Latest / UK Column Radio / UK Column News — 30th October 2026

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UK Column News — 30th October 2026 · UK Column Radio

0:15
Speaker 1: Good afternoon.
0:16
Speaker 2: It's Friday, the 30th of October, 2026, just after one o'clock.
0:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson.
0:21
Speaker 2: Joining me in this studio today, Patrick Henningsen. Welcome to
0:24
Speaker 2: the program, Patrick.
0:24
Speaker 1: Great to be with you, Mike.
0:25
Speaker 2: And by video link, we have Basil Valentine. Later in
0:28
Speaker 2: the program, we're going to be reporting on the AI
0:30
Speaker 2: financial bubble. on British state surveillance and how the digital
0:35
Speaker 2: ID agenda hasn't gone away at all, but is being
0:38
Speaker 2: used to remove anonymity from the internet. And we'll be
0:41
Speaker 2: joined by Lubna Spaitan to discuss Palestine and the Green
0:47
Speaker 2: Party Zionism vote. But we're going to begin today with
0:50
Speaker 2: the follow-up to the budget because the budget turned out
0:52
Speaker 2: to be, well, nothing very much. And in fact, the
0:55
Speaker 2: markets have given it a muted welcome with market players
0:59
Speaker 2: expressing a sense of relief, largely. The two main agenda
1:03
Speaker 2: items were defense and devolution. On defense, Healy announced a
1:09
Speaker 2: further bung to Ukraine, an additional 10 billion pounds in
1:13
Speaker 2: economic and military aid, which the government describes as the
1:17
Speaker 2: largest financial package Britain has ever committed to Kiev. And
1:20
Speaker 2: as you can see on screen there, Zelensky was very happy.
1:23
Speaker 2: You made my day, is what Healy claims that he said.
1:29
Speaker 2: But you'll note that this comes in the form of
1:32
Speaker 2: loans and export finance guarantees. And export finance guarantees are
1:37
Speaker 2: basically government underwriting commercial loans to another country and so on.
1:43
Speaker 2: And only £ 500 million of the money is in the
1:47
Speaker 2: form of a cash transfer. But that should buy a
1:50
Speaker 2: few Bentleys, Patrick.
1:51
Speaker 3: Should.
1:52
Speaker 1: It should buy a few Bentleys.
1:54
Speaker 3: It's just pouring money down a black hole at this point.
1:56
Speaker 3: Whatever doesn't get spent there will end up probably in
2:00
Speaker 3: the president of Ukraine's desk, I would imagine.
2:05
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
2:05
Speaker 2: But, of course, they continue to build the rhetoric towards
2:09
Speaker 2: a war economy. The aim here is clearly to try
2:11
Speaker 2: and generate support for the war policy by making everyone's
2:15
Speaker 2: livelihoods reliant on it. And, well, for Plymouth, this means
2:19
Speaker 2: a £ 3 million bond, which will pay for a pilot
2:22
Speaker 2: scheme run by the public-private partnership Team Plymouth. to move
2:27
Speaker 2: young people who are not in education, employment or training
2:30
Speaker 2: into the defence sector. This is subject to a business case, though. Now,
2:35
Speaker 2: Plymouth City Council says the details of how the money
2:38
Speaker 2: will be allocated will be worked out with employers over
2:40
Speaker 2: the coming months. The scheme is intended to join up
2:45
Speaker 2: existing health, employment and skills services. It's not creating anything
2:51
Speaker 2: new here. But Plymouth City Council estimates the city will
2:55
Speaker 2: need around 25,000 additional workers by 2035. And they're basing
2:59
Speaker 2: this need on the £ 7. 1 billion upgrade to Devonport Naval Base,
3:06
Speaker 2: which was announced in the summer. Now, this is known
3:09
Speaker 2: as Project Royal Oak, and it covers submarine deep maintenance
3:13
Speaker 2: and preparation for the Dreadnought nuclear ballistic missile submarines. and
3:18
Speaker 2: also the AUKUS submarines, which, although nuclear-powered, carry conventional weapons,
3:24
Speaker 2: at least that's how it is at the moment. Some
3:26
Speaker 2: of this money will also go towards defueling the remaining
3:30
Speaker 2: old Polaris submarines, which are rustling away at Devonport. So
3:34
Speaker 2: maybe those will finally be dealt with. But Healy said
3:37
Speaker 2: that detailed defence funding plans would follow in next year's
3:41
Speaker 2: spending review. But he also used Wednesday's budget to publish
3:45
Speaker 2: the government's long-awaited sorry, the government's long-awaited fiscal devolution roadmap.
3:53
Speaker 2: And this sets out how England's regional mayors will gain
3:56
Speaker 2: direct access to national tax revenues for the first time.
3:59
Speaker 2: So under the plans, mayors will receive a 20% share
4:04
Speaker 2: of business rates growth in their area from 2027 in
4:08
Speaker 2: exchange for several existing grant pots of money, including investment
4:14
Speaker 2: funds and also mayoral capacity funding. So it seems to
4:17
Speaker 2: be a swap. They're getting business rates in return for
4:20
Speaker 2: handing back some other cash. We put that just back
4:23
Speaker 2: on screen, again, because from 2028, every mayor will also
4:28
Speaker 2: be assigned a share of income tax. And the government
4:31
Speaker 2: intends to legislate so that strategic authorities can introduce an
4:36
Speaker 2: overnight visitor levy on top of that. Business rates, as
4:40
Speaker 2: I say, are going to become fully locally retained by
4:42
Speaker 2: the end of the decade, with council's share rising to
4:46
Speaker 2: at least 70%. nine mayoral authorities will establish new business
4:51
Speaker 2: rates retention zones and keeping all rates growth above an
4:55
Speaker 2: agreed baseline for 25 years and so on. So this
5:00
Speaker 2: is quite an incredible effort to push the narrative towards
5:05
Speaker 2: the mayors. And of course, if you want to get
5:08
Speaker 2: a bit more background to this, do have a look
5:10
Speaker 2: at the UK column website. If you search just for mayors,
5:14
Speaker 2: you'll find a whole bunch of content on this. Um,
5:17
Speaker 2: because of course this, uh, Patrick is how they intend
5:20
Speaker 2: to push forward with the, uh, net zero policy, but also, uh,
5:25
Speaker 2: you know, um, smart cities and 15 minute cities agenda
5:28
Speaker 2: is largely being driven by mayors and rather than by
5:31
Speaker 2: central governments.
5:32
Speaker 3: And I would be very skeptical about that 25,000 job figure. Mike,
5:38
Speaker 3: you'll see these things put out to get, to sell
5:41
Speaker 3: these agendas, to sell these ideas. People generally will say, well,
5:45
Speaker 3: it's probably a good idea. We're going to get 25,000
5:46
Speaker 3: new jobs. Well, is that really the case? Based on
5:51
Speaker 3: what you said previously about repurposing, reskilling, and all this,
5:54
Speaker 3: I don't think those growth numbers are going to be
5:57
Speaker 3: there based on those types of contracts. It's just not practical.
6:01
Speaker 3: But without selling the jobs, what can the government advertise
6:06
Speaker 3: as benefit?
6:07
Speaker 1: Not much.
6:08
Speaker 2: They want to, whether the jobs exist or not, though,
6:10
Speaker 2: they do want to persuade people that A wartime economy
6:14
Speaker 2: is a good thing for jobs, and therefore we should
6:16
Speaker 2: all support their war policy.
6:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all they've got left at the moment.
6:21
Speaker 2: But let's move on then to energy, and where does
6:26
Speaker 2: that take us?
6:27
Speaker 3: Well, in light of the budget, Mike, what really matters
6:30
Speaker 3: to people, I didn't see addressed very much in the
6:33
Speaker 3: budget this year. What matters to people out there, what
6:36
Speaker 3: matters to our viewers and our listeners and people watching
6:39
Speaker 3: right now, It's their bottom line. It's their monthly nut,
6:43
Speaker 3: as it were. It's what it costs, their overheads. This
6:46
Speaker 3: is one of the big overheads here. We'll bring this
6:47
Speaker 3: up on screen. What are we talking about? This is
6:49
Speaker 3: from the National Energy Action Association here. We're talking about
6:54
Speaker 3: fuel poverty reaching record levels in the UK and across Europe.
6:59
Speaker 3: Why is this a problem? By the way, these are
7:01
Speaker 3: old numbers here. Domestic gas and electricity consumers, typical annual
7:06
Speaker 3: energy bill, 1,800. Based on new price rises post-September, that's
7:11
Speaker 3: probably looking more like averaging 2,000 per household. That includes
7:15
Speaker 3: one-bedroom flats or much more. If you live in a
7:18
Speaker 3: family house, these are low numbers, by the way. These
7:21
Speaker 3: are national averages. But just compare this to other places
7:24
Speaker 3: in the world, and you'll see that it's just catastrophic
7:28
Speaker 3: in terms of the expense. Now, why does this matter? Well,
7:31
Speaker 3: this is coming out, and we're realizing this at the
7:33
Speaker 3: same time. This is a great report here. by Greenpeace.
