Latest / UK Column Radio / UK Column News — 31st July 2026

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UK Column News — 31st July 2026 · UK Column Radio

0:08
Speaker 1: Good afternoon. It's Friday, the thirty first July twenty twenty six,
0:11
Speaker 1: just after one o'clock. Welcome to the UK COLL News.
0:13
Speaker 1: I'm your host Make Rumson joining me in the studio today.
0:15
Speaker 1: Patrick Hennison, Welcome to the program. Patrick, it's great to
0:17
Speaker 1: be with you. Mike and Basil Valentine is with us
0:20
Speaker 1: on viney link as usual and I later in the
0:21
Speaker 1: program will be looking at the volunteer rollout in England's
0:24
Speaker 1: police forces, the so called migrant invasion in Spain, Andy
0:28
Speaker 1: Burnham's devolution plans, and John Healey's war spending. But we're
0:32
Speaker 1: going to begin today with Palistine Action because Huda Amuri,
0:36
Speaker 1: co founder of Palistine Action, has won the right to
0:38
Speaker 1: take her appeal to the Supreme Court. The reasons for
0:41
Speaker 1: granting the appeal are still to be published, although reports
0:44
Speaker 1: so far suggest there's a human rights argument behind it.
0:48
Speaker 1: It's understood that Supreme Court intends to give this case
0:52
Speaker 1: priority and it's expected to be heard immediately after the
0:54
Speaker 1: summer break in September. But in the meantime, Basil, there
0:58
Speaker 1: was some trouble outside we Sponser Magistrate's court yesterday, so
1:02
Speaker 1: tell us about that.
1:04
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Mike.
1:06
Speaker 3: Hundreds of defendants were due to a peer at Westminster
1:10
Speaker 3: Magistrates Court yesterday on terrorism charges for holding pieces of paper,
1:18
Speaker 3: but it turned into a complete melee, with the police
1:21
Speaker 3: arresting all sorts of people for various so called defenses,
1:26
Speaker 3: including erecting a small stand from which to speak. I'll
1:30
Speaker 3: be joined in a moment by doctor Clive Dolphin of
1:33
Speaker 3: Defend our Juries. But first here's some footage from social
1:37
Speaker 3: media from outside Westminster Magistrates yesterday.
1:41
Speaker 4: We should be supporting the people who are successful, highlight
1:46
Speaker 4: should have our government doesn't apport the journey side.
1:48
Speaker 1: I'm not trying complicit weapons, going to the.
1:53
Speaker 5: Inn existence any more. He discanted p dis landed, so
1:57
Speaker 5: you can see the name, because if you say that
1:59
Speaker 5: is the.
1:59
Speaker 6: Aunt jo exist and support for anybody who helps stop
2:04
Speaker 6: the genocide.
2:08
Speaker 4: Right there we go, Here we.
2:10
Speaker 2: Go people, Margie Mansfield.
2:45
Speaker 3: They're pointing out in that first clip that Palestine Action
2:48
Speaker 3: doesn't exist anymore. It's been disbanded. So how can one
2:52
Speaker 3: possibly be arrested for supporting an organization that doesn't exist?
2:56
Speaker 3: Now joining me to discuss this and other aspects of
3:00
Speaker 3: this ludicrous but equally sinister situation is doctor Clive Dolphin
3:05
Speaker 3: of Defend Our Juries.
3:06
Speaker 2: Welcome to the program Live.
3:10
Speaker 7: Welcome, Thank you for having me on the program.
3:13
Speaker 3: Clive, you were there for some of the time yesterday.
3:16
Speaker 3: It seems that the police really didn't know what they
3:17
Speaker 3: were doing. They arrested somebody for erecting a small stand
3:21
Speaker 3: on which they were going to read some poems and
3:23
Speaker 3: also inviting people to verbally express their support for Palestine action,
3:28
Speaker 3: and then arresting them as soon as they did so.
3:34
Speaker 7: It was a chaotic scene. The police just seemed determined
3:38
Speaker 7: to arrest anybody who was As you said, there was
3:42
Speaker 7: a plan that people were going to read some poems
3:44
Speaker 7: and there was going to be some songs, Son, and
3:46
Speaker 7: the people who moved a stage four were just to
3:48
Speaker 7: give a raised area for that for these people to speak.
3:51
Speaker 7: They were arrested, and they weren't arrested for giving support.
3:55
Speaker 7: They were wrested on the section twelve, which you are
3:58
Speaker 7: a terrorist, not a supporter for a terrorism, you are
4:00
Speaker 7: a terrorist. There were a set of people who were
4:04
Speaker 7: who are sat on the ground. They were arrested in
4:07
Speaker 7: the section twelve. As well as far as we know,
4:09
Speaker 7: some of the people who were sat on the ground
4:11
Speaker 7: had not said anything. They'd not spoken a single word.
4:15
Speaker 7: There was a plan for some people to step forward
4:18
Speaker 7: and say I am a member of Palatine Action, but
4:22
Speaker 7: as part of a protest. What they were doing is
4:26
Speaker 7: indicating the absolute folly of the situation. How can you
4:30
Speaker 7: be a member of a group which one doesn't exist
4:33
Speaker 7: because it disbanded and two never had a membership structure
4:37
Speaker 7: when it did exist.
4:40
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely ludicrous.
4:42
Speaker 3: And of course the reason everybody was there in the
4:44
Speaker 3: first place is that I think it was over two
4:47
Speaker 3: thousand individuals were due to appear in courts as simultaneous
4:52
Speaker 3: and when I want to say that was ever going
4:53
Speaker 3: to happen, it was a complete nonsense. And then over
4:58
Speaker 3: the course of the day we had thennouncement that uda
5:01
Speaker 3: Amory had been given leave to appeal the band. So
5:05
Speaker 3: the sensible thing to do from a policing point of
5:08
Speaker 3: view would have just been to left everybody alone, wouldn't it.
5:14
Speaker 7: Well, this is the nonsense of what is happening. They're
5:19
Speaker 7: actually over twenty two hundred people, all scheduled to be
5:24
Speaker 7: in thoughts during the course of the day, And if
5:27
Speaker 7: you do that calculation, you very rapidly work out that
5:31
Speaker 7: each person would have had a handful of seconds in court,
5:34
Speaker 7: so this was never going to happen. And what they
5:37
Speaker 7: actually did was they left two poor harassed on the
5:41
Speaker 7: front desk who were handing out letters to people apologizing
5:45
Speaker 7: saying your case has already been adjourned and their case
5:48
Speaker 7: shouldn't have been adjourned without them having an opportunity to
5:50
Speaker 7: speak to the judge and to put representations forward. So
5:54
Speaker 7: in terms of the legal process, that wasn't the correct procedure.
5:59
Speaker 7: And then people were offered compensation because the communication that
6:03
Speaker 7: been sent to people had been so awful. Some people
6:06
Speaker 7: were told that they had to be in court and
6:07
Speaker 7: if they weren't, they risked arrest. Some people were told
6:10
Speaker 7: that they mustn't come to court. Some people were told, well,
6:13
Speaker 7: you can come to court, but you don't have to,
6:15
Speaker 7: and it was just a complete mess. The cost, in
6:20
Speaker 7: terms of how much it costs yesterday in court must
6:24
Speaker 7: have been horrendous, but that will have been a fraction
6:27
Speaker 7: of the policing cost. We don't yet know whether the
6:31
Speaker 7: prescription of palatine action was lawful or not, and we
6:35
Speaker 7: will not know that until the Supreme Court has made
6:37
Speaker 7: a decision on it. And potentially that could even go
6:39
Speaker 7: to the Court of Human Rights. What we have seen
6:43
Speaker 7: other police forces around the country do is go along
6:46
Speaker 7: to people, give them advice, take photographs for evidential purposes,
6:51
Speaker 7: but not carry out these mass arrests. The only place
6:55
Speaker 7: in England and Wales where they have always carried out
6:57
Speaker 7: mass arrests is in London and this is an indication
7:01
Speaker 7: of the politicization that we're starting to see of policing.
7:07
Speaker 3: Indeed, it's not just politicization of policing, Clive, I think
7:11
Speaker 3: it's fair to say that there's a sort of multi
7:13
Speaker 3: pronged political attack on the very foundations of the British
7:18
Speaker 3: legal system. To other cases, I'd like to highlight our
7:23
Speaker 3: defendants looking at being sentenced under terrorism laws for criminal
7:29
Speaker 3: damage to a bank. Spraying red paint on a bank
7:33
Speaker 3: is now apparently terrorism. And of course the case of
7:37
Speaker 3: Rajiv Menon absolutely unprecedented, a case c Barrister being prosecuted
7:43
Speaker 3: for the speech he made in summation at the trial
7:48
Speaker 3: of the original filth and defendants.
7:53
Speaker 7: What we're seeing is an erosion across the entirety of
7:59
Speaker 7: the criminal or justice system. The idea that somebody could
8:04
Speaker 7: appear in court and they could be charged with criminal damage.
8:07
Speaker 7: As far as the jury are concerned, they make a
8:10
Speaker 7: decision based on whether someone has committed criminal damage, and
8:13
Speaker 7: then afterwards the judge could say, actually, I'm going to
8:16
Speaker 7: sentence you for terrorism. Well, this is completely wrong. It
8:20
Speaker 7: goes against all of our principles of law. A jury
8:26
Speaker 7: a decision, and then we carry out that, we assign
8:29
Speaker 7: a sentence according to that, or a judge to you
8:33
Speaker 7: the jury and say actually, I think it was terrorism.
