Latest / UK Column Radio / UK Column News Podcast 13th January 2025

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UK Column News Podcast 13th January 2025 · UK Column Radio

0:08
Speaker 1: Good afternoon. Today is Monday, the thirteenth of January twenty
0:12
Speaker 1: twenty five, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK column News.
0:16
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Brian Gerrish, delighted to have Ben Rubin
0:19
Speaker 1: with me in the studio. Brian, afternoon to you. And
0:24
Speaker 1: we're also joined by Diane Rasmusen mcaddie, who will be
0:28
Speaker 1: joining us from Edinburgh with a live link, So welcome Diane.
0:33
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get kicked off on the subject
0:36
Speaker 1: of confusion and chaos because this seems to be the
0:39
Speaker 1: thing that our audience is peeking up on. We're just
0:42
Speaker 1: drowning under a deluge of different reports and media claims.
0:48
Speaker 1: And let's just bring a few of these on screen.
0:50
Speaker 1: I could have selected fifty at one hundred, but all
0:54
Speaker 1: sorts of different headlines talking about different bits and pieces.
0:59
Speaker 1: Here's a select on your screen. Is it Starmer's controversial
1:03
Speaker 1: AI reforms that we should be paying attention to, or
1:07
Speaker 1: problems in the NHS, or was it Tony Blair looking
1:13
Speaker 1: after our mental health?
1:14
Speaker 2: Well?
1:14
Speaker 1: No, the most dangerous one we saw was the Telegraph,
1:19
Speaker 1: which is on the tucked away on the left of
1:21
Speaker 1: the screen. Let's bring this on here. It is net
1:24
Speaker 1: zero nudge unit accused of COVID scare tactics, will push
1:30
Speaker 1: heat pumps on the public. So here we've got that
1:34
Speaker 1: the public is to replace all of their gas boilers
1:37
Speaker 1: with the controversial and many say inefficient heat pumps. But
1:42
Speaker 1: the government is so desperate to get this agenda round
1:46
Speaker 1: home that they're going to use the Behavior Insights Team.
1:49
Speaker 1: And yes, this was the team that was working with
1:52
Speaker 1: the government and other psychologists in order to scare the
1:56
Speaker 1: public during lockdown so that the public followed better, followed
2:02
Speaker 1: the government's directive. So scare fear anxiety being unleashed on
2:08
Speaker 1: the public in order that we should follow the government's policy. Now,
2:13
Speaker 1: the Telegraph does mention that fear factor and that one
2:17
Speaker 1: of the Behavioral Insights Team members was concerned about it.
2:23
Speaker 1: But of course what the Telegraph didn't do was go
2:26
Speaker 1: into the depths of the beast in order to show
2:29
Speaker 1: the public what we're really talking about. So UK Colin
2:32
Speaker 1: will do that. Now, this is the mind Space document
2:36
Speaker 1: out of the Cabinet Office in twenty ten. I'm putting
2:39
Speaker 1: it up on screen so that all of the information
2:42
Speaker 1: is there in front of you. But David Halpin mentioned
2:45
Speaker 1: it in the text on the right one of the
2:47
Speaker 1: key people. And if we get into that document, there
2:50
Speaker 1: was a paragraph saying potential for controversy where the government
2:55
Speaker 1: was admitting that if and when people really understood what
2:59
Speaker 1: was having happening, they would accuse the government of brainwashing.
3:03
Speaker 1: That's absolutely what the government was doing. And then this
3:06
Speaker 1: was one of the key sentences when this applied psychology
3:11
Speaker 1: was used. They said that means that citizens may not
3:15
Speaker 1: fully realize that their behavior is being changed, or at
3:18
Speaker 1: least how it is being changed. Clearly, this opens up
3:22
Speaker 1: the government to charges and manipulation. So whatever you think
3:27
Speaker 1: about politicians that they lie, deceive, cheat, or they're into
3:31
Speaker 1: criminal activity or even children, these people now using applied psychology,
3:37
Speaker 1: and the UK column warned and warned and warned about this.
3:41
Speaker 1: He is twenty May twenty thirteen when we're pointing out
3:45
Speaker 1: that Francis Maude was busy promoting that so called nudge unit,
3:50
Speaker 1: and then with it we also warned in twenty eighteen
3:54
Speaker 1: a little bit before, if I remember correctly, these key statements.
3:58
Speaker 1: So Cameron ally and one time advisor Danny Krueger was
4:02
Speaker 1: forced to resign as a Tory candidate for Sedgefield after
4:05
Speaker 1: he was quoted as saying that the Conservatives plan to
4:09
Speaker 1: introduce a period of creative destruction in the public services.
4:14
Speaker 1: And Ben surely that's what we've got happening around us
4:17
Speaker 1: at the moment. But that was one quote. Nicholas Bowles
4:21
Speaker 1: MP at the same time was quoted in The Guardian
4:24
Speaker 1: and elsewhere the Prime Minister and his deputy Nick Klegg
4:27
Speaker 1: want their people power revolution to unleash chaotic effects across
4:33
Speaker 1: local communities. Chaotic, therefore, in our vocabulary, is a good thing.
4:39
Speaker 1: These people deadly serious. They were going to break the
4:43
Speaker 1: country and they were going to do it in a
4:46
Speaker 1: revolutionary sense, and essentially they were going to break down
4:51
Speaker 1: the structure of our society in order to build back better.
4:56
Speaker 1: Well that's the phrase that they're now using. Now, there
4:59
Speaker 1: were other war So if we just bring this one
5:01
Speaker 1: on screen. We've got Peter Hitchins, he said, we're on
5:05
Speaker 1: the verge of founding Britain's first thought police. Well, clearly
5:09
Speaker 1: that's already happened. And look at the date. This is
5:12
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen when the UK column was warning about this. Now,
5:17
Speaker 1: if we've got a state that is going to use
5:19
Speaker 1: propaganderance and psychological reframing to change the minds of the population.
5:25
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be surprised if that's going to be used
5:28
Speaker 1: when there's a state of war to help make people
5:31
Speaker 1: in this country more fearful. Let's have a look at Ukraine,
5:35
Speaker 1: because of course that's one of the major conflict areas
5:38
Speaker 1: in the world today. Here's the BBC headline, Russia claims
5:42
Speaker 1: capture of Ukrainian frontline town. But if we put in
5:47
Speaker 1: what the real headline should be, Russia continues to advance
5:51
Speaker 1: on key fronts and Russia is poised to capture the
5:55
Speaker 1: strategic cities per Cross excuse me, percrossk you are and
6:00
Speaker 1: Tret and these captures mean that there is a massive
6:05
Speaker 1: change on the battlefield. But of course the BBC is
6:09
Speaker 1: simply not telling the truth. Here's another BBC headline, Zelenski
6:13
Speaker 1: offers an exchange of North Korean soldiers. So you're led
6:17
Speaker 1: to believe one thing by the headline itself. I'll come
6:21
Speaker 1: back onto that. But if we put some truthful headlines here,
6:26
Speaker 1: Russias is close to finalizing Ukraine's curse salient fifty thousand
6:33
Speaker 1: declared Ukrainian casualties in that sector at the front alone.
6:38
Speaker 1: Ukrainian losses climb as Ukraine retreats. So this is to
6:42
Speaker 1: be expected because as men leave their defensive positions, they're
6:46
Speaker 1: more vulnerable to attack. And the other thing that's been
6:50
Speaker 1: happening is the desertions in the Ukrainian army have been
6:54
Speaker 1: climbing and climbing as a morale in their army is collapsing.
7:00
Speaker 1: No mention of this for the BBC. And this is
7:03
Speaker 1: the little piggy from the BBC that the soldier that
7:09
Speaker 1: their article discussed had exhibited Russian ID showing that he
7:14
Speaker 1: was Turan from the Russian Republic of Tuvan, which is
7:18
Speaker 1: on the Mongolian border, and significantly there was no speech,
7:23
Speaker 1: So we are to believe that these are Koreans when
7:27
Speaker 1: the reality seems to be seems to be that actually
7:30
Speaker 1: they are Russians from that Mongolian border area. However, the
7:34
Speaker 1: BBC doesn't bother with the facts. He just wants to
7:37
Speaker 1: get the spin headline out. And if we look at
7:40
Speaker 1: what's been going on in more detail, this is the
7:43
Speaker 1: sort of thing that the press has been talking about.
7:46
Speaker 1: The Russian army is incompetent and morale is poor. That
7:50
Speaker 1: was a lie. The Russian military equipment is inferior. Another lie,
7:55
Speaker 1: Ukraine will win because the Russians hate Putin and Russian
7:58
Speaker 1: people will forceme change. That was clearly untrue. Russia is
8:03
Speaker 1: running out of munitions. Well, that was a laughable claim
8:06
Speaker 1: at the time, but it goes on. Ukraine will win
8:10
Speaker 1: because of Western weapons such as the Javelin anti tank
8:13
Speaker 1: missiles or the Patriot missile systems. That was all proven
8:17
Speaker 1: to be false. Ukraine will win because of US, UK
8:21
Speaker 1: and NATO special forces and military advisors. None of that worked.
8:26
Speaker 1: Ukraine will win because of US, German and UK tanks.
