Latest / UK Column Radio / Mike Takes Me through UK Column’s History | Jerm Warfare

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Mike Takes Me through UK Column’s History | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:30
Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is germ warfare, the battle
0:33
Speaker 1: of ideas. Charles has abandoned us for a few days.
0:37
Speaker 1: So it's well, that's that's how we're putting it. We're
0:42
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, we kicked him often. We Well,
0:46
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, it was you who abandoned us,
0:48
Speaker 1: So now it's equal.
0:52
Speaker 2: Did I.
0:53
Speaker 1: Yes there was or no, you were late? I think
0:57
Speaker 1: that's what happened, something to that effect. I can't remember
0:59
Speaker 1: anyone was a few weeks ago.
1:01
Speaker 2: I am never lit.
1:03
Speaker 1: You're always promptly on time.
1:06
Speaker 2: Mike. Thank you.
1:08
Speaker 3: It's impressivey that just tripped off the tongue there, all right.
1:14
Speaker 1: So I was thinking over the weekend about what I
1:18
Speaker 1: wanted to chat to you about, and I know exactly
1:20
Speaker 1: what I have what for a long time wanted to
1:22
Speaker 1: chat to you about, and that is a memory lane
1:27
Speaker 1: discussion about UK column itself. I've never actually spoken about
1:31
Speaker 1: UK column itself on UK column And whenever I talk
1:35
Speaker 1: to people about my show, they go, what's UK column?
1:38
Speaker 1: Which means that there are a lot of people who
1:40
Speaker 1: still don't know the background, where it came from, your
1:46
Speaker 1: arrival and so on. And then I also like to
1:48
Speaker 1: know a few of your highlights and that kind of thing,
1:50
Speaker 1: like the journey. So just for clarity and just for simplicity,
1:56
Speaker 1: tell me how UK column started.
2:00
Speaker 3: Well, it started in two thousand and six when Brian
2:03
Speaker 3: and a number of other people felt that they needed
2:07
Speaker 3: to do something about the corruption in the city of
2:11
Speaker 3: Plymouth where we're based. Excuse me, Brian had come out
2:19
Speaker 3: of the navy as a left commander and sorry, Jem, sorry,
2:28
Speaker 3: you got a debt at that. Brian had come out
2:30
Speaker 3: of the navy as a left handed commander and it
2:33
Speaker 3: sort of become part of the business community in Plymouth.
2:36
Speaker 2: He was.
2:38
Speaker 3: In the Chamber of Commerce and various other things and
2:42
Speaker 3: started noticing what he described as as corruption. And one
2:49
Speaker 3: of the things that he was doing, just as one
2:51
Speaker 3: brief example, was that he there was there's particularly difficult
2:56
Speaker 3: area of Plymouth called Devenport, that where the kids really
3:01
Speaker 3: weren't having much of a look in on life and
3:04
Speaker 3: so on, and so he set up a project called
3:07
Speaker 3: Beagle Project, which was began with with one of the
3:13
Speaker 3: I believe it was one of the long boats from
3:15
Speaker 3: from the Beagle uh and uh they were refurbishing that
3:20
Speaker 3: and then with the intention of it was basically just
3:23
Speaker 3: about giving giving some of the young people in the
3:25
Speaker 3: area some skills. And that project was eventually basically shut
3:33
Speaker 3: down by the Console because well, I mean he would
3:36
Speaker 3: argue that it was because it was doing something good
3:39
Speaker 3: for people, and they they there wasn't.
3:43
Speaker 2: There wasn't.
3:47
Speaker 3: It basically was was was dumped on by the Console
3:50
Speaker 3: and shut down. And there were a number of other
3:53
Speaker 3: similar kinds of things that happened at the time. So
3:55
Speaker 3: so he and some others started publishing basically what began
4:01
Speaker 3: as an a four sheet of paper column highlighting well
4:06
Speaker 3: it was a column of sorts highlighting highlighting some of
4:09
Speaker 3: the the corruption in the city. And it was originally
4:13
Speaker 3: called Devenport Column. Uh, and well, the response to that
4:18
Speaker 3: was quite amazing, and so it rapidly expanded into the
4:22
Speaker 3: Plymouth and Devenport Column, and then some time after that
4:26
Speaker 3: the UK Column, which was originally a newspaper which we
4:33
Speaker 3: distributed right across the country. And one of the things, actually,
4:36
Speaker 3: it's interesting one of our early contacts a guy called
4:40
Speaker 3: Martin Brighton who is based in Sheffield. He was one
4:44
Speaker 3: of the original contacts that we had because what Brian
4:49
Speaker 3: was describing in that was going on in Plymouth. He
4:53
Speaker 3: was seeing precisely the same types of actvities in Sheffield
5:02
Speaker 3: where he was based. So these are, you know, opposite
5:05
Speaker 3: the ends of the of England and yet the same
5:08
Speaker 3: kind of activities going on. So it appeared that a
5:12
Speaker 3: lot of this was kind of running on a template
5:15
Speaker 3: or or else was some kind of centralized direction to
5:21
Speaker 3: what was going on, and that eventually led Brian to
5:26
Speaker 3: discover this organization Common Purpose, which at that time was
5:32
Speaker 3: a very young organization, but which was training people to
5:37
Speaker 3: become the next leaders of their communities and so on.
5:41
Speaker 3: And they were being very choosy about who they give
5:44
Speaker 3: this training too. But what was interesting about it was
5:49
Speaker 3: it wasn't just a training organization. It was also an
5:52
Speaker 3: alumni club, if you want to call it that, a
5:56
Speaker 3: secret society of a type. And over the years you
6:00
Speaker 3: know that that particular group has, that alumni group has
6:06
Speaker 3: done a number of things. One of the first thing
6:08
Speaker 3: that does is it gets itself. You know, once people
6:12
Speaker 3: start finding themselves in positions of management because they've had
6:16
Speaker 3: the leadership training and so they're ending up in management jobs,
6:19
Speaker 3: and then of course they're ending up in recruitment jobs.
6:21
Speaker 3: And then who are they recruiting. They're recruiting other Common
6:24
Speaker 3: Purpose alumni. And so you find that common Purpose is
6:27
Speaker 3: an organization takes over other organizations and runs it in
6:33
Speaker 3: the common purpose model. And actually, over the years this
6:38
Speaker 3: has been quite a problem for, for example, the Masonic
6:41
Speaker 3: Networks because they they are ideologically somewhat different, and so
6:47
Speaker 3: we've sort of seen over the years sometimes fights between
6:52
Speaker 3: these two groups. But anyway, anyway, the UK column went
6:57
Speaker 3: from there. Now brand started in two thousand and six
7:00
Speaker 3: I met Brian and two thousand and seven, I think
7:04
Speaker 3: through a mutual friend. And then in two thousand and
7:08
Speaker 3: eight I had had enough of the job that I
7:14
Speaker 3: was doing and took a year at a bit eyed
7:18
Speaker 3: two years, I suppose it is more or less, and
7:22
Speaker 3: we myself and my family moved to France for a
7:25
Speaker 3: couple of years, just for a bit of a career break,
7:28
Speaker 3: let's put it that way. And then no sooner had
7:31
Speaker 3: I decided to do that than i'd met Brian and
7:34
Speaker 3: I offered to help with what he was doing, and
7:37
Speaker 3: that kind of took over. And so when we decided
7:40
Speaker 3: it was time to come back to Britain again, because
7:44
Speaker 3: you know, the kids were getting to an age where
7:46
Speaker 3: they needed to consider going to school or whatever. Then
7:52
Speaker 3: we came back to Plymouth and although i'd been more
7:55
Speaker 3: or less working on at full time, sort of formerly
7:58
Speaker 3: joined full time and it's sort of gone from there.
