Latest / UK Column Radio / UK Column News - 17th November 2025

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UK Column News - 17th November 2025 · UK Column Radio

0:08
Good afternoon. It's Monday the 17th of November
0:10
2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
0:13
I'm your host, Mike Robinson, and my host in studio today is
0:16
Ben Rubin. Welcome to the program, Ben.
0:18
Thank you, Mike. And joining us by video link are
0:20
Sandy Adams and Diane Rasmussen. Later in the program, we'll be
0:24
looking at how impact investing is being used as well government
0:28
takeover effectively. And we're also going to look at
0:31
assisted dying and how that's going in Canada, concerns from
0:35
the climate lobby about disinformation and the latest on
0:38
the roll out of 5G in the UK. But we're going to begin today
0:41
with the with the UK Health Security Agency and links
0:45
between excess deaths and COVID shots.
0:48
Because on Saturday, the Telegraph put out this article,
0:52
which many may have seen headlined government withholding
0:58
data that may link COVID jobs to excess deaths, as if that should
1:02
come as a surprise to anyone but the UK.
1:05
The the argue, sorry, the article says.
1:08
The UK Health Security Agency argued that releasing the data
1:11
would lead to distress or anger if bereaved relatives, so a link
1:18
were to be discovered. They said public health
1:20
officials also argued that publishing the data risked
1:23
damaging the well-being and mental health of the families
1:26
and friends of people who died. Now if you remember what the ONS
1:30
graph looked like at the time, it was clear that there was
1:33
something pretty nasty going on. So we just put it on screen
1:36
there. Now this is largely ignored by
1:39
politicians and journalists everywhere.
1:42
And now the Telegraph is doing what?
1:43
Trying to cover their tracks? What's, what's going on here,
1:45
Ben? I'd say so, yeah.
1:48
I mean, it's quite amazing that they, they don't want to release
1:50
it because they want to spare us.
1:52
You see, it's all about us. It's not about escaping
1:54
accountability. Indeed, We'll, we'll come up,
1:57
we'll come on to that in a second.
1:59
Now the campaign to have the data released has been led by
2:03
this campaign group US for them who requested the data via
2:07
Freedom of Information requests. The refusal from the UKHSA said
2:11
nothing at all about distress or anger when they were answering
2:14
these Freedom of Information requests, but instead said that
2:17
publishing the data could quotes could lead to misinformation.
2:21
It would have an adverse impact on vaccine uptake in in the
2:25
public. So the question is, which was
2:27
it? Was it they were worried about
2:29
the alarm and distress that it might cause the public or was it
2:31
because they were worried about vaccine uptake?
2:34
The UK Health Security Agency also claimed that the data
2:38
released could carry a risk of individuals being identified
2:42
despite data being anonymised. But hold on, the same people
2:46
tell us regularly that it's OK to collect bulk data on all of
2:50
us on on all of us NHS users because it's perfectly safe as
2:55
the data is anonymised. So I'm not sure they can have it
2:57
both ways. They're going to try.
2:59
They're going to try. Well, let's just have a look at
3:03
this quick quote here from them because they said protecting
3:07
patient confidentially confidentiality is of critical
3:10
importance. Releasing this data presented a
3:13
real possibility that it could be used to identify individuals
3:17
which could result in significant distress.
3:19
So that's that was their position.
3:22
And that's pretty hilarious, bearing in mind they didn't
3:26
really worry too much about causing distress in 2020 when
3:31
Spy B, for example, put this in their minutes.
3:34
A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently
3:37
personally threatened. The perceived level of personal
3:40
threat needs to be increased amongst those who are
3:43
complacent, using hard hitting emotional messaging and saying
3:47
that social disapproval from one's community can play an
3:50
important role in preventing anti social behaviour or
3:54
discouraging failure to enact pro social behaviour.
3:57
So they didn't seem too worried about causing alarm and distress
4:01
at that point in time. Just including the UKHSA in the
4:05
whole covidocracy that that existed at that point.
4:09
It wasn't them specifically they were making those statements,
4:11
but they were part parcel of this, or at least the precursors
4:14
were. We're part and parcel of of this
4:16
entire regime. So it.
4:19
Was formed in that period as well.
4:21
It was absolutely Khsa was was an outcrop of that early.
4:25
Absolutely. Covidocracy.
4:27
Yes, absolutely. And that security word that they
4:30
introduced, that's very much aligned to this stuff.
4:32
Yes. So anyway, I, I think, you know,
4:36
I applaud the organization help, you know, attempt to get this
4:40
information out in the public and it's supposed to be public
4:43
data. And and the campaign group was
4:46
busy was was pointing out that of course, this data has been
4:49
shared with pharmaceutical companies already, but it has
4:51
not yet been shared with the public.
4:53
So I think it's about time it was.
4:56
I couldn't agree more. So Ben, let's come on to the
5:00
issue of impact economy. We've talked about this quite a
5:04
bit over the last couple of months, but what's what's it
5:08
doing with respect to government?
5:10
Was completely transforming government.
5:12
And actually what you've just talked about is a really good
5:14
example of the impact economy in action because we don't really
5:18
have a government anymore. We have a public private
5:21
marketplace designed to deliver a global agenda handed down by
5:25
the UN in the World Economic Forum in a manner that is
5:27
designed to maximize profits to international capital investors.
5:32
That's what it's all about. I've talked about this a lot
5:35
previously. I've used this term before woke
5:37
corporatism, which I'm just going to going to drag back in.
5:41
Essentially this is the, the, the model of governance that
5:44
we're currently being subjected to.
5:46
And it's a combination of intersectional Marxism, which is
5:49
the, the woke bit, the kind of DEI side of things, combined
5:54
with the corporatism, the integration of the, the, the
5:57
market in the state, which is also the definition of fascism.
6:01
I call this an unholy alliance between power and money.
6:04
And this to me is basically what Fabianism is.
6:08
No, the Fabian Society, we've got a Fabian government at the
6:11
moment. This is Fabianism.
6:12
It's also stakeholder capitalism, Same thing.
6:15
It's also the third way like you were talking about last week.
6:17
And it's also impact investment. That's ultimately what this is
6:20
all about. And the impact investment market
6:24
is in the ascendant. And who better to describe that
6:27
to us than Kieran Boyle, the chair of the Impact Investing
6:32
Institute? At the moment, governments
6:37
everywhere are facing a challenge.
6:38
They're all really ambitious to what they want to achieve, but
6:42
they're all facing increasingly tight financial environments and
6:46
impact investing can play a really important role because
6:50
when governments are tight on finances, they need to find
6:53
alternate sources of capital, people that they can partner
6:56
with. But it really matters about who
6:59
you partner with, what their incentives are.
7:01
Are they aligned and? What you have in in impact
7:04
investors is partners who can bring capital, solution focused
7:09
capital, but focus on the same sorts of things that governments
7:13
care about, improved social outcomes improved.
7:16
Environmental Outcomes. He seems like a lovely man,
7:21
doesn't he? Delightful.
7:23
A delightful man. What could possibly go wrong?
