that, an
extra I've no doubt. But let's come back to the UK
now. Plymouth City Council is
currently discussing the possibility of a mayor, unitary
authority and a mayor. Sandy, how's this developing
countrywide? Well, it's interesting, the
government has actually cancelled some local elections
in nine areas affecting approximately 6,000,000 voters
who will no longer be able to vote in the May the May
elections. And this is part of a bigger
plan. I mean those affected areas are
East Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk,
Surrey, Thurrock and West Sussex.
This is a decision as a part of a broader plan really to create
these combined authorities and appoint mayors.
They call them the metro mayors or the the Mayors for Global
Climate and Energy. It's a global initiative really
for from the, it's called the Covenant of Smart City Mayors or
Covenant of, of Mayors for Climate and Energy.
They call them all sorts of things, but they want to install
these mayors by 2026. This is next year so that they
they they become a force really for for climate change and
they're being given extreme powers.
And if you look at the the the document, which is the the
covenant of global Mayors for Climate and energy.
Let's Google it. You'll find that this document
document is partnered with Italy, which is the
International Committee for Local and Environmental
Initiatives, which way back in, in 20 in sorry in 1992 at the
Earth Summit was was tasked with the idea of bringing Agenda 21
from global to local. It's also partnered with the
C-40 cities and with the the Bloomberg Philanthropy and the
EU. So it's a big initiative really
partnered by a lot of these big organisations.
There was no consultation on this.
And, and obviously it was, you know, that, that no, nobody knew
it was coming to, to actually stop these, these elections.
This, this move is also backed by the Cities and Local
Government Devolution Act of 2016, which I think we've got a
slide of, I don't know, for the introduction of the, these
directly elected mayors, the devolution of their key powers
really is to take the power from Westminster and give it to these
mayors for, for basically for climate change.
And those, those powers are planning and housing, transport
and also policing. So they're shifting the power
from Westminster to these mayors completely.
And the, the provisions for this act are, you know, to introduce
the directly elected mayors to oversee combined authorities and
it grants them unlimited control over planning, housing and
allows mayors to actually replace police and crime
commissioners, which was a bit of a shock to me, to be honest.
And it reduces Westminster statutory limitations on local
authorities. They will have significant power
bypassing Westminster to implement net 0 policies by
20-30 to 2050. And that's their sole aim.
They, they don't really have any, if you look at all the
documentation, that's all they talk about is, is, is net zero
by, by 20-30 onwards. And these plans align with also
the govern government's devolution white paper of 2024,
which really it, it, it, it goes through this whole thing and
it's, it's shifting this power and giving all the, the power to
these, these directly elected mayors.
Now, what could be the potential impacts of this, You know, to
almost have a, whatever's happened in London with Sadiq
can't have that happening in these larger devolved areas.
So we're looking at what's happened in London.
Really, we'll have increased Urban Development because
there'll be carte blanche on housing and and development.
Expansion of ultra low emission zones, Eulers, low traffic
neighbourhoods, LTNS, 15 minute cities, 20 mile an hour zones,
increased surveillance and AI, Internet of Things, Internet of
bodies coming in higher carbon taxation in forced retrofitting
of homes to meet new energy efficiency standards and
possible enforcement of climate lockdowns if need be and
geofencing. And that that is a concern
because they'll just have, they'll have can't blanche to do
whatever they like to reach these, these, these targets.
So, you know, this isn't, you know, that it's sold as
empowerment to, to the local councils, you know, to the
local, to the locality, to, you know, we're taking it all the
way from Westminster because they're not, they're not good
Westminster, you know, give it to us.
We'll, we'll sort it out. And it's bringing all of this
into a local environment. But will the people have any
say? And I don't think so, because
these regional mayors have all the, all the, all the power and,
and, and it it centralises the power within with these mayors
under strict. 0 targets that people may or may not want and,
and you know when they see what's happening, I don't think
they will want it. You see the present unitary
councils are to be amalgamated. So at the moment our, our small
councils all got lumped together.
I mean certainly in my area they got lumped together.