8:03
Speaker 1: So at that stage, though the UK was still formerly
8:07
Speaker 1: part of Europe, wasn't.
8:08
Speaker 3: It as still a member of the European Union? Yes, yes, absolutely.
8:14
Speaker 1: If you were to redo that journey now, it'd be
8:17
Speaker 1: a bit harder with the whole Breksit thing.
8:20
Speaker 3: No, I don't think that makes it that that doesn't
8:22
Speaker 3: make the side a bit of difference. I mean, at
8:23
Speaker 3: the end of the day, you know, if there's one
8:26
Speaker 3: country in the world that sort of leads the leads
8:32
Speaker 3: bad behavior, it is Britain and it has always been Britain.
8:36
Speaker 3: So this is a perfect place to be in that sense.
8:40
Speaker 1: What was the very first story that you did? Can
8:42
Speaker 1: you remember?
8:43
Speaker 2: No? I don't know, I don't remember no. But but.
8:47
Speaker 3: You know, some of what we have done has been
8:50
Speaker 3: pretty dark and pretty grim because because one of the
8:53
Speaker 3: things that we discovered very early on was was that
8:58
Speaker 3: in parallel with with you know, the sort of hite
9:01
Speaker 3: just use the word normal corruption that you might expect
9:04
Speaker 3: to see was activities for children and children being removed
9:11
Speaker 3: from families, children being trafficked, children being abused. This is
9:16
Speaker 3: an area that we got into very very early. But
9:19
Speaker 3: for us it wasn't just a and for Brian in particular,
9:22
Speaker 3: it wasn't just a case of reporting because, of course,
9:25
Speaker 3: in many cases reporting is impossible because the family courts
9:30
Speaker 3: in the UK are are utterly secret and and it's
9:34
Speaker 3: simply illegal to report on what goes on in family courts.
9:39
Speaker 2: But illegal, you.
9:41
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, absolutely, it's it's absolutely illegal to report what
9:45
Speaker 3: goes on in family courts in this country. They have
9:50
Speaker 3: eased the restrictions somewhat in the last year or two,
9:53
Speaker 3: but you know, even even now you can only report
9:57
Speaker 3: what the court says you can report. You're not allowed
9:59
Speaker 3: to name any names. You're not allowed to.
10:01
Speaker 4: So, you know, the the the AHH facility, facilitation of
10:11
Speaker 4: the abuse of children has been something which is core
10:14
Speaker 4: to the establishment of this country forever.
10:20
Speaker 3: And uh, it's very very difficult area to cover. But
10:26
Speaker 3: what I was going to say there was that Brian
10:28
Speaker 3: wasn't just about reporting, or at least as far as
10:31
Speaker 3: we could reporting what was going on. He was you know,
10:36
Speaker 3: in many ways trying to help. So there was a
10:37
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of activity went on around the
10:41
Speaker 3: column in the early days that it wasn't just about
10:43
Speaker 3: getting information out and and we made very close contacts
10:47
Speaker 3: with a lot of people that were either abused themselves,
10:51
Speaker 3: or were the parents of the abused, or were you know,
10:55
Speaker 3: were with parents of children that had been taken by
10:57
Speaker 3: the state and and put in their care system that
10:59
Speaker 3: was then causing them to be abused. And we also
11:02
Speaker 3: have worked with police and a whole bunch of others
11:06
Speaker 3: that have been also trying to get the lid off
11:12
Speaker 3: the skill of what happens in this country in that area.
11:14
Speaker 3: So some of it has been pretty dark, and that's
11:16
Speaker 3: probably if you're saying what were we doing in the
11:19
Speaker 3: in the early days, that was a big part of it.
11:23
Speaker 1: There's a strange dichotomy there. I suppose there's an argument
11:26
Speaker 1: to be made that the state is trying to protect children,
11:31
Speaker 1: but the other side of the of the of the
11:34
Speaker 1: blade is that it cuts in a way that you
11:38
Speaker 1: are not able to actually get information art or to
11:41
Speaker 1: know what's going on.
11:42
Speaker 2: Now.
11:43
Speaker 3: The state as an institution, or the institutions of the
11:47
Speaker 3: state are absolutely not interested in protecting children. There are
11:53
Speaker 3: some individuals within that system that I would say are
11:58
Speaker 3: there with absolutely the best intentions, and where they are
12:02
Speaker 3: working with the best intentions are utterly hamstrung. The state
12:09
Speaker 3: as an entity is aggressively pedophilic, and the institutions reflect that.
12:19
Speaker 3: And so children are taken away from families, yes, in
12:23
Speaker 3: some cases because the families can't cope, But the state
12:27
Speaker 3: does nothing to support families that can't cope. They simply
12:31
Speaker 3: take the children into a care system where by and
12:34
Speaker 3: large they are abused.
12:37
Speaker 1: I don't think what you're saying is unique to the UK, though,
12:41
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that can be applied very much
12:44
Speaker 1: across the world.
12:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't say for sure. I think.
12:52
Speaker 3: I think that Western countries certainly do have this problem.
12:57
Speaker 2: I think that though.
13:00
Speaker 3: You know, as far as we're concerned, our interest is
13:04
Speaker 3: in trying to deal with what we can deal with,
13:06
Speaker 3: which is which is this country? Uh, and and if
13:09
Speaker 3: you know, if we can you know, for example, yes,
13:13
Speaker 3: there was there was that massive abuse case in Belgium,
13:17
Speaker 3: which absolutely demonstrates your point that this is not something
13:21
Speaker 3: that's limited to the UK.
13:24
Speaker 2: What I would say is that that.
13:26
Speaker 3: Uh, in this country, it goes to the heart of
13:35
Speaker 3: the entire establishment of the country, and it goes to
13:39
Speaker 3: the top. So as we know, it includes royalty and uh,
13:45
Speaker 3: you know, but but and indeed, on top of that,
13:49
Speaker 3: it's the fact that it's been going on for so
13:52
Speaker 3: many years and that there's an acceptance of it that
13:58
Speaker 3: I find that really problematic.
14:00
Speaker 2: You know.
14:00
Speaker 3: For example, if you remember back in it was the
14:03
Speaker 3: sixties or seventies, a perfumer affair, I can't remember exactly
14:06
Speaker 3: what year it was. One of the one of the
14:10
Speaker 3: prostitutes involved in that. Christine Killer mentioned in Passing in
14:15
Speaker 3: at least one of her books about being at you know,
14:18
Speaker 3: various high society parties at at stately homes in this
14:23
Speaker 3: country and uh but being there to provide entertainment for some,
14:29
Speaker 3: but not getting involved with the children. So you know,
14:32
Speaker 3: she was openly talking about that, and yet you know,
14:37
Speaker 3: nothing has ever been done. And in fact, you know,
14:40
Speaker 3: if we think about the efforts to get the lid
14:44
Speaker 3: off parliamentary pedophilia and how that was viciously shut down
14:52
Speaker 3: by the state with no proper investigation, even the Jimmy
14:58
Speaker 3: Savile affair, no proper investigation. You know, they close ranks
15:04
Speaker 3: very quickly. And that's that's certainly something which is you know,
15:11
Speaker 3: a core part of this country.
15:14
Speaker 1: So when you joined, Brian had a very specific vision
15:20
Speaker 1: or or was that still developing at the time.