7:26
That was Kieran Boyle, the chair of the Impact Investing
7:29
Institute. And I'm going to say, and I'll
7:32
be careful so that the lawyers don't get on the phone, that he
7:34
looks like a SPIV. Are you familiar with the term
7:38
SPIV? I've certainly are.
7:39
A dodgy geezer who makes his money in dishonest ways just
7:43
looks like one. I'm not saying he is a spiv, I'm
7:45
just saying that he looks like one.
7:47
It's the little Tash that he's got going on there.
7:49
Yeah, quite a quite a thing. Anyway.
7:51
Who is he? Well, we said he's the chair of
7:53
the Impact Investing Institute, which is actually a public
7:56
private partnership in itself. So that was set up between the
7:59
City of London and the Department of Culture, Media and
8:02
Sport, DCMS. It's backed by BlackRock and
8:05
bunch of other people like that. Boyle is also the director of
8:09
the Marshall Institute at the LSE.
8:12
That's Paul Marshall, the backer of GB News.
8:16
So if any GB News fans out there or people that you know that
8:19
like watching GB News, this guy works for Paul Marshall.
8:23
So this is ultimately Paul Marshall's agenda that we're
8:25
talking about here. He's also the chief executive of
8:28
the 100 X Impact Accelerator. We can get that back on screen
8:32
and have a little look at the logo there, which is embedded
8:35
into the LSC. Very influential guy this by the
8:38
way, better bet. He's also a non executive,
8:40
better society capital, formerly big society capital.
8:43
He's been there for nearly ten years now.
8:46
And before that he was a director in the Government
8:49
Innovation Group from 2008 to 2009.
8:52
So he straddled Blair, Brown and Cameron working in the Cabinet
8:56
Office, the Foreign Office, at Downing St. various other
8:59
places. And during that time he became a
9:02
young global leader of the World Economic Forum in 2014.
9:05
I say this guy here, this individual bundles together the
9:09
collected interest of all of those different groups and those
9:12
different organisations, and he's right in the mix of this
9:15
process of transformation of the British state.
9:19
Now let's hear a little bit more about impact investment from
9:22
Stephen Merse, who is the chief executive of Better Society
9:26
Capital. The government should really
9:30
start to build stronger relationships that impact
9:32
investors. The government has a really
9:34
significant mission around turning the UK into a clean
9:36
energy superpower and bringing communities and local people as
9:40
into part of that. And we've recently committed
9:43
significant capital into a new community energy investment
9:45
facility to support that and build on past successful
9:48
investments in community energy. You've also got really strong
9:52
track record of impact investment in the health sphere,
9:54
which is another one of the government's key missions, both
9:56
looking at prevention through community based initiatives such
9:59
as the very successful Thrive initiative in North East
10:02
Lincolnshire that helps people with long term conditions stay
10:04
out of hospital and and succeed in their lives without so much
10:07
health intervention. Yeah.
10:10
So that's Stephen Mirrors from Better Society Capital, the
10:15
chief executive, you know, say of Better Society Capital, who
10:18
absolutely reeks of civil service.
10:20
That guy. It was in the civil service for
10:24
about 20 years before heading over to Better Society Capital,
10:26
which is basically the extension of the civil service.
10:28
It was spun out of Cabinet Office by Cameron back in 2012,
10:31
and it was the precursor to the impact investment marketplace
10:35
that we're talking about today. All of this completely hand in
10:38
glove with the city. So those two videos I just
10:41
showed came from a short series that came out earlier this year
10:45
from the City of London. They're presenting themselves as
10:48
the global city. They want to help deliver
10:51
government using impact LED venture capital and private
10:55
equity so that they can make loads of money.
10:58
And they want to do this internationally importantly, so
11:01
that the UK is a test case for this stuff.
11:03
We talked about this quite a bit recently.
11:05
They're, they're trying, they're experimenting here, they're
11:08
building out the models for how they're going to deploy this
11:10
elsewhere and then they want to export that internationally.
11:12
And they're talking about this being a £1.9 trillion a year
11:17
global marketplace. That's ultimately what the city
11:22
and these investors are sniffing around and that's ultimately
11:24
what our government is becoming. It's what it's being set up to
11:29
enable and these organisations, we talked about the city, we
11:33
talked about the Impact Investing Institute, which as I
11:35
said, was set up by the city with the government.
11:38
So that's public private partnership right there, the
11:40
British Venture Capital Association, BCVA and Better
11:44
Society Capital. These are the people that are
11:47
really driving this forward, right?
11:49
And there was a big announcement on this front.
11:51
As I said, it's been going on for for quite some time now, but
11:53
there's been some really big developments over the past week.
11:57
Let's hear now from Darren Jones, the private secretary to
12:02
Keir Starmer. So can I start by saying thank
12:06
you for everything you've done and for the impact you've had on
12:10
so many local organisations and through them, the lives of the
12:13
people they serve. Because for all the good work
12:16
over many years, the community I now represent in Parliament
12:20
still has far too few young people being given the chance to
12:24
succeed in whichever way they wish to.
12:27
I feel lucky to represent my home in Parliament, but I do not
12:30
want my story to be exceptional. I want it to be normal.
12:36
And so my pledge to all of you this evening is I will use what
12:39
power I have for whatever time I have it to make sure that that's
12:43
the case in every part. Of our nation because we all
12:46
know that when governments empower communities,
12:48
specifically those who know the local area, the people, the
12:51
problems and the opportunities inside and out people like.
12:55
You that that's when truly transformative and long lasting
12:59
change can happen. So last year I set up the Social
13:04
Impact Investment Advisory Group and that it has today published
13:08
its report on what government can do to help more.
13:11
I can assure you that will be taking these recommendations
13:14
seriously and acting on them within a matter of weeks.
13:24
So it was Darren Jones, I said private secretary to Keir
13:26
Starmer, he's actually, sorry, chief secretary to the Prime
13:29
Minister. He's also the chancellor of the
13:30
duty of Lancaster. He's had those positions for the
13:33
past three months. You've been thrust right to the
13:35
forefront, doing a lot of communication work for the
13:38
government at the moment. They've got to put him out front
13:40
because no one wants to see the others talking about anything.
13:43
So this guy's been leading the charge.
13:46
He's the MP for Bristol Northwest, been in that position
13:48
since 2017. Background as a solicitor, when
13:51
he was at BT as a solicitor, he was on their smart Cities team.
13:55
Tells you quite a lot about where this is all going to.
13:57
He's also been receiving quite a bit of impact investing of his
14:01
own. So if you go to look at the
14:02
register of interests on the The Gov website, you can see that he
14:06
just received 44 and a bit grand from Lord Sainsbury, who's been
14:11
splurging huge amounts of cash on progressive political issues
14:15
quite some time now. That event, by the way, at
14:17
Downing St. was running partnership with this
14:20
organization. She's UK Community Foundations
14:23
in around for quite a long time, about 50 years.
14:26
And just worth noting that their president is this guy, Lord
14:29
Michael Hastings, former top brass at KPMG, World Economic
14:33
foreign strategic partner, wearing a UNSDG pin in the image
14:38
there on the right hand side of screen.