8:37
Speaker 7: Well that's completely wrong. The idea that esther, a barrister
8:43
Speaker 7: could be carrying out their ordinary, everyday work and then
8:47
Speaker 7: find that they are the person who is being prosecuted.
8:51
Speaker 7: And not only is rajaliven On being prosecuted, but there
8:54
Speaker 7: have been a whole series of legal twists and turns
8:57
Speaker 7: in order to try and prosecute him through what's called
9:00
Speaker 7: a summary process. The summary process is the quickest way possible,
9:05
Speaker 7: and it's intended for the situation where someone's been rowdy
9:09
Speaker 7: in court at the point where an ex husband leaps
9:14
Speaker 7: up and shouts, oh, she's a slag. Don't believe her.
9:16
Speaker 7: You need a facility in order to be able to
9:18
Speaker 7: deal with that swiftly, but it's not intended to deal
9:22
Speaker 7: with things which are happening months down the line. But
9:27
Speaker 7: this is the path that they've chosen, and they've chosen
9:29
Speaker 7: that because they want to cut out the attorney General,
9:32
Speaker 7: because the Attorney General makes a decision about whether it's
9:35
Speaker 7: in the public interest. There has never been a prosecution barrison,
9:41
Speaker 7: and that's because if you start prosecuting barristers, the embarrassters
9:45
Speaker 7: stop fearing for their well being and they won't then
9:47
Speaker 7: put a full defense of a defendant, and then you
9:50
Speaker 7: won't get fair trials. The other piece, which you haven't mentioned, y'elle,
9:55
Speaker 7: I'll add into this is the attempt by David Lammy,
9:59
Speaker 7: who was Justice Secretary and thankfully has been removed, to
10:03
Speaker 7: reduce the number of trials by jury. There are two
10:08
Speaker 7: points in the justice system where people can apply common
10:11
Speaker 7: sense with a wide degree of kind of scope. One
10:17
Speaker 7: is a police officer. So a police officer, if they
10:20
Speaker 7: see a crime, they can make a decision about whether
10:22
Speaker 7: they ignore it because there's something more serious happening, whether
10:25
Speaker 7: they give advice, whether they arrest somebody, whether they just
10:28
Speaker 7: take details. The other is a jury. A jury can
10:33
Speaker 7: look at a case in the hole and say, well,
10:36
Speaker 7: you may have technically broken this law, but this law
10:38
Speaker 7: was never intended to.
10:39
Speaker 6: Apply to you.
10:41
Speaker 7: And they're trying to take away juries because juries are
10:43
Speaker 7: ordinary everyday people. They are me, you, all of your viewers,
10:48
Speaker 7: and they want us removed from the system, and they
10:50
Speaker 7: want an autocratic system which just says no computer says A,
10:54
Speaker 7: therefore you're guilty.
10:58
Speaker 3: Indeed, real Cami Jones case Cy, the chair of the
11:02
Speaker 3: Criminal Bar Association, said, in connection with Radjeev's case, it's
11:06
Speaker 3: starting to feel like it's about the politics of the
11:09
Speaker 3: subject matter of the trial rather than the core principles
11:13
Speaker 3: of how a barrister represents his client. It's undeniable, isn't
11:18
Speaker 3: it clive that the hidden hand of the Israeli lobby
11:22
Speaker 3: is behind all these restrictions on our civil limities.
11:31
Speaker 7: What you have to do if you are in government
11:33
Speaker 7: is that you have to not only be fair to
11:36
Speaker 7: every single one of your citizens, but you have to
11:38
Speaker 7: appear to be fair if you have a situation which
11:42
Speaker 7: we have had where Israeli companies or companies which are
11:46
Speaker 7: based in Israel and the Israeli ambassador are having discussions
11:51
Speaker 7: with the Home Office about individual trials. Well, that looks
11:55
Speaker 7: like it's a sit chob. You should never put yourself
11:58
Speaker 7: in that sort of situation. You should always be fair
12:02
Speaker 7: and transparent so that everyone can see you're dealing with
12:05
Speaker 7: person A in exactly the same way that you're dealing
12:07
Speaker 7: with person B. But I have to be honest, and
12:10
Speaker 7: I say, it looks to me like certain wealthy companies
12:16
Speaker 7: the rules for them apply differently to the way that
12:19
Speaker 7: they apply for smaller companies and for individuals, And this
12:26
Speaker 7: not the way it should be. The state should always
12:29
Speaker 7: value people over companies, and the state should also have
12:34
Speaker 7: a graduation where you say minor damage is less significant
12:39
Speaker 7: than may damage is always less significant than injury to
12:43
Speaker 7: a person, and injury is a person is always less
12:47
Speaker 7: significant than the death and individual If you look at
12:50
Speaker 7: health and safety laws, that's very clearly laid out. But
12:54
Speaker 7: what the government is doing it is warping and twisting
12:57
Speaker 7: the rules a situation. I'd invite to people watching the
13:03
Speaker 7: show to question in their mind, if we're going to
13:06
Speaker 7: say damage equates to terrorism, well, how much damage equates
13:11
Speaker 7: to terrorism? And does that mean that in a rich area,
13:15
Speaker 7: somebody who goes along and launches a raid on a
13:18
Speaker 7: jewelry shop, they get a bigger sentence because they carried
13:23
Speaker 7: out a more serious crime.
13:24
Speaker 6: They are a terrorist.
13:26
Speaker 7: Somebody in a poor part of the country. They will
13:30
Speaker 7: then you could damage a whole set of houses. You
13:33
Speaker 7: could destroy a row of houses, but that would not
13:35
Speaker 7: equate to the same value as the jewelry shop. So
13:39
Speaker 7: that's see, and that would equate to less serious charges.
13:45
Speaker 7: You've got to always put people first. And once these
13:49
Speaker 7: people may have damaged a bank, the way in which
13:52
Speaker 7: they did that did not equate to terrorism. They did
13:57
Speaker 7: not cause fear and alarm to people, They did not
14:00
Speaker 7: risk anyone's life. It was carried out overnight. We've got
14:04
Speaker 7: to have a proportionate balance here.
14:07
Speaker 2: We certainly do.
14:08
Speaker 3: Doctor Clive Dolphin, thank you so much for joining me
14:11
Speaker 3: on UK column News today.
14:15
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Clive, Thank you Basil Patrick. Let's
14:18
Speaker 1: come over to you then. And of course the other
14:20
Speaker 1: news that broke yesterday or today has been the apparent
14:25
Speaker 1: hamas sees for agreement to hand over weapons the Trump
14:28
Speaker 1: has negotiated. How much truth is there in these headlines?
14:31
Speaker 6: The operative where there is a parent deal. Now, if
14:34
Speaker 6: you look at the BBC, you'd think this is a
14:36
Speaker 6: done deal here. Hamas agrees to Trump's plan to disarm
14:41
Speaker 6: Gaza officials tell the BBC Israel yet to comment. That's
14:45
Speaker 6: the key bit right there. So do we have a
14:48
Speaker 6: Gaza peace deal here? Well, let's just take a closer
14:51
Speaker 6: look and see still a question mark hanging over this story.
14:54
Speaker 6: Let's take a look at some of the particulars here.
14:56
Speaker 6: Courtesy of Al Jazer. This is what we know. So
15:00
Speaker 6: I've got some points here, But let me just distill
15:02
Speaker 6: this down very quickly. Some red flags are popping up immediately.
15:05
Speaker 6: No weapons will be transferred or handed over to Israel
15:08
Speaker 6: or any other non Palestinian parties. That's going to be
15:11
Speaker 6: a bone of contention coming forward, as well as disarmament
15:15
Speaker 6: phases are directly tied to Israel's gradual withdrawal from areas
15:20
Speaker 6: it controls. Which areas? Are they the same areas the
15:23
Speaker 6: next week or next month or are we talking about
15:26
Speaker 6: previously to this month or presently? Nobody knows. And Israel
15:30
Speaker 6: likes to have fluid clauses certainly that they can work
15:33
Speaker 6: within here, So is that going to impede the implementation
15:38
Speaker 6: of a peace plan? I would say yes. I would
15:40
Speaker 6: say yes. So let's look at that, and as well
15:44
Speaker 6: as this analysis here by a shale ben Efraim. He is, say,
15:51
Speaker 6: a dissident. Clearly he's Jewish, but he is definitely sort
15:55
Speaker 6: of an anti Zionist commentator, you could say here, And
15:59
Speaker 6: this is the one I'm I'm saying, this is what
16:01
Speaker 6: people need to see. A new Palestinian police force, vetted
16:05
Speaker 6: by Israel's shin Bet, that's their domestic intelligence services, will
16:10
Speaker 6: be deployed into areas that Israel evacuates, but Israel will
16:14
Speaker 6: not evacuate all areas it occupies. Here, the International Stabilization
16:19
Speaker 6: Force will oversee the weapons confiscation and storying in the
16:23
Speaker 6: training of police and so forth. And here's another little
16:27
Speaker 6: problem here. This will start with a pilot in Rafa.