15:23
Speaker 3: Still developing at the time, and you know, everything and
15:26
Speaker 3: at that point was was being done more or less
15:29
Speaker 3: on a voluntary basis. So you know, that was that
15:35
Speaker 3: was hard. It was it was hard to get the
15:37
Speaker 3: thing going at that point, but you know, it was
15:43
Speaker 3: it was fun at the same time, because doing things
15:47
Speaker 3: in that way can be uh challenging, but it's good
15:51
Speaker 3: crack to to to be punching above our wits in
15:56
Speaker 3: the way that we were.
15:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to in my mind
16:00
Speaker 1: to create the illustration of you know, the reality, you know,
16:03
Speaker 1: the actual human aspect of of what you guys are
16:06
Speaker 1: doing at the time.
16:08
Speaker 3: So at the time the reality was that we were
16:10
Speaker 3: that we were operating out of an office space. That's
16:15
Speaker 3: it's you know, it was was very very small. It
16:17
Speaker 3: was just one room.
16:18
Speaker 5: Uh.
16:19
Speaker 2: And then we moved to.
16:22
Speaker 3: A slightly bigger place where we had you know, three
16:25
Speaker 3: rooms and a kitchen that's very important coffee, yeah, absolutely,
16:31
Speaker 3: and then uh uh and then we moved again to
16:35
Speaker 3: a slightly bigger space, although it was certainly not as
16:41
Speaker 3: it wasn't as well fitted out, but it was a
16:43
Speaker 3: bigger space so it gives us a bit more room
16:45
Speaker 3: for for a studio. And then we're in the place
16:48
Speaker 3: we're in now, which is actually quite pleasant to be
16:52
Speaker 3: and so so yeah.
16:54
Speaker 1: Go ahead, sorry now I was gonna say sorry, But
16:56
Speaker 1: the reason why I'm having this discussion with you is
16:58
Speaker 1: because this year is a tweint, the anniversary of u
17:01
Speaker 1: K Column, and I think it's worth celebrating the journey.
17:04
Speaker 1: It's worth celebrating, you know, everything that UK Column has
17:08
Speaker 1: done up to this point. So I mean, from that
17:10
Speaker 1: humble beginning to a slightly big operation today is brilliant,
17:15
Speaker 1: particularly in the independent space.
17:18
Speaker 3: Well, and you know, we've got to say a massive
17:22
Speaker 3: thank you to everybody who has helped over the years,
17:26
Speaker 3: because you know, we couldn't have done any of this.
17:28
Speaker 3: I'm not just talking about, you know, the original group,
17:33
Speaker 3: which unfortunately most of them are no longer with us,
17:36
Speaker 3: but you know then there were a significant number of
17:40
Speaker 3: people over the years that came and had volunteered and helped,
17:43
Speaker 3: and of course we've got to say a huge thank
17:45
Speaker 3: you to the current membership and the membership for the
17:48
Speaker 3: last you know, since we actually decided to go slightly
17:53
Speaker 3: more commercial and set up a membership opportunity for people
17:57
Speaker 3: and which I guess was made fourteen or something along
18:02
Speaker 3: those lines. So everybody that supported us since then, we've
18:04
Speaker 3: got to say a massive thank you for that, because
18:07
Speaker 3: we absolutely could not be doing this without them.
18:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:10
Speaker 1: I mean, this is something that people tend not to understand,
18:15
Speaker 1: is that if you've got no advertising and those sponsors,
18:18
Speaker 1: you have to fund these things in some way or form.
18:21
Speaker 1: And this is where the good will of people around
18:24
Speaker 1: the world becomes very important.
18:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:28
Speaker 3: I mean in the early days, I was in the
18:31
Speaker 3: fortunate position that I'd been working for Hedge Fund. I
18:35
Speaker 3: had a reasonable amount of savings so that I could
18:38
Speaker 3: rely on for a number of years. And so, you know,
18:43
Speaker 3: we were able to do that on a literal shoe
18:47
Speaker 3: string at that stage because none of us had to,
18:51
Speaker 3: you know, to have any kind of income to actually eat.
18:57
Speaker 3: That has changed, and luckily we're in a very fortunate
19:02
Speaker 3: position now that we can take some income out of
19:06
Speaker 3: the out of what we're doing. But you know, we
19:08
Speaker 3: have we have been very careful with our money over
19:11
Speaker 3: the years, and it has gone into the organization, it
19:16
Speaker 3: hasn't gone into our pockets. And that's why we have
19:20
Speaker 3: Germ Warfare and Silk and Steel, and we've got a
19:23
Speaker 3: magazine and we've got you know, the contributors that we
19:26
Speaker 3: have that it's it is an amazing platform now and
19:30
Speaker 3: I'm very proud of what we've actually managed to do
19:33
Speaker 3: in the last twenty years. Could we be doing it
19:35
Speaker 3: better by a royal mile, we could be doing it better,
19:40
Speaker 3: but you know, it's it's we have. We have had
19:46
Speaker 3: to develop ways of working which are absolutely not industry
19:52
Speaker 3: standard in order to make up for the fact that
19:54
Speaker 3: we have always been under resourced in terms of personnel.
19:59
Speaker 3: And and yes that has in some ways come back
20:02
Speaker 3: to buy this letter because it's made it harder to.
20:06
Speaker 2: Scale.
20:07
Speaker 3: But we're getting there, and you know, with everybody's help,
20:11
Speaker 3: we're getting there.
20:12
Speaker 1: So in the first few years when you were part
20:14
Speaker 1: of the team, there was not video yet.
20:18
Speaker 2: No, it was just a newspaper.
20:20
Speaker 1: So it's just a newspaper.
20:22
Speaker 3: The newspaper on the website, and I think it was
20:27
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. I can't remember when
20:32
Speaker 3: we started producing some kind of video.
20:37
Speaker 1: Okay, but now that's interesting because so that's what over
20:40
Speaker 1: ten years ago. So it wasn't the easiest thing in
20:43
Speaker 1: the world to create independent video in those days.
20:47
Speaker 2: It was.
20:49
Speaker 3: Highly entertaining because it was right at the very beginning
20:52
Speaker 3: of people doing live streaming and most people at that stage,
20:59
Speaker 3: well maybe not YouTube, I mean people using YouTube. Yeah,
21:05
Speaker 3: but I mean I don't think YouTube was YouTube live
21:07
Speaker 3: even a thing at that point. I can't remember whether
21:10
Speaker 3: whether we whether YouTube even had the live capability when
21:14
Speaker 3: we originally started, or whether that came later. But yeah,
21:22
Speaker 3: YouTube was a very different beast in those days, and.
21:27
Speaker 2: People, you know, we.
21:29
Speaker 1: Talked about those days like literally only ten years ago.
21:31
Speaker 3: So well no, I mean it's fifteen years ago, wasn't it.
21:34
Speaker 5: Because but in the tech world, for example, Yeah, but
21:40
Speaker 5: for example, you know we're talking, we're talking using riverside,
21:44
Speaker 5: a platform on the Internet which allows us to connect
21:47
Speaker 5: and to have a conversation.
21:49
Speaker 3: In those days, the only way that you could have
21:51
Speaker 3: a guest on a program was Skype.
21:55
Speaker 2: That was basically it.