8:30
Speaker 1: That's the Abrahams, the Leopard and the Challenger tanks. They're
8:33
Speaker 1: busy burning on the battlefield and on the propaganda goes
8:38
Speaker 1: Ukraine will win because of US F sixteen's that of
8:42
Speaker 1: course never happened. Ukraine will win because of NATO training
8:46
Speaker 1: for Ukrainian conscripts at NATO bases. That was false. Ukraine
8:51
Speaker 1: will win because of those special advisors, right, that's the
8:54
Speaker 1: duplication there. And Ukraine will win because of US and
8:58
Speaker 1: NATO drone. If we look at the facts on the ground,
9:03
Speaker 1: we are seeing that the Russians are outperforming the whole
9:06
Speaker 1: of the Ukrainian military, the US and NATO combined, and
9:11
Speaker 1: they're outstripping the US and NATO in their productions of munitions.
9:15
Speaker 1: On the battlefield. We've got that the Russian air defense,
9:19
Speaker 1: particularly the missile systems such as the S four hundred,
9:23
Speaker 1: are showing outstanding performance. And the Russian adaptation to drome warfare,
9:28
Speaker 1: surveillance and attack is clearly outstanding. And it goes on
9:33
Speaker 1: because the Russians electronic warfare was described as eyewatering by
9:38
Speaker 1: an American general several two years ago. In fact, the
9:42
Speaker 1: Russian glide bomb technology up to three thousand kilogram flying
9:47
Speaker 1: bombs is outstanding and there's no Ukrainian or Western defense
9:51
Speaker 1: and the Russian hypersonic missile technology is outstripping the US
9:55
Speaker 1: and Western technology. So overall, the situation is that the
10:00
Speaker 1: Russian military, well the army and the air force in particular,
10:05
Speaker 1: has adapted to large scale battle conditions in Ukraine, and
10:10
Speaker 1: even though they've been under the combined US, NATO and
10:13
Speaker 1: Ukrainian space, airborne and drone battlefield surveillance system their performance
10:19
Speaker 1: has been outstanding. That is not for the uk column
10:23
Speaker 1: to be promoting Russia per se. What we are demonstrating.
10:27
Speaker 1: Here is the sheer lies and propaganda that's come through
10:31
Speaker 1: the BBC in the Western press about the reality of
10:35
Speaker 1: the battle. Meanwhile, in UK and again the UK Column
10:41
Speaker 1: has been warning and warning about this. We see the
10:43
Speaker 1: breakdown of our own military. So here is a sex
10:47
Speaker 1: incident on board one of our nuclear submarines which resulted
10:51
Speaker 1: in the captain of that vessel being relieved of his command.
10:56
Speaker 1: And if that isn't enough, here's the Armed Force Network
11:01
Speaker 1: getting very excited because Satanism has been approved for use
11:07
Speaker 1: in the Royal Navy. We're an equal opportunities employer and
11:11
Speaker 1: we don't stop anybody from having their own religious values.
11:15
Speaker 1: Policies that were of a practical, reasonable request for time,
11:18
Speaker 1: and facilities that do not impact on operational effectiveness or
11:23
Speaker 1: the welfare of other personnel are met. I believe we're
11:27
Speaker 1: looking at deliberate orchestrated breakdown across our society. It's the NHS,
11:33
Speaker 1: it's education, it's the police, it's the military. This is
11:37
Speaker 1: not accidental. We are being attacked by our own government
11:41
Speaker 1: and I think Ben, you've got more to tell us
11:43
Speaker 1: about how this is being done.
11:46
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and it's not just our own government. It's also
11:50
Speaker 3: the market, importantly, the public private partnership that's being used
11:55
Speaker 3: to create chaos out of which a new order will
11:58
Speaker 3: be built. I'm going to reintroduce you to this gentleman,
12:02
Speaker 3: Brent Hoberman CB. The British establishment are absolutely the center
12:08
Speaker 3: of all of this. We're going to meet a few
12:09
Speaker 3: people today who have honors from the royal family and
12:13
Speaker 3: I mentioned him first on the column on the sixteenth
12:16
Speaker 3: of December last year. He's the exec chairman of Founders Factory.
12:20
Speaker 3: He was the co founder of lastminute dot com, which
12:23
Speaker 3: he sold for one point one billion dollars in two
12:26
Speaker 3: thousand and five. Is where he established most of his
12:28
Speaker 3: wealth and he's now been plowing that into disruptive innovation startups.
12:33
Speaker 3: He also works on the UK Advisory Board for Government
12:37
Speaker 3: Digital Services, so he sits right at the heart of
12:40
Speaker 3: digitization of the British state. Interestingly, there's a link there
12:44
Speaker 3: between the mind Space document and GDS, which I don't
12:48
Speaker 3: have time to get into right now, but there's something
12:49
Speaker 3: that happened in the early years of that Cameron first
12:52
Speaker 3: Cameron government that is really crucial to understand what we're
12:55
Speaker 3: seeing around us today. He's also on the advisory board
12:58
Speaker 3: of Google Cloud. We can see how the technology companies
13:01
Speaker 3: in the state are really beginning to merge around people
13:04
Speaker 3: like this. He's also on the advisory board for the
13:06
Speaker 3: World Economic Forum Digital Europe Group, and he is a
13:09
Speaker 3: young global leader of the World Economic Forum, right, so
13:13
Speaker 3: very important individual. We spoke about this meeting, this brainstorming
13:17
Speaker 3: session that he had last year with Rachel Reeves, UK
13:21
Speaker 3: Chancellor and Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation
13:24
Speaker 3: and Technology, where they talked about using AI across government,
13:28
Speaker 3: spreading AI outside of urban centers really importantly, they want
13:31
Speaker 3: this to be used across the whole country. Also plugging
13:34
Speaker 3: Ewan Blair's recruitment company into central government to create a
13:38
Speaker 3: marketplace for new types of people being employed by central government,
13:43
Speaker 3: and then also stripping back regulations around technology. That was
13:46
Speaker 3: the focus of this conversation. Hoberman is also very closely
13:50
Speaker 3: LinkedIn to Oxford University. We spoke about his backing for
13:53
Speaker 3: William Haig to be the Oxford Chancellor. Haigue has been
13:57
Speaker 3: elected as Oxford Chancellor. Hopeman was part of the campaign
14:01
Speaker 3: to make that happen, and he's also very keen as
14:03
Speaker 3: I suppose you'd expect on Elon Musk helping Britain slash
14:07
Speaker 3: public spending, the digitization of the state, bringing in big
14:10
Speaker 3: tech billionaires, inter central government in order to transform how
14:14
Speaker 3: things are run, the new order ultimately out of this
14:16
Speaker 3: chaos that we're seeing, the breakdown that we're seeing now.
14:19
Speaker 3: I mentioned this group Founders Forum, all right, so this
14:23
Speaker 3: is where he has put a lot of his money,
14:25
Speaker 3: his time, and his investments. In two thousand and five,
14:28
Speaker 3: it's grown Ali. I used to work in this space.
14:31
Speaker 3: I was aware of them. It was a really high
14:34
Speaker 3: level network, very exclusive invitation only. It was primarily focused
14:38
Speaker 3: around an event, but they've subsequently expanded the group out
14:42
Speaker 3: into a whole bunch of different areas. So they've got
14:44
Speaker 3: the events and the networking, bringing people together, facilitating conversations.
14:49
Speaker 3: Convening is the big word that I hear people using nowadays.
14:53
Speaker 3: They convene politicians, investors, startup founders. They've got an education
14:59
Speaker 3: dynamic what they do. They've got professional services so they
15:02
Speaker 3: can advise you as a startup founder in their curated
15:05
Speaker 3: community around legal issues, around strategic communication, how do you
15:10
Speaker 3: hire people, how do you incentivize them. They've also got
15:12
Speaker 3: an investment component. So part of that is first Minute Capital,
15:16
Speaker 3: which is essentially like a family office type setup for Hobeman,
15:20
Speaker 3: he's got a load of his money in there. But
15:22
Speaker 3: then also they've got a broader proposition around Founders Factory.
15:26
Speaker 3: They've got a philanthropy component as well, so they can
15:29
Speaker 3: actually once they've made you a millionaire, they can help
15:31
Speaker 3: you spend that money in a philanthropic way and you
15:34
Speaker 3: can imagine how all that money gets directed, right, It's
15:38
Speaker 3: all the same kind of social innovation stuff that we
15:40
Speaker 3: are used to the kind of things that we talk
15:42
Speaker 3: about a lot in terms of the philanthropic space on
15:44
Speaker 3: the column. And you can see if we go back
15:47
Speaker 3: to the side there, this is all backed by their
15:49
Speaker 3: partners in this are big tech Google Salesforce, you've got McKinsey,
15:54
Speaker 3: the global strategy firm in their Goldman Sachs HSBC.
16:00
Speaker 2: Now, as you get an understanding.
16:01
Speaker 3: Of the kind of pedigree that we're talking about here,
16:03
Speaker 3: like quite an impressive mix, to be perfectly honest with you,
16:06
Speaker 3: And actually they're also interestingly for me in particular, sold
16:10
Speaker 3: this organization found as Intelligence into Eccentia, which is one
16:14
Speaker 3: of the big systems integrators the big technology consulting firms,
16:18
Speaker 3: and that will actually sit in the group. That was
16:21
Speaker 3: where a company that I used to work out was
16:24
Speaker 3: sold back in twenty eighteen. Yeah, so I was right
16:27
Speaker 3: in the sweet spot of my professional background, right, helping
16:30
Speaker 3: people these kinds of strategic problems relating to technology.
