Latest / UK Column Radio / UK Column News - 9th June 2025

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UK Column News - 9th June 2025 · UK Column Radio

0:08
Good afternoon. Today is Monday, the 9th of June
0:12
2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News.
0:16
I'm your host, Brian Gerrish, Delighted to have Ben Rubin with
0:19
me here in the studio. And we'll also be joined by
0:22
Diane Rasmussen. Mcaddy from the North East of
0:26
England. Well here we are, it's Monday.
0:30
I hope everyone had a good weekend.
0:32
I had a fascinating weekend because I got invited to
0:35
breakfast which led to a very interesting conversation with
0:40
some very kind gentlemen. Perhaps more on that in extra
0:44
time, but here we are. We are in UK.
0:49
If we look at the media, it is absolute chaos.
0:52
We're just going to talk about that chaos very briefly, but we
0:56
really want to move people's attention past the chaos and the
1:00
confusion and the anxiety, and we want to get people actually
1:04
looking at what is the real threat to the United Kingdom.
1:09
So we are moving away from what everybody else is reporting, at
1:12
least today, and we're going to have a look at what we think the
1:16
threat is and why people need to understand what's happening and
1:20
how indeed we are being attacked by our own government.
1:23
So Ben, you're going to be looking at Mindspace, Oxford
1:28
Theory of Change, amongst other things.
1:30
We're going to be having a little look at local authority
1:34
change in England with a particular focus on Plymouth.
1:38
Ben, you're going to be having a look at the building of a
1:42
collaborative society. This is all tied in together,
1:45
and we're going to take our audience through this really
1:48
critical little journey as to how this this thing works.
1:52
And Diane, you've been interacting with the University
1:57
of York, which is very special, of course, because we have our
2:00
events planned for October in York.
2:04
But what have you been having a look at?
2:06
Well, I believe it's making waves.
2:08
It is disinformation. It's the new world order and
2:12
it's also whether Europe will be safe.
2:16
So let's have a look at the meat.
2:17
And of course, many people at the moment distracted with Los
2:20
Angeles. We've got a little clip here,
2:23
which if we just bring on screen now, essentially this is what
2:29
the media is drowning in at the moment.
2:32
This is the BBC, apparently filming from Los Angeles,
2:35
although it says this video only has partial sound.
2:39
You'll see the police at one stage in this video clip beating
2:44
protesters with battens. What is it all about?
2:46
It's about getting rid of illegal migrants in America at
2:51
least. But there's some pretty
2:53
unpleasant scenes. And what's caused it?
2:57
Well, we're showing it just to reflect what the media is
3:00
talking about. Here's the BBC.
3:02
And if we look at their front page from earlier this morning,
3:06
it's chaos, it's unrest, it's a breakdown, it's the Brit Awards
3:11
and generally it's supporting dross.
3:14
The newspapers are as bad. We've got everything from hotter
3:17
than Morocco to the policing is broken that we've then got the
3:22
insanity, Sorry, we've got delays over winter fuel and then
3:27
we've got insanity over migration, more chaos, breakdown
3:31
and confusion, more from the mail to do with Los Angeles, Los
3:37
Angeles Burns. Is it reality or is it a film?
3:41
And Daily Mail is obviously not quite sure.
3:43
But the media, Oh my goodness, they love it because there's
3:47
violence and breakdown occurring in the states over migration.
3:52
But the Telegraph over the over the weekend came out with this
3:56
headline which I found critical concern over mass migration.
4:00
It's terrorist ideology. And if you add a little bit of
4:04
text here, mass migration or criticism of mass migration is
4:10
terrorist ideology that requires intervention by the government's
4:14
anti radicalization prevent programme.
4:18
So this is the smoke and mirrors, the fear, the anxiety
4:21
which the UK public are being taken through.
4:24
We are now going to delve into the real danger lurking behind
4:29
the scenes. Ben, what have you got?
4:33
Well, it's chaos out there, isn't it Brian?
4:35
Everything's breaking down. But don't worry, there's a
4:38
lovely bunch of people up in Oxford building a new world
4:41
order. Let's hear a little bit about
4:43
Makespace. Makespace Oxford was set up for
4:48
and by a coalition of local community groups and enterprises
4:51
who are being priced out of one of the least affordable cities
4:54
in the UK and one of the most unequal and Makespace.
4:57
We believe the most sustainable building is the one you don't
5:00
have to build, and that all the skills and creativity we need to
5:03
build vibrant, thriving places already exists locally,
5:06
everywhere and it just needs the conditions to grow.
5:09
We witnessed the rising number of vacant buildings on our high
5:11
streets and began unlocking these on a temporary meanwhile
5:14
basis, transforming spaces into affordable, community driven
5:18
places, nurturing connection and support, making a home for
5:21
creatives, makers, doers, fixers and dreamers.