21:57
Speaker 3: And in order to get there was no zoom, there
22:00
Speaker 3: was no let's operate this through a web browser. You
22:04
Speaker 3: had to you had to have your Skype guest on
22:08
Speaker 3: a separate computer. You had to take a feed out
22:10
Speaker 3: of that computer and somehow getting it get it into
22:12
Speaker 3: your your vision mixing console or whatever it was that
22:16
Speaker 3: we mean in those days we were using we were
22:20
Speaker 3: using a German product originally called Boints TV, which is
22:24
Speaker 3: now called Mimu Live or something, and then we moved
22:27
Speaker 3: on to Workcast and then we moved onto v mix.
22:30
Speaker 3: But uh, just to give an example, Skype in those
22:38
Speaker 3: days had really major problems with with audio and video sync.
22:44
Speaker 3: So we had to actually take the audio audio signal
22:51
Speaker 3: through a separate little box which was made by Berringer
22:57
Speaker 3: called the Shark, and that alledge. To put that aledge,
23:02
Speaker 3: you'd put a delay on the on the audio to
23:04
Speaker 3: try to get the audio and video back and sink
23:06
Speaker 3: and sometimes the audio and video sink would drift in
23:08
Speaker 3: the course of a program, and so you know, it
23:11
Speaker 3: was it was these were these were challenging, challenging times
23:16
Speaker 3: for doing the kind of things these days, it's it's
23:18
Speaker 3: so easy.
23:19
Speaker 1: Was it worth it have a conversation like this? Was
23:22
Speaker 1: it worth all the effort?
23:23
Speaker 2: For video?
23:23
Speaker 1: I mean, podcasting already was going on at the time,
23:26
Speaker 1: but it was just you know audio.
23:30
Speaker 2: Was it worth it?
23:31
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you know, I mean yes, the answer
23:36
Speaker 1: is probably yes because it helped you get to it.
23:39
Speaker 1: You're not but at the time you're thinking, should we
23:42
Speaker 1: really be going through all these expenses and effort just
23:45
Speaker 1: to try and get.
23:45
Speaker 3: Out Well, look that that that is something that we effort. Yes, expenses, no,
23:50
Speaker 3: because because it really was as I say, done on
23:53
Speaker 3: the on the shoe string. And yes, okay we needed
23:56
Speaker 3: a couple of computers. But but aside from that, but
24:00
Speaker 3: you spend no.
24:01
Speaker 1: But my point is you spend so much of your
24:03
Speaker 1: day trying to get it to work, and and then
24:06
Speaker 1: you go, this is not worth it?
24:09
Speaker 3: No, well yes, yes, and no the that that yes,
24:14
Speaker 3: but there's there's there's entertainment value. Look, what we're doing
24:19
Speaker 3: is is dark, right, and if if if you just
24:23
Speaker 3: spend your time in the darkness, you'll kill yourself. Right,
24:28
Speaker 3: You've got to have something that just sort of takes
24:31
Speaker 3: your mind off of that stuff. And and and so
24:34
Speaker 3: you know what motivates me, and I think Brian as
24:38
Speaker 3: well and everybody else is we feel that we're doing
24:41
Speaker 3: something that you know, the information we're putting out. That
24:45
Speaker 3: is information people need to know. Is is primary you know,
24:48
Speaker 3: that's our primary motivation. Motivation is to get the information
24:52
Speaker 3: out and help people make decisions about the world they
24:56
Speaker 3: want to live in, about the people that are actually
24:59
Speaker 3: rowing the kind of the right. So you understand that
25:01
Speaker 3: part of it. But but but for me, you know,
25:05
Speaker 3: my my background has always been tech. Uh and I've
25:09
Speaker 3: worked in a whole bunch of different industries, but it's always,
25:11
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's tech has been what I've been doing.
25:15
Speaker 2: And so you know, for me, the the the.
25:20
Speaker 3: Betting, the hurdles that that that were put in front
25:24
Speaker 3: of us for how we actually do this stuff, that
25:26
Speaker 3: that it was just a bit of a bit of
25:29
Speaker 3: light relief and a bit of uh, let's get away from.
25:32
Speaker 2: Thet for a while.
25:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm not I'm not trying to add
25:36
Speaker 3: because you know, inevitably, once you start playing with computers,
25:39
Speaker 3: you want to throw them out the nearest window that
25:42
Speaker 3: that you know.
25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but that's what I'm doing, Mike. I'm
25:47
Speaker 1: also I mean, I'm not trying to dismiss the purpose.
25:51
Speaker 1: I'm also just looking at the human aspect. For me,
25:52
Speaker 1: that's also interesting. There is a real reality that that
25:56
Speaker 1: goes alongside all of this. You're not talking over the
25:59
Speaker 1: internet and it's way easier than what it was ten
26:02
Speaker 1: years ago, and that's a good thing, but but there's
26:07
Speaker 1: still lots of tinkering that you do along the way
26:09
Speaker 1: to get stuff to to to work. And it's it's
26:12
Speaker 1: amazing now to see the quality that you know, the
26:14
Speaker 1: UK column is putting out. I mean it is, it's
26:17
Speaker 1: top notch.
26:19
Speaker 3: You know, audio visual stuff has is one of those
26:22
Speaker 3: areas that in those days, and in fact even before
26:28
Speaker 3: that was I was involved in a in a an
26:31
Speaker 3: office free version project that needed you know, a V
26:35
Speaker 3: suites and meeting rooms and stuff like this, and it
26:39
Speaker 3: was it was quite incredible to me that that, uh,
26:43
Speaker 3: there's all at that time there's almost no information about
26:47
Speaker 3: how all this stuff went together. You basically had to
26:50
Speaker 3: go to you know, a major supplier of this kind
26:55
Speaker 3: of equipment, who of course is selling you that the
26:59
Speaker 3: most offitable vendors that they could possibly right there was
27:03
Speaker 3: there was basically no information that would allow people to
27:06
Speaker 3: work out how this stuff goes together without spending money
27:11
Speaker 3: seeing whether it works, discovering it doesn't having to spend
27:14
Speaker 3: more money and trying again and so on and and
27:17
Speaker 3: actually in the early days of this, there was when
27:21
Speaker 3: when I started building the studio with the column and
27:24
Speaker 3: so on, it was it was quite similar. But even
27:28
Speaker 3: in those days, there was there was one YouTube channel
27:30
Speaker 3: called Studio Tech where they were they were doing a
27:34
Speaker 3: lot of this stuff, and and that became sort of
27:36
Speaker 3: regular watching for me because because that was giving clues.
27:42
Speaker 3: But nothing like these days when you can find out,
27:48
Speaker 3: you know, how do you run a green screen, how
27:49
Speaker 3: do you do this, how do you do that?
27:51
Speaker 2: It's the information is everywhere.
27:54
Speaker 3: It's still not easy because it's still very easy to
27:57
Speaker 3: end up buying something that isn't compatible the next thing,
28:00
Speaker 3: and so you know, it is quite easy to end
28:03
Speaker 3: up losing money in that sense. But it's a lot
28:08
Speaker 3: easier to be able to understand how stuff goes together
28:13
Speaker 3: now because so many people are talking about it on YouTube.
28:15
Speaker 3: In particular, those days, it was all pretty pioneering stuff
28:19
Speaker 3: and that was part of the part.
28:21
Speaker 2: Of the fun of it.
28:21
Speaker 1: Actually, for me, I love the independence of it. I
28:25
Speaker 1: love the fact that you don't have to rely on
28:27
Speaker 1: YouTube and rumble, et cetera. I find that exceptionally appealing.
28:32
Speaker 1: I mean, you can use them as secondary But I
28:34
Speaker 1: love the fact now that you can host a live stream,
28:38
Speaker 1: you can watch the news on UK COM's website.