7:37
Speaker 3: This blew up in the European press because Der Spiegel
7:39
Speaker 3: did a massive feature on it, excess in oil profits
7:43
Speaker 3: in the EU. So energy companies in Europe, 2026, EU-wide
7:49
Speaker 3: excess profits, record-breaking profits for energy. So while the population
7:54
Speaker 3: is going into fuel poverty, these major players in the
7:57
Speaker 3: energy markets are reaching record profits this year. So just
8:02
Speaker 3: think about that. We're talking about Shell, Repsol, the Spanish
8:05
Speaker 3: energy firm. Total Energies, I believe that is a French company.
8:11
Speaker 3: And OMV, which is an Austrian energy giant. I will
8:14
Speaker 3: add British Petroleum is on that list as well. And
8:18
Speaker 3: they're seeing record profits this year. So I have to
8:21
Speaker 3: ask the obvious question. Are we being obviously gouged here?
8:26
Speaker 3: So as the prices go up, so do the profits.
8:29
Speaker 3: That means somebody is gouging consumers in the middle. There's middlemen.
8:33
Speaker 3: involved in that. And that's the thing that needs reform. Now,
8:37
Speaker 3: think about this in terms of energy policy in the UK,
8:41
Speaker 3: in Europe, whereby they cut off access to cheap, affordable
8:45
Speaker 3: Russian energy.
8:47
Speaker 1: And for what?
8:48
Speaker 3: To punish the Russians because of the Ukraine war, which
8:52
Speaker 3: NATO started, which the United States started in 2014, to
8:56
Speaker 3: punish Russia for that. And then we just reported, what,
8:58
Speaker 3: a Record oil sales, the most since 2022. So these
9:06
Speaker 3: policies of cutting off Russian energy from the east have
9:09
Speaker 3: wrecked the German economy, wrecked the European economy, and driven
9:13
Speaker 3: up energy costs for everybody. Add to this the Iran war.
9:17
Speaker 3: And this is why you're seeing this catastrophe on the
9:20
Speaker 3: consumer side, and then record profits on the corporate side.
9:23
Speaker 3: We are getting absolutely had. Anybody who's supporting these wars,
9:27
Speaker 3: At this point, thinking that you're sticking it to Putin
9:30
Speaker 3: or somehow you're punishing the mullahs in Iran, you really
9:34
Speaker 3: need to consider getting checked in to your local hospital
9:37
Speaker 3: for an EEG scan. That's for brain activity.
9:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, I don't know what you're worried about.
9:42
Speaker 2: Patrick Healy gave us all 100 pounds in the budget.
9:46
Speaker 2: deal with these rising energy prices. So that solves the problem.
9:49
Speaker 3: Well, that's handy considering the devaluation of the currency. So actually,
9:53
Speaker 3: we're still in the minus column there. But anyway, thanks
9:56
Speaker 3: very much for that 100-pound bung from the Chancellor of Exchequer.
10:00
Speaker 1: That's great.
10:01
Speaker 3: Now, speaking of democratic reforms, we're going to go and
10:06
Speaker 3: just talk about here the only democracy in the Middle East,
10:10
Speaker 3: as you can see from the pictures there. What are
10:12
Speaker 3: we talking about? We're talking about the Zionist state of
10:16
Speaker 3: Israel here. And the elections are happening. And so let's
10:20
Speaker 3: look at how this is shaping up. It's Netanyahu versus Eisenkot.
10:25
Speaker 3: This is the opposition bloc. Netanyahu is trying to hold
10:28
Speaker 3: on to power. Now, the question is, is this the
10:30
Speaker 3: only democracy in the Middle East? Well, got a slight
10:34
Speaker 3: problem here with Israeli politics. It's called the Arab population.
10:39
Speaker 3: And now we're seeing Israel's opposition won the numbers to
10:43
Speaker 3: defeat Netanyahu. But it may defeat itself. Why? It turns
10:48
Speaker 3: out the opposition bloc do not want to include Arab
10:52
Speaker 3: Israelis or Palestinians who live inside the Israeli borders. They
10:55
Speaker 3: don't want to include them in the opposition bloc. So
10:58
Speaker 3: they might lose to Netanyahu over this issue that they
11:02
Speaker 3: are just institutionally racist people. So that brings us to
11:07
Speaker 3: our next segment, which we'll talk about in a couple
11:10
Speaker 3: of minutes with our guests. But this is what happened here.
11:12
Speaker 3: This is absolutely extraordinary. The leaders of the anti-Netanyahu opposition
11:17
Speaker 3: bloc set themselves the goal in this election of forming
11:20
Speaker 3: a non-Netanyahu-led government that will not depend on the support
11:25
Speaker 3: of the Arab-led parties or the ultra-right. orthodox parties. They
11:29
Speaker 3: insisted that this was their objective, and they believed that
11:32
Speaker 3: they could achieve it, even though no poll suggested that
11:35
Speaker 3: such a scenario was even possible. So this was a
11:39
Speaker 3: delusion from the beginning, or they were selling a lie,
11:43
Speaker 3: because it looks like we're in a position where we
11:45
Speaker 3: may get a Netanyahu government here. And right now, as
11:49
Speaker 3: we speak, protesters rallying outside Eisenkot's home, calling to include
11:55
Speaker 3: the Arab parties in his new opposition coalition. There can
11:58
Speaker 3: be no change without partnership, says the protesters. And mind you,
12:02
Speaker 3: these are protesters who are not calling for an end
12:04
Speaker 3: to the genocide in Gaza. They're just maybe more on
12:08
Speaker 3: the ethnic cleansing side rather than the mass murder side.
12:11
Speaker 3: That's the basic paradigm in Israeli politics today. But Netanyahu
12:16
Speaker 3: vows to stick with his far-right partners as Eisenkot seeks
12:20
Speaker 3: to a path to bring change. So while Netanyahu's massively unpopular,
12:26
Speaker 3: he may still cling to power. Now let's look at
12:29
Speaker 3: the numbers here. These are the live updates, Jerusalem Post.
12:33
Speaker 3: So as you can see, the Likud party, Netanyahu at
12:36
Speaker 3: the bottom there, the results, he's got the most seats,
12:38
Speaker 3: 27 seats. But is it enough to form a government here?
12:43
Speaker 3: And you can see Yashar, that is Eisenkot's party there
12:47
Speaker 3: with 21. So in red, you have the opposition bloc.
12:51
Speaker 3: In blue is Netanyahu's bloc. In the gray, they're the
12:55
Speaker 3: joint list and the Raham parties. Those are the sort
12:58
Speaker 3: of include the Arab bloc. constituents as well here. And
13:02
Speaker 3: then rounding out, you see some of these other parties
13:05
Speaker 3: rounding out the coalition there, including Bezalel Smoltrich there at
13:10
Speaker 3: the end with his far-right party as well. But that's
13:13
Speaker 3: how it looks right there, Mike. The race is to
13:16
Speaker 3: 61 seats. The Netanyahu bloc has 53 Now, the Eisen-Kotz
13:22
Speaker 3: block has 48. The gray bar within that 48 section there,
13:26
Speaker 3: that's what's unconfirmed. In other words, these are the Arab votes.
13:32
Speaker 3: Is the Israeli opposition going to commit to an anti-racist
13:37
Speaker 3: coalition and include Palestinians living, which they won't even call Palestinians.
13:42
Speaker 3: They call them Arabs because they don't want to acknowledge
13:45
Speaker 3: that they are Palestinians. That's another question. thing all in itself.
13:50
Speaker 3: So that's what's happening in the only democracy in the
13:53
Speaker 3: Middle East. It's absolutely extraordinary. And it's poetic because at
13:58
Speaker 3: least we can point to what an absolute joke that
14:02
Speaker 3: term is, that Israel is in fact the only democracy
14:04
Speaker 3: in the Middle East, far from it, especially not for
14:07
Speaker 3: Palestinians living in the occupied territories here. But take a
14:10
Speaker 3: look at this. And this is still on the table.
14:13
Speaker 3: Netanyahu must face treason probe over reported Iran plot to
14:18
Speaker 3: delay elections. He wanted to launch the war before the
14:21
Speaker 3: elections to delay the elections to stay in power. Avigdor Lieberman,
14:25
Speaker 3: who's part of that opposition bloc, who himself is a
14:27
Speaker 3: vile anti-Arab racist in the opposition bloc, he's saying Netanyahu
14:34
Speaker 3: needs to be brought up on treason charges. But the
14:37
Speaker 3: war is going to come. And a lot of people
14:39
Speaker 3: are just accepting this here. Take a look at this.