16:34
Speaker 4: Right.
16:34
Speaker 3: So this is a really interesting group. They've got a
16:37
Speaker 3: lot of stuff going on, but a lot of it
16:39
Speaker 3: for me is really it's about, first of all, burnishing
16:42
Speaker 3: the reputation of the big technology firms. So these big
16:45
Speaker 3: tech firms are key strategic partners to Founders Forum, and
16:49
Speaker 3: these are the people that are ultimately going to be
16:50
Speaker 3: building the infrastructure on which this new digital future is
16:54
Speaker 3: going to be built. But they are horrible companies. They
16:57
Speaker 3: are deeply unethical. They spy, they lie, they track, they trace,
17:01
Speaker 3: they abuse their power, and they're really the robber barons
17:06
Speaker 3: of the twenty first century. So in order to kind
17:09
Speaker 3: of address that, rather than changing their behavior, what they
17:12
Speaker 3: do is they come along and they say, hey, look,
17:14
Speaker 3: we're going to invest in UK startups and we're going
17:16
Speaker 3: to help create a new economic system for people to
17:20
Speaker 3: have an opportunity to create well for themselves by becoming
17:23
Speaker 3: startup founders, right, so they'll get in organizations light Founders Forums,
17:28
Speaker 3: just to establish these ecosystems that ultimately, in reality, they
17:32
Speaker 3: can invest in.
17:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
17:35
Speaker 3: So this is presented as a kind of altruistic move
17:39
Speaker 3: where they're trying to establish fairness in the economic system,
17:42
Speaker 3: but actually that's not what's happening at all, and they
17:45
Speaker 3: will use it as a reputation washing exercise ultimately for
17:49
Speaker 3: people like this. One example from a recent report from
17:53
Speaker 3: Founders Forum, this guy John Bomfree, who's the UK country
17:56
Speaker 3: manager at Amazon. You can see at the bottom there
17:59
Speaker 3: they first in being the most supportive to tech founders.
18:04
Speaker 3: They've invested four hundred and thirty million dollars in European
18:07
Speaker 3: startups across seventeen transactions in twenty nineteen, and he says
18:11
Speaker 3: we have a responsibility to support the thriving and diverse
18:14
Speaker 3: startup ecosystem in Europe. But they've actually destroyed the high street.
18:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we don't have a high street anymore.
18:21
Speaker 3: We've got Amazon and if you look at the impact
18:23
Speaker 3: that's had on British cities, it's completely destroyed them. Right,
18:27
Speaker 3: you know, the high street was a focal point of
18:30
Speaker 3: daily life. We now got Amazon.
18:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've now got people stuck at home waiting for
18:35
Speaker 1: a box to arrive. That's the highlight of their day
18:38
Speaker 1: instead of interaction with people on the high street. That's
18:41
Speaker 1: the point.
18:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
18:44
Speaker 3: The founders for him is here saying oh, no, no, no,
18:46
Speaker 3: they're helping us build a new economy. This is fantastic.
18:49
Speaker 3: And obviously Google are in there as well. It's another
18:52
Speaker 3: one of the big tech companies. So we can see
18:54
Speaker 3: that they've invested in fifty funding rounds over the past
18:58
Speaker 3: five years. They've invested seven and thirty million dollars. One
19:02
Speaker 3: out of two startup founders think that they're great. And
19:04
Speaker 3: Debbie Weinstein, who at the time was actually the head
19:07
Speaker 3: of the UK for Google, she's now just been bumped
19:09
Speaker 3: up to run Europe. She's emea top top lady for
19:13
Speaker 3: the whole of the top lady, top individual for the
19:16
Speaker 3: whole of Google. This lady, Debbie Weinstein, she's saying that
19:19
Speaker 3: competition is healthy for everyone. We want to see more
19:22
Speaker 3: businesses leveraging the power technology to improve people's lives.
19:27
Speaker 1: Except of the challenge in Google.
19:29
Speaker 3: Well qright, right, and this this is really the key point,
19:32
Speaker 3: right And actually there's There's a little quote here for
19:34
Speaker 3: again from one of the fans' forum reports. This lady
19:36
Speaker 3: Angie Marle saying big tech provides the platform.
19:41
Speaker 2: On which businesses are run.
19:43
Speaker 3: So when Debbie Weinstein's talking about enabling competition, what she's
19:47
Speaker 3: actually saying is, you can operate on top of our infrastructure, right,
19:52
Speaker 3: but you're going to buy from us. This is a
19:54
Speaker 3: marketplace that we have built and control, and you can
19:57
Speaker 3: come in with your little fiddly start up, whatever it
20:00
Speaker 3: might be. We might chuck you a bit of money,
20:02
Speaker 3: we might let you in our office from time to time,
20:05
Speaker 3: but ultimately you're never actually going to challenge Google fundamentally
20:08
Speaker 3: in its core business, right. And when we talk about
20:11
Speaker 3: big tech, it's these companies. Yeah, so Meta aka Facebook, Instagram,
20:17
Speaker 3: WhatsApp on the top left there in video, which is
20:19
Speaker 3: kind of the new kid on the block, specializes in
20:22
Speaker 3: chips for AI systems, and then Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, right,
20:27
Speaker 3: And this is the again hegemony, right, this is the
20:31
Speaker 3: global digital marketplace, and the whole of the business world,
20:37
Speaker 3: in their view, needs to run on top of this stuff.
20:39
Speaker 3: And so they're completely dominant. And these are all American
20:42
Speaker 3: technology companies importantly, but just as importantly, it's not just
20:48
Speaker 3: the markets, is also the state. Increasingly it's the state.
20:55
Speaker 3: And Blair at his events Future Britain event last year
20:58
Speaker 3: was saying, I'm advised in labor to talk to Google.
21:01
Speaker 3: He's advising labor to talk to Debbie Weinstein. And I
21:04
Speaker 3: know that Debbie Weinstein has been talking directly to Starma
21:08
Speaker 3: and other members of the cabinet. They're particularly interested in
21:11
Speaker 3: education at the moment. That's the big focus area. Yeah,
21:17
Speaker 3: public private partnership, digitization of the economic system and the
21:21
Speaker 3: replacement of what used to constitute economic activity and output
21:26
Speaker 3: with something that isn't what we used to think it.
21:31
Speaker 1: Was showing something for your labor and your work actually
21:34
Speaker 1: creating something, yeah.
21:36
Speaker 3: Exactly, So that doesn't exist anymore. We've now got just
21:39
Speaker 3: apps and the same thing is about to happen to
21:42
Speaker 3: the state, and it's being driven by people like Tony
21:45
Speaker 3: Blair and actually Founders Forum right at the heart of this.
21:47
Speaker 3: Because really interestingly, and I was mind slightly blowing when
21:52
Speaker 3: I came across this last week in twenty twenty three,
21:55
Speaker 3: they acquired this organization TechNation right now superficially, Technician looks
22:02
Speaker 3: basically a bit like Founder's Forum group, right, so as
22:05
Speaker 3: an ecosystem of different component parts. They're interested in climate
22:09
Speaker 3: because obviously everyone's interested in climate. They've got a Rising
22:12
Speaker 3: Stars program where they bring in young people that they
22:15
Speaker 3: want to be tech innovators. They've got a Future fifty
22:17
Speaker 3: program which is all about the next big fifty tech
22:21
Speaker 3: companies in the UK that are going to list on
22:23
Speaker 3: the stock market.
22:24
Speaker 2: Right.
22:24
Speaker 3: Who was founded by this guy, Gerard Grex's CBE, who
22:29
Speaker 3: has now after the acquisition, gone on to run something
22:32
Speaker 3: called Founders Cambridge is the end of Founders Cambridge, which
22:36
Speaker 3: means that between Hoberman Oxford and Grek at Cambridge, this
22:41
Speaker 3: new integrated proposition of Technician and Founders Forum are basically
22:45
Speaker 3: so and Oxbridge. So if you think about all of
22:49
Speaker 3: the intellectual firepower of Oxford and Cambridge University and how
22:53
Speaker 3: that can be commercialized, these two people this organization are
22:59
Speaker 3: absolutely slapped bang in the middle of it. And he's
23:02
Speaker 3: the founder of Technician. He's also on the UK Government
23:05
Speaker 3: Digital Economy Council, and he's also a member of the
23:07
Speaker 3: World Economic from Digital Economy Board. Yeah, so we can
23:10
Speaker 3: see again with UK Government they've integrated.
23:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally linked totally linked.
23:17
Speaker 3: So they're operating handing glove and technician is is quite
23:21
Speaker 3: an impressive organization. Again, I remember when this popped up,
23:25
Speaker 3: I was still working in industry. They've been at the
23:27
Speaker 3: heart of what they call a remarkable decade of tech growth.
23:32
Speaker 3: So we've seen a trillion dollars added to the UK
23:37
Speaker 3: technology ecosystem. That's just valuation, by the way, that's not
23:41
Speaker 3: actual output. That's just what we think we can flog
23:44
Speaker 3: this for. Really importantly, it's what this whole ecosystem is about.