28:43
Speaker 3: That's true, but we're still reliant on a service to
28:47
Speaker 3: do that. And yeah, that service is not YouTube, but
28:51
Speaker 3: we're still reliant on service to do that. And you know,
28:55
Speaker 3: one of the when YouTube kicked us off in twenty
28:59
Speaker 3: twenty one, whatever it was, and at the same time, well,
29:05
Speaker 3: in fact, I think we were using Vimeo at that
29:07
Speaker 3: point for live streaming.
29:09
Speaker 1: Oh that's not good. They they sense that.
29:12
Speaker 3: Seriously, Vimeo at that stage was actually very good and
29:18
Speaker 3: and their their reliability was very good and their cost
29:25
Speaker 3: was not expensive.
29:26
Speaker 1: Now they sensored me.
29:28
Speaker 3: Well, I'm coming on to that. What happened was, if
29:33
Speaker 3: you remember, we covered a story of a woman whose
29:37
Speaker 3: husband had ended up with Gian Barry syndrome, which is
29:41
Speaker 3: like he ended up for it was temporarily for thank goodness,
29:45
Speaker 3: for him with as effectively a quadriplegic because of the astroseneca.
29:51
Speaker 3: I think it was injection, and YouTube immediately shut the
29:58
Speaker 3: channel down. We when we covered when we recorded an
30:02
Speaker 3: interview with her and put that out, Vimeo had already
30:05
Speaker 3: been at the point of saying to us, well, actually
30:09
Speaker 3: you're you're in the top sort of one percent of
30:14
Speaker 3: people live streaming on our platform in terms of the
30:19
Speaker 3: bandwidth that we were using. So because we were putting
30:21
Speaker 3: out programs more or less every day, and because of
30:26
Speaker 3: the number of people that were watching the programs, they
30:28
Speaker 3: suddenly got very upset that we were costing them too much. Another,
30:34
Speaker 3: because the vimeos pricing model was based on the idea that, yeah,
30:39
Speaker 3: some people would be using quite a bit, but other
30:41
Speaker 3: people be using absolutely nothing, so so it would balance
30:45
Speaker 3: out in the end. In fact, they found that they
30:49
Speaker 3: sort of top one or two percent of users were
30:53
Speaker 3: using way more than the other lot we're paying for.
30:56
Speaker 3: So they they were already even before they decided to
31:01
Speaker 3: kick us off, We're already discussing discussions with us about
31:05
Speaker 3: turning our sort of monthly fee for using Vimeo from
31:10
Speaker 3: I can't remember it was two hundred a month to
31:12
Speaker 3: being two thousand a month or something like this. So
31:15
Speaker 3: so Vimeo was going to go. So but the fact is,
31:18
Speaker 3: at about the same time Vimeo and YouTube disappeared immediately,
31:24
Speaker 3: and as a result, you know, in terms of free
31:31
Speaker 3: or nearly free live streaming, that they were every option
31:35
Speaker 3: was gone immediately. They could cope with the kind of
31:39
Speaker 3: audience that we had at the time, and so we
31:43
Speaker 3: we had to find more commercial and to they used
31:49
Speaker 3: to work with and and and we have at the
31:52
Speaker 3: moment with box Cast, which and the box cut. They're
31:56
Speaker 3: they're very very good and they they the reason and
32:00
Speaker 3: about them was because they were, uh they were giving
32:05
Speaker 3: service to churches. I think, yes, yes, but no, it
32:10
Speaker 3: was it was children sales defense. We're using box Cast,
32:15
Speaker 3: and so I had some inkling that they were not
32:18
Speaker 3: going to censor us on the basis of the COVID
32:21
Speaker 3: narratives and so on. So we had a conversation with them,
32:25
Speaker 3: we agreed what we were going to do, and and
32:28
Speaker 3: and we've we've been with them and they have been excellent.
32:32
Speaker 2: Actually, uh so, so can't complain at all.
32:36
Speaker 1: But that's I mean, that's a that's a segue, But
32:40
Speaker 1: that's actually a silver lining because when these big corporations
32:45
Speaker 1: like YouTube et cetera, of them your censor, it does
32:49
Speaker 1: create a drive to counter that, and so you you'll
32:56
Speaker 1: end up with with very interesting alternatives that will go well,
33:02
Speaker 1: hold on, use us and we're not going to censor.
33:07
Speaker 3: Yes, but as I said on this program before, jerem
33:10
Speaker 3: of the d inside to that is that you end
33:12
Speaker 3: up with what's you know, basically a protest pan. So
33:17
Speaker 3: you end up with the platform where certain voices go,
33:21
Speaker 3: and that platform then gets a reputation for having those
33:24
Speaker 3: certain voices.
33:25
Speaker 2: So if you're not.
33:27
Speaker 3: Inclined to come across or to want to watch those voices,
33:32
Speaker 3: then you won't go to that platform at all. And
33:36
Speaker 3: so you know, the reason that I think YouTube is
33:38
Speaker 3: important is because you know, people do have the opportunity
33:44
Speaker 3: to find content that they wouldn't otherwise find. And the
33:47
Speaker 3: fact of the matter is that even at this stage
33:50
Speaker 3: twenty years later, there are still way too many people
33:56
Speaker 3: that have no idea what the column is. I mean,
33:58
Speaker 3: that's why you've started this conversation today, exactly right, and
34:03
Speaker 3: so uh so, yeah, a couple of points. Was the
34:06
Speaker 3: first point to make is despite the fact, you know,
34:10
Speaker 3: every single news program and despite the fact on every
34:14
Speaker 3: single video we put out we have UK column dot
34:17
Speaker 3: org labeled there somewhere. In other words, guys, we have
34:20
Speaker 3: a website, come and look at the website. Whenever we
34:24
Speaker 3: got kicked off YouTube, so many people never find us again,
34:30
Speaker 3: and then when we came back on YouTube, they said, oh,
34:33
Speaker 3: we didn't know you were still around.
34:35
Speaker 2: We thought you'd gone.
34:37
Speaker 3: And and you know, our policy are our strategy has
34:41
Speaker 3: always been to put the website first, because because that
34:45
Speaker 3: that is the sort of thing which that is the
34:47
Speaker 3: home and that's not going to go right and and
34:51
Speaker 3: so you know, even if yeah, just to just one
34:57
Speaker 3: example comment per us, we set up a website called
35:02
Speaker 3: cpxpos dot com. This is back in well, it already
35:06
Speaker 3: existed before I joined, but I updated it and rebuilt
35:11
Speaker 3: it and so on, and we put the the Common
35:15
Speaker 3: Purpose Alumni did a base as it existed at that
35:17
Speaker 3: time online because somebody inside the organization had managed to
35:23
Speaker 3: get a copy of it to us, and that was
35:26
Speaker 3: at that stage a really massively important resource for people. Now,
35:32
Speaker 3: what I did was when I updated the website, I
35:37
Speaker 3: deliberately made cpxpos dot com look like not identical too,
35:42
Speaker 3: because I wasn't going to I wasn't going to you know,
35:45
Speaker 3: find myself in the position of being copyrighted or whatever.
35:49
Speaker 3: But nonetheless they had to go. I made it look
35:53
Speaker 3: like the Common Purpose website. And the next thing was
35:59
Speaker 3: that they posting company. I can't even remember who it
36:02
Speaker 3: was in those days, received a copyright takedown notice and
36:12
Speaker 3: before we knew it, the website was dying.