14:43
Speaker 3: So the United States, 10 U.S. military aircraft arrive in Israel.
14:47
Speaker 3: in the last 24 hours. America warns of a short-focused
14:50
Speaker 3: Iran war likely to come before or after the U.S.
14:55
Speaker 3: midterms now. It's uncertain when, but that's the situation with
15:00
Speaker 3: the Israeli elections. It's very possible that Benjamin Netanyahu could
15:06
Speaker 3: cling to power. Isn't that extraordinary, considering everything that we've
15:10
Speaker 3: seen leading up to this? Plus all the protests before
15:14
Speaker 3: October 7th.
15:15
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
15:16
Speaker 2: But in the meantime, as we mentioned on Wednesday, of course,
15:18
Speaker 2: while all this shenanigans going on, he remains the interim
15:21
Speaker 2: prime minister. And actually, if they can't come up with
15:26
Speaker 2: a deal, what do they do?
15:27
Speaker 4: They hold more elections. And you could end up in
15:30
Speaker 4: a never-ending cycle. This happened to him before. He had
15:34
Speaker 4: had a state of execution previously. and clung to power
15:38
Speaker 4: as a result of exactly what you described there.
15:40
Speaker 1: Exactly.
15:41
Speaker 3: I want to get Basil Valentine, bring him in on this. Basil,
15:44
Speaker 3: what are your thoughts and reactions on how this is
15:48
Speaker 3: developing over there in the only democracy in the Middle East?
15:53
Speaker 5: Well, Netanyahu, as we speak, will be furiously speaking to
15:58
Speaker 5: individual members of the opposition, trying to get them to
16:01
Speaker 5: peel away from the Eisenkopf bloc and join him, claiming that,
16:06
Speaker 5: as Likud is the largest party, he retains the mandate.
16:09
Speaker 5: Moshe Feiglin, arguably the most genocidal of all Israeli politicians
16:13
Speaker 5: who thinks that Gaza should have been nuked. He apparently
16:17
Speaker 5: has won a seat and he's calling for the elections
16:20
Speaker 5: to be annulled. He doesn't believe that the Palestinian parties
16:25
Speaker 5: won all those votes. He thinks there's Qatari influence going on.
16:29
Speaker 5: And of course, should Eisencott ally with the Palestinian parties?
16:34
Speaker 5: He would be accused of treason by the Ben-Gavir smotheriches
16:38
Speaker 5: and indeed Netanyahu supporters of this world. And violence may
16:43
Speaker 5: very well erupt because, you know, as far as the
16:47
Speaker 5: majority of Israelis are concerned, Palestinians have no place within
16:52
Speaker 5: the borders of Israel. So to do a deal with
16:55
Speaker 5: them to gain power, which would inevitably involve making concessions
16:59
Speaker 5: to Palestinians somewhere along the line, that's a no-no.
17:04
Speaker 3: What does this mean for the prospect of war? If,
17:07
Speaker 3: like what you said, they don't form a government, a
17:10
Speaker 3: war is almost guaranteed, really, within weeks.
17:14
Speaker 2: Well, the question is, if Trump is saying that an
17:16
Speaker 2: attack on Iran is likely pretty soon, or if there's
17:19
Speaker 2: a hint of that soon after the midterms, I mean,
17:22
Speaker 2: Trump's effectively going to be in a very similar situation
17:26
Speaker 2: because he will have lost his hour within the Congress.
17:30
Speaker 2: And so for both countries, it would be very suitable
17:33
Speaker 2: to blow up Iran and use that as the opportunity
17:38
Speaker 2: for some kind of emergency powers?
17:40
Speaker 3: Well, for the US, it's almost a fait accompli because
17:43
Speaker 3: they don't have to pull the trigger. Israel can pull
17:45
Speaker 3: the trigger. And the US can just do what it
17:48
Speaker 3: always does and say, we have to defend our greatest
17:50
Speaker 3: friend and ally in the region. We had no choice,
17:52
Speaker 3: as Rubio and others admitted repeatedly. We had to defend
17:55
Speaker 3: and go in against Israel. Otherwise, it would have been
17:58
Speaker 3: worse for Israel and worse for our bases. In the
18:00
Speaker 3: region that can just default to that same logic, Basil.
18:04
Speaker 3: So Basil, really, this puts a lot of the power
18:07
Speaker 3: back into the hands of Israel, at least politically speaking,
18:11
Speaker 3: or at least in terms of the narrative. But we've
18:13
Speaker 3: got a few seconds left, but your final thoughts on that.
18:17
Speaker 5: Well, you know, Netanyahu isn't really a rational actor. His
18:20
Speaker 5: political future is on the line. He could even still
18:23
Speaker 5: go to prison, believe it or not, for the corruption charges.
18:27
Speaker 5: The word that I'm seeing on social media is that
18:30
Speaker 5: the possibility of a nuclear strike on Iran remains, believe
18:35
Speaker 5: it or not. With that insane in this world at
18:38
Speaker 5: the moment, terrifying as it may be, obviously we hope
18:42
Speaker 5: that doesn't come to pass.
18:44
Speaker 1: But the U.S.
18:45
Speaker 5: Moved, I gather the U.S. moved an aircraft, which is
18:49
Speaker 5: the one that gives the signal to the nuclear submarines
18:52
Speaker 5: to launch. That has moved to the Middle East in
18:55
Speaker 5: the last few days.
18:57
Speaker 2: An aircraft carrier?
18:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
19:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's actually a big bomber.
19:01
Speaker 1: It's actually a big plane. Oh, okay. Okay.
19:04
Speaker 3: Right.
19:04
Speaker 6: Okay.
19:05
Speaker 3: Okay.
19:05
Speaker 2: Well, look, Basil, let's stay on the topic of Palestine then.
19:10
Speaker 5: Yes, well, you wouldn't know it from corporate media, but
19:12
Speaker 5: a UN commission this week said that Israel has continued
19:16
Speaker 5: to commit genocide in Gaza, even after the US brokered
19:20
Speaker 5: ceasefire last October, citing continued attacks on Palestinians and the
19:25
Speaker 5: use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas. This report
19:28
Speaker 5: was presented to the UN General Assembly, and it also
19:32
Speaker 5: warned of escalating violence and displacement in the occupied West Bank,
19:38
Speaker 5: where Military offensives and illegal settler attacks have intensified, as
19:44
Speaker 5: indeed has the ethnic cleansing. Just last week, 5,000 people
19:48
Speaker 5: were expelled from their homes in Herzegovina. and the houses
19:51
Speaker 5: were subsequently demolished, but not before the contents had all
19:55
Speaker 5: been stolen. The Commission said that as of August this year,
20:00
Speaker 5: nearly 35,000 people Palestinians remain displaced in the West Bank,
20:05
Speaker 5: the largest displacement since 1967. It also accused Israel of
20:10
Speaker 5: crimes against humanity, including extermination, persecution and torture. Now joining
20:16
Speaker 5: me to discuss this and... Also, the worldwide furore that
20:23
Speaker 5: has followed the Green Party passing its Zionism is racism
20:28
Speaker 5: motion is Lubna Spater, a British-Palestinian activist and one of
20:32
Speaker 5: the lead advocates for the motion. Welcome to UK column, Lubna.
20:37
Speaker 6: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Great to join you.
20:41
Speaker 5: It seems that all the oxygen in the room, so
20:44
Speaker 5: to speak, certainly in UK media, is taken up by
20:47
Speaker 5: this confected outrage at your motion. And as usual, the
20:52
Speaker 5: United Nations and the suffering on the ground are ignored
20:56
Speaker 5: by corporate media.
20:59
Speaker 6: Along with international law, the Geneva Convention, every human rights
21:03
Speaker 6: act which Israel has passed, always denied us as Palestinians,
21:10
Speaker 6: like we have no rights to Israel and its boot,
21:13
Speaker 6: which can only exist on our subjugation. And of course,
21:15
Speaker 6: the media, the mainstream media and their propaganda machine have contributed, well,
21:22
Speaker 6: participated in our erasure through, you know, their vilification of Palestinians,
21:28
Speaker 6: their silencing of our voices, along with anti-Zionist Jewish voices
21:32
Speaker 6: who have been a part of this motion with us.
21:35
Speaker 6: And of course, this doesn't fit with their manufactured consent
21:40
Speaker 6: for genocide narrative. So, of course, they do not want
21:46
Speaker 6: to have Palestinian or anti-Zionist Jewish voices broadcasted because it
21:51
Speaker 6: counters the narrative that they have continued to use to
21:58
Speaker 6: undermine Palestinian rights and the continued vilification. of Palestinians and dehumanization.