23:48
Speaker 3: In the UK, we now have one hundred and thirty
23:50
Speaker 3: five tech unicorns, which is a ten time, ten ten
23:54
Speaker 3: x increase in ten years. A unicorn is a privately
23:57
Speaker 3: owned company worth a billion dollars or more. All right,
24:02
Speaker 3: So again, we used to have an economy. Now we've
24:05
Speaker 3: got tech unicorns, where you get a tiny handful of
24:08
Speaker 3: people in these highly automated, technology enabled companies who have
24:14
Speaker 3: these huge valuations, which we then get presented as being
24:17
Speaker 3: good for the country. But it's not good for the country.
24:19
Speaker 3: It's good for the people who run those companies and
24:21
Speaker 3: the people who invested in them, and organizations like founders
24:24
Speaker 3: for them, but actually for the broad propulation. There's absolutely
24:28
Speaker 3: nothing here at all. And we also apparently got ten
24:30
Speaker 3: deca corns, which is privately held companies worth ten billion.
24:35
Speaker 2: Dollars or more. Right, and what kind of companies are
24:38
Speaker 2: we talking about? Is this kind of company?
24:40
Speaker 3: These kinds of companies, You know, lots of app logos there,
24:43
Speaker 3: but the ones that jumped out of me was delivery,
24:47
Speaker 3: all right, So you know that's delivering kebabs via an app.
24:52
Speaker 2: That's economic output.
24:53
Speaker 3: Now, apparently we used to have a steel industry, we
24:55
Speaker 3: used to have a coal industry, we used to have
24:57
Speaker 3: proper manufacturing.
24:58
Speaker 2: Now we've got kebab's.
25:00
Speaker 3: Being delivered by a lot of illegal immigrants. Frankly, you know,
25:04
Speaker 3: that's what their workforce is built on, you know, because
25:08
Speaker 3: it's cheap labor, because it's cheap labor exactly. And then
25:15
Speaker 3: so that they're helping to form these things, establish them,
25:18
Speaker 3: fot them on the stock markets. This is from last month,
25:21
Speaker 3: so you can actually see Brett Hoberman there on the
25:25
Speaker 3: balcony the London Stock Exchange with one of these startups
25:29
Speaker 3: that they're promoting.
25:30
Speaker 2: But where did this come from? Right?
25:32
Speaker 3: Really crucially because this for me is absolutely critical and
25:36
Speaker 3: understanding that this particular group right is actually the Tech City,
25:42
Speaker 3: the Tech Nation initiated.
25:45
Speaker 2: From there's a timeline here. I can't go through all
25:47
Speaker 2: of it right now.
25:48
Speaker 3: I've been actually initiated here in twenty eleven from the
25:50
Speaker 3: Tech City Investment Organization, which was launched by Prime Minister
25:55
Speaker 3: David Cameron in April twenty eleven to support East London's
25:57
Speaker 3: tech cluster. And it was originally part of UK Trade
26:00
Speaker 3: and Investment, so there's a UK government asset. It was founded,
26:06
Speaker 3: not least in part on the back of advice from
26:08
Speaker 3: this guy, Roan Silver, who was an advisor to David Cameron.
26:11
Speaker 3: He's the guy that co authored that article trying to
26:14
Speaker 3: bring Elon Musk in to digitize the British state. And
26:19
Speaker 3: fascinatingly they actually ran the Global Talent Visa program bringing
26:25
Speaker 3: in high tech people into the UK economy. And so
26:30
Speaker 3: they bought nearly five and a half thousand people in
26:32
Speaker 3: over the past ten years on these global talent visas
26:34
Speaker 3: endorsed by Technician and after the acquisition that is now
26:39
Speaker 3: being handled by the founder's form group.
26:44
Speaker 1: It's one huge network and at the time that David
26:47
Speaker 1: Cameron was helping set this lord up, he was also
26:50
Speaker 1: bringing in his big society, which a lot of people
26:53
Speaker 1: think never happened, but actually it's absolutely happened. It's just
26:57
Speaker 1: it's happened under the surface. So there was the technological aspect,
27:02
Speaker 1: and there was also the control of society, including by
27:05
Speaker 1: creating what was called an army, that was the word used,
27:09
Speaker 1: an army of young people, the change agents to help
27:13
Speaker 1: bring this new society through. So all happening in front
27:17
Speaker 1: of Avery eyes wants you know where to look.
27:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and all again just to bring Homeman back
27:24
Speaker 3: on screen, going directly down to the bottom line there
27:27
Speaker 3: this is world Economic forum, particularly this public private marketplace
27:31
Speaker 3: and the way that advanced technology, the big tech companies,
27:34
Speaker 3: international capital, the British government are coordinating with each other
27:40
Speaker 3: and to effect this transformation of the economic system. And
27:43
Speaker 3: then increasingly, as we'll see certainly this year, it will
27:46
Speaker 3: accelerate the digitization of the British state or being driven
27:49
Speaker 3: out of this network.
27:52
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to say to that, and of course
27:55
Speaker 1: UK column is talking about this because we consider this
27:59
Speaker 1: to be the all news to understand what is happening
28:02
Speaker 1: around us in our society and in the political system.
28:06
Speaker 1: But the BBC and the main newspapers and the other
28:10
Speaker 1: TV channels simply do not talk about this. It's as
28:13
Speaker 1: if it doesn't exist. They prefer us to be distracted.
28:17
Speaker 1: And one of the things that it's distracted a lot
28:19
Speaker 1: of people over the last few days has been the
28:22
Speaker 1: wildfires in Los Angeles. So Diane, let's bring you on
28:26
Speaker 1: screen with us, because you've been having a good look
28:29
Speaker 1: at the events around these truly horrible fires.
28:34
Speaker 5: Yes, Brian, Hello, and hello Ben.
28:36
Speaker 6: Good afternoon everyone.
28:37
Speaker 5: A video that I've loved to play silently while I
28:40
Speaker 5: introduced the segment, just to kind of start to drive home.
28:43
Speaker 6: As much as.
28:45
Speaker 5: The fires are looking from the ground right now in
28:48
Speaker 5: Los Angeles.
28:49
Speaker 6: This was just posted yesterday.
28:51
Speaker 5: So following up on Mike's report that he started on Friday,
28:54
Speaker 5: I want to go deeper to ask some of the bigger.
28:56
Speaker 6: Questions that kind of I don't have any.
28:58
Speaker 5: Answers for certain things, point that we certainly do have
29:01
Speaker 5: a lot of questions that we need to be asking.
29:04
Speaker 5: This As a quick update, this morning, CNN reported that
29:07
Speaker 5: so far, at least twenty four people have been killed,
29:10
Speaker 5: but that we don't know for sure, we can't possess
29:12
Speaker 5: for sure how high that will rise and the winds
29:15
Speaker 5: are up dangerously again when they're still at a critical
29:18
Speaker 5: point of attempting to contain the fires. So as we
29:21
Speaker 5: go into thinking about, you know, how intense this looks,
29:24
Speaker 5: you was this really only caused by while by Wahai winds?
29:29
Speaker 5: Was it really We don't really have a lot of
29:30
Speaker 5: answers yet and we may never get them. But one
29:33
Speaker 5: of the questions that I do want to focus on
29:35
Speaker 5: was why the Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, was
29:38
Speaker 5: in Ghana on the seventh of January when the fires
29:41
Speaker 5: broke out. The basic answer that the mainstream media is
29:43
Speaker 5: giving us is that she was there for the inauguration
29:46
Speaker 5: of the new President of Ghana, John Dramani Mohamma. However,
29:51
Speaker 5: why do we care so much about Ghana? And also
29:53
Speaker 5: why does the UK care so much about Ghana? There
29:56
Speaker 5: was a delegation of four people that the White House
29:59
Speaker 5: appointed to go to the inauguration. One was the director
30:03
Speaker 5: of the US Office of Management and Budget.
30:05
Speaker 6: She led the delegation.
30:06
Speaker 5: There was also a Special Assistant to the President and
30:08
Speaker 5: Senior Director for African Affairs at the White House, the
30:11
Speaker 5: US Ambassador to Ghana, and then finally Karen Bass.
30:15
Speaker 6: Karen Bass.
30:16
Speaker 5: She was elected to be the mayor of Los Angeles
30:19
Speaker 5: in November of twenty twenty one. She's known for long
30:22
Speaker 5: history and having relationships between the US and Africa. She's
30:26
Speaker 5: a former congresswoman and shared with lated committees. But it
30:29
Speaker 5: was known as early as the third of January that
30:32
Speaker 5: there was a risk of extreme fires and raptive fires
30:35
Speaker 5: but planning to be could be spread in Los Angeles.
30:39
Speaker 5: But anyway, she got onto a plane to Accras on
30:42
Speaker 5: the fourth. Anyway, when she returned to Los Angeles through
30:46
Speaker 5: military flights, she was immediately questioned at the airport by
30:49
Speaker 5: a very ambitious Sky News reporter. And let's see what
30:52
Speaker 5: she had to say in response to this reporter when
30:54
Speaker 5: he met her at the airport.
30:57
Speaker 4: Do you, oh citizens and apology for being alps and
31:00
Speaker 4: while their homes were burning? Do you regret cutting the
31:03
Speaker 4: fire department budget by millions of dollars?
31:05
Speaker 6: Madam?
31:06
Speaker 4: There? Have you nothing to say today? Have you absolutely
31:13
Speaker 4: nothing to say to the citizens today? Elon Mosk says
31:17
Speaker 4: that you're utterly incompetent. Are you considering your position, madam
31:24
Speaker 4: mayor have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today?