36:16
Speaker 2: So, uh.
36:18
Speaker 3: No, that's the at that stage. At that stage, it
36:23
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't looking like their website that but but
36:26
Speaker 3: we we the logo that we had designed was designed
36:30
Speaker 3: to look like their logo. It had a couple of
36:33
Speaker 3: the features of their of their logo. So the website
36:35
Speaker 3: itself didn't look like their website, but the logo did
36:38
Speaker 3: and that that was what That was enough for them anyway.
36:41
Speaker 3: We we eventually found a UK based web post and
36:46
Speaker 3: I said, a small business sort of run by you know,
36:51
Speaker 3: a handful of people. And I said to the main guy, look,
36:54
Speaker 3: this is what's happened. If you receive a similar takedown request.
36:59
Speaker 3: If we if we host this site with you, and
37:01
Speaker 3: you receive a similar takedown request, are you going to
37:03
Speaker 3: comply with it? And he said, well, so long I'm
37:06
Speaker 3: not going to. I'm not going to go to coord
37:08
Speaker 3: for you, but as long as it stays out of court,
37:10
Speaker 3: I'm not going to. And I said, well that's good
37:12
Speaker 3: enough for me. So so when the site came back,
37:15
Speaker 3: not only did we keep the same logo. It didn't
37:19
Speaker 3: say common Purpose obviously, it said Common Purpose exposed, but
37:24
Speaker 3: it had you know, it had the same colors and
37:26
Speaker 3: this kind of thing. But the entire website and I
37:29
Speaker 3: looked much more like their website, and this annoyed them
37:32
Speaker 3: greatly and they did indeed send a takedown request to
37:37
Speaker 3: the new web post and he basically told them to
37:39
Speaker 3: go away. So so that that has h you know,
37:44
Speaker 3: that that was a success and from that point of view,
37:48
Speaker 3: but that website is still there and people can can
37:51
Speaker 3: go along and look at it. We've we've done a
37:52
Speaker 3: couple of things that have been similar since then. One
37:56
Speaker 3: was the Yellow Card website, where basically we said, well,
38:01
Speaker 3: hold on a second. We know that people are supposed
38:06
Speaker 3: to be reporting adverse reactions to the COVID jabs to
38:10
Speaker 3: the Yellow Card system, right, but where is that information?
38:15
Speaker 2: Where do we find that?
38:16
Speaker 3: And it turned out that the MHRA, this is the
38:20
Speaker 3: regulator of the Medicines regulator in the UK, was publishing
38:24
Speaker 3: these very opaque spreadsheets. So yes, they were publishing the data,
38:30
Speaker 3: but they were coming out in the form of a
38:31
Speaker 3: PDF file as a bunch of tables that just listed stuff.
38:36
Speaker 3: And so it was impossible to understand the scale of
38:40
Speaker 3: particular types of reactions and so on, and we said, right,
38:45
Speaker 3: this is no good, and so we set up a
38:47
Speaker 3: website yellow card dot UK called dot org still there
38:51
Speaker 3: if people want to go and have a look at it,
38:53
Speaker 3: where first of all we showed basically took that data
38:58
Speaker 3: in the spreadsheets mid at search of and so that
39:02
Speaker 3: you could see how many jobs have been given, how
39:04
Speaker 3: many adverse reactions had been reported, and then listed all
39:08
Speaker 3: the adverse reactions.
39:09
Speaker 2: You could search.
39:10
Speaker 3: Based on what kind of So if you, for example,
39:12
Speaker 3: Gail Barriers syndrome was what the guy that whose wife
39:18
Speaker 3: we interviewed that got us kicked off YouTube, you could
39:22
Speaker 3: search for that you could see how many people had
39:24
Speaker 3: experienced those kinds of reactions and so on. And then
39:28
Speaker 3: the other one that we did that we thought was
39:30
Speaker 3: important because of the of the war agenda was where
39:35
Speaker 3: was the foreign come wealth and development off of spending
39:38
Speaker 3: their money?
39:39
Speaker 2: And the fcdo.
39:42
Speaker 3: Occasionally publishes spreadsheets of their spending amounts of money that
39:48
Speaker 3: they spend over twenty five thousand pounds and they're supposed
39:50
Speaker 3: to these spreadsheets are supposed to come out every month,
39:54
Speaker 3: but they they're usually about two years behind. But anyway,
39:58
Speaker 3: we felt that those we're equally opique and let's put
40:03
Speaker 3: shine light on those. So fcdo spending dot UK Colum
40:07
Speaker 3: dot organs the place to go for that, and you
40:09
Speaker 3: can see what fcdo is which organizations are receiving their money,
40:15
Speaker 3: very very interesting if you look at the top twenty,
40:18
Speaker 3: which includes things like the British Consul and the BBC.
40:21
Speaker 2: But look at it.
40:23
Speaker 3: It's an amazing resource and very underutilized. But I encourage
40:28
Speaker 3: people to go and look at that. But the point
40:31
Speaker 3: that I was trying to make was we've the website
40:33
Speaker 3: are the core of what we do, and and yes
40:38
Speaker 3: we'll be on the platforms as well, but that should
40:40
Speaker 3: only be ever seen as secondary.
40:42
Speaker 2: So secondary.
40:42
Speaker 3: So if we get kicked off a platform again, people
40:45
Speaker 3: can always come back to the website.
40:47
Speaker 2: That would be what I encourage.
40:50
Speaker 3: And also, you know, you see UK column video content
40:54
Speaker 3: on YouTube, but you don't see any of the written
40:56
Speaker 3: content on YouTube, and we're publishing written articles every week,
41:00
Speaker 3: so come to the website.
41:03
Speaker 2: Now.
41:04
Speaker 1: The forums win did that begin.
41:12
Speaker 3: Basically two thousand and eight. Basically when I started, there
41:17
Speaker 3: was a there was a forum.
41:20
Speaker 1: The forums that big I remember in those years, like
41:23
Speaker 1: online forums were the big thing, the forums, fashion boards
41:32
Speaker 1: or whatever the right term is. Yeah, yeah, there there
41:34
Speaker 1: was a forum. It was the UK Calling Forums and
41:36
Speaker 1: they were they were quite popular at that time to
41:40
Speaker 1: twenty nine twenty ten, and they were basically free for
41:48
Speaker 1: everybody to sign up and quite honestly, you know, in
41:54
Speaker 1: those days it was a very different world. And yeah,
41:59
Speaker 1: people had arguments, and some of those arguments were pretty intense,
42:05
Speaker 1: but actually for a lot of people those were an
42:10
Speaker 1: opportunity to to to pass on information that they had
42:13
Speaker 1: discovered and and so it became in the early days
42:17
Speaker 1: it was quite a quite a good resource for research
42:20
Speaker 1: and so on. Of all, that research is pretty much
42:24
Speaker 1: out of date at this stage, but but anyway, there
42:29
Speaker 1: was you know, the issue of people fighting each other
42:33
Speaker 1: in the forums is one which has always been there
42:38
Speaker 1: and and of course when a big spot would kick off,
42:43
Speaker 1: that would result in, you know, dozens of emails coming in.
42:49
Speaker 1: You've got to do something about this sort of thing.