I think it was 3 or 4 councils got lumped together and so they
become unitary and then what they want to do is then expand
that to make these bigger. So you end up with about 7, just
7 regions instead of there's 300 and odd councils that we have.
Normally they're going to be 7 regions and these will all have
these, these mayors in place. And this is being implemented.
This is very clever the way they're doing it because this
was actually rejected, you know, from 2004 when Tony Blair tried
to do this, it was rejected by a lot of the councils.
And we see there the, the devolution, the devoluted areas.
And there's also a map that shows you what they planned in,
in 2015 and what's happening now.
And it's actually happening, you know, these larger devoluted 7
large areas. And So what, what they're doing
is they're keeping this, this plan going and what they've
done, and it's very clever. It's like a Trojan horse.
They've bankrupted the, the, the unitary councils.
So when our councils went unitary, and you'll probably
find it if yours does in your area, suddenly all these
accounts are amalgamated that did have money.
When they went unitary, suddenly they were bankrupt.
Where did the money go? It's all a bit of a mystery.
But what happened, and this is very clever, is that they, they,
they took funding away from the unitary councils and they gave
it to the, the smaller town and parish councils and they upped
their precepts, trebled them in some areas, trebled the precepts
of the smaller councils. Then the money from the precepts
comes from central government. So you're paying for it anyway
in your taxation. So what they did is they, they,
they took the, they outsourced all the services from your
unitary council that you get on your council tax bill and they
outsourced it to the, the smaller parish and town councils
that have got more money. And these are things like grass
cutting, waste disposal, public toilets, public space
maintenance. And all of these have been
funded by the Better Better Fund, you know, funded parish
and town councils and taken away from the unitary because let's
face it, they're bankrupt. They haven't got the money to do
it, but it ends up with you paying for these services twice.
But worse than that, um what? What are you paying for?
Because your council tax is going up.
My council tax is now going up by 7.5% this year and yet we're
getting less for our services. And it's a way they have to
bankrupt these guys, these these these areas, these combined
authorities in order for them to forcefully accept the devolution
plans. It's a Trojan horse to bring
this climate stuff into local authorities with these mayors
that have carte blanche to spend money on whatever they like.
And that, that, that is very concerning.
You know, they're, they're saying all that, you know, the
green, green energy jobs will be created.
But we know that green energy energy jobs are subsidised at
very high costs, averaging about £250,000 per job per year.
You know, the National Grid expansion to meet renewable
energy demands will cost 112 billion by 2035, which will
increase our energy bills. Ed Miliband's Clean Power Plan
aims to spend 260 to 290 by billion by 20, 30, which is only
saving 7 billion annually off the money we owe.
We spend normally on gas, gas, gas fired power.
So the whole thing doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make economic sense. And we know that it's not about,
it's not about environmentalism, it's about control.
And you know, The thing is that it's, it's bringing, brought in,
you know, really as a, as a, as a Trojan horse to roll out this,
the smart city agenda. And we, we don't have any say.
And my thoughts are, you know, it could lead to increased
poverty and greater government control.
And whilst it's, it's presented as a positive shift towards
sustainability and democracy, it doesn't either.
Absolutely neither. It carries economic risks and a
reduction in democratic process. You know, it's, you know, will
these policies truly benefit our local communities or will they
impose top down control? We need to share this
information. We don't need to sleepwalk into
devolution. And so many people don't know
this is happening. That's the problem.
Nobody knows it's actually happening.
And we've got to really be aware of this because, you know, we we
could find ourselves in a situation we can't get out of.
Once it's in in its motion, we won't be able to stop it.
Sandy, thank you very, very much for that.
And just to follow on from that then yesterday, because this is
related, yesterday the British, I'm going to call them the
British regime, announced £82.6 million for new flexible forms
of research funding as they describe it, plus a new
commitment to give UK researchers access to cutting
edge computing resources as part of the plan to unlock the power
of AI. So two of the three projects
benefiting from this support, which is helping what they
describe as Pioneer new ways of conducting research, will
harness the power of AI to develop treatments for
diagnostics for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's.