16:32
Speaker 6: The Gaza police there will hand over some weapons within
16:35
Speaker 6: two weeks heavy weaponry at around two hundred to three
16:39
Speaker 6: hundred and fifty days. That's kind of a big wide window,
16:42
Speaker 6: isn't it. And with all of these Trump deals Mike
16:45
Speaker 6: always week on detail, great on headlines, week on detail,
16:49
Speaker 6: one might ask, is this just to get from A
16:52
Speaker 6: to B for Donald Trump? Because basically everybody is criticizing
16:56
Speaker 6: him has totally failed the Board of Peace being a
16:58
Speaker 6: busted flush, and here we get this announcement and guess what.
17:02
Speaker 6: There's been no acknowledgment from Hamasa's military wing that this
17:08
Speaker 6: is indeed an accurate portrayal of a deal. So which
17:11
Speaker 6: Hamas are we talking about? The political negotiators in Doha,
17:15
Speaker 6: what's left of them, those who haven't been assassinated, or
17:19
Speaker 6: we're talking about the alkasambragates the Palestinian Islamics she had
17:23
Speaker 6: another resistance faction says they don't accept this deal. So
17:27
Speaker 6: I just see problems. And let's just remember when we're
17:30
Speaker 6: talking about Rafa, this is what Rafa looked like in
17:34
Speaker 6: twenty twenty one, and this is what Rafa looks like
17:38
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty five. Let's not forget. So if we're
17:42
Speaker 6: talking about some of these areas within Gaza, and just
17:46
Speaker 6: remember the devastation, remember what the Israelis did to these
17:50
Speaker 6: areas and what they continue to do to other areas
17:53
Speaker 6: within Gaza today as we speak, bombing refugee tents and
17:58
Speaker 6: doing hunger games and squid games for people to collect
18:01
Speaker 6: food and get risk their lives in their process. So
18:04
Speaker 6: we'll see how this one ends up. Check let's check
18:07
Speaker 6: back in a month, that's what we say. Indeed, thank
18:10
Speaker 6: you for that, Patrick. Let's come back to the UK
18:12
Speaker 6: then and well. At the beginning of this year, the
18:15
Speaker 6: National Police Chief Council announced that they would be building
18:18
Speaker 6: a national service for sharing local intelligence and police force
18:22
Speaker 6: data across law enforcement and justice. Now, the press release
18:28
Speaker 6: was entitled bridging the Gap between Force Data and in it,
18:32
Speaker 6: they said, when managed correctly and properly utilized, this data
18:37
Speaker 6: is a strategic asset which can enable our teams to
18:40
Speaker 6: proactively spot patterns and trends, highlight areas of risk, and
18:44
Speaker 6: lead smarter intelligence led investigations. And we'll come back to
18:48
Speaker 6: that point in the second. They also said that they
18:51
Speaker 6: were working with partners from across law enforcement and government.
18:54
Speaker 6: A scoping exercise will now take this to fully establish
18:57
Speaker 6: the National Data Integration and Export Viitation Service as a concept,
19:01
Speaker 6: and that's what they're building, and they're calling it the
19:03
Speaker 6: National Data Integration and Exploitation Service. But getting back to
19:08
Speaker 6: the managed correctly questioned, who's in the running for this?
19:12
Speaker 6: So we bring it on screen here because of course
19:15
Speaker 6: it is volunteer. Not surprisingly, now, volunteers already embedded in Bedfordshire,
19:22
Speaker 6: Leicestershire and the Met police forces in the UK, and
19:26
Speaker 6: Bedfordshire is the most significant because Bevfture Police contracted Polunteer
19:30
Speaker 6: to provide Nectar as you can see on screen at
19:32
Speaker 6: the moment, which connects existing police data sources with applications,
19:36
Speaker 6: allowing investigators to exploit mobile phone data, profile individuals and
19:42
Speaker 6: process sensitive personal data with AI. And according to Computer Weekly,
19:46
Speaker 6: they say the data sets feeding Bedforsure Polices volunteer system
19:50
Speaker 6: contain more than one thousand records of people who haven't
19:53
Speaker 6: been charged with crimes. So this is the type of
19:56
Speaker 6: thing that we're saying. The system that we are that's
20:00
Speaker 6: being used is built on sorry, is built on Polunteers
20:05
Speaker 6: Foundry platform. This is the same framework as the NHS
20:09
Speaker 6: federated data platform. Bedfordshire leads the pilot within the Eastern
20:14
Speaker 6: Regional Special Operations Unit, but Kimbridchure Hertfordshire also have access
20:21
Speaker 6: through Bedfordshire and then Essex, Kent, Norfolk and Suffolk are
20:25
Speaker 6: also part of that particular grouping so they are undibtedly
20:28
Speaker 6: getting access to it as well. So the PIPOT pilot
20:31
Speaker 6: is in preparation for a national rollout and it's being
20:34
Speaker 6: partially audited by Accenture, and of course Accenture has a
20:39
Speaker 6: global strategic partnership with Polentteer, so there's no conflict of
20:43
Speaker 6: interest there is there, And of course they also set
20:47
Speaker 6: Accentrier sits on the NHS Federated Data Platform Consortium, So
20:52
Speaker 6: this is just very incestuous. Getting back to the National
20:56
Speaker 6: Data Integration and Exploitation Service. In a request for information
21:00
Speaker 6: published on the bidstats website last year, the capabilities were
21:05
Speaker 6: expected to cost. The platform is expected to cost between
21:09
Speaker 6: seventy five million and two hundred and fifty million over
21:11
Speaker 6: five years. But Computer Weekly is reporting that no suppliers
21:15
Speaker 6: have been announced jet but the documents contain obtained by
21:19
Speaker 6: Computer Weekly indicated Pollunteer's foundry product is one of the
21:23
Speaker 6: preferred choices to meet these needs due to government and
21:27
Speaker 6: policing interest, and bearing in mind how embedded Polunteer already
21:31
Speaker 6: is with the British government, they seem like the obvious
21:34
Speaker 6: choice unless they're significant pushback. So I'm going to encourage
21:38
Speaker 6: everyone to read that Computer Weekly report for more on this,
21:41
Speaker 6: and of course links to that and everything that we've
21:44
Speaker 6: mentioned here will be in the show notes. But Patrick,
21:49
Speaker 6: volunteer increasingly getting a foothold in this country and why
21:54
Speaker 6: there is some pushback against it, and certainly volunteer in London.
21:58
Speaker 6: The staff they're feeling some come from from that government
22:01
Speaker 6: doesn't seem to be experienced again a major discomfort yet
22:05
Speaker 6: well not yet. But bring that article up on screen
22:07
Speaker 6: here from Computer Weekly to take it server and take
22:09
Speaker 6: a good look at that. You can google that again
22:11
Speaker 6: links in the show notes. My question is, when I
22:14
Speaker 6: look at all that data flowing into the police system,
22:17
Speaker 6: what we are not being told. No one's asking is
22:19
Speaker 6: what kind of prompts are inspectors or detectives or police
22:24
Speaker 6: officials putting into that system? Look like, what are they
22:28
Speaker 6: looking for? Is it a case of, you know, you know,
22:32
Speaker 6: looking for a suspect to a crime. We're going to
22:35
Speaker 6: find one no matter what. And the computer is going
22:38
Speaker 6: to allow us to sort of do that to profile
22:40
Speaker 6: people and then we start targeting people. So it seems
22:44
Speaker 6: like there's a huge risk of politicization with these tools
22:48
Speaker 6: because with all the speed and the convenience and just
22:51
Speaker 6: the massive data sets that they have to draw on,
22:54
Speaker 6: all you need is a political prompt and all of
22:57
Speaker 6: a sudden you've got a hive of activity going on area.
23:00
Speaker 6: Let's just say, let's find anyone who might be connected
23:03
Speaker 6: to Palestine Action or any anti Semitic postings on social
23:08
Speaker 6: media's cross reference that with something else or whatever. That
23:11
Speaker 6: is that the type of thing that police are going
23:13
Speaker 6: to be doing well, it is tool.
23:15
Speaker 1: This is a very good question. Of course, we can't
23:16
Speaker 1: find out because that was no freedom freedom information request
23:21
Speaker 1: is ever going to result in an answer to that
23:23
Speaker 1: type of question. The first question we should be asking
23:26
Speaker 1: is who are the thousand people that have never been
23:28
Speaker 1: charged with the crime that are on the system at
23:30
Speaker 1: Bedfordshire And have they got any political Are they political
23:34
Speaker 1: activists in some way?
23:36
Speaker 2: You know?
23:36
Speaker 1: So this is an absolutely key point that you're making, Patrick,
23:39
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about much more about this and extra
23:43
Speaker 1: I have no doubt after this program. Okay, if you
23:46
Speaker 1: like what the UK column does and you'd like to
23:48
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24:01
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24:16
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24:20
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24:24
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24:27
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24:29
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24:33
Speaker 1: seven pm tonight for Germ Warfare, and he is looking
24:36
Speaker 1: at regeneritive agriculture, raw milk, delicious burgers. I'm sure it's
24:40
Speaker 1: going to be a fascinating conversation with Gerham and China's
24:44
Speaker 1: rare earth squeeze crippling America's war machine is what Karl
24:48
Speaker 1: is looking at with silk and steel. And on Sunday
24:51
Speaker 1: at seven pm a thousand words. Sorry, I apologize. See
24:57
Speaker 1: the subject of the painting this time is Matt Pinn.