14:40
So again, just tying all these things together, separate
14:43
organisations, same agenda. This is what's driving state
14:47
policy right now. Now that event that Darren Jones
14:49
is speaking out was the launch of this report.
14:52
So this is mobilising the impact economy as partners in national
14:55
renewals based on three pillars, organising to mobilise and
14:59
support the impact economy, embedding the mobilisation
15:02
mindset into the government and then unlocking resources and
15:06
participation at scale. This is the total transformation
15:09
of the state essentially into what they call a market enabler.
15:14
That's what the government is becoming, a market enabler.
15:17
Still a regulator, a grant maker, a commissioner, A
15:19
guarantor. So they're actually going to
15:21
underwrite private sector risk. That's interesting, isn't it?
15:24
They even wrote that down. And then finally, an issuer.
15:26
So they're going to be raising capital through public debt
15:28
instruments. So this is just PFI spending
15:31
writ large across the whole of government.
15:33
Printing money. Printing money, I mean.
15:35
Yeah. And, and lumbering the tax payer
15:37
with extraordinary amounts of debt that never gets paid down,
15:42
overcoming barriers to this new model, whether those are
15:47
cultural barriers inside the civil service or other bits of
15:50
government or importantly, just just writing new laws.
15:53
So if the regulatory environment doesn't allow for it, well,
15:55
we'll change it, right? We've got to encourage
15:57
partnerships, not discourage partnerships.
16:00
This is already a huge business ultimately inside of the state.
16:04
They've done some work mapping out different levels of
16:06
investment across the five missions, whether that's kick
16:09
starting growth, clean energy, safer streets, the NHS, breaking
16:14
down barriers to opportunity. And that's coming from
16:16
philanthropy, social investment, institutional impact investment.
16:20
And they're actually explaining in quite some detail where these
16:22
funds are coming from and what they're all about.
16:25
They've developed this model for how they're going to, they call
16:28
it the staircase model. They're going to go to plant,
16:31
nurture, establish, grow and mature these initiatives across
16:36
the whole of government. They've got ways of different
16:39
ways of cutting up risk and return, different types of
16:41
financial financial instruments that they're going to use,
16:43
different participants in the marketplace from ventures to
16:46
private equity, everything in between different types of
16:49
support required from government.
16:50
And all of this is, is based on outcomes.
16:52
So they'll talk about outcomes based contracts so people can
16:55
extract value only when they actually deliver the outcome
16:58
they've signed up for. But what that necessitates is
17:01
Sandy talked about a couple of months ago actually is total
17:04
surveillance. So in order to know if they've
17:06
delivered an outcome, they have to surveil you in order to
17:09
understand if you can actually then trigger the payment, right?
17:11
So this is where a lot of that stuff comes in.
17:14
They're already acting on it. It's rushing ahead.
17:16
One of the recommendations that was in the report was to set up
17:19
listing the office for the impact economy.
17:23
This is housed in the Cabinet Office.
17:24
You can see at the bottom there, Darren Jones is going to be
17:27
running it. He's the ministerial lead.
17:30
And ultimately this is about cross government collaboration.
17:33
So cutting across all departmental divisions and silos
17:37
as they talk about them being a front door for institutional
17:41
capital to come into government to coordinate those
17:43
relationships, to build capacity and extend the government's
17:48
ability to to engage with this stuff.
17:50
While at the same time identifying and supporting new
17:53
partnerships, building the marketplace proactively for
17:57
these investors to come in and stop stripping profits out of of
18:01
government. And importantly, this is a said,
18:05
this is being run out of Cabinet Office.
18:07
They have what they call a hub and spoke model.
18:09
The DCMS are absolutely in the picture.
18:11
Treasury #10 partnerships, Union unit, the Department of the
18:15
Business and Trade. They're going to work openly and
18:17
collaboratively with stakeholders, obviously.
18:20
And this is about doing government differently, total
18:23
transformation of the state. This is what the change agenda
18:27
is all about, impact. Impact and no change actually,
18:32
because because this is a great example of the Unit party in
18:37
action. We're talking about the same
18:39
organizations that were established under the Cameron
18:42
Tory government. It's being absolutely pursued as
18:44
hard as it can be by the current Labour regime.
18:47
What's the difference between them?
18:49
Nothing. And would it be any different
18:51
under reform? Absolutely not.
18:54
Because Paul Marshall is. For for his words, for the, for
18:58
his words for the city. Yes.
19:00
And the city's is shaping this, so yeah.
19:02
OK, Thank you, Ben. OK, let's welcome sadly to the
19:06
program. And Sunday, of course, the
19:08
assisted dying bill continues to deliver its way through, excuse
19:12
the pun, through Parliament at the moment.
19:15
It's always good to look at what's happening in countries
19:17
where this policy has been implemented for a number of
19:20
years and see what's happening there.
19:22
So bring us up to speed with what's going on in Canada.
19:26
Yeah, yeah. Good afternoon, Mike and and Ben
19:29
and indeed everyone. Now, with the research we've all
19:32
been doing over the last decade or so, we've known that there's
19:35
been a depopulation agenda ongoing since around the 1970s
19:39
with the Club of Rome reports and the likes of Bill Gates and
19:43
Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab, they've all spoken about it.
19:47
And also there was the Deagle population forecast for 2025
19:50
published by the CIA from 2014 to 2020, which I'm sure all of
19:55
you will know about. Umm, we've, if not, I'll put
19:59
them in the show notes. We've hoped that this would
20:01
never happen, but umm, we have to, we have to call it out
20:04
nonetheless. But according to a recent piece
20:07
in in the Sage Journal of Death and Dying published by the
20:10
Health Canada, umm, they now lay bare a cost saving exercise and
20:15
it's so cold and extreme. It's really hard to believe that
20:18
they published it openly, to be honest.
20:21
Umm as Canadian veteran Kelsey Sharon highlighted, the analysis
20:26
claims that. From uh 2027 to 2047, the
20:30
Canadian government will save 1273 trillion not through
20:35
breakthroughs in medicine or better care, but by ending
20:38
lives. More than 14,000,000 Canadians
20:42
at their own data, you know, as their own data shows, are
20:45
expected to be disposed of through medical assistance in
20:49
dying or made as they call it, rather than receiving palliative
20:52
care, mental health support or actual help.
20:55
So that's, you know, the, the staggering amount is 14.7
20:59
million human beings killed by the state.
21:03
Now let's hear what Kelsey Sharon, she's a veteran
21:07
campaigner in Canada and she what she says about this.
21:13
So the Journal of Death and Dying recently this year of
21:16
2025, came out and expressed what Health Canada's plans look
21:19
like to do to save money. They are on track starting 2027
21:24
to 2047 to save $1.273 trillion by providing 14.7 million
21:31
Canadians with MAID rather than palliative care.
21:34
What was that #14.7 million Canadians?
21:39
Over 9 million of those are projected to be elderly.
21:42
Over 4 million of those are projected to be the mentally ill
21:44
and suicidal. Over 300,000 of those are
21:47
projected to be the indigenous population and then everyone
21:51
else, addicts, homeless and otherwise.