And this is the sort of carrot that's being put out there that
you're going to get a cure for cancer.
In the meantime, the AI agenda, which is related to what Sandy
has been talking about, roles on.
So they made this announcement as day two of the AI Action
Summit was getting underway in Paris yesterday, where quotes,
world leaders and AI companies have been holding a series of
talks focused on the opportunities the technology can
deliver for communities across the globe.
It's all really positive stuff. The opportunities of AI are an
area the UK government has placed heavy focus on the kick
start 2025, they say, unveiling a new blueprint with 50
proposals in January, which will spark a decade of national
renewal. That must make you feel really
great, Charles. We'll talk about that in a
second. But so at the summit anyway, the
UK joined the United States in refusing to sign a declaration
on what was called inclusive and sustainable artificial
intelligence. So this is what the communique
said, that ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical,
safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account
international frameworks for all, making AI sustainable for
people and the planet. The UK regime's spokesperson
said this. Then we felt the declaration
didn't provide enough practical clarity on global, nor
sufficiently address harder questions around national
security and the challenges AI poses to it.
So that was their rejection of that alongside the United
States. But in the meantime, the Labour
government claims that thousands of new jobs are set to be
created as the government opens bidding for its AI growth zones.
And they are saying that local and regional authorities across
the UK are being encouraged to put their communities forward to
become dedicated hotbeds for AI infrastructure development and
attracting millions in private investment.
They're going to speed up planning permission to rapidly
build AI infrastructure, including data centres, and give
them energy connections needed to power AI innovations and
areas in areas like healthcare. And as part of this, the
government will work with network operators to rapidly
scale each zone to 500 megawatts plus, which is roughly enough to
power 2 million homes. Except they won't be powering
homes because they're going to be powering data centres
instead. So they say that the ideal
ingredients and the key criteria for communities looking to host
AI growth zones include sites with large existing power
connections. As I say 500 megawatts plus or a
clear version vision, sorry, of how energy capacity can be
increased. They're looking for de
industrialised areas with land infrastructure standing ready
for redevelopment. And they're looking for
locations close to suitable sites for major energy
infrastructures such as nuclear reactors, solar stations and
wind farms or battery storage. Well, good luck with the solar
in in particular because that's not going to run a data centre
for long, particularly in the winter.
But anyway, and yet another announcement, this same regime
said that AI and satellite images are being used to predict
how natural habitats are changing across the country.
So more current data can be used to accelerate planning proposals
and stop Nimbyism getting in the way of everything that we've
just discussed. So satellite images and machine
learning are being used by Natural England.
Just put that back on for a second, Stephanie, thank you.
And and this is showing the current extent that they're
calling it Living England. So this is the latest report
Living England 2223. And that's going to be updated
with this new data from satellites and AI rather than
the manual surveys of the past. They say changing English
habitats will now be tracked more efficiently across the
country, speeding up decisions around planning and land use
while better protecting nature. So details of this project have
been released today. And that's alongside 13 other
examples of how AI and algorithmic tools are being used
to speed up decision making and improve public services.
And they've published this new AI Playbook, which gives the
public sector technical experts top tips and guiding principles
and how to replicate this work and build AI to help their
organisations fix services for citizens.
Ultimately deliver. Delivering this is this is their
words. It does it does find it hard not
to laugh at this ultimately delivering the government's
ambition to transfer public to transform public services with
AI. So my question is, did anyone
ask us what's being built here? It seems to me on one hand is a
surveillance state as, as we've just discussed, unlike anything
we've seen and it's being done in partnership with corporate
interests and it's the exact mirror, as we've mentioned
before, of the Stargate project in the United States.
But another part of this is that is that AI as was represented at
the AI conference, the fact checkers were there, fact
checkers like full fact. And of course, full fact has an
entire well, I I think it's one person, but nonetheless an AI
department because AI is to be the future of the truth.
