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The Transition · UK Column Radio

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Ben, thank you very much for joining me in UK
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Column studio number two. So this is a special afternoon
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: for us. But place is not totally complete yet, but
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: it's looking interesting.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It's great to be here good. It's nice to finally
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: be in a proper studio too.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I know we've been talking about this for quite a
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: long time and there was some debate about how it
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: should be set up. Obviously, in the footage we are
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: going to record the video we're going to record this afternoon,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the audience will see a little bit of how it looks,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: but there's still got a bit of tidying to do,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a little bit more to be done to assist the audio.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: But I think it's going to give us the opportunity
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: for some different styles. Both of us as sitting here
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: very relaxed today. No doubt I will be told off
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: because I haven't got to tie on, so we can
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: be relaxed. We can do more spontaneous discussions, whether it's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: you and me or other members of the UK Column team,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and I think this is going to be very nice.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: We've got the formality of the Plymouth Hoe backdrop in
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the main studio, which everybody likes, and this one more relaxed,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a little bit funky. Am I allowed to use that word.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: It might be old fashionable happened, and yeah, I think
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: it's going to go.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Well, it would be great.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: And we're allowed a cup of tea, and were allowed
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a cup of tea in here. Yes, So we thought
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: we would discuss with our audience a little bit about
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: cities and what is going to be happening with cities.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: And we're prompted to do this because a little while
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: ago a little magazine pots through my door at least
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: and in my glasses on to read this, and there
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: was a little article and it said Plymouth expansion plans.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Have your say, the plans for a large part of
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the South Hams to be swallowed up in a greater Plymouth.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Now just say, for the audience who don't know to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the eastern side of Plymouth, the district council area along
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the coastal belt is called South Hams. I live in
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: that area and that is one of the ones which
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Plymouth is going to take over. They say swallowed up
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: to form a greater Plymouth. And they are going to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: have a debate about well, no, they're not going to
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: have a debate about it. They're going to consult the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: public about their plans on Wednesday evening, so I'm going
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to be going along to a church hall to hear
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: what they have to say. Plymou's City Council has already
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: qualified the meeting by saying that there isn't really any
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: debate because the Government has said these changes to local
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: authorities are going to happen. So I'm going to be
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: very interested to see what the Plymouth City Council team
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: have to say. And I've already seen online in their
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: general blurb that they are saying it's not a power
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: grab and there's not going to be huge changes simply
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: because they've got control over all of this beautiful countryside
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and probably i'd like to say to the audience straight away,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I believe them, but that's the thing.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Wednesday evening, I'm going to get the opportunity to be
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: absolutely on the shop floor as a city, and Plymouth
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: is the major city in the southwest shre to Bristol. Anyway,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Plymouth is going to be talking about and into the
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: countryside areas around Plymouth, and why don't I just list
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the areas they're going to be looking at spark Well, Cornwood, Harford, Ugbrah,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: ivy Bridge, y Elkton, Irmington. So those are the local areas.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: They're all village areas largely, with the exception of ivy Bridge,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: which was a It was a village originally, but it
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: had a huge expansion in the very early two thousands,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: probably a bit before that, late late nineteen nineties, it
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: was growing incredibly quickly. So there's a lot of new houses,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: so it's a bit more of an urban area, but
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of countryside. Would you trust Plymouth when
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: they say it's not a power grab, I.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Don't just any political bodies, all administrative bodies of the state. Yeah,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: about anything that they say on any topic, Brian, So no,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I don't trust Plinmous Council when they say it's not
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: a paragrab.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I thought you'd probably say that we had a little
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: bit of interesting research going on a while ago, because
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: you are very keen on paper and drawing pictures of
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: diagrams of how you see the system, and that was
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: certainly something that I used to do. But you'd been
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: working and looking at quite well, probably at the highest level,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: because if I remember correctly, on your diagrams you were
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: definitely into things like the United Nations and the World
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Economic Forum and some of these other big political bodies.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: But what you were demonstrating was that you could see
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: their policy influence coming right down to city street level. Yes,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: And of your diagrams, you said to me, and down
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: here in Plymouth, we've got all these funny organizations. And
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: one of them was called Octopus, if I remember correctly
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: them Octopusmouth Octopus yea. And I said, that's funny, because
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: when I was researching back in two thousand and five,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I had also been drawing some diagrams where I came
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: across these funny little organizations, of which Octopus was one.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: We had Zebra Collective.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Zebra Collected, we had one called eye Contact. And I
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: was always fascinated by these little organizations, where they'd come