31:27
Speaker 4: You're dealing with this disaster. No apology for them. Do
31:39
Speaker 4: you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this
31:42
Speaker 4: was unfolding? Back home?
32:00
Speaker 5: So very conveniently guided away from the gate at that point.
32:04
Speaker 5: I'd also say that a couple of days later. This
32:06
Speaker 5: is just over the weekend. She posted an update with
32:09
Speaker 5: a message for the people of Los Angeles, and I
32:11
Speaker 5: just want you to watch her expression on her face
32:14
Speaker 5: as she greets them and talks about Angelinos.
32:17
Speaker 7: We're still going through it. And to any of you
32:20
Speaker 7: and all of you that have experienced a loss, the grief,
32:24
Speaker 7: the anger, the just utter shock. I've seen the devastation.
32:29
Speaker 7: It is unbelievable the amount of loss that people have experience.
32:34
Speaker 7: But we have to get through this crisis, and I
32:36
Speaker 7: know that we will. I was at the Silmar command
32:39
Speaker 7: post today and I saw the work of our first
32:42
Speaker 7: responders and how they've been able to defeat the fires
32:46
Speaker 7: in certain areas. We know we still have much more
32:49
Speaker 7: to go, and we know the winds are going to
32:51
Speaker 7: kick up again, but we got to stick together. We
32:54
Speaker 7: got to stand strong, and then we have to rebuild
32:57
Speaker 7: our city. We're the nation's second large city, one of
33:00
Speaker 7: the greatest cities in the world, and we stay together
33:04
Speaker 7: and we will rebuild an amazing city. So thank you Angelinos,
33:09
Speaker 7: and my thoughts and prayers are out to all of
33:11
Speaker 7: you that are going through unbelievable loss and pain. Today
33:15
Speaker 7: we will get through this. Thank you.
33:22
Speaker 5: Now, if I ran a city and my city was
33:24
Speaker 5: burning to the ground, I would not be smiling that much.
33:27
Speaker 5: Just a little more bit more background on Karen Bass,
33:30
Speaker 5: because this is important. She was potential vice presidential pick
33:33
Speaker 5: for Joe Biden in twenty twenty. We have a photo
33:36
Speaker 5: here of Kamala Harris and Karen Bass having a great
33:40
Speaker 5: time together, I believe where it shows that she was
33:42
Speaker 5: actually called a revolutionary communist. What this means is that
33:46
Speaker 5: starting the nineteen seventies, she spent time working in cubert
33:50
Speaker 5: with what what was called the Vinceremos Brigade, which means
33:53
Speaker 5: we will overcome. It's a Marxist group which was started
33:55
Speaker 5: by Fidel Castro's regime to subvert American interests, weaken democracy,
34:00
Speaker 5: and spread communism around the world. And the mission of
34:03
Speaker 5: this particular organization is dramaticalized, young, impressiable American leftists and
34:09
Speaker 5: terrorism and guerrilla warfare. Members of this brigade were even
34:12
Speaker 5: taught how to make bombs. And she has returned to
34:15
Speaker 5: Cubis several times throughout the years, including after she was
34:18
Speaker 5: in Congress.
34:18
Speaker 6: Starting twenty ten.
34:20
Speaker 5: And so why we have to ask about Ghana. So
34:23
Speaker 5: this is really getting into the heart of the issue,
34:25
Speaker 5: I believe. So why does the U US care so
34:28
Speaker 5: much about it? It's a Commonwealth country, It has around
34:31
Speaker 5: thirty five million people. It is a lower middle income country.
34:35
Speaker 5: It ranks one hundred and first in the world in
34:37
Speaker 5: CO two emissions from consuming energy if you believe in
34:40
Speaker 5: climate change. Ghana Statistical Service says that it is a source,
34:44
Speaker 5: transit and destination country for people subjected to forced labor
34:48
Speaker 5: and sex trafficking. It is an illicit producer, transit hub
34:52
Speaker 5: and user for drugs such as cannabis, heroin, and cocaine.
34:56
Speaker 5: There are problems with widespread crime, financial issues, still living crisis,
35:01
Speaker 5: money laundering going on, and so we see in looking
35:05
Speaker 5: at the relationships between the US and the UK. For
35:08
Speaker 5: the US, on the tenth of January, there was in
35:10
Speaker 5: the official government website called share America, which published an
35:14
Speaker 5: article about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris visiting southern Africa
35:18
Speaker 5: sort At the end of their turn in twenty twenty three,
35:22
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris announced over seven million dollars in private sector
35:25
Speaker 5: investments to boost reed production across Africa and medicate the
35:29
Speaker 5: evicts of climate change.
35:30
Speaker 6: So we're seeing climate change come in here a lot.
35:33
Speaker 5: The Vice President led a discussion in Ghana with women
35:35
Speaker 5: entrepreneurs when she announced a one billion dollar, one billion
35:39
Speaker 5: dollar global initiative to support women's entrepreneurship in Africa. On
35:44
Speaker 5: the third of January twenty twenty five, the British High
35:46
Speaker 5: commission hosted the third U eight UK Ghana Dice for
35:49
Speaker 5: New Year Networking Mixer, which was to connect London and
35:53
Speaker 5: Acro connecting capitals for economic growth. The trade between these
35:57
Speaker 5: two countries stood at one point four billion pounds in
36:01
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four, which they really are emphasizing has potential
36:04
Speaker 5: to grow further. Talking about the diaspora between Ghana and
36:08
Speaker 5: the UK and the British High Commissioner to Ghana, Harry
36:12
Speaker 5: Thompson said at this event that economic growth is a
36:14
Speaker 5: top priority for both UK and Ghana governments together and
36:17
Speaker 5: we have witnessed this impact tonight and this will continue
36:20
Speaker 5: to be a priority.
36:21
Speaker 6: For the Britishiged Commission.
36:23
Speaker 5: In twenty twenty five, the British Minister for Africa, Ray Collins,
36:27
Speaker 5: who is now Lord Collins of Highbury, represented the UK
36:30
Speaker 5: at the inauguration and he said that they look forward
36:32
Speaker 5: to working closely together to advance the shared growth of
36:36
Speaker 5: economic growth, security, tackling the climate crisis once again. And
36:40
Speaker 5: this goes on for the last several months since labor
36:43
Speaker 5: has gotten in that this relationship has been growing. If
36:46
Speaker 5: we take a look at here at John Muhamma, he
36:48
Speaker 5: is w EF There's a long bioarchray for him on
36:52
Speaker 5: the World Economic for on website, as are many other
36:54
Speaker 5: Ghana politicians. What Muhamma has promised, even though this is
36:58
Speaker 5: his third term, is that he now prom is to
37:00
Speaker 5: reset the country, if that term sounds familiar. In twenty
37:04
Speaker 5: sixteen he was named the co chair of the SDG
37:07
Speaker 5: Advocates by the UNS Secretary General, which is mandated to
37:11
Speaker 5: generate momentum commitment to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by
37:14
Speaker 5: twenty thirty and back in twenty twenty, the previous Prime
37:18
Speaker 5: Minister of Ghana as well as the co chair of
37:20
Speaker 5: the UN Secretary General's sug efcuts at the time Nana
37:24
Speaker 5: Atto Danqua afucot Auto. He said that the COVID response
37:29
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty can't be unlinked from the sustainable development
37:32
Speaker 5: goals and that COVID mostly affected vulnerable societies. So let's
37:36
Speaker 5: hear back from COP twenty nine in Baku. Let's hear
37:39
Speaker 5: what Ado had to say about climate finance to COP
37:42
Speaker 5: twenty nine.
37:45
Speaker 8: Through Article six of the Paris Agreement, Ghana has mobilized
37:50
Speaker 8: eight hundred million United States dollars by training carbon credits
37:55
Speaker 8: with nations like Switzerland and Sweden. However, we cannot reach
38:00
Speaker 8: our climate goals alone. We're call on our global partners
38:04
Speaker 8: to honor their commitments ensuring accessible concessional financing for sustainable
38:11
Speaker 8: development in Africa without unsustainable debt.
38:19
Speaker 5: So now we're seeing that we're talking about channeling the money,
38:22
Speaker 5: and we've I've reported on this previously about climate finance,
38:25
Speaker 5: about sort of channeling money from countries like the US
38:28
Speaker 5: and the UK two countries such as Ghana. We see
38:32
Speaker 5: that also in HOW twenty nine they announced what is
38:34
Speaker 5: called the Ghana Climate Prosperity Plan, which is a strategy
38:38
Speaker 5: aimed at tackling climate change.
38:39
Speaker 6: While fostering economic growth.
38:41
Speaker 5: The plan is to generate an economic gain of seventy
38:44
Speaker 5: six billion dollars by twenty fifty. And we see here
38:47
Speaker 5: also doctor Mohammad Amin Adam, who is Ghana's Minister for Finance.