25:01
Speaker 1: So joined Jake at seven pm on Sunday for that. Patrick,
25:07
Speaker 1: let's come to this story of the migrant invasion into Spain,
25:12
Speaker 1: because we've all seen the social media posts on this
25:14
Speaker 1: over the last few days.
25:15
Speaker 6: Oh, it's going wild. Of course, this is like absolute
25:19
Speaker 6: red meat for the anti immigration crowd. So this is
25:23
Speaker 6: the one that's hit the headlines. Let's take a look
25:26
Speaker 6: at that, just from sky News, nineteen dead as almost
25:29
Speaker 6: fifty thousand migrants enter the Spanish enclave of of Cueta
25:34
Speaker 6: and Melilla in Morocco. No see, these are Spanish sovereign
25:39
Speaker 6: territory but located in Morocco. Sort of a colonial hangover
25:44
Speaker 6: and deals made between kings from days gone by and
25:47
Speaker 6: also after the Second World War. So let's just look
25:51
Speaker 6: here and just you can see the scenes here I
25:54
Speaker 6: mean this, I'm showing you the tame footage. It's wilder
25:57
Speaker 6: than this, so you can imagine. Also, you know, people
26:00
Speaker 6: have died as well, swimming. I think there's been some drowndings.
26:04
Speaker 6: There's been other reports as well as we say, nineteen
26:07
Speaker 6: dead so far, and so people are looking at this
26:10
Speaker 6: in your average kind of right wing discourse on this
26:14
Speaker 6: will be ah, there they go again, it's the Muslims
26:17
Speaker 6: invading Europe. But we're sorry to inform you there's a
26:21
Speaker 6: lot more behind this story than the mainstream media are
26:25
Speaker 6: giving any credence to. However, Luckily, there's independent journalists and
26:30
Speaker 6: analysts out there like Wally Rashid on X who does
26:34
Speaker 6: excellent work, who boils this down to a narrative that
26:40
Speaker 6: I think is all too familiar. Let's listen to what
26:42
Speaker 6: he has to say about the causes of this migrant invasion.
26:47
Speaker 8: Probably already seen this video now of thousands of migrants
26:50
Speaker 8: flooding into Spain cities in North Africa. I find so
26:53
Speaker 8: interesting is that back in twenty nineteen, Netanyahu's son revealed
26:57
Speaker 8: that Israel funds separatists NGOs in Spain, calling Spain to
27:01
Speaker 8: give away those two cities to Morocco, regardless of how
27:04
Speaker 8: you feel about the fact that those two cities are
27:06
Speaker 8: on African land. Why was Netanyahu's son in twenty nineteen tweeting,
27:10
Speaker 8: dear Arabs and Muslims want to free occupied Arab Islamic lands.
27:14
Speaker 8: Here's a good start, Suta and Malilla. What you're seeing
27:17
Speaker 8: right here is a manufactured event by the Trump administration.
27:19
Speaker 8: Israel and Morocco, give you, guys context. Morocco and Algeria
27:23
Speaker 8: are adversaries. Whenever Spain warms relations with Algeria, Morocco responds
27:27
Speaker 8: by using its own population as blackmail and opening up
27:31
Speaker 8: the gates into Suta and Malilla. This is all documented.
27:33
Speaker 8: It happened in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two
27:36
Speaker 8: Morocco diplomatic blackmailing of Spain and Europe by means of
27:39
Speaker 8: migration management. The reason Israel is involved now and the
27:42
Speaker 8: Trump administration, especially Marco Rubio, is because they do not
27:45
Speaker 8: like Pedro Sanchez. Back in April, for the first time,
27:48
Speaker 8: the Republican led US Congressional Committee described Suta and Mililla
27:52
Speaker 8: as located in Moroccan territory. The Congressional Committee stated specifically
27:56
Speaker 8: that they support Secretary of State Marco Rubio's effort to
27:59
Speaker 8: encourage diptic engagement between Morocco and Spain on the future
28:02
Speaker 8: of Suta and Malilla. Why is this happening again now
28:05
Speaker 8: because just ten days ago Pedro Sanchez visited Algeria for
28:09
Speaker 8: the first time in four years. A lot of the
28:11
Speaker 8: reason why Morocco and Algeria our adversaries has to do
28:14
Speaker 8: with the Western Sahara. All you have to know for
28:15
Speaker 8: this video is that in twenty twenty two, Spain abandoned
28:18
Speaker 8: it to neutrality, stands over the disputed territory and back
28:22
Speaker 8: Morocco over sovereignty claims angering Algeria. Twenty twenty one, Spain
28:26
Speaker 8: gave medical treatment to a leader in the Western Sahara
28:29
Speaker 8: and it angered Morocco. Morocco responded by creating the exact
28:32
Speaker 8: same situation we're having today. A month after the hospitalization,
28:36
Speaker 8: Moroccan security forces located on the border of Suta and
28:39
Speaker 8: to a lesser extent, Mililla relaxed the last control mechanisms
28:43
Speaker 8: allowing the passage of migrants from Morocco to the Spanish city.
28:46
Speaker 8: This is a geopolitical blackmail event by the Trump administration,
28:49
Speaker 8: Morocco and Israel. It's not just happening because of lax
28:52
Speaker 8: border policies from a left wing government.
28:56
Speaker 6: So total weaponization of immigration. Absolute, classic, absolute, classic example
29:05
Speaker 6: of that. So and again well well explained by Wally Rashid.
29:09
Speaker 6: I encourage people to take a look at Wally's x
29:12
Speaker 6: feed here. He's also got an Instagram channel. I think
29:15
Speaker 6: he's on TikTok as well. Wally Rashid a very sharp, young,
29:19
Speaker 6: independent geopolitical commentator who we highly recommend. A link to
29:24
Speaker 6: his social media is in the show notes as well.
29:28
Speaker 6: So I don't know if we have if you have
29:32
Speaker 6: any comments on this or.
29:37
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, Patrick, you know what can we say
29:40
Speaker 1: with this? We've seen this type of exercise before, as
29:45
Speaker 1: Wally Rashid has highlighted, and.
29:49
Speaker 4: But it's too easy just to look at.
29:51
Speaker 1: The the the basic events and assume that that this
29:56
Speaker 1: is yet another migrant which is just happening by itself.
30:01
Speaker 4: Of course, these things never happen.
30:03
Speaker 6: How do you think gb News is covering this?
30:05
Speaker 4: I think I thank you if highlighted that here they.
30:08
Speaker 6: Come there, Muslims are invading. It's all the fault of
30:12
Speaker 6: the leftists and the socialists and the communists. That's kind
30:15
Speaker 6: of how in the pro Hamas pro Hamas Europeans. That's
30:19
Speaker 6: kind of how it's going to get covered unfortunately. But
30:22
Speaker 6: you know, it's good enough for Nigel and Rupert, so
30:26
Speaker 6: it's good enough for gb News, and so should it
30:29
Speaker 6: be good enough for our audience. I don't think so.
30:32
Speaker 6: I think people need to question these things extremely hard,
30:36
Speaker 6: as we have done today.
30:38
Speaker 4: Basil.
30:39
Speaker 1: Let's come back to you know, add back to the
30:41
Speaker 1: UK in fact, and well, there's been a lot of
30:44
Speaker 1: conversation in recent months and years in fact on the
30:48
Speaker 1: situation with water companies.
30:51
Speaker 2: Yes, so it's right.
30:52
Speaker 3: Overwhelming majority of people in Britain quite rightly want to
30:56
Speaker 3: see the water companies they used to be water boards.
31:00
Speaker 3: A renationalized Kirstarmer claimed he was going to do it.
31:05
Speaker 3: He did nothing of the kind, of course. Now Thames
31:10
Speaker 3: Water is arguably the best candidate very nationalization because it's
31:15
Speaker 3: in so much debt. In a moment, I'm going to
31:17
Speaker 3: be joined by kat Hobbes, the founder of we own It,
31:22
Speaker 3: a pressure group dedicated to taking essential utilities back into
31:27
Speaker 3: public ownership. But first here's a tweet from we own It,
31:31
Speaker 3: a post that appeared yesterday with a very novel and
31:35
Speaker 3: interesting way of how to go about taking the water
31:39
Speaker 3: companies back into public ownership at minimal cost.
31:44
Speaker 9: You might already be aware that over half of England
31:46
Speaker 9: is officially in a state of drought, and the ITV
31:50
Speaker 9: has put out some advice for individuals and households on
31:53
Speaker 9: how we can save water.
31:56
Speaker 10: People are being advised to turn off the tap when
31:59
Speaker 10: you're doing things like shaving or brushing your teeth, but
32:02
Speaker 10: they being asked to take shorter showers, stop rinsing your
32:05
Speaker 10: dishes before you put them in the dishwasher, and even
32:07
Speaker 10: fix leaky appliances and leaky losers. Well, all of that
32:10
Speaker 10: can help to save water.