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: from and what they were actually doing. And it's been
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the discussions with you that's really started to fill in
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: some big holes, because these huge changes to our cities
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: and county councils and district councils. These are not small
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: local plans that are unfolding. This is big stuff.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: This is well the local levels where the shovels meet
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: the ground, Basically, you know, if all of the policy
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: stays up in the stratosphere internationally, in the UN and
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: the World Economic Forum, then it doesn't actually have any impact.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: It has to ground itself in a local area in
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: order for change to actually take place. And yeah, so
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: I've spent a lot of time looking at well, first
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: of all, for me, trying to understand the UN system
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: and what it was doing, because actually, until I started
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: working at the UK column, I'd never even really encountered
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: the UN system. I knew that the UN existed. I
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: knew that politicians went along to New York and sat
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: in the UN building, and obviously you'd see the Security
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Council on the news, and you know, the kind of
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: the basic functions of what the UN publicly communicates, you
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: would hear about it, right, But I had no idea
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: really that it was this hue, huge international network and
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: all of the different bodies that it encompasses, and the
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: agenda it's set for itself basically, which is an agenda
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: of total wholesale global transformation. I had never really understood
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: that because professionally I'd always been more on the market
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: side of things.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Just qualify that then when you say professionally, you're referring
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: back to your time with a CONSULTANCYCE and young.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Well not just young, So I worked in I worked
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: in the consulting industry and was advising companies mainly bits
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: of government were but mainly working with brands and international
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: corporations to help them improve their performance, I guess would
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: be a very short way of describing it. And then
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: latterly a lot of that was to do with using
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: new technologies. So this process of digitization that the whole
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: of society has been going through for the past I
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: mean probably forty years now. Actually maybe even slightly longer
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: if you think back to the early days of Silicon
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Valley in the seventies, when organizations like well IBM has
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: actually been around for over a century now, but certainly
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Microsoft when that appeared, Apple appeared in the mid to
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: late seventies. You know, this process of computer technologies coming
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: in has been going on for quite a long time now.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: I was obviously very young back then. I was only
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: born in eighty one, So professionally I kind of entered
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: the workforce in two thousand and four and then sort
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: of rode that wave of mobile devices the iPhone in
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: particular the app ecosystem, so everything becomes about digital applications
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: running on a mobile device, and then basically how you
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: collapse industries ultimately into the techn anology, so that that
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: becomes your primary primary interface point for how you interact
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: with a company. It's now a lot of the time
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: it's done through through the phone. And you know, there's
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: been huge ramifications to that in terms of how cities
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: are built, and particularly around things like the high street
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: for example, so that the death of the high street
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: you can pretty much down completely to the Internet in
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: particular mobile telecommunications.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Everyone just buys things on.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly, but they are online now, so you end up
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: with you know, a few very small, not very small,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: a small number of very large, dominant players in areas
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: of the economic system where you used to have huge diversity.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: And you know, the high Street is a really good
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: example of that. And that's that's been particularly and it's
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: particularly important for the way that, uh, this sort of
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: the transformation of cities and transformation of governance is playing
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: out because in the vacuum that's been created, the physical vacuum,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: literally we've got empty shops everywhere.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: You've now got these new.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Types of organizations, local government organizations. But these new they're
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: not quite businesses. Do you hear this term social enterprise
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: a lot or community interest company? And these organizations are
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: now filling up those spaces actually, and that's sort of
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: presented as this sort of nice, friendly, organic progression of
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: the way that a society is structured and how and
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: how it's run.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: But actually when you go and look at what's.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Driving that and where the money is coming into that
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: system in order to enable it, and how it links
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: directly to UN policy, then you can begin to understand
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: how that top level bit of the system, which to
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: most people feels very sort of abstract and distant and
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: above their head and democratically unaccountable. And you know, we'd
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: never vote vote for people to go to the UN.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: You know, we don't any of these sort of supernational bodies.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: You know, no one voted for Usha Livon Delean, but
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: apparently she's the you know, she's running Europe at the moment.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: No one voted for Antonio Goutedes, but he's running the
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: UN and apparently speaking on behalf of the holy humanity, right,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And and the things that they talk about are so
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: kind of.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Sort of lofty and theoretical.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: A lot of people would say it's nonsense. They hear
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the language, Yeah, they can hear them talking about ideas