AI is going to be much more likely to flood the Internet
with misinformation than as we're going to hear about later
on, so called right wing political parties who are being
accused of flooding the Internet with misinformation at the at
the moment. So it can't be a coincidence
that AI and US are both refused, sorry that the UK and the United
States both refused to sign the Paris Declaration at the AI
summit yesterday on the same day.
That can't be a coincidence, particularly when we see that
they're the agendas are basically the same in both
cases. It is a very interesting area
and it fits very much with what Sandy was just talking about.
So let's leave that for now and move on to say if you would like
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the UK column website to get around the censorship regime
that we continue to experience. And well, another reminder of a
day for your diary, which is Saturday the 5th of April 2025.
The 1st 2 speakers that we're going to announce for this are
Catherine Gunn and Alex Thompson.
And since we're so close to GCHQ, that seems absolutely
appropriate and so hopefully you will join us for that.
The tickets are on sale. Please grab yours now while you
can and hopefully we'll see you there.
Tomorrow we have an interview with Victoria Rickson.
Debbie and Cheryl are speaking to Victoria Rickson, the Honest
Midwife. That's at 1:00 PM tomorrow to
join us for that and also the interview that went out
yesterday. Dear Farmers 999 Point Part 3,
Debbie and Sandy and Roger Maycock discussing that the
future of food that is up on the website now.
Another reminder of the Public Child Protection Wales
Conference happening on the 22nd of February.
Commissionwood absolutely deserves as much support for
this as possible. If you are in the area, please
go along to that. There are going to be some
fantastic speakers for that. Details on screen and the
details will be in the show notes again as well.
And also the Scottish People's COVID-19 Inquiry which Diane
McCarthy is involved with. That is also if you're in that
part of the world in Edinburgh on the 22nd of February, get to
that as well if you possibly can.
OK, let's come back to Vanessa then.
And Vanessa, what's what is going on in the wider region of
the Middle East at the moment? Well, I did include a link to my
sub stack because actually when I was looking this morning for
reports on what I'm going to talk about, I found absolutely
nothing. Of course, not in the BBC and
not at CNN and not in the Guardian at all.
Why? Because what has been going on
since the 7th of February? So for about the last five days
is that if we can just have a look at the map, the HTS
terrorist forces have been leading attacks against Lebanese
territory on the border, very close to areas like Crusader and
Hans that were traditionally, let's say resistant strongholds
and areas where weapons could be smuggled into both Lebanese and
Palestinian resistance. Now, effectively, if we, if we
look at the photo, we can see that it was actually who was
leading the attack or what are known as Jolani's red band
brigade as Saib al Hamra, which is his elite forces, Special
forces led the attacks on the borders, targeting farmland,
villages under the pretext of preventing smuggling, which of
course had when I'm talking about smuggling, we're talking
about drugs and and foodstuff and so on.
But of course it will become very apparent that in reality,
HDS, as it always has done, is working hand in glove with
Israel. We talked about the Gaza
situation and and the Palestinian situation in
general. The the border between Syria and
Lebanon is 394 kilometres, 245 miles.
HDS have effectively attempted to breach that border in the
north, causing civilian casualties.
But the interesting thing is the elite forces suffered enormous
casualties at the hands of the tribal factions.
Jafar, sorry, the dog has made an appearance more Al Mekdad and
Al Zaita tribes, which from the 5th century to the 18th resided
in Tripoli and in Beirut and then moved to the Bakar region,
which is that northeastern region on the border.
So the tribes by themselves defeated what are effectively
Jolani's elite forces to the point where Jolani was calling
for reinforcements from from Idlib and from other areas of
Syria and also calling for a ceasefire.
The Lebanese army in the last two days has stepped in and
taken control of the border and and sort of pushed the tribesmen
back into territory further inside Lebanon.
And I will remind you because we're talking about Israel
manoeuvres. Also last week we spoke about
the five high points in the South of Lebanon that Israel is
trying to maintain control of. There have been 1350 violations
of the ceasefire by Israel since December, and we we have
looming, of course, the date for the full withdrawal.