32:12
Speaker 9: But the thing is that nearly three billion liters of
32:16
Speaker 9: water daily is lost through leaky pipes, and that's because
32:21
Speaker 9: water companies, after decades privatization, have chosen to prioritize our
32:27
Speaker 9: money as bill payers, going to faraway shareholders to line
32:30
Speaker 9: their pockets instead of investing in infrastructure. So I have
32:35
Speaker 9: some advice on saving water during this drought, but it's
32:39
Speaker 9: not for members of the public or household households. It's
32:42
Speaker 9: for this government, and it's for the Environment Department, and
32:45
Speaker 9: it's for Andy Burnham. We should be finding water companies
32:48
Speaker 9: until they go bust. If they are forced to declare
32:52
Speaker 9: how much it would cost them to fix all of
32:53
Speaker 9: our pipes so that they don't leak, they would go bust,
32:56
Speaker 9: then we can vary affordably bring them into public hands
33:00
Speaker 9: and under public ownership, all of our money as bill
33:03
Speaker 9: payers can go straight into these much needed repairs that
33:08
Speaker 9: are so desperately needed as the climate collapse accelerates, and
33:13
Speaker 9: because it's so urgent and devel can actually start tomorrow.
33:17
Speaker 9: He can start tomorrow by bringing Thames Water, which is
33:19
Speaker 9: in a state of financial collapse, is running out of money.
33:22
Speaker 5: He's got twenty billion pounds worth of debt. He can
33:24
Speaker 5: bring that.
33:25
Speaker 9: Into special administration and from there into permanent public ownership,
33:29
Speaker 9: where he's already said it should be.
33:36
Speaker 3: Joining me now, yeah, joining me now, from we own
33:40
Speaker 3: it is Kat Hobbs, Welcome to the program.
33:42
Speaker 6: Cat.
33:48
Speaker 3: There's sums of money involved with privatized water. Companies are
33:54
Speaker 3: eye watering. As we heard in that clip, three billion
33:58
Speaker 3: liters a day wasted through through leaky pipes. Most of
34:01
Speaker 3: the infrastructure dates back to the Victorian age, and billions
34:06
Speaker 3: and billions of pounds paid out in gividends to shareholders
34:11
Speaker 3: and fat cat salaries. It's got to come to an
34:14
Speaker 3: end and perhaps finds, as you suggest, there are the
34:18
Speaker 3: way to go. But does the government have the political
34:21
Speaker 3: will to do so.
34:24
Speaker 5: Good afternoon, Well they certainly should do, because eighty two
34:28
Speaker 5: percent of us want water in public ownership, and that's
34:31
Speaker 5: a majority across all voter groups. So whoever you're voting for,
34:35
Speaker 5: you probably believe that this natural monopoly of water should
34:37
Speaker 5: be in public hands. It's a very normal way to
34:40
Speaker 5: run water. So across the world, nine out of ten
34:43
Speaker 5: water systems are in public ownership. It's really disgraceful that
34:46
Speaker 5: Starmer's government didn't bring water into public hands. And it's
34:50
Speaker 5: absolutely necessary that Andy Benham's government straight away takes back
34:54
Speaker 5: Thames Water and then starts to bring the other water
34:56
Speaker 5: companies into public hands over time. It would be really
34:59
Speaker 5: easy to do, as your clip just then outlined, and
35:03
Speaker 5: that's because these water companies have really taken the mickey,
35:06
Speaker 5: and so instead of relying on regulation as the solution,
35:11
Speaker 5: what we do is squeeze them till the pips come
35:13
Speaker 5: out and then take them back.
35:16
Speaker 3: Indeed, the whole architecture of privatized water with this toothless
35:20
Speaker 3: off what body supposedly regulating what, as you say, is
35:26
Speaker 3: a natural monopoly. And also, I mean I think people
35:30
Speaker 3: resent paying these ever higher bills. When the senior executives
35:36
Speaker 3: in water companies who provide no enterprise, no imagination, no
35:41
Speaker 3: great business, now walk off with seven figure salaries. It's obscene.
35:46
Speaker 3: The British public have been swindledn't they cat.
35:50
Speaker 5: One hundred percent yes, and as you say, these aren't
35:52
Speaker 5: swashbuckling entrepreneurs. These are essentially bosses and shareholders and creditors
35:58
Speaker 5: sitting on assets, assets that used to belong to us,
36:01
Speaker 5: and they have a revenue stream. And that's why it's
36:04
Speaker 5: really important to understand that every penny of our bills
36:07
Speaker 5: needs to be going into the infrastructure instead of flowing out.
36:11
Speaker 5: Since nineteen eighty nine, under privatization, our bills are paying
36:15
Speaker 5: not just for infrastructure, but they're paying for the huge
36:19
Speaker 5: debt piles of these companies and for the dividends of
36:21
Speaker 5: the shareholders. And at the moment, if you get your
36:24
Speaker 5: water bill in through the door, you know that a
36:26
Speaker 5: third of that is going directly out again just to
36:30
Speaker 5: fill the pockets of these shareholders and creditors. So really
36:33
Speaker 5: Burnham's government has to stop this ripoff and termes water.
36:38
Speaker 5: It could be done tomorrow because actually this is a
36:41
Speaker 5: company that has been in breach of its license for
36:44
Speaker 5: two years. It's already gone bust, it's already been bailed
36:48
Speaker 5: out by households. It's still on the brink. And what's
36:51
Speaker 5: happening right now is that the US Hedge Fund, who
36:54
Speaker 5: are the creditors, who are an unaccountable group of predators
36:58
Speaker 5: because the shareholders have already walked away, they are proposing
37:01
Speaker 5: various absurd deals where they're saying they want leniency to
37:06
Speaker 5: pollute rivers. They want to be allowed to leak water
37:10
Speaker 5: away because they don't actually want to invest, but they're
37:14
Speaker 5: saying that that they will give a little bit in
37:16
Speaker 5: the way of greater public control. We have to see
37:19
Speaker 5: through this and say to Burnham, actually this is a nonsense.
37:24
Speaker 5: The only thing to do with terms of Water is
37:26
Speaker 5: to take them back. They have been in breach of
37:27
Speaker 5: their license conditions. They have gone bust. This is a
37:30
Speaker 5: company that has failed and that makes it very straightforward
37:33
Speaker 5: to take.
37:33
Speaker 2: Them back very quickly.
37:36
Speaker 3: Andy Burnham's made a song and dance about a nationwide
37:39
Speaker 3: social care program, But isn't that just going to be
37:43
Speaker 3: another opportunity for billions to be siphoned off by private agencies.
37:49
Speaker 5: Well, I think there's a really important conversation to have
37:51
Speaker 5: about social care at the moment. As you say, private
37:54
Speaker 5: equity sharks are very involved in the system, and so
37:58
Speaker 5: a lot of money is being waste did on privatization.
38:02
Speaker 5: It doesn't have to be that way, and we are
38:04
Speaker 5: calling on Andy Burnham to look at not just how
38:07
Speaker 5: we run social care, but who owns the system, who's benefiting,
38:10
Speaker 5: and how we can get the money back into the
38:12
Speaker 5: system to benefit the vulnerable people and the older people
38:16
Speaker 5: who need the care rather than equity companies far away.
38:23
Speaker 3: Very quickly, Kat, how can people support your organization?
38:26
Speaker 2: We own It?
38:28
Speaker 5: Thank you well, so come to our website we own
38:31
Speaker 5: it dot org dot UK, sign up and get involved.
38:33
Speaker 5: We really need you with us right now. And there's
38:35
Speaker 5: a really big opportunity because actually no one's quite sure
38:40
Speaker 5: how far Andy Burnham's going to go. But we are
38:42
Speaker 5: the organization that set up the campaign Better Buses the
38:45
Speaker 5: Greater Manchester, that pushed Burnham to bring the buses and
38:49
Speaker 5: Greater Manchester into public control, and so we've had a
38:53
Speaker 5: victory with him before and he stood up to the
38:55
Speaker 5: private bus companies on that one, and so now we
38:57
Speaker 5: want to win more victories. But we can only do
38:59
Speaker 5: it if you.
38:59
Speaker 2: Join us well.
39:01
Speaker 3: The water boards bringing them back into public ownership would
39:04
Speaker 3: be a huge victory and a big benefit to all
39:07
Speaker 3: of us here in Britain.
39:09
Speaker 2: Cat hobs Of, we thank.
39:11
Speaker 3: You so much for joining me today on UK column News.
39:15
Speaker 6: Very compelling arguments there, and perhaps in the future we
39:18
Speaker 6: could get Kat back on to talk about the water
39:20
Speaker 6: use of data centers, more sharks and fat cats doing
39:24
Speaker 6: deals with other sharks and fat cats. I would certainly
39:27
Speaker 6: like to know more about that. But meanwhile, Mike, the war,
39:31
Speaker 6: where are we with this war? The war seems to
39:33
Speaker 6: be expanding, unfortunately, and I really thought that this wasn't
39:39
Speaker 6: going to be the case a month ago, but this
39:42
Speaker 6: thing has found ways to expand. And here's just a
39:46
Speaker 6: couple of things that's happened over the last forty eight hours.
39:49
Speaker 6: And it's important that people understand here. Now you'll probably
39:52
Speaker 6: have heard the US and Saudi Arabia BOMBI Rock based
39:56
Speaker 6: on what however here and their claim. This is the
39:59
Speaker 6: claim here. Arabia blames Iran backed militias any Iraq for
40:03
Speaker 6: attack on oil facilities at ab Cake in Saudi Arabia,
40:09
Speaker 6: very near puff Rain. But they're saying that Yemen's Huthis
40:12
Speaker 6: also claim to have hit the kingdom's energy infrastructure. That's
40:16
Speaker 6: a half truth. They didn't hit that facility, there's no claim.