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: and things they're doing, and a lot of a lot
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of people will often say, oh, this is just nonsense. Yes,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And I find this quite frustrating because you sense that
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: people with out any understanding of what these individuals are
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: doing or planning are dismissing it. No, it's not nonsense.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: We're not only need to pay attention to what they're
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: talking about, we need to actually understand the language they used, Sorry,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: they use because very often you've got to get into
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: the language to fully understand what they're talking about.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, because it's how the it's how bureaucrats talk
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: to each other. Ultimately, it's all very procedural and rigid
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: and loaded with propaganda buzzwords, and you know, you get
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: things like diversity and inclusivity and sustainability and all this
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: stuff that you know, it's Superficially it sounds to some people,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: it sounds like rubbish. To some people, it sounds reassuring
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: and you know, and and like a positive thing. But
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: actually when you sort of dig just very very you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: one or two layers beneath the surface.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: There's actually a lot of a lot of meaning buried
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: in this language that is having direct.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Effects on the whole of that the whole of our society.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: And and it's it's literally the physical environment in your town.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: You know, we talk about Plymouth. You will down Union
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Street in Plymouth. Now there are buildings along that stretch
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: that are part of redevelopment programs directly aligned to United
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Nations Rocherstainable Development goals.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, And that's just in Plymouth. This is going
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: on in every major town around the UK.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as you said Union Street, I thought, let's let's
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: describe that a bit for viewers and listeners. There's quite
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: an interesting little bit of Plymouth history. But originally when
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Plymouth developed a support the first development was in Devonport,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: which is the area to the west of what is
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: now the main city of Plymouth, and the Devenport Naval
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Base was on the River Tamar to the west side
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: of the city, southwest southwest side of the city, and
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: in days gone by, that was the predominant area because
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: obviously ships came in and that's where cargoes were landed,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: and that's how the trade built up, and it was
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: only when the expansion started that Plymouth as a city
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: began to grow. And the other thing that happened was
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: that Plimpton, which is an area to the northeast of
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the city which until about one hundred years ago, one
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years ago, did have a just navigable river,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: So that actually formed, if my memory serves me right,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: one of the Stannery ports, So you did have another
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: port area to the eastern side of Plymouth. But when
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the river silted up, the strength of that side of
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the city reduced and most of the maritime side went
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to the to the Devonport side. And Devenbort was connected
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: to Plymouth by one street, which was Union Street, and
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: originally that street was a very busy hub of everything,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: so it had shops. But in later years, because in
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: particular of the number of sailors who were ashore from
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a very big military base, naval base in Plymouth, that
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: street was full of pubs and clubs in music halls,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and it was a very very lively environment. And I
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: found it very sad to see these parts of Plymoth
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: absolutely fall into disrepair. And I know that you're thinking
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: one particular building down that direction, which should be an
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: absolutely phenomenal Victorian theater, but it's in fact sitting there
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: as a derelict building.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, so we've seen the whole strip.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: It's probably about the main bit is about two hundred
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: meters of.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: What you can still see used to be real.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Victorian grandeur actually, you know, but with a kind of
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: burlesque sort of edge to it as well. Actually, you know,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: like these ornate buildings, and you can kind of sense
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the life that would have been pulsing through that place
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: right when it was an entertainment destination for the poor
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: and a cultural destination, and it's clearly just sort of
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: been left to rots over decades.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: This becomes very interesting for me because my time in Plymouth,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I have watched the decline of the city and so
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: you had the basic neglect of areas, You had the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: demise of the naval base. So from being a huge
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: employer just after the Second World War, I think there
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: was about fifty five thousand people employed just in the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: dockyard alone, and then Plymouth had inside the city and
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: on the city periphery a lot of industry and small
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: businesses often connected to the dockyard. So a lot of
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: business and industry in Plymouth Dockyard starts to reduce, and
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: then you saw these companies disappear one by one on
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the periphery of Plymouth and you say, well, how are
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: people going to earn their money? Then, when we ended
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: up with in Devonport area, so that naval base area,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a large part of the community unemployed, and some of
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: them had been unemployed for three generations. But what we
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: saw Plimouth City Council start to do was regeneration projects.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And this is where I got interested because these weren't
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: homegrown regeneration projects. They were all regeneration projects which were
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: either funded by or themselves targeting European Regeneration grant money
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: from European Investment Bank, from the European Bank of Reconstruction
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and Development. And then what you started to see happen
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: was a style of regeneration which to my mind, completely