21:53
So Canada's running eugenics program and they're planning to
21:56
expand that with the start of mentally ill only qualification
22:00
in 2027. And for those that are find
22:03
those stats as disgusting as I do, you can go check out the on
22:08
the Sage Journal or the Death Journal of Death and Dying.
22:10
They break it all down for you. They go through the numbers.
22:12
We've also done it on the series as well. 9 million of these
22:21
deaths are forecast to be the elderly, the people who built
22:23
the country, parents, grandparents.
22:25
Another 4 million of people suffering from mental illness,
22:29
depression or suicidal thoughts. Exactly the people who need
22:32
compassion and treatment. 300,000 are projected to be
22:36
indigenous and the rest are discarded.
22:39
Discarded of society, the poor, the addicts and the homeless.
22:43
This depopulation agenda is wearing it's, it's kind of
22:46
wearing the the mask of being somehow health reform.
22:51
It's also the same ideology that drove the last century's
22:54
euthanasia programmes and the belief that some lives cost too
22:58
much and aren't worth living. And it's funded by the taxpayer.
23:01
I mean, I can't believe they've got it all sewn up.
23:05
It isn't stopping at Canada's borders either.
23:07
The same conversation is unfolding across the rest of the
23:10
Western world from the UKNH processes build their End of
23:15
Life Cost Management Bill is openly discussed and the US
23:20
think tanks pushing optimised death as a budget strategy.
23:24
A narrative is being seeded everywhere that euthanasia is
23:27
empowerment or some form of dignity, when in fact it's a
23:31
system itself that created the despair and the poverty and the
23:34
mental illness. The powerful have effectively
23:38
declared open season on on the vulnerable.
23:41
Our UK assisted dying bill reached its committee stage in
23:45
Parliament last week, Friday the 14th of November.
23:48
Will we go the same direction as Canada where it appears to be an
23:51
open movement to kill people? It's up to us to campaign our
23:54
local MPs and make a noise about this.
23:57
So I really think our MPs don't understand what's going on at
23:59
all. Now we've, we've also got coming
24:04
up this at the moment is the Public Authorities Fraud, Error
24:09
and Recovery Bill, which also also moved to the committee
24:12
stage last week where it's sort of ping pongs around before it
24:16
goes to Royal Assent. Now this is all linked.
24:19
There's been some opposition to this by MPs where there's,
24:24
there's a Lib Dem MP called John Miller who, who's the, I think
24:30
he's the MP for Horsham and what he has to say about, about
24:34
what's what's going on. And he says, yeah, he said
24:39
everyone accepts that we need to keep a handle on fraud, but the
24:42
powers being taken in the bill gives the DWP access to people's
24:47
private bank accounts. Now what he's worried about is
24:50
that this could actually 'cause people to take their own lives
24:55
and it has done in the past. So what, what he's what he's
24:59
saying is, is, is, is he's got very grave concerns and a lot of
25:03
the MPs do. And I think we really have to
25:05
push this, that in fact this is this, this is a bit, you know,
25:09
this is definitely dodgy. Umm, so the government repeats
25:13
the same lines. We're only targeting benefit
25:15
fraudsters. That's nonsense.
25:17
The bill covers fraud, error, debt and overpayments, which
25:20
usually is errors by the DWP. Yet banks will be forced to hand
25:24
over people's financial data to simply check avail, you know,
25:27
sort of the eligibility. Now, once that precedence in
25:33
place, once banks and government systems are wired together, it
25:36
never goes away. And then comes the most chilling
25:39
part, direct deduction payments. The government will be able to
25:42
reach into your bank account and take money if you dispute the
25:45
debt. We already know where this
25:47
leads. Disabled people who've been
25:49
hounded over DWP errors in the past and push deeper into
25:53
despair. Coroners have explicitly linked
25:56
DWP actions to suicides. Now there's a campaigner called
25:59
Liz Liz and she's campaigns for the disabled and she warned MPs
26:06
and peers that the care funding crisis will create pressure to
26:10
those to who might want to choose assisted suicide as a as
26:15
a way of getting out of it. And I think we could listen to
26:19
her now what she says about all this.
26:25
DPAC and every other disability rights organization says no to
26:30
assisted dying, or as we call it, assisted suicide.
26:35
We live in a world that sees disabled people as better off
26:40
dead than disabled. When you're living in a world
26:44
with attitudes like that, it is not safe to legalize making it
26:49
easier for certain groups of people to have a medically
26:53
assisted death. Until our demands are met, our
26:57
core demands for an inclusive and Equitable Life for all
27:03
disabled, ill, and older people, for all people, in fact, we
27:08
can't even consider legalizing assisted suicide.
27:12
It is not safe. This is not, by the way, a bunch
27:16
of religious people saying let's not change the law.
27:20
This is a group of disabled people, many of us, who've
27:24
considered this subject with great concern.
27:28
And we know it is dangerous to legalize and change the law and
27:32
to remove the legal protection that currently exists around
27:37
assisted suicide. We demand this government does
27:41
not legalize assisted suicide. For terminally ill people, ill
27:46
people, disabled people. Now we only need to look at
27:53
Canada to see the end game. Disabled people quietly steered
27:56
towards state approved death because they've been deemed too
27:59
costly to support. And that's what happens when
28:02
governments governments begin to weigh human life in purely
28:05
financial terms. Benefit claimants are simply the
28:09
testing ground. Once this system is operational,
28:12
it will expand to taxes, fines, carbon rationing, energy use and
28:16
whatever future governments consider necessary.
28:19
This is the thin end of the wedge.
28:21
If we don't stop it now, the vulnerable will suffer first and
28:24
the rest of us will wake up to a world where the state access our
28:28
finances. And it isn't, you know,
28:30
exceptional or limited. It's permanent.
28:33
All the details of of this will be in the show notes back to
28:37
you. Sandy, thank you very much for
28:39
that. OK, let's move on.
28:42
If you like what the UK column does, you would like to support
28:45
us, head over to the front page of the website.
28:47
You'll get a link to the page which explains how you can
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support us. We do need your financial
28:52
support if you possibly can. If you can't support us
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financially, please share material you find on the
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website, including perhaps Germ Warfare.
29:00
It's tonight at 7:00 PM. Germ is speaking to Jeff Berwick
29:03
on the On Reality being a 3D video game.
29:06
I'm not sure I necessarily I totally agree with that, but you
29:09
know that I'm going to be watching with interest anyway.
29:12
And then at 9:00 PM tonight, former Taiwan Independent
29:16
supporter, now a pragmatic voice in Taiwan's future.
29:19
This is Angelika Young speaking to Carl for the Silk and Steel
29:23
podcast. Join us at 9 for that, Ryan, as
29:28
his presentation from the Hope Freedom Festival is finally
29:30
going out at 1:00 PM tomorrow. So join us for that as well.
29:34
And of course, we'll be back for the news on Wednesday as well,
29:38
1:00 PM as usual. But in the meantime, let's get
29:41
on with some other matters. And well, Diane, over the last
29:47
couple of weeks, we've been talking about the increasing,
29:51
how do we describe it, desperation among certain people
29:56
that they're not being believed and their agendas are not being
29:59
accepted by people. And this applies equally within
30:04
the climate science community. And they're very concerned, it
30:08
seems, about disinformation. Yes, Mike.