Israel has been pushing the US to extend the withdrawal yet
again, which is very typical of their tactics, but so far the
Lebanese government is insisting on full withdrawal by Israel on
the 18th of February. Sorry, I'm losing track of
months at the same time. So at the same time as these
border attacks were ongoing, this is in Damascus, in the
southern countryside, Israel has been bombing what it claimed
were Palestinian resistance weapons warehouses, which were
in fact described by Syrian sources as being a building that
was used as the clinic by the military housing complex that
was in this area. And they've also been extending
their military occupation into southern towns like Kanatra and
Dara, and sending reinforcements to the Mount Hermon area, which
is the highest vantage point on the border between Syria and
Lebanon. They've established basically 9
new bases in the South. They've been sending the Golani
Brigades and various other specialist forces to the Mount
Hermon area in collaboration, of course, with what HTS is doing.
And gradually HTS is extending the length of their operations
along the border. And again, if we just have a
look at this map, so here HTS now has sent in the last 24
hours, 700 Turkmen, Turkmenistani brigades and some
Syrian extremist forces also to this area.
They're laying mines of order in this area to prevent any
incursions into Syrian territory.
But as I said, they're also extending further down the
length of the border. So combined with Gaza here in
Lebanon, we are expecting a serious escalation.
Wanted to point out that all of this, of course, was going on
during the formation of the Lebanese government under the
newly elected President Joseph Arun, and the US envoy for peace
in the Middle East, Morgan or Targus.
Sorry, Deputy Envoy came to. Beirut and went to the Babda
Palace and informed the president that they were very
glad that Hezbollah had been defeated and that they would not
like to see Hezbollah representatives in the
government. This, of course, despite the
fact that Hezbollah actually had the highest vote in proceeding
to parliamentary elections. And ultimately I'm very pleased
to announce that the US again, pressure on Lebanon failed and
five MPs were approved by Hezbollah and the Prime
Minister. So Hezbollah and Amal movement
between them, both Shia are approved as health minister,
labour minister, environment, finance and as administration,
administrative development. So we're sitting on a powder keg
at the moment. There's an awful lot of this
going on. And as I said, they're being
completely ignored in Western media, perhaps honestly, while
Alastair Campbell is and Rory Stewart are interviewing
Geolani, or as he likes to call himself, Ahmed Al Shahra, the
self proclaimed president in Syria.
Thank you, Vanessa. And I mean, just before we move
on, do you have any thoughts on what Charles was talking about
at the beginning of the programme with Iran?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's inevitable that we're we're
ratcheting up at least aggressive rhetoric against
Iran. Is that actually going to to
lead to some kind of escalation of military force?
I don't know. Is it to put pressure on Iran
and the reformist government to come to the table with the
United States over, you know, the nuclear deal?
Like, what is the UK going to do against Iran?
I mean, that's the number one question that I have to ask.
So for me, it seems to be pressure rhetoric.
But yeah, I mean, all bets are off at the moment.
Yes, OK, thank. Thank you very much for that.
Now in following on from the latest farming protest, then
Charles, let's come back to the UK and the latest land grabs.
Yeah, also it would appear and exactly like Mike says, I mean.
The eyes of the wider farming community have been drawn back
towards London on Monday of this week as another well publicised
protest was planned to coincide with the parliamentary debate on
the agricultural property relief on inheritance tax, which has
proved very controversial of course.
The debate prompted by more than 150,000 signatures on a petition
to scrap the plan to reintroduce the tax for farmers and small
businesses. Now this tax has been suspended
since 1992 and it's one that the Labour government are planning
to reintroduce in April next year, giving people very little
time to react to that or plan around it.
The government has said the proposed change is not intended
to take land away from small farms or to put people out of
business. And yet it's catch all design
will have that specific consequence, at least for those
that have not been able to plan around it.