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: destroyed the historical look of the city. So cities, so
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: streets were going to be and eyes, they were going
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to be paved over in a particular way. A certain
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: style of street furniture, lamp posts and benches and bollards
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: would come in and that was very quickly followed by
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: the fact that the shopping area had a very high
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: percentage of charity shops, all the same shops, and I
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: was interested to see that happen in Plymouth. But at
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: the same time I could travel to another city. I
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: could go to Liverpool or Sheffield or Manchester and see
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: exactly the same style of regeneration. And what it actually
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: did is gave a uniform look to the cities and
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: they became slightly Unbritish. Sometimes the architecture you'd say, yeah,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: this looks a bit like you might see it on
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the continent, and very often attracted but attractive but slightly
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: dilapidated buildings were disappearing to be replaced by very unattractive
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: modern concrete structures. And I was very I was always
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: very interested in that process.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Right, well, yeah, all of the personality was being stripped
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: out of the country. And I remember this in so
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: this is pre financial crash, So I think I was
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: while I was at university or just after I graduated
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: from university. So I graduated in two thousand and four.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: I remember.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Nottingham, which was my hometown, bits of it were completely transformed,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: so like areas of the Lace Market, which was all
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: beautiful old Victorian buildings were being taken down and they
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: were putting up these new flats and they were concrete
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: but also a lot of glass. There was this sort
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: of new glass and sort of ugly boxing, nondescripts modern
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: new build apartments with some retail underneath them. And as
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: you say, this was it was the same look that
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: you were getting in Nottingham as you were getting in
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Plymouth or and any other bit of the country. Basically
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: like actually the personality and character of the place and
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: like local materials.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: For example, which is it just wasn't there anymore.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: And you you referenced the the EU money, which is interesting, right,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: and the fact that a lot of this is grant based, right.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: And and to me.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: This is deliberate disruption from the bureaucratic center in order
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: to essentially reset the social and the economic and the
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: cultural structures in towns around the UK. And this was
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: happening acrosse the whole of Europe as well. Right, It's
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: not just in this country, It's hapen happening everywhere and
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: basically creating a false economy because our industrial capacity had
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: been wound down over decades, you know, So if you
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: go to Nottingham, for example, I just mentioned the lace market,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the wealth of Nottingham through the seventeen and the eighteen
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: hundreds came from lace. Yeah, so the work's no longer
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: made in Nottingham, but a lot of the built physical
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: infrastructure and the wealth and heritage of the town is
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: tied up with that. But they haven't made lace there
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: industrially in probably a couple of hundred years now, you know.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: And there are other things that have happened there in
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: terms of industrial outputs. So Boots was a big employer
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: in the city, but a lot of that has been
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: sent overseas now and you know, to cover over the
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: cracks in the decline in our wealth creating capacity as
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: a nation, you have these slugs, huge slugs, billions of
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: euros coming in from these grant systems to give people employment,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: but in order to do what to.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Tear down.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Their own infantry, their own infrastructure, you know, which which
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: should have been maintained.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Aside from watching this in the city, the other thing
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I started to be able to see is the documents
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that the local authority and also some of the government agencies,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the Government Office of the Southwest Southwest of England regeneration agencies.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: So these are government constructs. How the government would be
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: helping local businesses grow I don't know, But so these
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: agencies came along and predominantly they then followed the requirements
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: of the sources of the funding. So if you were
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: going to take EBRD European Bank of Reconstruction and Development grants,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: for you to get that money, you would have to
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: agree that in your plans you were going to do X,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Y and z, which is what the bank wanted. And
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: so through the money they controlled the type of development,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the style of it. And essentially that's when I started
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: to see the European purse holding cities in this country
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: to account because the focus of the city areas instantly
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: went away from national government to the European Union. Because
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the European Union was dangling all the pots of money,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: it was really interesting to watch.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Right, we did a total manipulation of the economic system.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, so, I say so at that time, everything
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I was watching happen for me was linking back to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: the European Union. But now we've moved on because we've
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: got other things which have sort of come to the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: surface and Mark and us and who is with us
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: at the UK columns often talking about the rise of
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: the global cities and the global mayre system. And so
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: it was later that I started to realize that, okay,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: what the European Union was building and destroying was all
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: on the path to a much bigger control coming in.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And that's really dovetails with what you started to say
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: just now, Ben the people's sense that there's something higher