40:20
Speaker 6: So on two points, Mike, this is fake news. So
40:24
Speaker 6: no one has yet taken credit. None of the Iraqi
40:27
Speaker 6: pm US pmfs have taken credit, none of the Islamic
40:30
Speaker 6: Resistance has taken credit. So technically this is a false flag.
40:35
Speaker 6: Technically this is a false flag because there has been
40:38
Speaker 6: no attribution to it. Yet the US and Saudi Arabia
40:41
Speaker 6: responded by bombing so many targets within Iraq, hitting the
40:45
Speaker 6: Iraqi military, not Islamic resistance groups, the actual Iraqi DoD
40:52
Speaker 6: So that's clearly a gambit to expand the war. Then
40:55
Speaker 6: this in the last twenty four hours, drone attack causes
40:58
Speaker 6: fire on gas ships at me, a Terranian port in Egypt.
41:02
Speaker 6: And this is in Damietta here, and here's the key point.
41:06
Speaker 6: No party has claimed responsibility. A statement says from Egypt,
41:10
Speaker 6: adding the authorities we're continuing to investigate the incident. And
41:13
Speaker 6: yet if you read the headlines here you'll the implication
41:17
Speaker 6: is right across the mainstream medium mic that somehow this
41:21
Speaker 6: is you know, the hu Thi's or an Iranian backed operation.
41:25
Speaker 6: So again this could be another false flag. A drone
41:28
Speaker 6: reportedly hit a US owned floating storage and regassification vessel here,
41:33
Speaker 6: and this is in the med mic. So this seems
41:36
Speaker 6: to be more within the range of you know who,
41:39
Speaker 6: if we really think about it, Israel, for instance, So
41:42
Speaker 6: what do they have to benefit from an expanded world? Well,
41:45
Speaker 6: I don't know, how about the Greater Israel project. Let's
41:48
Speaker 6: just take a look at the expansion of this. So
41:50
Speaker 6: up until this point, Mike, we've really been dealing with this, Okay,
41:54
Speaker 6: this has been the area of conflict here, give and
41:57
Speaker 6: take a couple of Gulf states and of course Lebanon
41:59
Speaker 6: as well, if you want to attach that. But in
42:02
Speaker 6: the last couple of days we've seen in a massive expansion.
42:06
Speaker 6: There have been attacks here in the Caspian Sea, the
42:09
Speaker 6: Ukrainians hitting an Iranian boat there that you could say
42:14
Speaker 6: is an extension of the US blockade. Many are looking
42:16
Speaker 6: at it like that or trying to pull Russia into
42:19
Speaker 6: this conflict here. And of course, as I said in
42:22
Speaker 6: ap Cak there near Bahrain, that Saudi Aramco facility as
42:27
Speaker 6: well as all of these various attacks in Iraq, So
42:30
Speaker 6: now Iraq is involved as well. In addition, Mike, this
42:34
Speaker 6: is the Damietta on the med they're what we just
42:37
Speaker 6: said in Egypt. And of course we have Yanbu Port
42:40
Speaker 6: and yi Zan in Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea.
42:45
Speaker 6: Those are key Saudi facilities, Patrollum facilities hit by answer
42:50
Speaker 6: Allah aka the houthis here, and of course the Kingdom
42:53
Speaker 6: of Jordan, Mike, has been in there as well. In
42:56
Speaker 6: the news, the Iranians have hit US bases there destroy
43:00
Speaker 6: thirty five's hugely damaging to the US military position in
43:05
Speaker 6: the region there. So look at the expansion of that.
43:07
Speaker 6: So let's look at we're going to have to redraw
43:10
Speaker 6: this matter. Now, this is what we're looking at. This
43:12
Speaker 6: is a massive expansion of the conflict zone potentially here.
43:16
Speaker 6: So I mean, are we not looking at a world
43:20
Speaker 6: war type situation? It's certainly on the cusp, I would say,
43:24
Speaker 6: And we'll bring this back up on screen. What you
43:27
Speaker 6: see here, we could easily extend that red line around
43:29
Speaker 6: Syria and Turkey if a few more things are to
43:32
Speaker 6: happen like we've seen in the last seventy two hours.
43:36
Speaker 6: So we're just telling people that things are potentially escalating
43:41
Speaker 6: wider than just Iran and Lebanon, but only in the
43:44
Speaker 6: last week. So keep it very close eye on that
43:47
Speaker 6: and be certain that we will as well.
43:49
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
43:50
Speaker 1: Okay, Now let's come back to the UK then and well.
43:54
Speaker 1: The Prime Minister's office published a press release here. It
43:56
Speaker 1: is released on the thirtieth of julyanting what he calls
44:00
Speaker 1: the biggest transfer of power from Westminster in a generation.
44:04
Speaker 1: English mayors will for the first time retain a share
44:08
Speaker 1: of income tax. Is it the first time though, we
44:11
Speaker 1: shall see. Just bring it back on screen for a
44:13
Speaker 1: second share of income tax revenues raised in their areas,
44:17
Speaker 1: alongside a greater share of business rates. And Andy Burnham,
44:21
Speaker 1: in a second week in Dining Street, has framed this
44:24
Speaker 1: package as making good on a promise to carry part
44:27
Speaker 1: into every postcode in the country. That's his claim. That's
44:31
Speaker 1: what he wants us all to think. It's taking pow
44:34
Speaker 1: into the furthest reaches of the land. But what is
44:40
Speaker 1: the nature of this power. That's what we need to
44:42
Speaker 1: come on to now. Retention of locally generated revenue is
44:46
Speaker 1: supposed to begin next spring with business rates, so keep
44:51
Speaker 1: that in mind. Business rates come first and then further date.
44:53
Speaker 1: Detail on the income tax retention is going to come
44:56
Speaker 1: in the road maps published as part of the budget,
45:00
Speaker 1: which the press release says will be underpinned by a
45:02
Speaker 1: commitment to what they describe as fiscal discipline. Whatever that means, well,
45:06
Speaker 1: we'll come on to what that means in a second.
45:09
Speaker 1: John Healey, of course, is a new chancellor. He said
45:11
Speaker 1: that the reforms mean the communities benefit directly when their
45:14
Speaker 1: local economy grows and Angela Rinner If anybody doesn't can
45:19
Speaker 1: manage to listen to anything she says without they're side splitting.
45:23
Speaker 1: Of course, she's ironically secret estate for housing communities. The
45:26
Speaker 1: local government described it as ending the so called begging
45:30
Speaker 1: ball culture of the past.
45:32
Speaker 6: I will interject John Healy, Chancellor of the Exchequer, when
45:36
Speaker 6: he talks about local economies are growing, how are they
45:38
Speaker 6: supposed to grow through good defense jobs?
45:42
Speaker 2: Yes?
45:42
Speaker 6: Is that the plan?
45:43
Speaker 4: That is the plan.
45:44
Speaker 6: Absolutely militarize the country and more good defense. Build some
45:47
Speaker 6: drones up in Merseyside or out in the farthest reaches
45:51
Speaker 6: of Cornwall or something like that. Let's weapons of war.
45:55
Speaker 6: That's going to get us, that's going to get us
45:57
Speaker 6: back on track. Absolutely one hundred percent.
46:00
Speaker 1: Accompanying pars over local control of real and buses services,
46:05
Speaker 1: Stronger planning and regeneration pars. We know what stronger planning
46:10
Speaker 1: pars for local authorities means, because that means passing all
46:14
Speaker 1: those five gitars. But it also more importantly means the
46:17
Speaker 1: building of new data centers that we've just mentioned, control
46:21
Speaker 1: of large transport schemes sixteen to nineteen funding and employment
46:26
Speaker 1: support because there are lots of young people that are
46:30
Speaker 1: economically inactive, as they call it these days, and this
46:33
Speaker 1: local first principle, they say, is going to require ministers
46:37
Speaker 1: to justify why pars should remain in Whitehall, and they
46:40
Speaker 1: say that delivery will run through a strength and number
46:42
Speaker 1: ten North operation that everybody knows about.
46:45
Speaker 4: And the release.
46:47
Speaker 1: States that a civil service will become smaller as pars
46:50
Speaker 1: move out from the central location and areas without a
46:53
Speaker 1: mayor are promised support to establish strategic authorities. Because Burnham
46:58
Speaker 1: is presenting this as a Burnham policy, it's his big idea,
47:02
Speaker 1: a labor idea, except it isn't because it's a continuation
47:06
Speaker 1: of a policy systematically rolled out by the Blair Brian
47:09
Speaker 1: Cameron in every regime since, no matter the political party
47:13
Speaker 1: in charge. It is a uniparty policy because it's an
47:16
Speaker 1: internationalist policy. And if you're wondering what's on screen at
47:19
Speaker 1: the moment, it's a headline from twenty fifteen when George
47:22
Speaker 1: Osborne announced that the consuls were to keep twenty six
47:24
Speaker 1: billion pounds from business rates in a devolution revolution, and
47:28
Speaker 1: we got to say, Patrick, devolution is not about local
47:31
Speaker 1: decision making. It is about bringing centralized control to the
47:35
Speaker 1: local level. And if you don't believe me, consider this.