30:12
Hello Ben, Sandy and everyone. Glad to be here.
30:15
Glad to be here today to give you this report on what's been
30:18
going on at COP 30, which is still ongoing.
30:21
This actually follows up a little bit, starting with the
30:24
disinformation segment that Mike and Charles did back on the 7th
30:27
of November, talking about the UK statements at the UN 4th
30:31
Committee by Letitia Loonen when she said that the UK is indeed
30:35
deeply concerned by the growing threats to information
30:38
integrity. Now, first of all, let's define
30:40
what information integrity means according to the UN.
30:43
It's not my definition necessarily as a librarian of 25
30:47
years, but the UN defined it last year as existing.
30:50
Quote. Where freedom of expression is
30:53
fully enjoyed and where accurate, reliable information
30:57
free from discrimination and hate is available to all in an
31:02
open, inclusive, safe and secure information environment.
31:07
So at COP 30 last Wednesday, the 12th of November was Information
31:11
Integrity Day and let's watch this lightheart YouTube video
31:15
that was played through to show what they think they mean by
31:19
information integrity. What is the most absurd thing
31:24
that you've ever heard on social media about climate change?
31:27
That the ice in the Antarctic and Arc is not decreasing but
31:32
increasing. I think that the most crazy
31:34
thing I've ever heard is that it's OK that our plan is dying
31:37
because there's other plans that we can live.
31:39
Today is Information Integrity Day here at COP.
31:43
This information about climate change is spreading faster than
31:47
ever, fueling myths and misconceptions about the climate
31:52
crisis and the solutions to address it.
31:55
Because tackling climate disinformation has never been
31:58
more important, and to learn how to address it, we asked
32:03
Charlotte Skadden to share her insights.
32:07
I'm Charlotte Skadden, and I'm Senior Advisor on Information
32:10
Integrity at the United Nations. We're all targeted.
32:13
By climate disinformation in one way or another and anyone who
32:16
uses online spaces has come across climate disinformation
32:19
there are many different tactics used to try and undermine
32:22
climate action in information spaces and they range.
32:25
From. Classic disinformation, denial
32:28
of climate change to disinformation around solutions.
32:32
So we need all hands on deck to address climate information and
32:35
threats to climate information integrity.
32:37
And that includes governments, it includes tech platforms and
32:40
companies, it includes civil society, it includes
32:43
advertisers. It's really important that we
32:46
try and empower ourselves to recognise it when we see it and
32:50
to share that information with others.
32:52
You might also be targeted by it.
32:54
Fighting climate disinformation starts with knowing the facts
32:58
and sharing them. Together, we can make truth go
33:01
viral. So great to make truth go viral.
33:10
All right, well, we like you look at a range of press
33:13
releases related to what they said at the UN.
33:16
But first let's look at this ex post where basically they're
33:20
saying this is what they're going to be doing.
33:22
This is a landmark declaration. All of the press releases and
33:25
tweets. And so that I've seen about this
33:27
has been saying that essentially this is the first time that this
33:31
has been an important thing at COP at a COP conference, The
33:35
very first time actually for information integrity at any COP
33:38
conference. Some of the other press releases
33:41
that the UN has put out about this has said this is the age of
33:45
disinformation, which I would probably agree with in certain
33:49
ways. This again saying about the wave
33:52
of truth, the COP of truth, which is on the the next press
33:56
release, which is again from the UN saying that it is now
33:59
targeting disinformation as a threat to climate action.
34:02
So again, obviously the science is out.
34:04
The consensus all says, well, it's all just, you know, we need
34:08
this information because we all now know that we have to do
34:10
absolutely everything apparently according to all scientists
34:14
everywhere. So let's look at this next
34:16
video, which was part of that ex post pay potential.
34:20
If you look at the tie on the the first person that appears,
34:24
you'll see a very sustainable development pattern on the tie.
34:28
Let's take a look at this. For a few years now, several
34:34
global risk reports, for example, the Davos World
34:38
Economic Forum Global reports of risks.
34:42
They put as global risk number one in this planet, not climate
34:46
change or climate disasters, but disinformation, Global risk
34:50
number one and global risk number 2 is actually climate
34:54
change. Purveyors of climate
35:04
disinformation don't simply deny climate change.
35:08
They undermine climate action by attacking researchers,
35:11
scientists and journalists personally by questioning the
35:15
scientific consensus around climate change and creating
35:18
false narratives around climate solutions.
35:21
And and they're also seeking to skew the perceptions of policy
35:24
makers of of the people here negotiating.
35:26
So for many years we have been trying to raise awareness or
35:31
sound the alarms that this interaction between information
35:37
integrity and climate change is absolutely vital for both
35:43
fields, for the field of information integrity, but also
35:46
for the field of climate change and those two crucial issues,
35:49
they depend on each other, they need to interact more.
35:57
So you can see the full press conference that some of that was
36:00
based on, including the the lady wearing the Sustainable
36:02
Development Goals pin Charlotte and some of the other people in
36:06
that press conference said things like, quote,
36:08
disinformation and denialism undermine trust in science and
36:12
institutions. It feeds and fuels hate speech
36:15
and extremism. Some of the questions that came
36:19
up in the full press conference, I watched the whole thing so
36:21
that the viewers don't have to, but some of the questions came
36:24
from example from the Guardian who when a reporter asked why
36:27
are the fossil fuel lobbyists present and basically what can
36:30
we do about these lobbyists that have been present here at this
36:33
particular COP conference. It's important to note as well
36:37
that this all goes back to the UN Global Digital Compact, which
36:41
was released in September of 2024.
36:44
Paragraph 35 E states quote encourage United Nations
36:48
entities in collaboration with governments and relevant
36:50
stakeholders to assess the impact of misinformation and
36:54
disinformation on the achievement of the Sustainable
36:57
Development Goals or SGG 17. SGG 17 is partnerships for the
37:02
goals, and this basically talks about how the goals are
37:05
accomplished through various sources of funding and
37:08
organizations. I'll come back to how this is
37:10
done at the end of my report, but I just want to remind
37:13
viewers that essentially, if you hear the word sustainable within
37:16
the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, it really
37:19
means unsustainable. It's all an inversion of
37:22
language. Now, how is this done,
37:25
particularly through UNESCO and other organizations?
37:28
UNESCO is the one who has published what they've called
37:30
the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate
37:33
Change. So what we see here is from
37:36
their website talking about COP 30 in particular, they have
37:40
several documents. This COP 30 document talks about
37:43
exactly what they're going to be doing here and how it's going to
37:46
be done. That basically they have signed
37:47
this declaration, which I'm going to cover here in just a
37:50
minute. It's all about how to fight the,
37:52
as they're calling it, catastrophic global heating.
37:56
And this is being sabotaged the by a surge of climate
37:59
disinformation. And so these falsehoods are
38:02
getting in the way of stopping all this apparent global boiling
38:06
that is going on. So before November this year,
38:10
earlier this summer, they put out a call to action for this
38:15
initiative for information integrity and climate change,
38:17
asking for individuals and organizations to come forward to
38:21
come up with solutions on how to fight this apparent problem.