42:54
Speaker 3: And even in those days, of course, there as someone
42:57
Speaker 3: as as an organization running a forum, there was no
42:59
Speaker 3: way to win for the organization because if you step
43:04
Speaker 3: in and try to stop the fight and your accused
43:07
Speaker 3: of censorship. If you don't step in and try to
43:09
Speaker 3: stop the fight, then you're accused of of you know,
43:12
Speaker 3: just running a wild West show. And the line people
43:14
Speaker 3: that you know, So depending on which side of the
43:16
Speaker 3: argument you're on, both both sides were accusing us of
43:22
Speaker 3: of things and and so it's always been a very
43:25
Speaker 3: difficult line to walk in terms of of how do
43:28
Speaker 3: we sort of moderate. And our position has been in
43:33
Speaker 3: general that that we don't moderate until such times as
43:39
Speaker 3: things become personal, and we just will not, you know,
43:43
Speaker 3: we just will not permit personal attacks on on on
43:47
Speaker 3: each other. So so if if we're you know, we
43:50
Speaker 3: can't be watching what's going on in the discussions all
43:53
Speaker 3: the time, but if somebody lets us know about something
43:56
Speaker 3: or we see something which is just such an it's
43:59
Speaker 3: just a regious personal attack that will be taken down
44:02
Speaker 3: because we don't what's the point I mean?
44:06
Speaker 1: But that's changed now. I mean, I'll speak about the
44:08
Speaker 1: forums as if they were part of antiquity. They don't
44:11
Speaker 1: really exist anymore. It's all changed now. What has changed.
44:18
Speaker 3: What has changed is that that basically most of the
44:23
Speaker 3: functionality that was there a month ago is still there.
44:27
Speaker 3: But the forums are morphed into a more traditional discussion
44:36
Speaker 3: commenting sections on UK column content. But you know, we
44:41
Speaker 3: would encourage anybody that that has a topic that they
44:45
Speaker 3: feel should be discussed to write a letter to the
44:48
Speaker 3: editor and we will absolutely you know, just send an
44:52
Speaker 3: email to editor at GUK column dot org with with
44:55
Speaker 3: what you know, with a little bit of text and
45:00
Speaker 3: will take the best of those and create a because
45:03
Speaker 3: we are creating a members section with the letters for
45:07
Speaker 3: the editor things, and we will we'll post those because
45:12
Speaker 3: because you know, people do have members do have important
45:19
Speaker 3: context and important views on what's going on, and they
45:23
Speaker 3: are often bringing us stuff which is going to be
45:27
Speaker 3: a massive interest to other members.
45:30
Speaker 1: I'll ask about the forums because it was a big
45:34
Speaker 1: it was a big era. Forum discussion bars were a
45:37
Speaker 1: big Internet thing. But I think it's all, you know,
45:39
Speaker 1: it shifts the way the way in which people engage
45:42
Speaker 1: online is constantly changing. I actually don't really use online
45:47
Speaker 1: forums anymore. You know, you go straight to telegram channels
45:51
Speaker 1: or WhatsApp channels or or signal, you know, because because
45:56
Speaker 1: most people use the phones now for or accessing the
46:00
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And that's the other thing. When you
46:02
Speaker 1: get column started was mostly on the desktop computer. It's
46:06
Speaker 1: now probably moved mostly to mobile.
46:09
Speaker 3: I think it's about fifty to fifty at the moment,
46:12
Speaker 3: still certainly fifty, it's over fifty percent or using mobile devices,
46:17
Speaker 3: that's for sure.
46:22
Speaker 2: The thing about the thing about forums.
46:28
Speaker 3: And because this is clearly where this is what comes
46:30
Speaker 3: back to the protest pen comment that a bit earlier.
46:33
Speaker 3: The thing about forums in the early days was that
46:36
Speaker 3: they were focused around a particular topic. You know, in
46:40
Speaker 3: our case, the news or current affairs, whatever you want
46:44
Speaker 3: to describe it. But there were you know, the forums
46:47
Speaker 3: for everything hamsters, right, if you wanted to have a
46:53
Speaker 3: discussion on a particular topic, you had to go to
46:56
Speaker 3: the forum that was that was based around that particular topic.
47:00
Speaker 3: And so when social media came along in its earliest
47:05
Speaker 3: form but certainly in the form that it's in at
47:07
Speaker 3: the moment, this was like the uber forum, where all
47:12
Speaker 3: the discussion topics that are that were in individual forums
47:16
Speaker 3: all ended up on one platform, and so people were
47:19
Speaker 3: sharing information for the first time and there was cross
47:23
Speaker 3: pollination of ideas that that just never happened before because
47:28
Speaker 3: because you know, people weren't exposed to the types of it,
47:32
Speaker 3: because they had to go and look for things that
47:33
Speaker 3: they were interested in, and if they weren't interested in
47:36
Speaker 3: a particular topic, they never saw the comments that were
47:38
Speaker 3: being made about that topic, whereas once they got on
47:41
Speaker 3: the Facebook, then they started seeing information that they just
47:45
Speaker 3: had never seen before. And this absolutely was at the
47:51
Speaker 3: early stages a positive and productive thing. Now what's happened
47:58
Speaker 3: since is that that we've ended up with social media
48:03
Speaker 3: where we have toxicity on steroids. So whereas on the
48:07
Speaker 3: UK column forums we had occasional blow ups and occasionally
48:12
Speaker 3: people came along that weren't always pleasant and so on
48:17
Speaker 3: that got massively amplified on social media platforms.
48:23
Speaker 2: And.
48:25
Speaker 3: So you know, as a result, we've had and I
48:31
Speaker 3: would argue that this was absolutely intentional. As a result,
48:34
Speaker 3: we've had this massive momentum towards having to regulate the Internet. Now,
48:45
Speaker 3: if we go back to twenty fourteen, most people will
48:50
Speaker 3: know this story, but I'll just briefly mention it again.
48:53
Speaker 3: Twenty fourteen and we were doing the UK column News
48:56
Speaker 3: at the time. Still are obviously, but we've been run
49:00
Speaker 3: the UK Call News for eighteen months, two years whatever
49:03
Speaker 3: it was, and offcom little subsidiary that was known as
49:09
Speaker 3: the Authority for Television on Demand gotten us to say, look,
49:13
Speaker 3: we feel that you need to sign up to be
49:16
Speaker 3: regulated by us, and we said no to that. But
49:21
Speaker 3: the point was that the guy, Peter Johnson was his name.
49:26
Speaker 3: I think the guy who's running that organization had said
49:31
Speaker 3: at that stage in twenty fourteen that his intention was
49:35
Speaker 3: to regulate the whole Internet. So this is something that
49:37
Speaker 3: had been building for ten years before we got the
49:43
Speaker 3: Online Safety Act. But in order to justify the Online
49:48
Speaker 3: Safety Act, we had to get to a point where
49:51
Speaker 3: the wild West nature of social media had got to
49:55
Speaker 3: such a height that, you know, people were genuinely willing
49:59
Speaker 3: to demand that things were sorted out and dealt with.
50:04
Speaker 3: And so that's why we're at this point.
50:09
Speaker 1: Now, Where does UK conumn go to from here?
50:21
Speaker 3: I see a lot of I don't think there's I
50:29
Speaker 3: don't think there's There needs to be a sort of
50:33
Speaker 3: idea of where we go to at this stage. At
50:37
Speaker 3: this stage, we just need to be at the let's
50:41
Speaker 3: keep going stage, because, particularly since October twenty twenty three,
50:51
Speaker 3: there have been a lot of people that are just
50:54
Speaker 3: getting overwhelmed by the speed and the acceleration events and
51:00
Speaker 3: the the sheer darkness and scariness of what's going on
51:05
Speaker 3: in the world, and they're they're they're leaving the fight.