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: than them, there's power being enactive, but they can't see
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: that so easily. Now some of that is breaking surface,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: isn't it. Because we can look at the UN Sustainable
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Development Goals, we can see their documentation and what it's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: talking about. We can have a look at websites which
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: are talking about the global city and the global mayre system.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: And the overwhelming more coming through is that they are
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: creating city states of immense.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Power, yes, which are not independent city states, which is
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: how they're being positioned. So this drive towards this metro
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: mare system, which is already happening, by the way, right,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: So one of the most important things for people to
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: take away from this, I think, right is that they've
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: actually already doing this. There's no proper consultation about it
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: at all. The system's already in place, they are implementing it,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: and they're effectively bull dozing the existing system out of
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: the way with almost no discussion at all, and it's
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: just happening, right, And they've lined up every single component
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: part of the system in order for them to enable
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: that transition ultimately, and they talk about it as a transition,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: a great global transition. And it's not just political system.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: It's the whole economic system. It's the energy grid, it's
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: the telecommunications infrastructure, the Internet, it's the artificial intelligence platforms
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: that they're developing that are going to be absolutely core
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: to this governance. And it's basically a replatforming of everything
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: everywhere to a single integrated system that is consistent across
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: the whole world. And the mayors is how is being implemented.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: And they allow devolution to the level of mayor because
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: it gives people the sense, you know, the the false
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: hope ultimately that there's that there is some accountability, or
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: that you can exert a little bit of control and
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: have some democratic representation because there's someone from your local
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: area who you can at least vote for and that
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: might help you to exert some influence over the system, right,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: But actually that's that's not what they're for. So this
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: devolution to this mare based system is actually their their
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: little fiefdom. It's like a franchise model. It's actually, it's
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: probably a really good way of describing it, right, It's
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: like every restaurant that you can go into is now
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: a McDonald's. It might have different people behind the counter,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: and the manager might be a different person from one
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: to the next, but ultimately they're all just McDonald's. And
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: that's basically the model that they're moving towards. And actually
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: they learned the lessons of global corporatization of industry is
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: they've actually learnt a lot of stuff from the way
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: that these big international companies have run and then deployed
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: it back into the political system.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: This is fascinating and for me, this is where people
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: need to pay attention because, as you say, this bit
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: has been put in place very quickly, so they've built
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: a new system of governance just reminds people what they
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: had Hadish councils, so representation down to the smallest village
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: or hamlet, just a few people in the parish. And
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: of course that's also connected to the churches. Parish is
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: usually regarded as the area connected to a particular church. Yes,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: we had the district councils which were locally based, not
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: even at community level. They were geographic areas within a county,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: so they're a division of the county level. And then yes,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: it was sensible. I would agree that when you had
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: the bigger cities forming, they obviously need to needed to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: become a unit in their own rights. So then we
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: had a city Council and Manchester City Council and Greater
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: London Council as it was, so that made sense, but
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: nevertheless was a system where you had a breakdown in
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: levels and you knew if you were at the bottom
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: of the chain you were always dealing with somebody bigger
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: but still local in order to represent you. Now, what's
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: been built on the side to one side a parallel
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: system is nothing to do with that at all. And
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: this is where people a really got to pay attention
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: because we've got district councils have gone. A lot of
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: that happened after lockdown because during lockdown a lot of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: the district councils simply abandoned their businesses and said you
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: can work from home, and then once COVID was over,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: people never went back to work in the district councils,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: and so now that's being used as an excuse that
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: we don't really need the district councils and we're going
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: to get rid of them. So there's a grouping up
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: of the county structure, whilst at the same time we're
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: building these city states fiefdoms is what they are. And
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the other personal power in them, of course is the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: police commissioner. Yes, who was introduced as a person who
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: the public could trust to regulate the police because they
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: elected them. But everywhere I've come across police commissioners they
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: are actually working hand in glove with the police and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the local authorities themselves.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: So certainly are yeah.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And we've talked about this particularly in relation to
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Greater Manchester and a lot of the issues around investigations
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: into an accountability for grooming Gang's issue and what's been
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: going on in Oldham and Rotherham, and it's been a
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: pack of trouble and that we're not here to talk
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: about that necessarily, right, But ultimately these things are all