22:06
Speaker 6: This is a big part of it. And it's something
22:08
Speaker 6: that we've seen historically used and weaponized against the oppressed peoples,
22:14
Speaker 6: whether it's the Congolese, the Irish, even the Jews who
22:18
Speaker 6: fought in the Warsaw ghettos. These were the same legacy
22:21
Speaker 6: media channels that also referred to them as terrorists.
22:26
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
22:28
Speaker 5: On Monday, you held a joint Jewish-Palestinian activist press conference.
22:34
Speaker 5: Haim Rashid Zabner spoke particularly eloquently. But there's no reportage
22:41
Speaker 5: of that in legacy media in Britain. This has been
22:45
Speaker 5: a trend we've seen over the last 20 years. Jewish
22:50
Speaker 5: anti-Zionists simply don't exist. And ironically, of course, that is anti-Semitic.
22:57
Speaker 6: Of course, but the weaponization of anti-Semitism, which has been
23:01
Speaker 6: used not to protect Jews from discrimination for being Jewish,
23:04
Speaker 6: but to protect Zionism, a racist, settler, colonial, ethno-nationalist ideology
23:10
Speaker 6: and the perpetrators of the crimes. And they count on
23:14
Speaker 6: the conflations between Zionism and Judaism and or Israel and Judaism,
23:21
Speaker 6: to silence voices across the movement and portray objections to
23:26
Speaker 6: Israel and its genocidal assault on us as normal, as justified.
23:32
Speaker 6: This is, sadly, again, the responsibility of our media. There
23:38
Speaker 6: has to be accountability for what they have done. And
23:41
Speaker 6: there's the silences of anti-Zionist Jewish voices who, again, have
23:46
Speaker 6: contributed hugely to the work that we're doing. And the
23:51
Speaker 6: biggest issue and risk to the safety of Jews is
23:55
Speaker 6: Israel and Zionism.
23:59
Speaker 5: Well, indeed, and its actions, claiming to act, of course,
24:02
Speaker 5: on behalf of all Jewish people. With regards to the media,
24:06
Speaker 5: Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, also issued a report
24:12
Speaker 5: this week highlighting how media narratives since the start of
24:16
Speaker 5: the genocide have dehumanized Palestinians and downplayed their suffering. And
24:22
Speaker 5: we can see her talking about that report now. Hi, everyone.
24:26
Speaker 7: I've just spent a day being interrogated at the Israeli
24:29
Speaker 7: border by Israeli security forces. They turned me away at
24:33
Speaker 7: the border alongside a group of other political activists and
24:36
Speaker 7: other elected representatives in the UK and in the Basque country.
24:40
Speaker 7: And they don't want us to see what's happening in
24:44
Speaker 7: the West Bank. They don't want to see what's happening
24:46
Speaker 7: in Palestine. They don't want us to bear witness to
24:49
Speaker 7: the kinds of atrocities, the kinds of violence that they
24:51
Speaker 7: are enacting on the Palestinian people. They don't want us
24:54
Speaker 7: to be able to witness the violence against the olive harvesters.
24:57
Speaker 7: They don't want us to witness the demolition of people's houses.
25:01
Speaker 7: They don't want us to witness the kind of checkpoint
25:04
Speaker 7: violence that's happening at the moment. So, yeah, unfortunately, we've
25:08
Speaker 7: been rejected at the border.
25:11
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean, you would think that elected representatives of
25:15
Speaker 5: the UK Parliament would be allowed into what is, you know,
25:20
Speaker 5: illegally occupied territory, even if it's controlled by somebody that's
25:24
Speaker 5: supposed to be our ally in Israel. One hopes that
25:28
Speaker 5: this group of MPs will return to the UK and
25:32
Speaker 5: put pressure on the government to change its policy, basically,
25:37
Speaker 5: to apply more stringent sanctions to Israel. I mean, this
25:40
Speaker 5: is totally unacceptable by anybody's standards, isn't it, Lubna?
25:45
Speaker 6: Yes, I mean, you would hope so. But we're talking
25:47
Speaker 6: about the same governments who have been funding and fuelling
25:50
Speaker 6: and investing in Israel for decades, who even now will
25:57
Speaker 6: not use the term genocide to describe it.
26:00
Speaker 4: Why?
26:00
Speaker 6: Quite simply because they know they're participant and guilty of
26:03
Speaker 6: the crimes of genocide and participating in it. And these
26:07
Speaker 6: are the same people who should be in the Hague,
26:09
Speaker 6: the same people who are prescribing People holding up placards
26:13
Speaker 6: for terrorism whilst the impunity and double standards apply to
26:18
Speaker 6: those who are participants in our genocide. The British citizens
26:22
Speaker 6: who can join the Israeli occupation forces, slaughter our family
26:27
Speaker 6: and people and come back with no accountability. We had
26:31
Speaker 6: it in a 540-page dossier to New Scotland Yard on this,
26:32
Speaker 6: and after a year, They refuse to even investigate. This
26:40
Speaker 6: is the same government which, of course, we have challenged
26:44
Speaker 6: and issued a pre-action protocol at the Met, because this
26:48
Speaker 6: is their job. But we have seen the authoritarian measures applied,
26:53
Speaker 6: one to silence dissent against Israel, for them to protect
26:57
Speaker 6: their colonialist projects. And Again, this is them participating in
27:04
Speaker 6: genocide in the same governments that are also crushing the
27:07
Speaker 6: rights of the British public who are being made to
27:10
Speaker 6: pay for this. And of course, and I don't mean
27:14
Speaker 6: just materially, but this is also our freedom of speech,
27:18
Speaker 6: our right to protest all hanging in the balance.
27:20
Speaker 7: So....
27:23
Speaker 6: It's a question of who are the government here to protect.
27:27
Speaker 6: Our systems, our authorities, I mean, they are occupied. It
27:31
Speaker 6: is about protecting a racist, pariah, settler colony rather than
27:35
Speaker 6: British interests here. And as we've seen, it's a threat
27:39
Speaker 6: regionally as well as globally. This is a matter that
27:42
Speaker 6: really should be of great concern to everyone. And it's
27:45
Speaker 6: not a single issue matter. Anyone who cares about the environment,
27:49
Speaker 6: women's rights, children's rights, animal rights, it should be there
27:52
Speaker 6: standing up. for Palestine. This is beyond a litmus test now.
27:57
Speaker 6: It's also a test of how compliant will the world
28:00
Speaker 6: remain in the face of injustice. And this motion that
28:03
Speaker 6: has been brought forward has shifted the Overton window. It
28:07
Speaker 6: has brought forward the problems, a diagnosis of the ideology
28:12
Speaker 6: and its material manifestation, the reality that it is and
28:17
Speaker 6: always has been racist and discriminatory, as well as genocidal.
28:22
Speaker 6: This has always been based on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
28:26
Speaker 6: It can only exist on the erasure, ethnic cleansing and
28:29
Speaker 6: subjugation of Palestinians.
28:32
Speaker 5: Indeed, we were talking about the Israeli elections there and
28:35
Speaker 5: the difference between the parties really is whether to kill
28:37
Speaker 5: everybody or simply ethnically cleanse them. And to facilitate the
28:41
Speaker 5: ethnic cleansing over the last couple of weeks, Israel has
28:44
Speaker 5: stopped allowing food into Gaza, believe it or not. They
28:48
Speaker 5: cut off the supply of flour completely, meaning that 14
28:52
Speaker 5: of the 17 bakeries that were operational closed. Now, finally,
28:56
Speaker 5: on the back of that, 75 parliamentarians, we can see
28:59
Speaker 5: the letter now, have signed a letter to the Foreign Secretary,
29:04
Speaker 5: Ed Miliband, demanding immediate sanctions on Israel and the immediate
29:09
Speaker 5: lifting of this food blockade because Israel As always, Lubna,
29:13
Speaker 5: what's actually happening on the ground in Gaza, the very
29:16
Speaker 5: deliberate infliction of suffering in order to encourage people to
29:20
Speaker 5: leave and then claim, of course, they are left voluntarily,
29:24
Speaker 5: that gets pushed to the bottom of the agenda. So
29:27
Speaker 5: I'm sure you're pleased to see this letter. I don't
29:29
Speaker 5: know if it was signed by any of the Green MPs.