38:25
It says through a global fund and through various ways of
38:30
getting this funded and sourced that this is what we need.
38:34
So they're looking for organizations are looking for
38:37
money, they're looking for various things and how they can
38:39
get this actually going into play.
38:43
And once again, you could apply to, to contribute to this.
38:47
Apparently the, the applications are not closed.
38:49
So I wasn't able to see what it was that they were actually
38:52
looking for. I would have loved to see the
38:54
application form, but unfortunately that's no longer
38:58
available on that website as well.
39:00
They, they talked about this initiative at the COP of Truth,
39:04
which was directly from this taken from this website.
39:08
And this was really interesting because it said you can read
39:11
more about the unprecedented prominence of IT information
39:14
integrity at COP 30. Now, apparently before Cop 30, I
39:19
don't know if the first 29 Cops did not care about integral
39:22
information, but this is now a a very important point here in Cop
39:26
30. So we can't really speak exactly
39:29
to what was going on there. But the call to action again is
39:32
talking about here's what we have to do, here's what we need,
39:35
here are the people that we need to have to be able to
39:38
contribute. So what happened at the November
39:42
conference last week? Well, we now, as a result of the
39:45
call to action and as a result of this now being the cop of
39:49
truth, there was an open letter signed talking about this
39:53
declaration on information integrity.
39:55
So the open letter was signed by 134 organizations, including the
40:01
Club of Rome at the University of Leeds, for an example of an
40:04
academic partner, Extinction Rebellion, and 127 individuals,
40:09
which of course included Sandrine Dixon, exactly the
40:12
president of the Club of Rome, and many others.
40:15
And this information about the declaration was saying,
40:19
basically here are here are the ways that we're going to do it.
40:22
We are going to do research. We are going to share practical
40:25
tools, policies, communications, advertising campaigns.
40:29
Of course, we have to have the the propaganda campaigns,
40:32
trusted voices and influencers, media sustainability, protecting
40:37
journalists, activists, communicators, scientists,
40:40
protecting data, data sets, transparency of placement data
40:45
information, digital literacy related to climate change in
40:49
particular, and of course, donating financial resources to
40:52
UNESCO's Global Fund for Information Integrity on Climate
40:55
Change. And according to this, Antonio
40:58
Guterres, the UN Secretary General, said that, quote, we
41:01
must fight the coordinated disinformation campaigns
41:04
impeding global progress on climate change.
41:08
So that's the open letter, if we go into the actual declaration
41:10
statements. And it says it's drafted by the
41:12
members of the committee of this initiative for information
41:16
integrity on climate change. And it basically says, well, as
41:20
a result of the Global Digital Compact from 2024 Summit of the
41:23
future and looking at these global principles for
41:26
information integrity, we now, quote, reaffirm our shared
41:30
responsibility to ensure that societies around the world are
41:33
empowered with the knowledge and information they need to act
41:36
urgently and decisively in the face of the climate crisis.
41:40
So I went to look at this global Fund to see exactly how much
41:44
they were looking to fund and what they were going to do about
41:46
it. So this is from one of the UN
41:48
websites saying that since their launch in June 2025, they had
41:53
received 447 proposals from nearly 100 countries.
41:58
So this might not be entirely up to date.
42:00
It could be more by now. And they're saying that the role
42:03
of the funding is to uphold the integrity of information related
42:07
to climate change and calls on funders to donate this fund and
42:11
support projects that promote information integrity locally,
42:13
nationally and internationally. And it will contribute again, as
42:17
I said, through search funding, investigative journalism,
42:20
strategic work, communications, advocacy, cooperation with
42:23
organizations, carrying out related activities, which of
42:26
course goes back to SDG 17 partnerships for the goals.
42:30
This is how it's all going to be done.
42:33
So I'd like to say as UK columns, librarian and
42:35
information correspondence, that after 25 years in the library
42:39
field, I, I was, you know, I was really important to me to hold
42:42
the line to make sure that the basic principles of
42:44
librarianship and information access were provided.
42:47
Everything is available. But what they're doing here is
42:50
obviously only pushing the things that the UN wants them to
42:53
push. And so if we look here at what
42:55
they have been doing in the Internet International
42:57
Federation for Library Associations and Institutions,
42:59
which is an organization I used to belong to, I used to have an
43:03
elected role in this organization.
43:04
Actually, their press release from the 10th of November said
43:08
COP 30 begins. Culture adaptation and
43:10
information integrity are key themes for the library field.
43:14
So how are they contributing according to this press release?
43:17
Well, one is the state of library engagement and climate
43:19
communication and education. This report was funded by the
43:23
Gates Foundation. It basically said that now
43:26
libraries are contributing more to sustainability event, to
43:29
climate action, and so they need to be doing more on the climate
43:31
side. They said they would be
43:33
contributing to the global goal on adaptation.
43:35
So specifically here around how the cultural heritage sector
43:39
contributes to sustainable development goals, the Paris
43:42
Agreement, and of course, as always, the importance of equity
43:45
and inclusion. And so this is how it's going to
43:48
be done through the Action Agenda, which is one of the top
43:50
30 documents which we've talked about as well.
43:54
And they're contributing to this in different ways, including
43:57
contributing to a collaborative plan to accelerate solutions
44:01
that will explore narratives and storytelling as catalyst for
44:05
climate action. So that's the way I guess
44:07
libraries can contribute and helping libraries around the
44:11
world adapt and build resilience to the changing climate.
44:15
Now, they did also contribute to the UN global Principles for
44:17
Information Integrity, which they were very proud of.
44:20
And they said that these principles quote responded to
44:24
concerns about governments themselves sharing
44:26
misinformation. The quote info Demic experienced
44:30
during the COVID-19 quote pandemic.
44:34
Those are my quotes. Why are worries about how the
44:36
way Internet platforms themselves risked accelerating
44:38
the spread of fake news and growing awareness to the real
44:41
world impacts of online hate speech.
44:44
Now the human global principles themselves for information
44:47
integrity are is another document and these will all be
44:50
available in the show notes. But basically there are five
44:54
points that they are using that are these principles.
44:57
So one is societal trust and resilience.
45:01
You'll get the role of platforms and acting in trustworthy ways,
45:05
healthy incentives, looking at business models that favour
45:08
click bait, public empowerment with some references to digital
45:12
literacy and enabling people to exercise choice when choosing
45:16
platforms. Which is great news for UK
45:18
column to have Choice, Transparency in research.
45:22
And finally, Independent, Free and Pluralistic Media, which
45:26
discusses the need to resist restrictions to press freedom,
45:29
support independent journalism and the need for ethical conduct
45:32
within the press. So Mike, maybe this is some good
45:35
news for UK column after all. Perhaps so.
45:39
Perhaps so. OK, Well, thank you for that,
45:41
Diane. Ben, let's move on then for the
45:45
capture of young minds. And maybe that's a related topic
45:48
actually. It's absolutely a related topic
45:50
because even with infinite wealth and power, their
45:54
narrative is falling to pieces it would seem.