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: inter link with each other, and if that's an exemplar
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: of how this thing is going to operate. Then I
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: think it's fairly damning.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, so your city franchise idea, this
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: is brilliant. This really brings it home. You're going to
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: be in a city. So you'll drive along the road
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and you'll come to a sign and it will say
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: you're you're entering Manchester or Newcastle, and you think you've
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: entered a different city. But actually the whole structure is
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: going to be franchise model and it will be exactly
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the same as Glasgow or Manchester, or Sheffield or Leeds
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: wherever it.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Is, and it will be running on the same governance,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: the same technological systems. Everything will be integrated in the
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: background and they'll have they'll have the same surveillance technologies.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: They're driving people towards urbanization because they want people to
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: be This is part of this idea of inclusivity, right.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: They want they don't want anyone living outside of the system.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: It's what inclusive means. It means that you can only
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: exist within the system that they're developed.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: The level of every man, woman and child.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Live on earth. Yes, exactly, because this is not happening
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: in the UK. Is happening everywhere. So we talked about this.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Global Mayors C forty Mayors is one of the sort
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of leading examples of this. Selik Kahan is the co
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: president alongside a woman forget her name from Sierra Leone.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: I believe it is right.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, So you've got these kind of diverse groups internationalist
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: promoting the same agenda, running on the same the same platform,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: same technology, the same system.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Ultimately, which is alien to the.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Nation state and national cultures.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Is essentially anti nationalist, right, and this is this is
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: a globalized system. And you can see this manifesting in
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: right down to the level of you want to know
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: why they're not paving the roads properly out in the counties,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: because they want to make those areas unlivable so that
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: people leave them, won't live there, and they'll move into
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: the urban centers where all of the investment is being put. Right,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: you know, you hear a lot of one of the
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: one of these issues that people get quite upset about
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: is potholes in the roads.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Well, that's not a mistake.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: That's a deliberate move to drive people, nudge people towards
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: urban centers and the new system, which is where you
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: know the cities is where is where this new system
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: is focused on, ultimately.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Before it before it goes out of my mind. Just
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: coming back to Plymouth specifically, when you when you read
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the blurb from Plymouth City Council about these new plans,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: one of the things they said is that, well, first
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: of all, the emphasize that Plymouth was an important global city.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: This always makes me smile because Plymouth has trouble operating
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: as a city in the UK, but apparently as an
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: important global city. And also the Plymouth Fields that it
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: needs to increase its population to three hundred thousand. Now
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: I can imagine for other city dwellers across the UK
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: they're going to be thinking, well, that's not much. But
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Plymouth has just about held its own as a city
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: with the population I think around about two hundred and
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: thirty two hundred and forty thousand. I think it's up
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: to about two hundred and fifty thousand now. So they
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: are proposing another fifty that let's say another fifty thousand
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: people coming into Plymouth. Where are they going to work,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: where are they going to live? Well, we know what's
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: going to happen with the living problem, because just outside
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: of Plymouth, they decided to create a new town called Shereford.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: It's on green fields. And although the excuse used was
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: that it was low grade agricultural space. Since we can't
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: feed ourselves as a nation, perhaps we ought to be
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: very careful of what we designate low grade agricultural space.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: But they built a new city or a new, big,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: new housing development with no new link to the main highway.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: So the eight coming down into Plymouth, there is no
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: new junction to take you into this vast new urban area.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: There are virtually no shops. They have got a school
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: there now, I think. But you you just drive into
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: this slightly to me spooky urban area, which is there
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: are some nice buildings, but it's all a bit uniform,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: and it's very wide space and.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: Open inorganic, and I feel a bit fake.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, right, yeah, because actually, if you in any city,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: proper city, yes, you know, certainly in this country another
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: ancient ancient civilizations.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Britain is an ancient culture.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Right, We've got cities that have built up over thousands
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: of years. They build up over thousands of years, right,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: It's a process of development and that takes time, and
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: it happens in the kind of in a very natural and.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: An organic way.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And you know, a fifty thousand person town serciually what
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: that is, right, we're talking about fifty thousand people were
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: actually how many people in this.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: New l I'm saying they're going to take on another
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: fifty I'm not sure what the population of Sherford is now.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: It's nowhere near fifty thousand. But nevertheless, they've built a
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: lot of houses, yes, and it's still expanding.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Right, But it's all just come at once, something that's