As I've said before on UK column, the real purpose of this
measure appears to be to distract from the many other
ways in which farmers are having their land controlled or taken
from their possession. Daniel Zeichner, the Minister
for Food, Farming and Fisheries, has attempted to make the case
for upholding the tax reform by saying that it will make a vital
contribution to the running of the NHS, chess and the education
system. But he seems to undermine his
own point entirely by saying that it should recoup £500
million per annum, which is about equivalent to running the
health service for just one day. The protests themselves have
proved a handy bandwagon for social media influences to leap
on, as well as political parties, both diluting the
message and ensuring that the focus is on the protest itself
rather than on the articulation or attainment of any particular
goals. The slide just showing some of
the sort of contributors to the promotion of all of this, but
without a sort of coherent banner to stand underneath, all
appearing to score capital from what's been going on in
Westminster this week. Now, underpinning the other
mechanisms by which farmers will be removed from the land and the
rural economy is destroyed is the fictitious narrative
surrounding the climate emergency.
The system of subsidy, which, alongside the conduct of the
food cartels, controls the operations of land owners and
farmers, is increasingly predicated on threat posed by
what is described as climate change.
For as long as farmers fail to challenge this premise, they
render themselves powerless to combat any of the measures taken
by the government. And just to illustrate this, and
indeed how straightforward it is for the government to control
the farming sector, this map shows the areas of Devon and
Cornwall which are to the West and the north of Plymouth, from
where UK column broadcasts. All the parcels bordered in red
are in receipt of Countryside Stewardship subsidy.
And of course, this map doesn't actually even show the more
recently introduced sustainable farming in this is from the
Defra Magic mapping platform, a link to which will be provided
in the show notes. Now legislation grants
extraordinary powers to Natural England, which we've already
heard referred to by Mike. And in particular this shows
just some of the ways in which they can be wielded, first by
areas of outstanding natural beauty, shown here on this slide
dotted about the country. Then we look at national parks
and following that special areas of conservation and then finally
and the most contentious of all the sites of special scientific
interest. And obviously the size of these
green dots is is unrepresentative to the the area
of land that they would take up. Nonetheless, the point is made
and via each of these mechanisms Natural England is able to
either prohibit or mandate certain activities which could
well and often do render a farm business unviable.
So as far as the industry is concerned.
On the other hand, the Grocer magazine has recently reported
that the Groceries Code Adjudicator, which is a one man
band charged with policing fairness in dealings between
supermarkets and farmers, is reported to be considering
investigating Amazon Food, which entered the arena recently and
has been performing even more unscrupulously than its
competitors. But with Amazon's global
turnover for 2024 standing at 515 billion lbs, making it only
7 1/2 times less than the whole GDP of the United Kingdom, it it
looks rather like a foregone conclusion as to which way it
might go. And to set that in context,
Tesco's turnover for for that year was just £68 billion.
So, as I say, you might you might guess which way such an
investigation of Amazon would go, also bearing in mind that
they control, or at least virtually control all the
government communications platforms and the holding of
their data via Amazon Web Services.
Now, at the end of January, the government launched the rather
ominously titled National Conversation on Land Use.
The priorities appear clear. This is described in the
document as being part of Labour's plan for change and
that it will concern supporting economic growth through building
1 and a half million homes, delivering critical
infrastructure, securing clean power, protecting farmland and
restoring the natural world. But no explicit references to
food security. As well as this, they've
announced a new land use framework which refers back to
Mike's segment in relation to sort of Natural England and how
all these things are accounted for.
This was announced on the same day and the Environment
Secretary Steve Reed said this government has a cast iron
commitment to maintain long term food security, but it didn't
qualify it by suggesting to what extent food security would be
guaranteed or indeed what sort of food would be produced in
order to say that it had been achieved.
Now this situation has prompted the National Preparedness
Commission to produce a report which is called Just in Case.
So they're attempting to shift the focus from the just in time
method by which many businesses, particularly in the food
industry, have operated. And this followed the rather
bizarre assumptions made during something called Exercise Mighty
Oak in 2023, which was prefixed on a national energy outage.
During that exercise it was believed or assumed that people
would effectively do nothing, there would be no unrest.
And therefore it can be considered perhaps that they
were looking back to the lack of response or apparent lack of
response to the draconian measures introduced by the
government from 2020. And therefore it's reasonable to
see how they might have arrived at such an assumption.