5:24
And we use meanwhile as a catalyst to build towards
5:27
community ownership and wider systemic change.
5:30
We're locally rooted in place based but developing approach is
5:33
relevant at a global scale. In the last five years we've
5:36
scaled our model to bring back into use 30 vacant buildings,
5:40
establishing hubs across Oxfordshire and making space for
5:43
nearly 200 purpose driven groups, artists, tailors,
5:46
weavers, makers, architects, community cafes, restaurants,
5:50
dance theatres, roasters and organisers, all who want to
5:53
build a mutually supportive community and prototype new
5:56
forms of civic and social infrastructure.
5:59
And we're now adapting and replicating this model with
6:01
local groups across the country, with the ambition to transform
6:04
our declining town centres into places owned and managed by the
6:07
people that live there, building community wealth, climate
6:11
resilience and fostering cultures of care and connection.
6:18
So I'll just say, if I may, Ben police and military on the
6:22
streets with batons beating people.
6:24
That's very engaging news. It's dangerous, of course, but
6:28
what we are showing you in these soft videos equally if not more
6:33
dangerous. Well, indeed, because that's
6:35
what they're driving people towards.
6:37
So the breakdown of the current system is designed to
6:41
necessitate the creation of a new one.
6:43
And this is the kind of location and innovation hub where this is
6:50
happening basically. So the thing that really strikes
6:53
me about that video is that on on the surface it sounds lovely
6:57
and touchy feely and friendly and nice.
7:00
But then you actually breakdown what they've said and what
7:02
they're doing and it becomes quite terrifying actually.
7:06
So let's just have a little look at this.
7:07
What are they doing? They're taking over post
7:09
industrial and retail spaces and what they call a meanwhile
7:13
basis, right? So this is a consequence of the
7:16
deliberate deindustrialisation of the country over the past
7:19
four or 50 years. And the the High Street has been
7:23
decimated by the Internet, right.
7:25
Primarily. Right.
7:26
So this is moving into the vacuum that's been created by
7:30
industrial policy in the UK over the past 50 years that has
7:33
basically destroyed the country. Yeah.
7:36
We have no wealth creating capacity.
7:38
We have no communal spaces. It's been a radical
7:41
transformation. It's been done deliberately in
7:43
order to drive people towards this.
7:46
Yeah, they are prototyping new forms of civic and social
7:52
infrastructure. They're creating community
7:55
wealth, right. Really importantly, this is
7:59
about climate resilience. So climate change is driving
8:02
this cultures of care and connection across the whole of
8:07
Oxfordshire. They're adapting and replicating
8:10
this across the country and they're also developing
8:13
approaches that are relevant at a global scale, right?
8:17
So this is something that looks like it's just going on at a
8:19
local level, organically popping up in Oxfordshire.
8:22
But actually this is operating in a global ecosystem and it is
8:27
speaking to that ecosystem and that message is going up and
8:29
it's also coming back down again as well.
8:31
Importantly now let's have a little look at the blueprint for
8:36
this thing, right? Because they actually published
8:38
this and this, this post you can see on the right hand side,
8:41
which we're going to going to talk it through because it has
8:43
some very revealing language on here.
8:44
And it basically describes how these innovation hubs work.
8:48
So we can start in the bottom right hand corner and we can
8:51
see. The first thing to notice is
8:52
that this is a theory of change. Note that language, any
8:58
organisation has got a theory of change, is a progressive
9:02
organisation driving towards this transformation of the
9:05
system. Absolutely crucial, right?
9:08
And they have an approach that they use in this theory of
9:10
change, which is about, amongst other things, embracing
9:13
complexity, solidarity over charity.
9:16
That's an important one because that essentially means it's
9:18
state versus charity. There's a lot of stuff loaded
9:21
into this and being transformational and doing it
9:26
with an understanding of what they call these root problems.
9:30
Now, the root problems they've identified at the top level
9:34
there you can see on the left hand side are underused spaces
9:37
again. So this is post industrial, post
9:39
retail spaces that should be being used properly, frankly,
9:44
but they're not. But these people moving into it
9:46
on what they call a meanwhile basis, which basically means
9:49
temporary, but they have to invent new words for everything.
9:52
Apparently this, these buildings apparently are climate unsafe.
9:57
They lack community knowledge and imagination.
9:59
And importantly, they're built on a substructure of dark
10:02
matter, right? Get used to this language.
10:05
You're going to be talking about this a lot.
10:07
Dark matter, the bottom 3 levels that you can see there, These
10:10
are the things that exist beneath the surface that drive
10:13
what happens in observed reality, right?
10:15
There's a lot of theory behind this.
10:17
It's actually something that I used to, I used to work with
10:19
this stuff professionally for many years, right?
10:22
And the few things that they've identified as being dark matter
10:25
issues include things like imperialist and extractivist
10:30
mindset, right? They're talking about our
10:32
current culture. Private individualised
10:35
ownership, that's a problem, apparently.