47:39
Speaker 1: Several Tory and Reform consuls since this press release was
47:43
Speaker 1: published Announce Today would consider using the money released to
47:46
Speaker 1: them under Burnham's scheme to give rebates to local people.
47:50
Speaker 1: Now that's a local decision made locally for the benefit
47:53
Speaker 1: of locals. But central government says absolutely not. And as
47:58
Speaker 1: Gito Fox here is saying that, they are saying no,
48:02
Speaker 1: that only spending is allowed. For this money, You've got
48:04
Speaker 1: to spend it. So the best that can be said
48:07
Speaker 1: is that local decisions could be made between options and
48:10
Speaker 1: only the options that are provided by central government. That's
48:13
Speaker 1: what they mean by evolution. It is central control at
48:17
Speaker 1: a local level. And I'll just point out that the
48:20
Speaker 1: only party which sees through this agenda, it seems, is
48:23
Speaker 1: David Curtin's Heritage Party, which is absolutely recognizes what this
48:28
Speaker 1: mayor policy and the city's policy is all about, and
48:32
Speaker 1: is actively campaigning to have it all scrapped. But you know,
48:35
Speaker 1: it is quite an incredible situation Patrick, that you know,
48:40
Speaker 1: people forget that this evolution policy is not Burnham's policy.
48:45
Speaker 1: It is something that is cross party and every political
48:48
Speaker 1: party in this country has been one hundred percent behind
48:51
Speaker 1: it for the last since nineteen ninety eight.
48:53
Speaker 6: Basically, I thought, I thought the comments there from the
48:56
Speaker 6: reform and the conservative suggestion of return some of that
49:00
Speaker 6: money in the form of rebates is interesting. Curiously, Mike
49:03
Speaker 6: always wondered about this position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
49:07
Speaker 6: the iconic red suitcase, the budget and all this. Are
49:10
Speaker 6: any of these people trained economists, like what's generally their experience.
49:15
Speaker 6: It's not really about doing anything for the economy, is it.
49:18
Speaker 6: It's about basically taxing, borrowing and spending. That's basically what
49:22
Speaker 6: government seems to be doing all of these days. And
49:25
Speaker 6: if I look at the actual engine of the economy
49:28
Speaker 6: in Britain, it's really the small to medium sized enterprise.
49:31
Speaker 6: It's the SME sector in business, that's the actual main employer,
49:36
Speaker 6: that's the actual driver of the economy. And what is
49:39
Speaker 6: the biggest killer of SMEs. It's business rates, which is
49:43
Speaker 6: basically a tax. Before you even open the shop you
49:46
Speaker 6: have to pay and what do you get for it?
49:48
Speaker 6: They even charge you extra for rubbish collection on top
49:51
Speaker 6: of that. Believe it or not, at least rubbish collection
49:54
Speaker 6: should be included in business rates right, No, it's not.
49:57
Speaker 6: So that seems to me like a real econom to
50:00
Speaker 6: meet killer is business right. So any suggestion of helping
50:03
Speaker 6: small to medium sized businesses get a little advantage in
50:07
Speaker 6: a little relief, I think is a good thing for
50:09
Speaker 6: economic growth. But hey, I only took basic economics as
50:12
Speaker 6: an undergraduate. I'm certainly not qualified to be Chancellor of
50:16
Speaker 6: the Exchequer.
50:16
Speaker 1: Well, looks the key point here is Patrick, if the
50:18
Speaker 1: money was given back as rebids, it would still be
50:21
Speaker 1: getting spent. The problem is is not being spent on
50:24
Speaker 1: the right things as far as the Treasury, or as
50:27
Speaker 1: far as Burnam is concerned. So you can't be left
50:30
Speaker 1: up to you and me to decide what we're going
50:31
Speaker 1: to spend her money on. It has to only be
50:33
Speaker 1: spent through the agenda. And that's that's the position we're
50:37
Speaker 1: in at the moment. But speaking of spending money, and
50:40
Speaker 1: speaking of the fact that the new economy is a
50:43
Speaker 1: war economy, what is John Healey up to.
50:46
Speaker 6: Well, let's just take a look at this article here
50:49
Speaker 6: from Declassified UK. Chancellor wants a military officer with him
50:55
Speaker 6: at Treasury. Is that a bodyguard or is that an advisor?
50:59
Speaker 6: We're not sure, let's bring that back up on screen again,
51:02
Speaker 6: bring that article back. So he wants to have he
51:04
Speaker 6: wants to have a sidekick someone to I don't know,
51:06
Speaker 6: overseas spending to make sure that what the military is
51:10
Speaker 6: getting their business. I thought he left his last position
51:13
Speaker 6: as defense secretary and now he's chancellor. Why is he
51:16
Speaker 6: dragging his old job portfolio into the new department.
51:20
Speaker 1: Because he left his last position because Starmer was not
51:24
Speaker 1: prepared to spend enough on defense. Now he's chancellor and
51:26
Speaker 1: he can bring all his myths in and make sure
51:29
Speaker 1: that the money is going in exactly the direction he
51:31
Speaker 1: wants to go in.
51:32
Speaker 6: So is he what a stooge of the military industrial
51:35
Speaker 6: Well it's just not obvious, is it. But let's bring
51:39
Speaker 6: this back again. So an advocacy group here, just to
51:42
Speaker 6: pull some key points here from kem Rogali here, from
51:46
Speaker 6: the Transition Security Project. There, an advacy group on this
51:50
Speaker 6: overspending here. Stationing a military officer at the Treasury will
51:54
Speaker 6: increase pressure to cut areas of government spending to fund
51:57
Speaker 6: the soaring military budget, taking money from schools, hospitals to
52:01
Speaker 6: fund notoriously wasteful military and boy is it wasteful? If
52:05
Speaker 6: you want to talk about contract procurements and the lengths
52:08
Speaker 6: of some of these projects, the mothballing, Hey, there's a
52:11
Speaker 6: conversation to be out here. We'll bring that back up
52:13
Speaker 6: on screen again though, and see what else he has
52:16
Speaker 6: to say. It should not escape the Treasury's attention that
52:19
Speaker 6: military spending is one of the worst forms of public
52:22
Speaker 6: investment for jobs and growth. Military largesse is an extremely
52:26
Speaker 6: damaging economic strategy here, and he goes on to conclude,
52:31
Speaker 6: despite the claim that more military spending is needed for
52:35
Speaker 6: national defense, the Defense Investment Plan commits Britain to military
52:39
Speaker 6: engagement in the Middle East, Indo Pacific, Africa, Latin America
52:43
Speaker 6: and the Caucuses. What are we doing in the Caucuses,
52:47
Speaker 6: pray tell, may I ask Mike.
52:50
Speaker 4: Well, the point here is they have announced the next
52:53
Speaker 4: World war effectively, because this is basically every region on
52:56
Speaker 4: the planet we intend to be engaged in some kind
53:00
Speaker 4: of conflict, whatever scale it happens to be.
53:02
Speaker 6: What I see here is the dying pangs of a
53:06
Speaker 6: shadow of a former imperial power. This is what we
53:10
Speaker 6: see trying to remain relevant. And what can you do
53:13
Speaker 6: to remain relevant? Well, let's just try to start wars.
53:17
Speaker 6: Let's see if we can get wars going around the
53:19
Speaker 6: world to fuel our great new defense economy. Here this
53:24
Speaker 6: seems to be potentially not just counterproductive, but highly dangerous
53:28
Speaker 6: in this current conflict ridden world that we're in right now,
53:33
Speaker 6: with so many different nuclear powers abound and more nuclear
53:36
Speaker 6: powers to come online as well, maybe there's a way
53:40
Speaker 6: to pursue diplomacy or peace. Isn't that more economical in
53:43
Speaker 6: the long run? One would think it depends what your
53:47
Speaker 6: policy is. If your policy is just a funnel money
53:49
Speaker 6: and doesn't matter if it's twenty twenty and big Farmer
53:52
Speaker 6: or twenty twenty six and the industrial military industrial complex,
53:56
Speaker 6: just get that toxic pair money going in those directions.
53:59
Speaker 6: It depends what you're index fund has in it exactly, really,
54:02
Speaker 6: your private equity portfolio. Isn't that what we're talking about anyway?
54:07
Speaker 1: Anyway, let's move on to other things. Online Safety Act.
54:11
Speaker 1: So earlier this week, the House of Lords Communications and
54:15
Speaker 1: Digital Committee began a new inquiry into the implementation, enforcement,
54:20
Speaker 1: and impact of the Online Safety Act. They are seem
54:24
Speaker 1: to be taking the view that Ofcom's implementation of the
54:26
Speaker 1: Act is a failure. Now, the Online Safety Act was
54:29
Speaker 1: intended to bring about a step change in protection against
54:33
Speaker 1: online harms in the UK. That's what they say. Of course,
54:37
Speaker 1: if you've been following what the UK column has been
54:39
Speaker 1: talking about for some time, may have come to another conclusion,
54:42
Speaker 1: but anyway, they say that many of the rules it
54:45
Speaker 1: introduced are now in force and a year has passed
54:48
Speaker 1: since key duties to protect children come into effect in
54:50
Speaker 1: July twenty twenty five. However, they say serious concerns have
54:54
Speaker 1: been raised that the regime is currently an effective. OFFCOM,
54:57
Speaker 1: the regulator charged with its implementation enforcement, has faced criticism
55:02
Speaker 1: for not doing enough or going far enough or fast
55:05
Speaker 1: enough in its efforts to hold online services and tech
55:08
Speaker 1: companies to account, and at the same time, new harms
55:12
Speaker 1: continue to emerge as technologies evolve. So the Community's Communications
55:16
Speaker 1: and Digital Committee has opened a new inquiry into the
55:20
Speaker 1: Online Safety Act. It's going to consider the implementation and
55:23
Speaker 1: enforcement of the Act, and Baroness Killey then, who's chair
55:28
Speaker 1: of the committee, said our new inquiry will look in
55:30
Speaker 1: detail at how the Act is being implemented by OFFCOM.