38:52
Speaker 5: He started a Climate Financing Division back in October twenty
38:56
Speaker 5: twenty four which is meant to coordinate and lead climate
38:59
Speaker 5: finance its initiatives. And one of the specific plans is
39:03
Speaker 5: called the Akostombo Net zero Industrial Park which they want
39:06
Speaker 5: to develop in Ghana, which is meant to be the
39:09
Speaker 5: first fully renewable energy powered industrial park in Africa, designed
39:13
Speaker 5: to attract industries committed to the particular sustainable development goals
39:17
Speaker 5: and so on. This is one hundred and five million
39:20
Speaker 5: dollar project which will be financed through public private partnerships,
39:24
Speaker 5: equity investments, concessional debt and grants. So going back to
39:28
Speaker 5: Los Angeles once again, back in December twenty twenty, there
39:32
Speaker 5: was a document that's published. You can find it anywhere
39:35
Speaker 5: on the indnet. It will be in the show notes
39:36
Speaker 5: called smart City LA twenty twenty eight, in which it
39:40
Speaker 5: declared in a very long document that the City of
39:42
Speaker 5: Los Angeles envisions a highly digital and connected city by
39:46
Speaker 5: twenty twenty eight, Los Angeles residents will experience an improved
39:49
Speaker 5: quality of life by leveraging technology to meet urban challenges,
39:53
Speaker 5: and that LA will no longer be the car capital
39:56
Speaker 5: of the world. And in just in recent days, the
39:59
Speaker 5: californ Governor Gavin Newsom has already said that the rebuilding
40:02
Speaker 5: of Los Angeles after the apocalyptic fires as he's calling them,
40:07
Speaker 5: will coincide with their hosting of the Somber Olympics in
40:10
Speaker 5: twenty twenty eight. So I think we just have to
40:13
Speaker 5: ask are these things connected? And we can also see
40:16
Speaker 5: as well there's videos from the World Economic Forum that
40:19
Speaker 5: sort of talking about AI fires and what AI can
40:22
Speaker 5: do to prevent fires, but also saying that these will
40:25
Speaker 5: require behavioral changes as well as technical innovations. So Brian
40:30
Speaker 5: and Ben more questions than answers. But I think we
40:33
Speaker 5: will continue to need to look into this because there
40:35
Speaker 5: are clearly some things going on here.
40:40
Speaker 1: Some things going on, some global things going on. But
40:44
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you Dian for that really excellent segment
40:48
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Speaker 1: you and a key subject under the surface in UK
42:41
Speaker 1: but also many other places worldwide. Is child abuse.
42:47
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and is the story that I kicked the year
42:51
Speaker 3: of with last Monday is the Asian grooming gangs. There's
42:55
Speaker 3: been an absolute deluge of information and conversation about this
43:02
Speaker 3: over the past week. I think it's going to continue.
43:04
Speaker 3: It's been turned into a political football by Musk and
43:09
Speaker 3: many others. Actually, I mean there's a whole ecosystem of
43:13
Speaker 3: talking heads on Twitter and elsewhere who are really trying
43:16
Speaker 3: to use this to attack the UK government, and not
43:18
Speaker 3: without good reason actually, So I'll just remind you that
43:22
Speaker 3: we started by showing you some clips from this gentleman Rajama,
43:26
Speaker 3: who is a.
43:27
Speaker 2: Whistleblower from Oldham.
43:28
Speaker 3: He's been trying to draw attention to grimming gangs operating
43:31
Speaker 3: in Oldham for the past probably over ten years now actually,
43:35
Speaker 3: and he's been on Twitter talking about the case. Is
43:39
Speaker 3: a big, long tweet here. I won't read the whole
43:42
Speaker 3: thing out, We'll provide a link to it so you
43:43
Speaker 3: can go and have a look at it. We've talked
43:45
Speaker 3: about the political dynamic of this, but I just want
43:47
Speaker 3: to drill in quickly on the media dynamic, which I
43:50
Speaker 3: think is really interesting. So in this tweet he did
43:54
Speaker 3: add that publications like The Olden Times and the Manchester
43:57
Speaker 3: Evening News didn't just report on my case, they amplified
44:01
Speaker 3: the lies around it. They were trying to help cover
44:03
Speaker 3: things up according to mea they were not alone. A
44:05
Speaker 3: man called Joshi from Manchester Mill launched an online smear
44:10
Speaker 3: campaign against me and he even recruited Bajor Cummings from
44:14
Speaker 3: Tortoise Media. Right, so Raja Miha is annoying a lot
44:19
Speaker 3: of the right people. As far as I can tell,
44:21
Speaker 3: Tortoise have come after his reputation and also the Mill,
44:25
Speaker 3: and we spoke about last year back in May. I
44:27
Speaker 3: introduced you to this new media organization. So this is
44:31
Speaker 3: Joshi Herman, who's the founder and the execu editor, basically
44:34
Speaker 3: saying that Elon Musk thinks that there is a hidden
44:36
Speaker 3: grooming scandal in Oldham. Why can't the police find it?
44:41
Speaker 3: Right now, he's emphatically saying that this thing doesn't exist.
44:45
Speaker 3: And actually he's been apparently been reporting on this for
44:48
Speaker 3: about six years.
44:49
Speaker 6: Right.
44:49
Speaker 3: So again, this is a long post there from Raja
44:52
Speaker 3: Mia and a very long article here from Joshi Herman.
44:55
Speaker 3: And this runs extremely deep, right, this older issue. There's
44:59
Speaker 3: there's there's something going on here, right, obviously there's you know,
45:02
Speaker 3: there's there's two very different sides to this story. But
45:07
Speaker 3: and I'm not, if I'm being honest with you, completely
45:10
Speaker 3: clear on on on on where the whole thing's going
45:14
Speaker 3: to be honest with you, right, because actually when you
45:16
Speaker 3: look for Oldham child of Wu's cases, you don't come
45:19
Speaker 3: up with that much. But you look around the rest
45:21
Speaker 3: of the country. Actually did some research over the past
45:23
Speaker 3: few days. We've got twenty five thirty different locations across
45:27
Speaker 3: the north of England, even in places like Aylesbury and
45:30
Speaker 3: in the south of England, just outside of London, where
45:32
Speaker 3: this stuff is happening. We do have examples of Asian
45:34
Speaker 3: groom and gangs operating. So how the Oldham story develops.
45:40
Speaker 3: I'm not entirely sure, but what I am interested in
45:44
Speaker 3: is Joshi Herman and his role in this and the
45:46
Speaker 3: fact that, as I pointed out back in May last year,
45:49
Speaker 3: Mill Media is actually backed largely backed by Sir Mark Thompson,
45:55
Speaker 3: who's currently the chief executive CNN. He was also the
45:58
Speaker 3: New York Times Director German at the BBC. He spun
46:01
Speaker 3: some of the crimes of Jimmy Saville. Can famously canceled
46:04
Speaker 3: the Panorama episode which would have exposed Savile before he died,
46:08
Speaker 3: and then when he was about to be questioned about it,
46:13
Speaker 3: Thompson basically skipped the country, went to go and work
46:15
Speaker 3: at the New York Times and avoided accountability ultimately, and
46:19
Speaker 3: he's one of the primary investors in Mill Media. He's
46:21
Speaker 3: personally put in several hundred thousand pounds into this organization.
46:25
Speaker 3: I think that really undermines the credibility of Mill Media,
46:29
Speaker 3: Joshi Herman, and actually gives them really zero credibility when
46:32
Speaker 3: it comes to handing down moral judgments about child rape unfortunately, Joshy.
46:37
Speaker 3: So that's the media dynamic to this, and this will evolve.
46:41
Speaker 3: We'll certainly be talking about it over the coming weeks.
46:43
Speaker 3: But also let's remind ourselves that there was a vote
46:45
Speaker 3: on this in Parliament should we investigate child grooming gangs?
46:51
Speaker 3: A vote on it on Wednesday last week. Let's see
46:53
Speaker 3: what the result was.
46:56
Speaker 1: I one hundred and eleven to the left three hundred
47:01
Speaker 1: and sixty four.
47:09
Speaker 9: The eyes to the right were one hundred and eleven,
47:13
Speaker 9: the nose to the left three hundred and sixty four.
47:16
Speaker 5: So the nose have it the nose have it unlock?
47:23
Speaker 2: Did you make of that, Brian.
47:25
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just not surprised because the state of the
47:28
Speaker 1: government never wants to go near the abuse of children
47:31
Speaker 1: because of course, if there was a proper investigation, a
47:34
Speaker 1: proper investigation, then the leads would run straight back to
47:39
Speaker 1: the government and government agencies themselves, as we're going to
47:43
Speaker 1: discuss a little bit later in the news. So I'm
47:45
Speaker 1: absolutely not surprised. This is the state protecting itself in.
47:50
Speaker 3: My opinion, indeed, the accused of deciding that they shouldn't
47:53
Speaker 3: be investigated. That's not how justice works, right, And this
48:00
Speaker 3: this is just an astonishing period of time, to be
48:03
Speaker 3: perfectly honest, I mean that was astonishing. Every single labor
48:06
Speaker 3: MP basically saying no we don't want to look at this.
48:09
Speaker 3: And then this popped up over the weekend. So we've
48:11
Speaker 3: got former Labor MP Ivor Kaplan who was arrested in
48:16
Speaker 3: Hove for trying to meet with what he thought was
48:19
Speaker 3: a fifteen year old boy for sex. So he was
48:21
Speaker 3: arrested for engaging in sexual communication with the child. He's
48:24
Speaker 3: been released on bail. He was a member of Blair's government,
48:27
Speaker 3: was a Labor MP for many many years and his
48:30
Speaker 3: Twitter feed is an absolute mess. So there was some
48:33
Speaker 3: tweets shared by lawyers from Light who censored them. This
48:36
Speaker 3: is from telegram saying that we don't think that this
48:40
Speaker 3: can be shared. Surely this cannot be his real account,
48:43
Speaker 3: right because actually some of the stuff on there is
48:45
Speaker 3: so explicit that it beggars belief that this is a
48:49
Speaker 3: until recently a senior politician. But the account is being
48:52
Speaker 3: followed by Rachel Reeves and Anders in the government. Now
48:56
Speaker 3: now I've censed them. Lawyers from Light censed them. But
49:00
Speaker 3: Diane decided that actually the UK column viewership did need
49:04
Speaker 3: to see these tweets. So she's going to put some
49:05
Speaker 3: stuff on screen, I think in a moment.