29:33
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, there needs to be sanctions, but not
29:36
Speaker 6: just partial. We're talking about, you know... the British complicity, well,
29:42
Speaker 6: participation in this for far too long is about really
29:46
Speaker 6: the severance of all ties that needs to be called for,
29:50
Speaker 6: you know, full boycotts, full divestment, full sanctions and embargoes
29:54
Speaker 6: as applied to apartheid South Africa. And we acknowledge that,
29:57
Speaker 6: you know, this is something that can be done and
29:59
Speaker 6: I hope that all principled parliamentarians will stand up and
30:04
Speaker 6: take a strong position, no capitulation, there is no justification
30:09
Speaker 6: for the unjustifiable. And the sooner every one of us
30:12
Speaker 6: realises that and is willing to take that action, the
30:15
Speaker 6: better for us all.
30:17
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
30:17
Speaker 5: I mean, apartheid, South Africa, for all its faults, they
30:20
Speaker 5: didn't regularly bomb, massacre and starve the black, the South Africans,
30:25
Speaker 5: nor did they try and steal all their land, quite
30:28
Speaker 5: the reverse. But anyway, Patrick, I know you wanted to
30:31
Speaker 5: speak to Lubna.
30:33
Speaker 1: Well, I did.
30:34
Speaker 3: And thanks for joining us, Lubna. We noticed that, you know,
30:38
Speaker 3: when it was publicized that this motion was going to
30:41
Speaker 3: be at the conference, the mainstream media said, went to
30:44
Speaker 3: attack you, but on a completely different issue. And there
30:48
Speaker 3: was even the report that we read about the Green
30:50
Speaker 3: Party investigating you over links to Al-Qaeda. It seemed very
30:55
Speaker 3: sensational just looking at the mainstream press. What was your
30:59
Speaker 3: reaction to that whole scene?
31:02
Speaker 6: Well, quite simply, this is again about the vilification, the
31:05
Speaker 6: dehumanization attempts to undermine the work that we're doing by
31:08
Speaker 6: personal attacks and smears. I mean, this was quite simply,
31:13
Speaker 6: you know, a typical tactic of guilt by association, which
31:18
Speaker 6: in short is because they cannot justify their racism and genocide.
31:24
Speaker 6: And they have no coherent argument that can really oppose
31:28
Speaker 6: the motion and its contents, which is why they targeted
31:32
Speaker 6: me as an individual, um, which quite simply, I don't
31:36
Speaker 6: need to even dignify with a response. This is an
31:39
Speaker 6: eight-year-old tactic applied. And, uh, to be honest, it just
31:44
Speaker 6: exhibits more to the point of what we're doing, why
31:47
Speaker 6: it needs to be achieved, why everyone should be opposing Zionism.
31:51
Speaker 6: And this is Zionism in action. So it does nothing
31:55
Speaker 6: except to make me and others across the movement who
31:58
Speaker 6: have learned very well from the the Robin Labour era,
32:03
Speaker 6: to now we need to push back. We need to
32:06
Speaker 6: stand strong and defend each other across the movement. It's
32:09
Speaker 6: not just me that they've come after because they've realised
32:12
Speaker 6: that this is not going to deter me. 56 of
32:15
Speaker 6: my own relatives have been slaughtered in this current genocide.
32:18
Speaker 6: hundreds before. My grandmother, you know, victim of the 1948 Nakba,
32:22
Speaker 6: continually displaced from her homeland. Many of our family have
32:25
Speaker 6: either been shot, killed, tortured, imprisoned. This is Israel. This
32:29
Speaker 6: is Zionism. And it just is beyond disturbing that not
32:37
Speaker 6: only are they continuing this, I mean, even our journalists
32:40
Speaker 6: who are filming their annihilation for the world to bear
32:42
Speaker 6: witness to, their voices are silenced. the vilification of the
32:48
Speaker 6: men who bear, I mean, unfathomable torture, like of the
32:52
Speaker 6: most sadistic nature. And when they attack me with this,
32:58
Speaker 6: it just makes me ever more determined to continue confronting it.
33:01
Speaker 6: And the support that has come in across the movement
33:04
Speaker 6: has been, you know, really heartening. The world is waking up.
33:10
Speaker 6: The people are seeing it. And there will come a time,
33:12
Speaker 6: I believe, Everyone will always have been an anti-Zionist. This
33:18
Speaker 6: will come. And like I said, the Overton window is shifting.
33:23
Speaker 6: And I am proud of our movement, those who turned
33:26
Speaker 6: up to vote for it. This is democracy. And the
33:30
Speaker 6: people used their vote in a democratic process because they
33:35
Speaker 6: understood what this was. And that's what matters, that people
33:40
Speaker 6: are standing up, they are speaking out, that we refuse
33:43
Speaker 6: to be silent And we will not capitulate.
33:48
Speaker 1: Brilliant.
33:48
Speaker 2: Lubna, thank you very much for joining us today. That
33:51
Speaker 2: has been a hugely interesting conversation. So thank you.
33:53
Speaker 6: Thank you very much.
33:57
Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Okay. We do need to move on.
34:00
Speaker 2: Now, if you like what the UK column does and
34:02
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34:05
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34:07
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34:10
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34:12
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34:15
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34:18
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34:21
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34:24
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34:27
Speaker 2: And now, tonight at 7 p.m., Jerm is discussing the
34:30
Speaker 2: sun and whether it's being blocked. And then Carl is
34:35
Speaker 2: discussing another one of his Chinese history series, talking about
34:40
Speaker 2: the secret alliance that changed Chinese history. We'll see that
34:44
Speaker 2: at nine o'clock tonight. Now, let's move on then to
34:47
Speaker 2: the issue of freedom of speech, because we've been talking
34:49
Speaker 2: about for quite a number of years now. Patrick and
34:52
Speaker 2: I started talking about this really in 2017 when the
34:55
Speaker 2: online harms white paper came out. But I'm talking about
34:59
Speaker 2: the end of anonymous use of the internet and the
35:02
Speaker 2: effect on freedom of speech that that is going to have.
35:05
Speaker 2: And this is because adults are very likely now to
35:07
Speaker 2: have to prove their age to keep using social media
35:10
Speaker 2: of any kind. This is after Ofcom has named four
35:13
Speaker 2: methods of judges being highly effective at confirming that a
35:16
Speaker 2: user is 16 or over. We've been talking about this
35:19
Speaker 2: quite a bit, but now they're talking about photo ID matching,
35:23
Speaker 2: bank-based checks, digital ID services, facial age estimation, and so on. Now,
35:28
Speaker 2: the regulator has published its rapid assessment yesterday that you
35:32
Speaker 2: can see on screen at the moment. And this is supporting,
35:35
Speaker 2: or they say that they support, the government's ban on
35:37
Speaker 2: under-16s using platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, and X.
35:43
Speaker 2: Regulations are due to be rubber-stamped by Parliament in the
35:46
Speaker 2: next few weeks, in fact, before Christmas. And the ban
35:50
Speaker 2: is going to take effect from spring 2027.
35:55
Speaker 1: The chief executive of.
35:57
Speaker 2: Ofcom, Melanie Dawes, said that The ban can work if
36:00
Speaker 2: social media companies do highly effective age checks properly. And
36:04
Speaker 2: we've been talking about over the last number of months
36:08
Speaker 2: about Ofcom's attempts to roll out these age checks on
36:13
Speaker 2: pornography companies and making the point that this is not
36:15
Speaker 2: where it was going to end, that it was going
36:17
Speaker 2: to end with social media companies as well. They concede
36:21
Speaker 2: that it's inevitable that some under-16s are going to get
36:23
Speaker 2: round the checks, but that doesn't mean they say that
36:26
Speaker 2: the checks shouldn't be put in place anyway. And the
36:29
Speaker 2: estimate that around 150,000 16 and 17 year olds have
36:34
Speaker 2: neither a passport nor a driving license. So it's not
36:37
Speaker 2: clear exactly how they're going to fulfill these obligations other
36:42
Speaker 2: than by using the digital identity services of third-party companies
36:46
Speaker 2: like Jody and the rest. So now the third of
36:53
Speaker 2: Ofcom's methods, digital ID services, depends on the infrastructure that
36:58
Speaker 2: government is building in parallel and largely unnoticed because everyone
37:02
Speaker 2: went to sleep as soon as Starmer announced that state
37:04
Speaker 2: digital ID would be dropped. But a week ago, the
37:07
Speaker 2: Department for Culture, Media and Sport laid a draft code
37:10
Speaker 2: of practice before Parliament. And this code governs Section 45
37:14
Speaker 2: of the Data Use and Access Act 2025. This is
37:17
Speaker 2: known as the information gateway. So Section 45 lets public
37:22
Speaker 2: authorities disclose information about a person to private digital verification services.