55:33
Speaker 1: The law, any law is only as good as its enforcement,
55:36
Speaker 1: and we want to know if it's if it's doing
55:39
Speaker 1: enough to hold tech platforms to account, and we'll look
55:42
Speaker 1: at whether there are issues with the legislation itself that
55:45
Speaker 1: need to be addressed, both to improve online safety now
55:49
Speaker 1: and ensure we're better prepared to tackle new harms as
55:52
Speaker 1: they emerge in the future. And yes, indeed, so look,
55:56
Speaker 1: they're inviting written contributions to be submitted by five people
56:00
Speaker 1: on Monday, the seventh of September, and the questions post
56:04
Speaker 1: by the committee will be linked in the show notes,
56:08
Speaker 1: So do have a look at those.
56:10
Speaker 6: So harms. Harms are now a thing.
56:13
Speaker 1: There have been a thing since twenty seventeen. Patrick, We've
56:15
Speaker 1: been talking about it all that time, so they'll continue
56:17
Speaker 1: to be a thing. And all you have to do
56:19
Speaker 1: is there's plenty of harms on the internet, Mike, you
56:22
Speaker 1: just have to if you want to go look for harms,
56:24
Speaker 1: you'll find them.
56:25
Speaker 6: You'll find them. So once that mean more regulation, more restrictions, absolutely,
56:30
Speaker 6: the more things that we label as harms. There weren't
56:33
Speaker 6: harms before twenty seventeen. There were just stuff on the internet,
56:36
Speaker 6: but there we are.
56:37
Speaker 1: Indeed, Basil, let's come back to you and finish with
56:41
Speaker 1: some more in case you missed it.
56:44
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, My Kid's Time for everybody's favorite section
56:48
Speaker 3: of the week. In case you missed it, get the
56:50
Speaker 3: popcorn ready for five minutes of quick fire stories that
56:54
Speaker 3: you may or may not have noticed, starting with this one.
57:00
Speaker 2: Believe it or not, AI.
57:02
Speaker 3: Is now shredding books, scanning them, and then pulping the books.
57:06
Speaker 3: This isn't fake news or a scare story, and it
57:11
Speaker 3: includes rare books in particular, the idea being that we
57:16
Speaker 3: only go to AI and it becomes the sole source
57:19
Speaker 3: of information. Extremely disturbing if you ask me. Next up,
57:25
Speaker 3: we've got oh, yes, Benjamin Netta, who says Israeli special
57:30
Speaker 3: forces will come and rescue him if he's arrested anywhere
57:35
Speaker 3: in Europe. Of course, Zoron mom Dali wanted to arrest
57:39
Speaker 3: him in New York City because he plans on going
57:43
Speaker 3: to the United Nations again in September. But of course
57:48
Speaker 3: the warrant remains out, and hopefully he will get arrested,
57:51
Speaker 3: and then we'll see Israeli commandos descending on well wherever.
57:56
Speaker 3: That should be quite a spectacle, shouldn't it. Next up,
57:59
Speaker 3: we got yes. The words Jewish terrorists appeared in the
58:05
Speaker 3: headline of an article by Brett Stevens in the New
58:08
Speaker 3: York Times, but only for about an hour.
58:12
Speaker 2: Then, of course, such.
58:13
Speaker 3: Acendury phraise had to be taken down and replaced with
58:19
Speaker 3: something much more anodyne. Well done for spotting that one.
58:24
Speaker 3: Next up, we've got another fascinating story. Donald Trump has
58:30
Speaker 3: made over a billion dollars in his first year out
58:34
Speaker 3: of cryptocurrency, more coming from other nefarious sources, including this
58:40
Speaker 3: coin company that he set up with his sons. It
58:43
Speaker 3: really is absolutely unprecedented. More than two billion in all
58:48
Speaker 3: since he assumed office. He's earned more money, far more
58:51
Speaker 3: money since he became president than beforehand. A nine hundred
58:56
Speaker 3: and twenty four page financial disclosure is what was produced.
59:02
Speaker 3: Next up, we've got Yeah, this is one of my favorites. Now,
59:08
Speaker 3: this is one of the whistleblowers. Actually, this isn't just
59:11
Speaker 3: any old so and so from the internet. This is
59:14
Speaker 3: more than one whistle blow In flact has said that
59:17
Speaker 3: the United States is indeed in contact with extraterrestrial races.
59:23
Speaker 3: A lot of people say that Donald Trump is going
59:25
Speaker 3: to be the man to finally go ahead with disclosure.
59:30
Speaker 3: That's the key word, when finally the rest of the
59:33
Speaker 3: public become aware that indeed the shadow government have been
59:38
Speaker 3: in touch with extraterrestrials for decades. We shall see time
59:43
Speaker 3: tells all. That was my old prep school motto. Never
59:46
Speaker 3: truer than in that case. And finally today, possibly my
59:51
Speaker 3: favorite idio means grandson. So idio means grandson has been
1:00:00
Speaker 3: disqualified from the boxing tournament at the Commonwealth Games because
1:00:04
Speaker 3: he head butted somebody. Apparently he arrived with an ambition
1:00:09
Speaker 3: to become the next King of Scotland. Doesn't look like
1:00:12
Speaker 3: he's going to get his wish, and it doesn't look
1:00:14
Speaker 3: like he's going to win a medal either, because he's
1:00:16
Speaker 3: been disqualified for head butting. He wasn't happy about it.
1:00:20
Speaker 3: Of course, great grandfather was also a boxing champion before
1:00:25
Speaker 3: becoming President for life of Uganda. Unfortunately that didn't work out.
1:00:30
Speaker 3: Lots of stories about Armen, but one that I picked
1:00:34
Speaker 3: up this week was that apparently so many people were
1:00:37
Speaker 3: fed to the crocodiles in the Nile when he was
1:00:41
Speaker 3: running the country that it clogged up the hydro electric
1:00:45
Speaker 3: works downstream. And finally tonight we do have another story,
1:00:50
Speaker 3: which is, boy, George, you couldn't have to a nicer bloke.
1:00:54
Speaker 3: He released an entirely AI pop song about how the
1:01:01
Speaker 3: Holocaust in Gaza is simply war.
1:01:03
Speaker 2: You know, I thing can be done about.
1:01:05
Speaker 3: It, massacring thousands, tens of thousands of children, mutilating more well,
1:01:12
Speaker 3: never mind who cares well. Unfortunately, the backlash has already begun.
1:01:15
Speaker 3: I should say fortunately, because he's left his role in
1:01:20
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ Superstar wholly in the fitting vehicle for our
1:01:27
Speaker 3: boy George, who, of course was prosecuted for chaining somebody
1:01:31
Speaker 3: to radiate a sexual misadventure I believe some years ago.
1:01:35
Speaker 3: So I think that marks the beginning of the end
1:01:39
Speaker 3: of boy George's career. The song is dire, the sentiment
1:01:44
Speaker 3: even worse. It might be the last we see of him.
1:01:47
Speaker 3: I never was a fan. I don't know about you
1:01:49
Speaker 3: too well. All I can say about boy George major misstep.
1:01:53
Speaker 3: There a man without conviction, a man who doesn't know
1:01:57
Speaker 3: how to sell a contradiction, or a boy George, and
1:02:01
Speaker 3: it's a shame about Edie means grandson Basil. A lot
1:02:03
Speaker 3: of people have given an arm and a leg for
1:02:05
Speaker 3: that opportunity to compete at the game. That's a very
1:02:10
Speaker 3: bad pun Patrick, giving an arm and a leg given
1:02:13
Speaker 3: the fact that granddad was, it was claimed accountable. When
1:02:20
Speaker 3: he asked whether he ate human flesh, he said not
1:02:24
Speaker 3: very often because he found it a bit too salty.
1:02:27
Speaker 6: I don't know much about that story. I've only heard
1:02:29
Speaker 6: bits and pieces.
1:02:30
Speaker 4: Right, we're going to finish that.
1:02:32
Speaker 1: We're going to finish that idea because this could get
1:02:34
Speaker 1: very sully undunedly will continue that extra however, So if
1:02:37
Speaker 1: you are UK call member, stay on the live stream
1:02:40
Speaker 1: and we'll be back in a few minutes for extra. Otherwise,
1:02:43
Speaker 1: thank you Basil, thank you Patrick, Thanks everybody that's been watching.
1:02:47
Speaker 1: We'll be back at one pm for another news program
1:02:49
Speaker 1: on Monday. We'll see you then.
1:02:51
Speaker 2: Hell