49:07
Speaker 1: So that we see something about what's going on here,
49:11
Speaker 1: So this is pretty offensive material, but we took a
49:14
Speaker 1: decision that to some extent should be shown. So Diane
49:18
Speaker 1: over to you.
49:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's basically just following on what Ben's just
49:24
Speaker 5: reported and I redacted. But I didn't redact as much
49:28
Speaker 5: as Ben did because these were just tweets from January ninth,
49:31
Speaker 5: so just four days ago, right before his arrest. So
49:35
Speaker 5: we have about ten percent of it redacted, I guess,
49:38
Speaker 5: with the most important parts blacked out. Hopefully we have
49:43
Speaker 5: after what else do we have? I think I've got
49:45
Speaker 5: a few different tweets here from the ninth. This one
49:48
Speaker 5: is him basically thinking Keir Starmer for being a wonderful
49:52
Speaker 5: Prime Minister. It's kind of a mix of Keir Starmer
49:55
Speaker 5: being wonderful and really inappropriate photos of men and boys,
50:00
Speaker 5: and then finally one that he apparently retweeted and offered
50:04
Speaker 5: to contribute to the proceedings that are shown there. To
50:08
Speaker 5: make it as delicately as possible, I would add that
50:12
Speaker 5: just before the news started he has now been released
50:15
Speaker 5: on bail according to the National So we'll see where
50:18
Speaker 5: this goes and if anything.
50:20
Speaker 6: It all happens to him from what he's done.
50:22
Speaker 5: We're not sure, like we said, for sure, if this
50:25
Speaker 5: is really his Twitter you can't necessarily verify it. But
50:28
Speaker 5: we do see that Rachel Reeves aka Rachel from Accounts
50:31
Speaker 5: does follow the account, as well as.
50:33
Speaker 6: Other people with the name Kaplain.
50:35
Speaker 5: So we'll have to see what happens from here.
50:38
Speaker 1: A pretty despicable trail, but the government doesn't want to
50:42
Speaker 1: get anywhere near the subject of child abuse. This is
50:47
Speaker 1: a report back from twenty seventeen UK column Devon and
50:50
Speaker 1: Carwell police officer sentence for in decent images and illegal
50:55
Speaker 1: ammunition offenses. We were also reporting about this on Edward Heath.
51:01
Speaker 1: Police delayed the Conifer report to avoid overshadowing the Tory conference,
51:06
Speaker 1: So that tells you a few priorities about police force
51:10
Speaker 1: and this one particularly interesting from Russia today that French
51:15
Speaker 1: courts had ruled that an eleven year old girl had
51:18
Speaker 1: consensual sex with a twenty eight year old man and
51:24
Speaker 1: this was really setting the scenes for well, it's a
51:27
Speaker 1: life choice for the girls, which is similar to what
51:30
Speaker 1: they've been talking about in the Midlands. Sorry, I can
51:32
Speaker 1: bring a bit of text on screen here who they
51:37
Speaker 1: say did not force a girl of eleven to have
51:40
Speaker 1: sex with him. So this is France. We can see
51:44
Speaker 1: that this attitude is really across the board. But also
51:47
Speaker 1: back in twenty eighteen, we were commenting on this Guardian
51:52
Speaker 1: article the state. The state, the British state is a
51:56
Speaker 1: terrible secret. It kidnaps our children and the journal this
52:00
Speaker 1: was Louis Tickle. She was absolutely on the button with
52:03
Speaker 1: this report. But of course, true to form, the Guardian
52:07
Speaker 1: sort of dropped the line of investigation and so it
52:10
Speaker 1: didn't come to anything important. But the column was reporting
52:16
Speaker 1: around the same time that we had Eileen Campbell from
52:20
Speaker 1: the SNP in Scotland saying that we the Scottish government
52:26
Speaker 1: recognize the parents also have a role in making decisions
52:31
Speaker 1: about raising the children. So here was the Scottish state
52:35
Speaker 1: at least taking over control of the family and children.
52:38
Speaker 1: But this is the same state as exists south of
52:42
Speaker 1: the border that absolutely cannot guarantee the safety of children,
52:46
Speaker 1: because it's clear that people in the positions apparent the
52:49
Speaker 1: government and their agencies are involved in the abuse of children. Now,
52:54
Speaker 1: if I go way back to two thousand and nine,
52:57
Speaker 1: I gave a talk on child snatching by the state
53:00
Speaker 1: in Bristol at what of Ian Crane's early events, and
53:04
Speaker 1: I was pointing out with that Guardian report that of
53:10
Speaker 1: course we were pushing and pushing this subject many years ago,
53:14
Speaker 1: and this is one of the statements we made in
53:17
Speaker 1: that talk. Children stolen and kidnapped from their parents by
53:22
Speaker 1: the state using lies, false evidence, perjury, threats, intimidation, false
53:28
Speaker 1: medical reports, including sectioning fraud, corruption in the public authorities,
53:34
Speaker 1: in the police courts and the high levels of government.
53:37
Speaker 1: And what is the objective to break up families? This
53:41
Speaker 1: is all part of the re ordering society, drug testing,
53:46
Speaker 1: body parts and sexual abuse. So we absolutely weren't messing
53:51
Speaker 1: around in what we were talking about there, and true
53:55
Speaker 1: to form, the government simply doesn't want to get involved
53:58
Speaker 1: if we go on a little bit. The Liverpool Express
54:01
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen was also talking about regional adoption agencies
54:07
Speaker 1: to be set up. So the very agencies who are
54:10
Speaker 1: facilitating some absolutely horrific abuse of children, children being taken
54:17
Speaker 1: from their parents and then abuse, we've now got these
54:21
Speaker 1: regional adoption agencies which the government was promoting, and you
54:25
Speaker 1: as parent, absolutely no control will come back. This was
54:30
Speaker 1: a comment by Barry Kushner, the Liverpool City Council children's services.
54:34
Speaker 1: He said, this proposal will mean that we're able to
54:37
Speaker 1: make a better service for children and adopters. At the moment,
54:41
Speaker 1: each local authority is effectively competing with each other for
54:45
Speaker 1: adopters and profit. He didn't say that, I'm adding that,
54:49
Speaker 1: and there is a great deal of duplication of effort.
54:52
Speaker 1: By creating a regional agency, we will be able to
54:55
Speaker 1: widen the net of potential adopters, share expertise and ideas,
55:00
Speaker 1: and make sure adoptors and children get a consistent level
55:03
Speaker 1: of support regardless of where they are. But of course
55:07
Speaker 1: the key thing is that wherever there's children and they're
55:11
Speaker 1: being cared for, vast amounts of money of changing hands,
55:14
Speaker 1: and huge amounts of money change hands with children for adoption.
55:19
Speaker 1: So this is a very very dangerous element to society.
55:23
Speaker 1: And of course when police have dared to speak out,
55:26
Speaker 1: as John Wedger did many years ago, he was vilified
55:29
Speaker 1: by the police force and others, lost his job, family
55:34
Speaker 1: threatened because he pointed out that the state agencies, including
55:39
Speaker 1: the Met Police, absolutely knew that the abuse was going on.
55:44
Speaker 1: So you can find John Wedger in that interview on
55:47
Speaker 1: the UK column. Encourage you to have a listen to
55:50
Speaker 1: what he had to say, Diane, let's bring you back,
55:53
Speaker 1: and really we're going to end on wokeness, but you've
55:58
Speaker 1: got a little bit more to say bout the Los
56:00
Speaker 1: Angeles fire.
56:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Los Angeles fire, wokeness and Elon Musk and
56:08
Speaker 5: so on at the end. So let's just look at
56:09
Speaker 5: what happened in the fire department and the water department
56:13
Speaker 5: situation in California that obviously has not been sufficient. The
56:17
Speaker 5: service has not been sufficient. And part of it what
56:19
Speaker 5: was back in twenty twenty two when they were sending
56:22
Speaker 5: firefighting equipment to Ukraine rather than keeping things for themselves,
56:26
Speaker 5: and so that has been part of it. But a
56:28
Speaker 5: lot of it has been I think as a result
56:30
Speaker 5: of equality, diversity and inclusion wokeness efforts, which has been
56:34
Speaker 5: destroying the city's infrastructure from within essentially. And I'm going
56:40
Speaker 5: to give you some examples here of why I think.
56:42
Speaker 6: This is happening.
56:43
Speaker 5: So first one is fire Chief Kristian Crowley, who's in
56:46
Speaker 5: charge of the entire fire department. After her credit, she
56:49
Speaker 5: did submit a report to the city in December of
56:51
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four saying that because they have cut overtime
56:55
Speaker 5: hours and the budget.
56:56
Speaker 6: I think the budget overall was cut.