45:59
So the last roll of the dice is to get hold of the minds of
46:03
young people and make sure that they don't listen to
46:05
disinformation and they are democratically resilient in all
46:09
of these awful terms that we keep hearing from these people.
46:13
But let's hear quickly now about a new report from Demos looking
46:19
inside the mind of a 16 year old.
46:23
From Manchester. They're both with me now and
46:25
what they find out may surprise you.
46:27
So can I start with you, this great odyssey?
46:30
What did you learn that surprised you?
46:33
The biggest surprise was the difference between the moral
46:35
panic that we see online and what we did that we saw during
46:38
our DES research phase, and the reality the moral panic around
46:42
young people not believing in democracy is simply not true.
46:44
They do believe in democracy. And they want to preserve it,
46:47
but they're looking for powerful messages that I've done
46:49
correctly. But the fact that they're
46:51
brainwashed by Andrew Tate, simply not true.
46:53
Every time we mention Andrew Tate's name in a classroom, they
46:56
laughed us off. They're not.
46:58
They're aware of some of his messages, but they know the hard
47:00
reality. This fact that they're
47:02
brainwashed by the algorithm, They're impacted by it, but
47:06
they're curious and they're thoughtful and they know what
47:08
they want and they know what they want to hear, and they'll
47:10
look for good voices. This is remarkably cheering.
47:13
I wasn't expecting a cheerful conversation at this time in the
47:16
evening. What kinds of things do you if
47:18
you're a politician, what kinds of things should you be thinking
47:21
about more when you focus on younger people?
47:23
Be honest, be direct and cut the BS essentially, and meet them
47:28
where they are. If you do meet them where they
47:30
are, you can, you'll see incredible.
47:32
Like what Zach Polanski is doing right now is incredibly
47:34
interesting. He's got a podcast, he's really
47:36
active on TikTok, he's bringing on really interesting American
47:39
names like Hassan Abbey, who's very popular on the left, left
47:42
side of American politics. And we need to see something
47:45
similar like that from, in my personal opinion, from Labour
47:49
and, and yeah, and just clearly show your values and clearly
47:52
tell a story. I will just say then the lip
47:56
sync there was was their issue, not ours.
47:58
That was their issue, yes. I accept no responsibility for
48:01
that. So, but we thought we wanted
48:02
people to hear the clip. Actually, it's quite interesting
48:04
to get a sense of what the liberal progressive political
48:08
classes inside the M25 are desperately trying to find out
48:11
about, which is what's going on with 16 year olds.
48:13
Obviously they've just been given the vote that's kind of
48:16
forthcoming. So this is a crucial
48:18
constituency and it was all relating to this report.
48:22
We can get that on screen inside the mind of a 16 year old.
48:25
From Andrew Tate to Bonnie Blue to Nigel Farage, what the first
48:28
time voters think about social media, politics, the state of
48:30
Britain and their futures. The references here are just so
48:34
obvious. Andrew Tate, Bonnie Blue, Nigel
48:37
Farage, what do you think of these things?
48:39
And actually, it turns out the 16 year olds are not idiots.
48:42
They're not idiots Like the people who work at Demos are
48:45
clearly idiots and the people that go to Demos events are
48:48
idiots, right? They're much more sophisticated
48:50
than people. Give me credit for this report.
48:54
We just nip it to look at Polly Curtis, the the chief executive
48:58
of Demos, talking about the fact he came from Peter Hyman, who
49:01
was a political strategist for Tony Blair and Keir Starmer.
49:03
So gives you a sense of where this is coming from.
49:05
He didn't speak in that video. That was the chap Shuab Gamotti,
49:10
who she just calls us black. I hate racial categorisation.
49:14
It's just so crude, right? But that's what these people are
49:16
like. They go Gen.
49:18
Z, you all think this and black, you all think this.
49:21
And then when it doesn't turn out to be the case, they they
49:23
don't know what's going on, right?
49:25
And this is all about power ultimately and building
49:30
democratic resilience in this age group to make sure that they
49:34
don't fall out of this democratic system that people
49:39
like Polly Curtis are really keen on.
49:42
And I'd actually recommend going to have a read of the report is
49:46
quite well done piece of work. My main takeaways from me were
49:51
the first of all, there's no such thing as Gen.
49:52
Z. Like it's obviously a lot more
49:53
complicated than that. You're talking about that two or
49:56
three generations of people right now, as I said, 16 year
50:00
olds are not idiots. Some young women are very
50:02
disengaged. Some other young women are
50:04
completely terrorised by the world at the moment and they
50:07
want to burn the whole thing down, start again.
50:10
And they they they in brutalised and misinformed in a really
50:14
malicious way. And young men in particular are
50:17
questioning the narrative. And they're doing that with
50:19
various levels of varying levels of patriotism, which was quite
50:24
encouraging, to be honest with you, which tells me that Demos
50:27
and this crowd have got a big problem on their hands.
50:31
And just a very final quick note about the provenance of the
50:34
reporting, That chap that was speaking just there, Shurab
50:39
Gamotti, he actually is employed by this organization, which is
50:44
the Future Governance Forum, whose job they see is reforming
50:47
the state. And again, this links directly
50:49
back to what I was talking about earlier in my first report.
50:53
And they are backed by, amongst others, Amazon, the British
50:57
Venture Capital Association, who I did speak about earlier,
51:00
William Perrin and Francesca Sainsbury.
51:03
So the Sainsbury's family, again, they're all over this
51:06
space at the moment. And then also Vanguard, one of
51:08
the biggest asset managers in the world.
51:10
So these are the people funding this activity in order to
51:13
understand what 16 year olds are thinking about so that they can
51:17
sneak whatever their agenda items are on any particularly
51:21
given day pass and when it comes to the next election.
51:24
Yeah, OK. Thanks and for that.
51:26
Now let's move on then to to 5G. Now as some may be aware,
51:31
there's still no real 5G infrastructure rolled out in the
51:35
UK yet. What we have at this point is an
51:37
enhancement of 4G which is branded as 5G.
51:40
This is because very major part of the 5G roll out wasn't yet
51:44
licensed. I'm referring to the really high
51:47
frequency component of the technology known as millimetre
51:49
wave spectrum. And before any of the telecoms
51:53
companies could begin building out this capability, they have
51:55
to pay money. Or they had to pay money via an
51:58
auction process run by Ofcom, which aside from being the chief
52:01
sensor here in the UK, is also regulating the telecoms
52:04
industry, including who can use which frequencies on the radio
52:07
spectrum. So Ofcom announced the final
52:11
auction results on the 24th of October this year were three
52:15
winners, EO 2 and Vodafone 3 each paid Ofcom 13,000,000 lbs
52:21
for the right to use 800 megabytes, 800 megahertz bands
52:26
of the 26 gigahertz band and 800, I'm sorry, one gigahertz of
52:31
the 40 gigahertz band. So Virgin Media O2 already has
52:38
2000 small cells deployed, but not none of these have this
52:42
capability yet. They can be have have millimetre
52:46
wave technology deployed on them.
52:48
Now they are going to be aiming to get those into stadiums,
52:52
arenas, transport hubs, it's all mainly towns and cities related
52:58
what they call high density populations and so on.