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: developed over time, incrementally over decades.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: It's just lump it in.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: But when they went to develop it, it was we
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: had to have it how we need it, we need
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: we need all this space for new homes. And they
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: never said where people were coming from. Yes, But now,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: of course we get a little bit of a clue
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: because if we dip our toes into a delicate area
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: any place around UK can now see that a significant
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: proportion of the population is coming in with migration. And
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: that is also part of the plan to break down
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: national identity, not only in UK but across Europe and
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: so people. So we're in here to the UN's migration plans. Yes,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: impacting on how how somewhere like Plymouth builds itself.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: It's it's fascinating, it is fascinating, right, and that's and yes,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: so you know another example of where the the global strategy,
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: the global plan begins to impact on the physical and
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: the cultural space in your immediate vicinity ultimately. And I
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: forget the name. Was it Peter Sutherland? Yes, so it
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: was the Irish am I getting that.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I think possibly possibly was, you might yeah.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but he was a top un official.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: An ambassador on migration.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Right and this was.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: Probably knocking on twenty years I think he died around
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: twenty ten if I'm correct, maybe he was more recent
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: years ago. Yeah, but he was basically saying that, well,
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: we need mass migration in all this breakdown in the
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Nation States, and this is the direction of travel that
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: we've taken, and that's what we're.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: Going to do.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: And that's a very cruel agenda, because yes, if people
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: are feeling pressurized as a result of newcomers coming into
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: the country, the people who are being displaced from their
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: own country or leaving their own country, a lot of
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: them are understressed themselves. Absolutely, And I have never forgotten
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: driving home one night from the UK column very rarely
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: listened to it now, but I had Radio four on
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: and at one point they were talking about the fact
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: that if you were a social worker in UK, you
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: should seriously think about having a look for a job
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: in Poland because Poland was desperately short of social workers
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: and care workers. Why because all the young people had
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: migrated into Western Europe and UK, leaving the elderly people,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: particularly in the farming areas in Poland, with no young
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: people to support them. So very cruel on the elderly
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: people in Poland, cruel on the young people that have
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: been lured to a new nation state thinking that they're
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: you know, the grass is greener on the other side.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: And then we are pressurized as a result of that migration.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: And it's a completely the crous and illogical policy. Right,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: So the young people who have come from Poland to
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: work in jobs here, but then we've got to send
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: people from here over to Poland to working jobs there.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Why on earth would we need to do that. Why
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: doesn't everyone just stay where they are and we can
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: feel the positions that are required.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: We don't have happy people living in their own states,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: enjoying their own culture and their own identity, exactly. That's
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: all all got to be broken up exactly. That is
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: what Peter Sutherland said. We need more mass migration to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: break down the homogeneity of the nation state.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly, which is ultimately, but it's not just it's a
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: direct attack on the people, right. So when we talk
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: about the nation state and why that's important, it's because
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: it's constituted of individual human beings with lives and ambitions, and.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: This is actually a direct attack.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: On them, right importantly, and these and the mayors, they're
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: ultimately driving this agenda now, right. So there's there's one
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: example that I've been looking at for the past few days,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: which is the new mayor of let me get this
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: absolutely correct, got it in front of me here. So
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: this lady is Helen Godwin and she's the mayor of
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: the West of England Combined Authority, Bristol and associated areas
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: around there, and she's only been in position for a
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: couple of months and just yesterday I think it was
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: no one did this come out on the eighteenth of General.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: We'll provide a link to this you can go and
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: have a read of it. But it talks about the
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: fact that she's going to be using a citizens Assembly.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: She's one of these democratic innovations that we've been talking about,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: these new democratic models, and she's going to use that
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: to reshape culture in the West of England with a
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: people powered vision. Apparently, so the mayor is going to
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: micromanage culture in Bristol and Avon and that whole area.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: And they're talking about this as a democratic experiment which
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: will put cultural decision making in the hands of fifty
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: two citizens.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: So they're going to select.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: That's the key word, isn't it. These are not elected citizens.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: These are going to be selected, yes, citizens.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, So they send out letters to fifteen thousand households,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: apparently randomly chosen. But you know, I would question how
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: random that actually is. And if the letters going out
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: is random, then I'm sure that there's some screening going
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: on in the selection process. Of course there will be.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: And then they're going to run this series of assemblies
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: to make decisions about culture in the Bristol region. Well,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: why does the mayor have anything to say about culture?