56:57
Speaker 5: By seventeen million dollars and some of that money went
57:01
Speaker 5: to EDI initiatives instead. So now she didn't have enough
57:04
Speaker 5: hours available for firefighters, especially if a major disaster occurred,
57:08
Speaker 5: which of course it has, so we have to ask
57:10
Speaker 5: where the priorities are. Kristin identifies as LGBTQ, and she
57:16
Speaker 5: was the Grand Marshal of the twenty twenty four at
57:19
Speaker 5: La Pride Parade, so we've got our priorities in order there.
57:22
Speaker 5: She makes four hundred and forty thousand dollars a year.
57:26
Speaker 5: The Deputy Chief of the Fire Department, Christine Larson, who
57:29
Speaker 5: is the first Equity and Human Resources Bureau chief for
57:33
Speaker 5: the Fire Department and makes four hundred thousand dollars a year,
57:37
Speaker 5: also identifies as LGBTQ, and she had this to say
57:40
Speaker 5: in the short clip about what she thinks the firefighters
57:43
Speaker 5: responsibility is.
57:46
Speaker 10: You want to see somebody that responds to your house,
57:49
Speaker 10: your emergency, whether it's a medical call or a fire call,
57:52
Speaker 10: that looks like you. It gives that person a little
57:54
Speaker 10: bit more ease knowing that somebody might understand their situation better.
57:58
Speaker 10: Is she strong enough to do this? You couldn't carry
58:01
Speaker 10: my husband out of a fire, which my response is
58:03
Speaker 10: he got himself from the wrong place. If I have
58:05
Speaker 10: to carr him out of a fire.
58:13
Speaker 5: Personally, if somebody is carrying me out of a fire,
58:15
Speaker 5: I just want to get taken out of the fire.
58:17
Speaker 6: I don't care what they look like, and I don't
58:19
Speaker 6: care if they care what.
58:20
Speaker 5: I look like, honestly, So I looked at the twenty
58:22
Speaker 5: twenty three to twenty twenty six strategic plan for the
58:25
Speaker 5: Fire Department.
58:26
Speaker 6: It has seven goals overall.
58:28
Speaker 5: Goal number three is to commit to an organizational culture
58:31
Speaker 5: that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion. The strategies include promoting
58:35
Speaker 5: DEI or EEDI as systemic values and principles, Creating this bureau,
58:41
Speaker 5: which Larson is now in charge of, making four hundred
58:44
Speaker 5: thousand dollars a year to provide leadership and guidance and
58:47
Speaker 5: resources to advance the DEI vision, reducing invisible barriers to DEI,
58:52
Speaker 5: and creating opportunities to improve the diversity of recruits, so
58:56
Speaker 5: not necessarily their merit or their qualifications their ability to
58:59
Speaker 5: fight a fire, their diversity and the Water Department is
59:03
Speaker 5: just as bad. Karen Bass, who I talked about earlier
59:06
Speaker 5: in the news. Hired the CEO of the Water and
59:08
Speaker 5: Power Department. Her name is Janice Kimonis. She makes seven
59:12
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. She was disappointed
59:16
Speaker 5: in May there have been problems with empty water reservoirs.
59:19
Speaker 5: This disconnected broken fire hydrants.
59:22
Speaker 6: Firefighters just haven't had enough water.
59:24
Speaker 5: And she previously held an executive role at an electric
59:28
Speaker 5: company in the States called PG and E, which previously
59:31
Speaker 5: went bankrupt, interestingly enough, overliability for several wildfires that have
59:35
Speaker 5: happened in California. So let's hear from her about her priority.
59:41
Speaker 7: We call it powered by equity, and I know that
59:44
Speaker 7: it's been really important for the DWP to put an
59:46
Speaker 7: equity lens on everything.
59:48
Speaker 5: Yes.
59:49
Speaker 9: Yeah, and that's the number one thing that attracted me
59:52
Speaker 9: to this role, coming from the communities that I seeing
59:56
Speaker 9: what I've seen through my career and utilities and through
59:59
Speaker 9: the MALI. I've been in the Coast Guard nineteen and
1:00:01
Speaker 9: a half years now, so I got six more months
1:00:04
Speaker 9: to qualify for my twenty years, which was my original goal.
1:00:07
Speaker 2: Wow.
1:00:07
Speaker 9: Congratulations, thank you for your service. Thank you, thank you.
1:00:11
Speaker 9: It's important to me that everything we do, it's with
1:00:15
Speaker 9: an equivalence and social justice and making sure that we
1:00:19
Speaker 9: right the wrongs that we've done in the past from
1:00:22
Speaker 9: an infrastructure perspective, and that we involve the community in
1:00:25
Speaker 9: that process. And this utility is serious about it, is
1:00:29
Speaker 9: authentic about it, and so I'm just super excited to
1:00:34
Speaker 9: be part of that movement.
1:00:39
Speaker 5: So again, I think everybody has the right to access water,
1:00:41
Speaker 5: regardless of how you identify. But anyways, what's happening with
1:00:46
Speaker 5: I think as a result of Elon Musk and some
1:00:48
Speaker 5: of the other major players, is that some of these policies,
1:00:51
Speaker 5: at least in America and we can only hope that
1:00:53
Speaker 5: these will start to follow elsewhere throughout the West, is
1:00:55
Speaker 5: that EDA policies are starting to go away. Just in
1:00:59
Speaker 5: the past couple of days, we've seen Meta and Amazon
1:01:02
Speaker 5: have announced that they are ending their EDI programs, saying
1:01:05
Speaker 5: they have caused.
1:01:06
Speaker 6: Legal and political risks. What a shock there, right.
1:01:09
Speaker 5: Anyways, Mark Zuckerberg, who owns Meta, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, has
1:01:14
Speaker 5: also said that they are ending their fact checking program,
1:01:17
Speaker 5: criticized by Donald Trump and Republicans. And I personally believe
1:01:20
Speaker 5: that maybe this has to do with the approach that
1:01:23
Speaker 5: at least on the surface, Elon Musk has taken to
1:01:26
Speaker 5: the community notes that he provides on Twitter rather than
1:01:30
Speaker 5: the fact checking Mark. Zuckerberg was interviewed by Joe Rogan
1:01:34
Speaker 5: on his podcast in the last few days, and he
1:01:36
Speaker 5: told Rogan that he has always been concerned, which I
1:01:38
Speaker 5: don't believe, about being labeled the arbiter of truth, which
1:01:42
Speaker 5: I thought, by the way, was just send to arjourn
1:01:43
Speaker 5: but apparently at Zuckerberg, and that he was ill prepared
1:01:47
Speaker 5: when the first issue first heated up after the twenty
1:01:49
Speaker 5: sixteen election when Trump was elected president, and he said
1:01:53
Speaker 5: that these demands to take down information became unreasonable under
1:01:57
Speaker 5: the Biden administration, and by the way, he now wants
1:02:00
Speaker 5: to be called suck I think anyways, I think Zuck
1:02:02
Speaker 5: is bowing to save this company because this is not
1:02:05
Speaker 5: at all what he has said in the past few years.
1:02:07
Speaker 5: And I personally think it's because of Trump and must
1:02:09
Speaker 5: get the influence. So we'll see what happens in a
1:02:11
Speaker 5: couple of weeks time when Jump gets in.
1:02:16
Speaker 1: Very much for that lot for us to think about,
1:02:18
Speaker 1: for the audience to think about. But this is the
1:02:21
Speaker 1: key thing we feel for twenty twenty five is to
1:02:24
Speaker 1: be looking at what is actually happening, what the real
1:02:27
Speaker 1: drivers within politics and the community, what they are. We've
1:02:32
Speaker 1: got to get the lid off them. We've got to
1:02:33
Speaker 1: expose the bad ones. We've got to call things out
1:02:37
Speaker 1: for what it is, and we've got to use the
1:02:39
Speaker 1: real words. If it's fraud, corruption, if it's abuse, if
1:02:43
Speaker 1: it's perversion. We've got to use the real terms to
1:02:46
Speaker 1: call this out because only by doing that are we
1:02:49
Speaker 1: really going to be working to stop this pretty horrific
1:02:54
Speaker 1: undertone of new politics. We'll leave it there, Ben, Diane,
1:02:59
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining me. We're going to
1:03:01
Speaker 1: be we have a UK Column Extra in a couple
1:03:04
Speaker 1: of minutes time. We're going to be talking about sergeant
1:03:08
Speaker 1: former Sergeant Tangy from Devon and Cornwall Police who was
1:03:13
Speaker 1: arrested in the last couple of days with his girlfriend
1:03:17
Speaker 1: on allegations of stalking and harassment. We think there's a
1:03:21
Speaker 1: lot of the background to this man that we need
1:03:23
Speaker 1: to share with our audience, So if you're joining us
1:03:26
Speaker 1: for UK Column Extra, that's one of the subjects we'll
1:03:30
Speaker 1: be covering. We'll end there. Thank you very much for
1:03:33
Speaker 1: joining us. Wherever you are in the world, and a huge,
1:03:36
Speaker 1: huge thanks to all of the people that support us
1:03:39
Speaker 1: financially and keep UK column operational. Thank you very much.
1:03:43
Speaker 1: We'll be back at the same time one o'clock on
1:03:47
Speaker 1: Wednesday for the news. Don't forget that interview with Mike
1:03:51
Speaker 1: Yedon at one o'clock tomorrow. Okay, we'll see in a
1:03:54
Speaker 1: few moments. By empty ra