53:01
EE has around just over 1000 small cells so far which they
53:05
can deploy this in and they're also looking at the same types
53:09
of venues for their infrastructure and so on.
53:12
And so it goes on. They Ofcom themselves in this
53:16
technical frequency assessment criteria for shared access radio
53:19
services, which is one of the documents that governs this roll
53:22
out. I said that the license terms
53:24
and conditions will have a requirement for equipment to
53:27
start transmitting within six months of the license being
53:30
issued and continue to be operational afterwards.
53:32
The spectrum is not used in this time frame.
53:35
Ofcom. Ofcom may revoke the licence
53:37
within one month's notice. So that'd be great.
53:40
You paid £13 million and if you don't manage to get your gear
53:44
rolled out quickly enough, they can revoke the licence
53:47
afterwards. Now Open Signal here is
53:51
commenting on this and they're saying 5G millimetre wave.
53:54
The UK auction is over, but where's the action?
53:57
And they're making the point that actually even in countries
54:00
where that are much further ahead than Britain is, the
54:03
amount of millimetre wave technology that's been rolled
54:06
out so far is extremely small. So in the in Australia it's 0.1%
54:11
of all the mobile telecoms gear. In Japan it's 0.7% and in the
54:16
USA it's 0.3%. And they're asking why is that?
54:21
And one of the key reasons is because none of the telephone
54:25
manufacturers have really rolled this out in their handset yet
54:28
because this is quite a a step up from the current radio
54:33
equipment that they have in their telephones.
54:36
So not even high end iPhones in many countries have this.
54:41
Only in the United States and one or two other sales regions
54:45
do they have this this technology at this point.
54:48
So anyway, we're at the beginning of this, at this of
54:51
this situation. Just want to remind everybody
54:55
that some time ago we held a symposium, an expose on 5G, if
55:00
you haven't seen this on the UK column website, if you want more
55:02
background on this, please do go and have a look at the various
55:07
presentations there. It was very interesting and it's
55:11
worth your effort if you want to oppose this.
55:14
But obviously, we are at the beginning of a process.
55:17
Now that the auction is complete, we're going to see
55:20
this gear starting to be rolled out because the companies have
55:23
to roll it out in some capacity over the next six months.
55:27
So keep an eye out for that. OK, let's come back then to
55:31
Sandy. And what's the latest Sandy on
55:34
solar farms in the UK? I was I want to thank a
55:40
gentleman called Mark Saxby from Wiltshire, who sent me this this
55:45
campaign. You know, that's a stop the line
55:49
down solar farm in Wiltshire. And actually if if we could have
55:53
the the slide just. Before that, sorry, that's
55:56
that's that's my mistake, Sandy, you'll get you'll get that at
55:59
the end. So.
56:00
We'll get that at the end. No, that's great.
56:01
No, that's good. Yeah.
56:03
I mean this. I couldn't believe the size of
56:05
this thing. I mean, it's absolutely huge.
56:07
It's a 3 3000 acre facility and it's proposed by Island Green
56:13
Power, a Bermuda registered company 100% owned by an
56:17
Australian venture Capital Group called Macquarie.
56:21
That's MAQUARIE, which I I will be looking into, but I didn't
56:27
quite have time to do it today. But this solar farm is massive.
56:31
I mean, it's so huge. And if we just move on, I want
56:36
to go through these slides. Yeah, obviously they've got a
56:38
barrister on it. They think they'll probably get
56:40
it turned down. But the trouble is that that
56:43
this bonkers Ed Miliband could override it with his bonkers
56:48
renewable acceleration programme because that's what's happening.
56:53
You know, this has happened with with several of these solar farm
56:57
applications. They've been turned down, but
56:59
he's been able to override it. Now these solar farms are, this
57:02
isn't an isolated incident. There's huge ones being prepared
57:06
all over our country, all the planning applications.
57:09
Now they're huge. The tracking panels have motors
57:12
which allow them to follow the sun and they make a noise, so
57:15
they need deep foundations. These things, umm, and if we
57:19
just keep moving, moving on through, and I'll just comment
57:21
in each one because I know we're short of time E umm, each of
57:24
these, umm, they have the battery energy storage as well,
57:28
which is a huge fire hazard Chief, uh, fire chiefs all over
57:31
the country are really worried about these because when they do
57:34
burst into flames, which they do quite frequently, it take they,
57:38
they actually can't put the fires out.
57:40
So, uh, and, and each one is 4 times the size of a shipping
57:43
container. And they've also got these
57:45
enormous, umm, uh, these, this infrastructure that's going in,
57:49
uh, one of these is a place called Hullavington, which is
57:53
right next to the solar panel farm.
57:55
But the, the amount of infrastructure, as you can see,
57:58
is absolutely enormous. So if we just keep going through
58:01
the slides, yeah. Now this is interesting.
58:04
This is the international comparisons.
58:06
The UK is the world's third largest food importer after
58:09
China and Japan. We import 46% of our food.
58:13
Other European countries take more care of their agricultural
58:16
land. Now this is the worry.
58:18
It's actually taking up prime agricultural land.
58:21
No, in France, no solar panels on agricultural land for export
58:24
to the grid. That all the large car parks are
58:28
covered with the solar panels so they're using built existing
58:31
buildings. In Germany, solar panels are
58:33
strictly controlled and limited. And in Italy large scale solar
58:37
on agricultural, agricultural land is prohibited.
58:39
But we're just using up all our wonderful agricultural land with
58:43
all this stuff. Now what's interesting is I, I
58:46
want to thank Bannerman for this particular slide and Cassie from
58:50
the Residents Association, the National Residents Association,
58:53
because it, it really makes you see how much of our land is
58:57
being taken up by all this, all this infrastructure.
59:02
And the yellow ones are the solar panels, the blue ones are
59:06
the wind panels, and the purple ones are the battery energy,
59:09
energy storage facilities. Now, all this is, is going to
59:13
take up vast amounts of energy, vast amounts of water, and it's
59:17
going to destroy our, our, our farmland.
59:19
So I've put in the show notes, you know, ways to, you know, the
59:24
whole campaign and how you can, how you can oppose it.
59:28
So we need to fight about this because this is our food
59:31
security. Thank you.
59:33
Thanks, Sandy. And we'll just we'll just very
59:35
quickly put the the slide up for stop lying down the campaign
59:40
here so that people can see that we'll talk a lot about that and
59:45
extra. I'm quite sure we've got lots of
59:47
other stuff to talk about as well.
59:49
So well, that's it for today. I'm going to say thank you very
59:52
much to Diane, Sandy and Ben for joining me today and for you for
59:56
watching. We'll be back in a few minutes
59:58
If you UK column member for some UK column News Extra.
1:00:03
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you can join us in the chat box and so on as we discussed in
1:00:08
more detail some of the topics we've covered today.
1:00:12
Don't forget Jerem and Carl's tonight and Brian's presentation
1:00:16
going out at 1:00 PM tomorrow. We'll see you again on at 1:00
1:00:20
PM on Wednesday for another news programme.
1:00:22
See you then. Thanks for joining us.
1:00:24
Bye bye.