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Culture comes from the people, comes from the whole population engaging.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: In Now that that's where it came from, where it
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: used to come from, That's where it used to come
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: now we have a group of individuals who've been told
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: cultures to change, yes, and they are now starting the
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: path to changing the culture. Yes, to a culture that
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: we can suspect we know what it is. We can
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: we can guess by looking at indicators.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, But ultimately this.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Is going to be a culture which is alien to
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: anything that we've lived with. Yes, if we still have
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: a national identity of any.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Type, exactly, it's going to it's it's imposed, it's artificial culture.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: It's these decisions that they're all ultimately going to be
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: about the allocation of of tax revenue, because that's all
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: politicians do, right. They don't actually understand anything other than
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: how to dole out other people's money.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: That's literally the job that they have.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: And so that's interesting in its own right right. And
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: and but beyond that, the two other things I think
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: that really stood out of me about this was, first
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: of all, this lady hell and Godwin has most recently
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: she's she's a She was a counselor in Bristol for
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: a few years. She also worked professionally as as a
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: director at Hayes which is a big recruitment company, but
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: most recently she was in the local government consulting team
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: at PwC. She spent three years at Price Wall's House Coopers,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: who are a strategic partner in the World Economic Forum,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: so they are actively engaged in the Great Reset and
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: the implementation of the Sustainable Development goals. So this is
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: the market side that the UN represents the state ultimately
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: the power structure, It dictates the direction of travel, terms
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: of engagement. But then the market, the World Economic Forum side,
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: the corporations are engaged in the implementation of that in
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: the the the profit seeking marketplace that's been constructed around
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: this whole transformation program. So she spent three years doing that,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: so that you have to question her, her motives and
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: ultimately her mindset around this.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: You know, she's she's been put in there to change.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Where has she come from? How is it that she's
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: now in this very interesting position. Yeah, that's the first
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: question i'd ask exactly.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing is when you look at
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: where the money is is coming in from to support
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: this cultural transformation program, and some of it's from the
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Arts Council, right, So again this is central state money
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: being pushed into transformation of city regions across the UK.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: But then also importantly the Golbenkian Foundation and the Paul
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Hamlin Foundation. So these supposedly philanthropic charitable foundations who have
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: all made it their.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: Their their mission.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: To break down and reshape and reform the donation state,
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: and these two are particularly active in the UK. I
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: think Callouse Golbenkian is is Turkish, but I think Paul
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: Hamlin is based out of London. Right, So we've got
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: international capital coming from the richest families in the world
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: flooding into these cultural and economic and political change change programs.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: And this has now been presented back to the British
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: people as a fate of complete and inevitability.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: And with the deceitful line that it, oh, this is
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: just government UK government reorganization of local government, when in
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: fact what the government is doing is following this higher
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: level international agenda. So there is a huge amount to
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: discuss about this. Yes, just coming back to Plymouth, we'll
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: say to the audience that this meeting's coming up this week.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I will attend, I will make sure I pay attention
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: and we'll see whether we can get some interesting material
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: to run a follow up on what was discussed in
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the meeting. What did Bloomouth City Council say it was
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: going to do in these expansion plans. I think we
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: might be able to challenge them a little bit, so
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: that'll be fun. But we've got a huge amount of material.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: You've done a really bririlliant amount of research looking at
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: these change agents, the bodies that the policies, the people,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: the funding streams. It's a vast network. It's almost like
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a virus descending over culture in UK.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I think it's a cancer cancer. It's like a cancer's growth.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Actually we use attached itself to the host nation and
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: he's slowly killing it ultimately. And that's that's the closest
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: analogy I can think of.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: So to deal with this disease, we need to be
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: able to see it, recognize it for what it is.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: We need to be having a look at what we
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: can do to heal society in UK. And I think
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the most upbeat thing which I could possibly end on
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: is the fact that when you and that, when you
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: analyze the control structure that these powers and these bodies
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: and these funding streams are implementing, they only get control
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: when people at the lowest level agree to be controlled.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: And more and more I see that if you have
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: people at the local level, parish level, communities on a street,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: every time they say no, we are not having this,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: it causes ruptions further up the chain because these powerful
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: people have no power unless they can control the individual.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: So that's how I see it.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: It's completely completely true.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and actually they they have massively underestimated.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: The fight.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: I think I would say that there is still in
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: the hearts and minds of the British people, but also
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: you know, internationally they're struggling to implement this system. But
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: I'll talk to talk to Britain because that's where we
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: are and that's, you know, my main focus. But they
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: also massively overestimated their own ability to implement this. You've
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: got a lot of very arrogant people in these systems
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: who seem to think that because they've done a good
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: job of elevating themselves up the corrupt hierarchy, that that
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: gives them some kind of power over others, whereas actually
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: it doesn't, and they're beginning to really understand that.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: So I think that's true. Yeah, Okay, well, Ben, it's
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: been a fascinating conversation, a little teaser for our viewers
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: and listeners, and that is that UK Column is planning
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: another written reports along the lines of your life in
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: their hands. We are going to specifically look at this
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: issue of control over the nations and the city states
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: and some of these power systems. And I think, I
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: think there's a very good, glossy UK Column production coming
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: and we'll keep people informed us to the final published date,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: but we are working on it. You'll certainly working on it. Okay,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Thanks very much, Ben.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure. Here's so many more
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: in the new studio