37:28
Speaker 2: on the government's register. And then when that person asks
37:31
Speaker 2: the service to verify them. So the draft code encourages
37:34
Speaker 2: authorities to share where possible. It says requests should not
37:37
Speaker 2: be refused without reasonable justification. And it said that costs
37:42
Speaker 2: should not be an obstacle because providers can then be
37:45
Speaker 2: charged for fulfilling those queries. And so An example that
37:52
Speaker 2: they give is a yes, no answer against a date
37:55
Speaker 2: of birth record. So confirmation of that, for example. And
37:58
Speaker 2: that's where it would be applied in this case. The
38:01
Speaker 2: government tends to set the gateway up as soon as
38:04
Speaker 2: Parliament approves. And providers based overseas are absolutely eligible to
38:09
Speaker 2: use this. The usual suspects are coming out against it.
38:13
Speaker 2: So Silky Carlo, who's director of Big Brother Watch, called
38:16
Speaker 2: the plan a national ID system by the back door,
38:19
Speaker 2: which is exactly what it is. And she said that
38:21
Speaker 2: people without ID who tend to be poorer people are
38:24
Speaker 2: going to be locked out of much of the internet
38:26
Speaker 2: as a result of this. And she asked, would those
38:30
Speaker 2: unwilling to hand their passports to foreign tech companies also
38:34
Speaker 2: be locked out of these types of platforms? Maybe there's
38:38
Speaker 2: something to be said for that. But anyway, we know,
38:42
Speaker 2: as everybody knows, the government dropped the digital ID scheme
38:45
Speaker 2: in July. But all the underpinnings of that, all the
38:49
Speaker 2: basis of that remains absolutely in place including a statutory
38:53
Speaker 2: register of private verification providers a government trust network and
38:57
Speaker 2: now a gateway to public authority records and uh this
39:01
Speaker 2: of course is uh all about making sure that no
39:04
Speaker 2: one can post on the internet without their identity being
39:08
Speaker 2: known and what is the effect going to be on
39:10
Speaker 2: freedom of speech patrick.
39:11
Speaker 3: Massive massive look i'm i'm not i'm not a big
39:14
Speaker 3: fan of sock puppets on on social media but i
39:17
Speaker 3: i I still have to accept their right to anonymity,
39:20
Speaker 3: even though I can't stand them, and even though I don't.
39:24
Speaker 1: Use a sock puppet account.
39:26
Speaker 3: So that's because, well, it's one of those things that you,
39:29
Speaker 3: within that environment, that digital environment, you just have to
39:32
Speaker 3: kind of learn to adapt to. And I think the
39:35
Speaker 3: speech and the conversations and the discourse just develops naturally,
39:39
Speaker 3: and it has. And we do get sieged by trolls,
39:43
Speaker 3: be sieged by trolls. And that's also a part of
39:45
Speaker 3: it as well. And that's just become part of the process.
39:48
Speaker 3: So I'm not for this sort of stringent regulation of
39:55
Speaker 3: the internet and digital IDs and driving licenses for the internet.
39:59
Speaker 3: I'm absolutely against it.
40:00
Speaker 1: Absolutely, 100%.
40:01
Speaker 2: Now, let's talk a little bit about AI because, of course,
40:04
Speaker 2: the British government, along with other Western governments, determined to
40:08
Speaker 2: push AI forward. But the question is whether the AI
40:11
Speaker 2: companies are going to be around for very much longer.
40:13
Speaker 3: Well, there's problems. There's big problems. I'll just point, this
40:16
Speaker 3: is an incredible story right here. This is in Finland.
40:19
Speaker 3: They're launching a criminal probe. It's not against Google. It's
40:23
Speaker 3: against the company that's building the data centers on behalf
40:26
Speaker 3: of Google. And look at what they've done. The US
40:29
Speaker 3: tech giant cleared hundreds of hectares for us for planned
40:33
Speaker 3: facilities before completing an environmental impact assessment. So, I mean,
40:39
Speaker 3: there are firms that are renting these out to the
40:41
Speaker 3: big tech companies. But ultimately, the big tech companies are
40:44
Speaker 3: going to end up being responsible for this because they're
40:46
Speaker 3: also pushing for this hyperscaling right now. And let's just
40:50
Speaker 3: take a look at Alphabet, the parent company of Google here.
40:55
Speaker 3: Their stock just tanked. They lost $ 500 billion in their
41:00
Speaker 3: total value.
41:02
Speaker 2: Just to say that again, that's $ 500 billion, not million dollars.
41:05
Speaker 3: Billion, half a trillion dollars they lost in market cap.
41:09
Speaker 3: So the second biggest daily market cap loss ever for
41:12
Speaker 3: the parent company, Alphabet, which the biggest business in there,
41:15
Speaker 3: of course, is Google. Let's just take a look at
41:18
Speaker 3: what that means in terms of the numbers here. That's
41:20
Speaker 3: a 12.5% loss of total value of market cap. That's
41:25
Speaker 3: a company Mike valued at $ 4 trillion roughly. I mean, it's, it's,
41:29
Speaker 3: it's a huge business. So a half a billion dollars,
41:32
Speaker 3: it's significant. And what they found here is interesting. The AI, uh,
41:36
Speaker 3: scaling is eating their core business, which is search. So
41:40
Speaker 3: people are doing AI searches at the top of the page.
41:43
Speaker 3: They're not clicking on the ads. The ad revenue is
41:46
Speaker 3: just tanking.
41:47
Speaker 2: So I believe that, uh, Google's revenue from search has
41:51
Speaker 2: fallen to below 50% since the first time. I mean,
41:53
Speaker 2: that's the first time it's ever fallen to that level.
41:56
Speaker 3: It's significant, and it's having a knock-on effect to other problems,
42:00
Speaker 3: which is this here. Bring this up on screen. Cash flow.
42:03
Speaker 3: Minus $ 9 billion negative cash flow for the last quarter,
42:07
Speaker 3: for the last three months. That means that they're spending
42:10
Speaker 3: way more than they're bringing in. So how are they
42:13
Speaker 3: bridging that gap? They're doing it through finance, through corporate bonds,
42:16
Speaker 3: which we might talk about in a moment, and also
42:19
Speaker 3: borrowing from the banks. The banks are paying for this hyperscaling.
42:22
Speaker 3: This is all finance. These companies don't have the money
42:26
Speaker 3: to build these data centers. They're relying on borrowed money.
42:29
Speaker 3: money to do it. And that's going to have another
42:31
Speaker 3: financial knock-on effect to you, me, and everybody here, which
42:35
Speaker 3: we'll show you in just a moment. But back up
42:37
Speaker 3: on screen here, let's just take a look at this.
42:39
Speaker 3: In the same report, Amazon. Amazon, they're in the same boat.
42:42
Speaker 3: 6% loss in market cap this quarter. That's about $ 165
42:48
Speaker 3: billion US. That is minus $ 42 billion, I say billion,
42:54
Speaker 3: in negative cash flow for the last three months. So
42:57
Speaker 3: what does that mean in terms of their expenditures? That
42:59
Speaker 3: is a, well, that's a 6X, a 6X spending over
43:05
Speaker 3: the last quarter. And bring this back up on screen again.
43:08
Speaker 3: And that's, yeah, this is 6X increase in spending over
43:11
Speaker 3: the last three months there. So that's Amazon. Mind you,
43:16
Speaker 3: different in terms of market cap size, but it shows
43:19
Speaker 3: you what's actually happening with those businesses there. So we
43:23
Speaker 3: have on the back end of this, and we're not
43:25
Speaker 3: even talking about the big AI companies, Mike, OK? But
43:28
Speaker 3: on the back end of this, we have another crisis brewing.
43:31
Speaker 3: And we'll bring this up on screen, the next one.
43:34
Speaker 3: And by the way, just keep this up on screen.
43:37
Speaker 3: Their main spending right now, Amazon, is on chip manufacturing in-house.
43:42
Speaker 3: This is their new business that they haven't announced yet,
43:45
Speaker 3: and AI tools. So Amazon plans to compete with all
43:49
Speaker 3: the major AI companies and chip manufacturers. So the consolidation,
43:55
Speaker 3: the monopolistic tendencies of these businesses, that's what's going on.
43:59
Speaker 3: That's what they're spending their money on. So I would
44:02
Speaker 3: say Amazon might come out the better end of this crisis, probably,
44:07
Speaker 3: than a lot of these AI companies like OpenAI, like Anthropic,
44:13
Speaker 3: and others. And I will bet that Bezos or some
44:16
Speaker 3: of these people will be buying up for pennies, pennies
44:19
Speaker 3: on the dollar, when the share prices tank. How do
44:22
Speaker 3: we know the share prices of the big AI companies
44:25
Speaker 3: are going to tank? We'll take a look at this here.