51:11
Speaker 3: And so, you know, and I'm hearing this from people
51:15
Speaker 3: right across the independent media sphere that the the Israel
51:24
Speaker 3: Palestine issue was such a divisive issue that they have
51:30
Speaker 3: seen audiences half Now I'm not happy to say it,
51:35
Speaker 3: but I'll say it that absolutely happened to us. Half
51:39
Speaker 3: our audience just disappeared within a few months, and and
51:44
Speaker 3: that has been particularly challenging from a for a host
51:48
Speaker 3: of different reasons. I think the grand shifting on that,
51:53
Speaker 3: and I think we're we're seeing a lot of people
51:56
Speaker 3: coming back. And you see this, this is this is
52:00
Speaker 3: a common feature of our lives. We make progress and
52:05
Speaker 3: then something happens, and people are People have an expectation
52:13
Speaker 3: that if they're going to support an organization, they've got
52:17
Speaker 3: to agree with absolutely everything that that organization says or does.
52:23
Speaker 3: And I think the chances of that, you know, the
52:26
Speaker 3: chances of that any audience is going to agree with
52:28
Speaker 3: what any organization says or does all the time is
52:34
Speaker 3: is just on ten.
52:35
Speaker 2: It's just ridiculous.
52:36
Speaker 3: It's it's not possible, right, But people have a tendency
52:41
Speaker 3: to say, right, well, you said something I disagree with
52:43
Speaker 3: and therefore that's it. I'm canceling the membership. And this
52:49
Speaker 3: this is part of the challenge of what we're doing
52:51
Speaker 3: is to say, well, look, guys, if if you support
52:55
Speaker 3: what we're doing, we do need your support, So please
52:58
Speaker 3: support us.
52:58
Speaker 2: Now.
52:58
Speaker 3: We're not gonna you're not gonna agree with us on everything.
53:02
Speaker 3: And you know, there are a number of topics where
53:05
Speaker 3: you know, Jeremy and I know how much pushback there
53:08
Speaker 3: is on but if if you if you feel that
53:13
Speaker 3: we're doing generally at the right thing or a good job,
53:17
Speaker 3: then we absolutely need that support.
53:20
Speaker 2: Now.
53:22
Speaker 3: In the past, we've seen people get annoyed with us
53:25
Speaker 3: on a particular thing and they go away. They they
53:28
Speaker 3: often come back again after after a period of time.
53:32
Speaker 3: Uh and and I think we're starting to see that
53:35
Speaker 3: a little bit with with the Israel Palestine things as
53:38
Speaker 3: that as that issue continues, we're starting to see people
53:43
Speaker 3: come back. Or maybe it's a new audience. I don't
53:46
Speaker 3: I don't know, but we were doing a little bit
53:48
Speaker 3: better on that score at the moment, or at least
53:51
Speaker 3: we're seeing member should grow again. And that's so that's positive,
53:57
Speaker 3: But you know, the fact of the matter is just
54:01
Speaker 3: surviving is a success because this is a massively challenging
54:06
Speaker 3: environment we're in at the moment. We are in an
54:09
Speaker 3: information war. We are being attacked as an organization, never
54:14
Speaker 3: mind what the what the state is doing. So you know,
54:21
Speaker 3: this is this my as far as I'm concerned. This
54:24
Speaker 3: is a period of consolidation.
54:26
Speaker 5: Now.
54:27
Speaker 3: We have at the same time expanded what we're doing
54:30
Speaker 3: with your program, with Carl's program, with Jake Fern's program,
54:33
Speaker 3: with the magazine, and and so that that absolutely there
54:39
Speaker 3: are a massive positives that have come out of the
54:42
Speaker 3: last two or three years. But the environment is massively
54:48
Speaker 3: challenging and we absolutely need people to stick with it.
54:52
Speaker 2: Just quickly.
54:53
Speaker 1: I was wanting to ask you earlier and I forgot.
54:56
Speaker 1: You're talking about the importance of YouTube. And I remember
55:00
Speaker 1: a number of years ago when people still bought CDs,
55:04
Speaker 1: and I remember going into CD stores and at that stage,
55:06
Speaker 1: I was very much into Christian rock, Christian metal, that
55:09
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and I would deliberately go to that section.
55:15
Speaker 1: Now you could see that as the parallel in going
55:18
Speaker 1: to a website that is for a specific type of
55:21
Speaker 1: media as opposed to YouTube, which covers everything you do.
55:25
Speaker 1: I think there's also a space for for the the
55:29
Speaker 1: what's the word, the targeted media, but.
55:33
Speaker 3: There's I'm not saying there is no spares for it.
55:36
Speaker 3: You know, we are uploading to rumble just as much
55:39
Speaker 3: as we are uploading to.
55:42
Speaker 2: YouTube. I think there is a danger and.
55:49
Speaker 3: People I hate to use this time because it's used
55:54
Speaker 3: so often by people that I found a manage you
55:57
Speaker 3: disagree with. But the fact of the matter is we
56:01
Speaker 3: should not be existing in an echo chamber because because
56:08
Speaker 3: that if we find ourselves just going off track a
56:13
Speaker 3: little bit and we only ever spend time amongst other
56:18
Speaker 3: people that are just off track a little bit, that
56:22
Speaker 3: that we head in the wrong direction.
56:25
Speaker 2: At that point, we've we have to be challenging our.
56:32
Speaker 3: Our our belief systems every single day. In my opinion,
56:36
Speaker 3: we've got to be challenging everything that we believe, and
56:40
Speaker 3: and that means exposing ourselves to other points of view
56:45
Speaker 3: and being willing to.
56:48
Speaker 2: Experience the It is paying the right word, but.
56:54
Speaker 3: You know that that feeling that you have when when
56:56
Speaker 3: somebody says something that you just fundamentally disagree with and
57:00
Speaker 3: you've got to you've in my opinion. You've got to
57:03
Speaker 3: be absolutely questioning whether whether that person is right or wrong,
57:08
Speaker 3: because it's too easy to to just.
57:16
Speaker 2: Just swallow whole what what we're told by.
57:23
Speaker 3: Somebody that we watch on YouTube or more as if
57:28
Speaker 3: we're thinking in terms of what you're talking about, what
57:31
Speaker 3: somebody has said on rumble, and and you know there
57:35
Speaker 3: is so much incorrect information out there that it's easy
57:42
Speaker 3: to be mis directed. We just got to be challenging
57:48
Speaker 3: everything all the time. And uh, that's harder to do
57:54
Speaker 3: if we're not willing to allow ourselves to take information
58:01
Speaker 3: from from sources that we wouldn't otherwise come into contact with.
58:10
Speaker 1: Okay, well, Mike times against us. From my side, God
58:13
Speaker 1: bless you and Brian for sticking sticking it through all
58:17
Speaker 1: these years. Twenty years later, I am absolutely honored to
58:23
Speaker 1: be part of the Fold team, the family, whatever the
58:26
Speaker 1: right terminology is. So it's a great pleasure working with
58:30
Speaker 1: you and UK column and may there'd be another twenty
58:34
Speaker 1: more years at least.
58:35
Speaker 3: Well that's the intention. But look, Jarmon, I just got
58:37
Speaker 3: to say once again, it was not, It was not,
58:40
Speaker 3: is not, was not never was just me and Brian.
58:42
Speaker 3: So we've got to just yes, of course acknowledge the
58:45
Speaker 3: fact of everybody else that has contributed.
58:49
Speaker 1: So but thanks for that, or I might catch up
58:53
Speaker 1: with you and Charles next time, right,