Anyway, this report pushes centrally for what they're
describing as a Food Security and Resilience act.
And the background being that they do rightly point out that
the current system of food distribution is hopelessly
vulnerable to technological failure and cyber sabotage, as
well as widespread and of course increasingly likely power
outages, as well as catastrophic human decisions like COVID
restrictions. The proposed solutions to match
this somewhat inevitably miss the point.
This refers back now to what Sandy's been talking about
because it calls for a devolved system of regional
responsibility. And they're suggesting
mechanisms such as stockpiling and the compulsory use of
Greenbelt land for food production in times of
emergency. But who decides what the
emergency is and when it should be declared?
But at no point does the report suggest that there should be a
direct relationship between farmers and their customers and
their therefore that could be something that could create
greater business resilience. But they don't touch it.
Or indeed less vulnerability to the factors described earlier.
But with all these recommendations of devolution,
there are really only suggestions that control and
decision making remain the preserve of the bureaucratic and
technocratic few. So really going back to exactly
what Sandy's been articulating in her first segment today, so
the government in effect being the problem and not the
solution. And this would absolutely be the
case for land owners and farmers.
And just to articulate the point and to round off, we look at the
attack on the poultry industry and the propaganda campaign
which runs it. And here's a piece by the BBC in
which farmers are said to be clamouring for vaccines for
poultry which is currently prohibited in the United
Kingdom. And this mirrors almost exactly
the conditions surrounding the destruction of more than
11,000,000 head of livestock in 2001 during what was deceitfully
described as a foot and mouth epidemic.
The details which I really would encourage you to watch on the
excellent UK column documentary Slaughtered on Suspicion.
For more on on all of this, please do go to the To the UK
column website to look at the farming section, where you'll
find a compilation of all the material that we've dealt with
on this particular critical top topic, including a range of a
broad range of interviews with those that provide credible
alternative by virtue of their own experiences.
Charles, thank you. Now let's move on to the issue
of fake news. And the Guardian published an
article yesterday entitled Far Right Populists Much more likely
than the Left to Spread Fake News study.
So this is an uncritical puff piece for this paper published
in Sage journals entitled Went Parties, Live Misinformation and
radical Right Populism across 26 countries.
So Peter Thornburgh of the University of Amsterdam, one of
the authors, said that radical right populists are using
misinformation as a tool to destabilise democracies and gain
political advantage. And he went on to say that the
findings from the paper underscore the urgent need for
policy makers, researchers and the public to understand and
address the intertwined dynamics of misinformation, radical right
populism. They say they've examined which
parties are more likely to spread information by drawing on
a comprehensive database of 32,000,000 tweets from
parliamentarians in 26 countries and that spans 6 years from 2017
to 2022 and several election periods.
The 26 countries were seven included.
Seventeen EU member states, Austria, France, Germany,
Netherlands and Sweden were amongst those, as well as the
United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
But basically at the bottom line here is it was they had hoovered
up millions, as they say, of tweets.
They then compare compared those tweets, that data with what they
described as international political science databases
holding detailed information about political parties and
cabinets. For example, their position on
the left right spectrum and their degree of populism.
But here's the kicker, to identify cases of
misinformation, we examine the URLs that the politicians share
and then use the Media Bias Fact Check database and the Wikipedia
Fake News list to identify politicians sharing
misinformation in tweets. So that is totally about the
reliable, isn't it? So that they go on to say to
ensure the robustness of our methods, the factual, the
factuality measure was manually validated to ensure that the
articles shared in fact contain misinformation.
And they say that we should look at the supplementary information
file that goes with this paper. They say that we, we selected a
stratified random sample of 50 articles from each of the five
predefined factuality levels, totalling 250 articles.
These were manually analysed. The reports, sorry, the results
are reported in supplementals tables 6S6 and S7.
So when you go to the tables, you find that in fact there's no
such proper validation. It was a manual validation, as
they said, but that might be summarised as the sources we
chose are accurate because we say they're accurate.
And and that's, that's basically it, but it gets even better.