44:27
Speaker 3: Let's just look at this. This is the great AI bubble,
44:32
Speaker 3: which is bursting. It has already begun. to burst, over-leveraged,
44:37
Speaker 3: way over-leveraged. How over-leveraged? Let's show you. And I don't
44:41
Speaker 3: know what's more shocking about what we're going to show
44:43
Speaker 3: you right here. The fact that this headline's here or
44:45
Speaker 3: the fact that we have to go to the Jacobin
44:48
Speaker 3: to get our news on finance. That's the state of
44:51
Speaker 3: the world right now. Wall Street is starting to short
44:54
Speaker 3: AI companies. What does this remind you of? The big
44:58
Speaker 3: short folks, the volume of credit default swaps tied to
45:02
Speaker 3: US technology giants has risen by 90% since September. That's
45:08
Speaker 3: just in the last three months, just this quarter. So
45:12
Speaker 3: everything we showed you is correlated with this. Now, the
45:16
Speaker 3: subprime mortgage crash was punctuated by a sharp rise in
45:20
Speaker 3: credit default swaps. What is a credit default swap? It's
45:23
Speaker 3: an insurance derivative that pays out when the companies fail.
45:27
Speaker 3: So that means Wall Street, I mean, 70% of the
45:32
Speaker 3: S & P 500 valuation of the whole stock market
45:35
Speaker 3: in NASDAQ are like seven AI companies. And they're betting
45:39
Speaker 3: against them Wall Street's betting against the thing that has
45:43
Speaker 3: provided the most amount of value to the current stock market.
45:47
Speaker 3: Try to get your head around that. We'll bring this
45:48
Speaker 3: back up again, this article here. So Wall Street traders
45:52
Speaker 3: have sharply increased how they're spending on credit default swaps
45:56
Speaker 3: tied to AI. That means more and more investors are
45:59
Speaker 3: managing their risk by putting their money on the AI
46:02
Speaker 3: market's eventual crash. So it's not a question at this point, folks,
46:08
Speaker 3: of whether it will happen. The question is, it is
46:11
Speaker 3: happening now. What does that mean? If you have a
46:13
Speaker 3: retirement or an index fund that's tied to any of
46:17
Speaker 3: the major stock markets, that means your money is going
46:21
Speaker 3: to disappear. Your retirement funds will take a sharp hit,
46:25
Speaker 3: not least of all because some of these funds are
46:27
Speaker 3: almost mandated to be purchasing some of these huge high-risk stocks.
46:32
Speaker 3: This is a bubble of proportions that are even greater
46:35
Speaker 3: than the housing crisis. When it crashes, it's going to
46:38
Speaker 3: take a large portion of the economy with it. We
46:41
Speaker 3: warned about this many times on this program over the
46:44
Speaker 3: last three months. And sadly, those warnings have come true.
46:47
Speaker 3: Where are our politicians on this, by the way?
46:49
Speaker 2: Silent.
46:50
Speaker 3: No, our politicians are checking their trading apps right now.
46:54
Speaker 3: So when you see them in parliament or in Congress,
46:57
Speaker 3: they're like this. They're checking their apps. They're checking their
47:00
Speaker 3: eToro account. to see other stocks and selling, they're shorting
47:03
Speaker 3: the market. The politicians that made money on the boom
47:06
Speaker 3: on this, on the sort of fake hyper-scaling, they're shorting
47:10
Speaker 3: the market as well. And so another one I would
47:13
Speaker 3: hate to be quoting here, but this is another globalist publication.
47:17
Speaker 3: This is a project syndicate, and they're telling you exactly
47:20
Speaker 3: how it is. They're saying, when the AI bubble bursts, folks,
47:24
Speaker 3: that's October 30th. This is new stuff. Speculative bubbles often
47:27
Speaker 3: leave behind valuable infrastructure while bankrupting the investors who finance them.
47:34
Speaker 3: That's what we were just telling you. So somebody's going
47:36
Speaker 3: to come along and scoop up the remnants of this
47:40
Speaker 3: bubble after it pops four pennies on the dollar, and
47:44
Speaker 3: you'll have another reconsolidation by probably a monopolist, probably a
47:49
Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos or something like this. We're saying it's not
47:53
Speaker 3: a question of when folks, it's a question of it's
47:56
Speaker 3: happening now.
48:01
Speaker 2: It is incredible that, you know, Microsoft being a case
48:04
Speaker 2: in point. So let's just talk about that for a second,
48:06
Speaker 2: because Microsoft being a case in point doesn't have the cash,
48:10
Speaker 2: as you say, to develop their AI infrastructure. And so
48:13
Speaker 2: they are going to the bond markets. Now they're going
48:15
Speaker 2: to issue corporate bonds to the tune of something like
48:18
Speaker 2: $ 25 billion. to try to raise $ 25 billion for the
48:22
Speaker 2: next stage of their AI rollout. It is staggering that
48:29
Speaker 2: the lessons of the dot-com bubble were not learned. The
48:33
Speaker 2: lessons of the 2008 bubble were not learned. The financial
48:38
Speaker 2: system keeps blowing bubbles, and no one really seems to
48:42
Speaker 2: get the message.
48:43
Speaker 3: And what is a corporate bond? It's a company writing
48:46
Speaker 3: you an IOU, right? Right. Which is even less... less
48:50
Speaker 3: steady than a government bond, right? So that's a high
48:53
Speaker 3: risk piece of paper, isn't it? Corporate bond.
48:56
Speaker 2: Well, it's assumed to be fixed income, but it becomes
48:58
Speaker 2: high risk if the company itself is high risk. Now, Microsoft, well,
49:02
Speaker 2: some people would view Microsoft as being as steady as
49:05
Speaker 2: they get. But clearly, if some market players are starting
49:11
Speaker 2: to bet against these companies, then the question is, would
49:16
Speaker 2: Would a pension fund see a fixed income product like
49:19
Speaker 2: a corporate bond? being a good investment?
49:21
Speaker 1: Probably.
49:22
Speaker 3: Who's more likely to weather this disaster that's unfolding right now?
49:26
Speaker 3: It's probably going to be people like Microsoft, who spent
49:29
Speaker 3: a lot less on the AI build-outs, and Amazon spent
49:33
Speaker 3: a lot less on AI-specific build-outs than these new players.
49:37
Speaker 3: like OpenAI, like Anthropic.
49:40
Speaker 2: Well, the point is that Microsoft has other sources of income,
49:43
Speaker 2: whereas OpenAI and Anthropic have no other sources of income.
49:47
Speaker 2: So anyway, we'll talk much more about this in Extra, Patrick.
49:51
Speaker 2: It is an interesting topic. Now, let's come back to
49:54
Speaker 2: the domestic scene again and talk about surveillance, because Britain's
50:00
Speaker 2: spy agencies and the police misled judges, lost track of devices,
50:05
Speaker 2: and could very well hold sensitive data that broke rules
50:12
Speaker 2: on child informants. These are the findings of the annual
50:15
Speaker 2: report of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, none other than jury
50:19
Speaker 2: killer Sir Brian Levison. The report was published yesterday and
50:23
Speaker 2: covers intelligence agency activity in 2025. And that year, authorities
50:27
Speaker 2: were granted 336,976 warrants and authorizations to use covert powers
50:36
Speaker 2: Judicial commissioners refuse only 30 applications of those. And so
50:42
Speaker 2: those are powers that allow the state to do things
50:44
Speaker 2: that would otherwise be illegal. For example, phone calls and
50:47
Speaker 2: messages can be intercepted. Phone and internet companies can be
50:50
Speaker 2: made to hand over records of who contacted whom, when,
50:54
Speaker 2: and from where. Phones and computers can be hacked. People
50:57
Speaker 2: can be followed or bugged, including inside their homes and cars. So,
51:03
Speaker 2: and informants and officers can be run sometimes with permission
51:08
Speaker 2: to commit crimes. And we've talked about that before, the
51:10
Speaker 2: so-called CHIS Act, Covert Human Intelligence Act. Now, most uses
51:18
Speaker 2: need sign-off by a senior officer or a minister, but
51:22
Speaker 2: the most intrusive also need approval from a senior judge.
51:25
Speaker 2: And Levison said that, we spoke about the Agent X case,
51:29
Speaker 2: if you remember that one, Patrick, the MI5 case, where
51:32
Speaker 2: they lied in court. He said that it raises acute
51:36
Speaker 2: questions about compliance and candor. And he said that in
51:40
Speaker 2: that case, MI5 wrongly told the High Court and the
51:42
Speaker 2: tribunal that it had never confirmed to the BBC that
51:45
Speaker 2: Agent X was an informant in September 2025. Then the
51:49
Speaker 2: then Prime Minister directed Levison to investigate how the false
51:54
Speaker 2: evidence came to be given. And by the end of
51:57
Speaker 2: the year, though, His team had only interviewed 36 people,
52:01
Speaker 2: so that investigation isn't going terribly quickly. He said that
52:06
Speaker 2: GCHQ could not show that every overseas partner with access
52:09
Speaker 2: to its new intercepted data, sorry, its raw intercepted data
52:14
Speaker 2: was protecting journalists and lawyers' material. One major overseas partner
52:18
Speaker 2: had inadequate arrangements for journalistic material. Not mentioned who that
52:23
Speaker 2: overseas country is, but maybe Israel.