They admit that in many cases, the sources that they put in a
low factuality group do report accurate news.
But for example, let's take an example, they they say about RT
that quotes although each individual article may be
factually correct in its reporting on individual battles,
the overall story is thus a false narrative of highly
successful special military operation.
This underscores the limitations of assessing factuality solely
based on the accuracy of individual articles, offering
further support for the validity of relying on media outlet level
analysis. Right.
In other words, if you report accurate stories, we're going to
say that you're inaccurate anyway because you don't report
the things we say you should report.
So this, I think, is a work of art, not a work of science.
The Guardian is a disgrace for not holding the authors to
account, but perhaps there are no surprises there.
I don't know what your thoughts are on that.
Well, it's almost as though this has been handed to some climate
scientists with a bit of time on their hands because of amazing
parallels between what's extrapolated and what's actually
there. Yeah, extraordinary.
Yes, absolutely. Well, let's let's move on to to
this image because, you know, Elon Musk was in the White House
yesterday and well, I don't know what your thoughts were on on
the whole thing. It's frightfully awkward.
I I would say. I mean, he, I'm not quite sure
why he is sort of wheeled in. It's, it's hard to see whether
he makes Trump look better or worse.
And and that's sort of saying something.
The whole thing was just a very bizarre episode.
And he does have a tendency to ramble, much like the man
sitting in the chair. I suppose so.
But he was asked about the issue of accountability.
He didn't really have an answer. Did.
He, no, he didn't. No, actually that and that was
it. He, he was asked 22 questions
about whether or not he would be in effect declaring interest.
Not that he necessarily needs to declare, because I think they're
quite well known, but the suggestion that his operations
on behalf of the office of the President of the United States
wouldn't have any overlap with his many, many business
interests is totally absurd. And of course, there's probably
the least suitable candidate for conducting reform in any sort of
transparent sense, which I suppose for this administration
might make him perfect. And for some reason, he decided
to bring his son, who was utterly bored and behaving
appropriately, I thought. Yeah, well, you know, the son
sort of held it together. Yeah.
But anyway, sorry Stephanie, let's just put that back up a
second because I just wanted to .1 thing out here because and
let's just label that as saying enough said.
There's nothing else really required.
The hand gesture is clear. We've seen it from so many
others. I I would like to get a
definitive response from from some of these people, from
Moscow or from Keir Starmer, all the other people that use this
particular hand gesture to explain what it is because,
because they all use it. Why?
I don't know, unless it's a
control mechanism from preventing you from doing a
Hitler salute. I'm.
Not quite sure, maybe it is OK, but anyway we do have a final
video. We do now.
For many, many months we've been talking about all the various
challenges faced by farmers and indeed the activities that the
government wants to stop farmers from doing and us enjoying.
And whilst I wouldn't necessarily be advocating the
number of pharmaceutical products that are referred to in
this video, I thought we'd end on a slightly lighter note with
what's happening in the farming community at this time of year.
We've got some glucose, Actran, beta Mucha, Metacam, long
gloves, vet loop, iodine and stomach cube, blue spray, lots
of hay and calcium to save the day.
All ready for the day when the sheep have got 2.
Bullsh, bullsh, bullsh, bullsh, bullsh, bullsh scholar.
Shepherd's frog. This girl called faces me
through there. Now it's a pocket of rings.
I'll be there to lend a hand. God bless Planet sheep fever.
Planet sheep. Godless planet sheep.
Because we get no sleep. We're money she get no sleep.
We're money, she. Are you expecting this year?
Yeah, not as many as that, but absolutely, yes.
So there we go. That's diversification as he
forges his new path in the music industry.
Good man. Indeed.
Well, thank you, Charles. Thank you to Vanessa and Sandy
for joining us today. We got to end there.
For now. We will be back in a few
minutes. If UK column member for some UK
column news extra. Join us for that if you can.
Otherwise join the interview tomorrow at 1:00 PM and we'll
see you at 1:00 PM as usual on Friday.
See you then. Bye, bye, bye bye.