52:28
Speaker 1: Most likely. Balance of probability, I would say so.
52:31
Speaker 2: Indeed. The National Crime Agency authorized the use of a
52:34
Speaker 2: child informant for 12 months, which is three times the
52:37
Speaker 2: legal limit of four months. And they failed to notify
52:41
Speaker 2: IPCO that they had done so. Its interception errors rose
52:47
Speaker 2: from 47 to 73. Inspectors find recurring problems in how
52:52
Speaker 2: prisons monitor inmates' communications and The Ministry of Defence was
52:56
Speaker 2: criticised over its handling of rules on detainees held overseas.
53:00
Speaker 2: And four errors were judged serious. One was the arrest
53:03
Speaker 2: of an innocent person after police dropped a digit from
53:06
Speaker 2: an online username. Mistakes by phone companies led to further
53:10
Speaker 2: wrongful arrests, including one caused by confusing British Summertime with
53:15
Speaker 2: GMT and choosing the wrong person, therefore. Levinson questioned whether
53:21
Speaker 2: older surveillance law remains clear, coherent, and fit for purpose.
53:25
Speaker 2: So it's got to be updated.
53:27
Speaker 1: And then.
53:29
Speaker 2: This has got to take the biscuit as far as
53:31
Speaker 2: I'm concerned, Patrick, because GCHQ, the Signals Intelligence Agency, still
53:36
Speaker 2: cannot account for removable media such as USB sticks and
53:40
Speaker 2: hard drives that may contain surveillance data. It estimates the
53:44
Speaker 2: number of missing items to be in the thousands. Levison
53:48
Speaker 2: said the problem was first brought to his attention several
53:50
Speaker 2: years ago. I remain concerned, he said, that the government
53:54
Speaker 2: communications headquarters, GCHQ, has not yet established a sufficiently clear
53:59
Speaker 2: understanding of the scale, location, and recoverability of these devices.
54:04
Speaker 2: And then just to finish off on this, you'll see
54:07
Speaker 2: on screen at the moment, Lillian Greenwood, who's Minister for Innovation, Fraud,
54:10
Speaker 2: and Data. And she is basically now announced yesterday, the
54:16
Speaker 2: day before, the use of the first eligibility verification notice
54:21
Speaker 2: under PARS introduced by the Public Authorities Fraud Error and
54:24
Speaker 2: Recovery Act. And what this is doing is allowing the
54:27
Speaker 2: DWP to access or to ask banks to provide them
54:32
Speaker 2: with data on people's savings, on people's holidays and so on,
54:37
Speaker 2: or money that's being spent abroad and whatnot with a
54:40
Speaker 2: view to identifying benefits fraud. Now, many people would say, Well,
54:44
Speaker 2: that's good. The government should be identifying benefits fraud. But
54:47
Speaker 2: of course, we've already seen that HMRC has the ability. Now,
54:52
Speaker 2: these particular notices don't allow DWP to get access to
54:56
Speaker 2: people's bank accounts. But we already know that HMRC does
54:59
Speaker 2: have the right to access people's bank accounts. They are
55:04
Speaker 2: clearly rolling this idea of government getting some kind of
55:09
Speaker 2: insight into people's bank accounts as being sufficient. rolling it
55:13
Speaker 2: out to broader government departments. And the question is, will
55:17
Speaker 2: this end with so-called benefits fraud? And I don't think
55:22
Speaker 2: it will.
55:23
Speaker 3: No, no, it's what they call the slippery slope. But this,
55:28
Speaker 3: along with half a dozen other things that were reported
55:31
Speaker 3: just in the last 50 minutes, Mike, is a chilling
55:36
Speaker 3: picture that's being shown here.
55:38
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
55:38
Speaker 2: And we'll just end this segment just with this, because Palantir, uh,
55:42
Speaker 2: apparently has been paid 180, uh, million pounds more than
55:47
Speaker 2: the publicly available contracts say they should have been paid
55:51
Speaker 2: by the ministry of defense. So this article here saying,
55:53
Speaker 2: while the ministry of defense published contract details, totaling, uh, 90, 95.9 million.
55:59
Speaker 2: In fact, volunteer has been given 282 million. Now what
56:03
Speaker 2: they're saying in this is that, um, why possibly the
56:06
Speaker 2: reason for it was that, um, On national security grounds,
56:10
Speaker 2: at least one of the contracts that's been given to
56:12
Speaker 2: Palantir has never been published. But the point is nobody
56:15
Speaker 2: has any oversight over that. There's no accountability for it.
56:20
Speaker 2: And it just seems like more and more money goes
56:23
Speaker 2: in that person's direction.
56:24
Speaker 3: So secret contracts, secret contracts that we don't need, that
56:28
Speaker 3: we can't know about because it's a secret.
56:31
Speaker 1: I don't like the look of this already.
56:33
Speaker 2: That seems to be the situation.
56:34
Speaker 1: Are they going to pay back the 190 million? What
56:36
Speaker 1: is it? 200 million? Roughly? No.
56:40
Speaker 3: Or is that just considered a bung? Or like, what
56:43
Speaker 3: is this? You know, are they paying tribute to Palantir?
56:47
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Is that what this is? Absolutely.
56:49
Speaker 3: To keep Alex Karp from turning the machine against the
56:52
Speaker 3: state at some point in the future.
56:54
Speaker 1: Who knows?
56:55
Speaker 2: Basil, let's finish off with a little bit of In
56:56
Speaker 2: Case You Missed It.
56:59
Speaker 5: Yes, a little bit truncated this week, but nevertheless, a
57:02
Speaker 5: few interesting things here that you mentioned. may not have seen.
57:07
Speaker 5: Police Scotland says it has received information on Jeffrey Epstein's
57:10
Speaker 5: visit to Balmoral with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he now is.
57:16
Speaker 5: He was fully titled when that happened. I bet he
57:18
Speaker 5: wishes that day had never taken place. Now, further to
57:23
Speaker 5: Wednesday's report on artificial lab-grown food. Now it seems lab-made
57:28
Speaker 5: butter is being backed by Bill Gates and is already
57:32
Speaker 5: being used in American bakeries.
57:33
Speaker 1: It'll be on the shelves.
57:35
Speaker 5: In 2027, apparently a company called Savor, S-A-V-O-R. So keep
57:41
Speaker 5: an eye out for them. This is, well, it would
57:43
Speaker 5: be funny if it wasn't so appalling. AI company urges
57:47
Speaker 5: people living near its data centers to invest in noise-canceling
57:51
Speaker 5: headphones instead of complaining. So we're all supposed to walk
57:56
Speaker 5: around with those big yellow ear defenders that people wear
58:00
Speaker 5: on building sites, even in your own home, believe it
58:03
Speaker 5: or not. And lastly, a few examples here of how
58:07
Speaker 5: the design of our world has changed. And we've lost
58:10
Speaker 5: a lot of beauty, the interior of a classic car
58:13
Speaker 5: there against a modern car, the modern one, obviously much plainer,
58:18
Speaker 5: everything on a touchscreen. Also, the theatre's And cinemas, the
58:23
Speaker 5: Gilded Age, unfortunately, we've got a lot of Victorian and
58:27
Speaker 5: even Georgian cinemas in London, which look like the one
58:30
Speaker 5: on the left, but anything new, unfortunately, looks more like
58:33
Speaker 5: the one on the right. And domestically, too, a lovely,
58:38
Speaker 5: you know, palatial, really, living room on the left. But nowadays,
58:43
Speaker 5: the height of modernity and sophistication is to be as plain,
58:48
Speaker 5: simple and grey as possible.
58:52
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed.
58:53
Speaker 3: I don't know, I quite liked the Bauhaus minimalist style
58:58
Speaker 3: of the 1920s and 30s.
59:00
Speaker 2: We'll discuss this in Extra, I'm quite sure. Look, Basil,
59:04
Speaker 2: thank you very much for that. Thank you, Patrick, and
59:06
Speaker 2: thanks to Lubna as well. And thanks to everybody that's watched.
59:09
Speaker 2: We will be back on Monday at 1 p.m.
59:12
Speaker 3: As usual.
59:12
Speaker 1: Have a great.
59:14
Speaker 2: Weekend, everyone. If you're a UK call member, stick around
59:16
Speaker 2: for Extra. But we'll see you on Monday as usual.
59:19
Speaker 1: Bye-bye.