10:38
Private ownership's problem. Supremacy culture, that's a
10:41
problem. Private intellectual property,
10:44
antiquated exclusive property rights.
10:47
These are things that these people want to want to get get
10:49
away from, right? And they're going to do it using
10:53
this programme and they're going to introduce learning.
10:58
You can see that's just come in. The little green stripe is
11:01
coming in from the side there. So these are new ideas coming in
11:04
from their network and coming from case studies from other
11:07
countries, other locations, from research, from storytelling.
11:11
They love, love a bit of storytelling and they're going
11:13
to use that learning to unlock a new reality.
11:17
And so we saw in the bottom left hand corner the root problems
11:20
that under used space. And they're now going to create
11:22
that, turn that into a learning space, A creative space that is
11:26
people and climate safe and connected and is a storytelling
11:30
and a platforming space for people to build this new reality
11:34
from, right. And then there's a whole bunch
11:35
of transformation again going on underneath in the dark matter.
11:38
And ultimately what that's going to drive is new ideas, new
11:41
culture, new ways of doing things into what they call a
11:44
dream space. You can see that there.
11:47
That's the kind of slightly translucent hexagonal cloud
11:51
thing. And in there it says
11:52
transforming systems. They are transforming the
11:56
system. New ownership models, decolonial
12:01
futures, solidarity networks, a new economy.
12:06
Essentially that's what they are prototyping and building and
12:12
scaling in Makespace in Oxford. That stuff's getting pushed out
12:17
into the town, then into the county and then importantly it's
12:22
being used to influence national policy.
12:25
You can see in the top right hand corner there across the
12:28
country, and then also global policy.
12:33
And those things then come back down into this physical and
12:37
virtual location in order to drive change across Oxford,
12:43
Oxfordshire, UK, and then internationally and back down
12:47
again, right? This is a network.
12:50
They've just decided to do this themselves.
12:53
You know, there's been no discussion about this whatsoever
12:56
and it's being driven by these people.
12:59
So interesting bunch of funders. So the first one step change
13:04
fund is a debt to charities, but it's very extremely high powered
13:10
finance and civil service people here, including the former head
13:12
of the Pensions Regulator that deserves more scrutiny because I
13:15
don't know what they're up to and I don't like it.
13:17
But also the National Lottery Fund, the Community Fund,
13:20
they're always in the mix in these programmes, right?
13:23
So essentially what you have is people playing the playing the
13:25
lottery generally indexed towards working class people,
13:30
people on lower incomes essentially funding their own
13:32
destruction. That's what my interpretation of
13:35
National Lottery is. What else have we got there?
13:38
We've got this thing called Enterprise Oxfordshire which
13:41
issued something called the Oxfordshire Internationalisation
13:44
Plan to 2025 in 2020, right? So this is a great reset
13:51
organisation which is actually using funding from the Getting
13:55
Building Fund, which was launched in 2020.
13:58
It was £900 million fund, part of the COVID legacy essentially,
14:01
right? So this is all about the
14:02
transformation of the system. We're now in five years into
14:05
this. And this is what these people
14:07
have been doing with this money. And this is all coming out of
14:10
central government, right? Absolutely crucially because the
14:14
chair of this, this lady as Shufta Alam is a deputy director
14:20
in the civil service who also overseas £2.5 billion of
14:24
international climate investments and it essentially
14:26
is applying an International Development methodology here to
14:29
the UK, right. So the the the British civil
14:32
service, which is supposed to be sitting in the background
14:35
running the country, is actually engaged in a radical
14:40
transformation programme to completely rethink and re
14:44
engineer our economy, our social systems, governance and to hook
14:50
us up to this global network, all being funded by taxpayers
14:55
who've never been asked about this once.
14:58
Thank you very much, Ben. This is very, very serious stuff
15:02
we're giving you today and we're going to say this is unique.
15:04
What UK column is delivering today is a unique look into the
15:09
future, the governance of this country.
15:12
You haven't been asked about it, you haven't voted on it.
15:15
It is already being put into place and it needs people to
15:19
wake up very quickly. Let's take what Ben has
15:22
described in Oxford and bring it home to Plymouth Now.
15:27
Over the weekend a little magazine dropped through my
15:29
door, a very small magazine, but one of the headlines caught my
15:33
eye. Let's see if we can highlight
15:35
that. Here we are.
15:37
And basically it says local council reorganisation.
15:41
And when I got inside the magazine, I had to search for
15:45
it. A tiny, tiny little article
15:47
talking about Plymouth expansion plans.
15:50
Have your say, it said, Now remember that.
15:53
Have your say. So when we tied the whole thing
15:56
up together or I did some work over the over the weekend.
16:00
This is Plymouth City Council's big community conversation page.
16:05
And what is it telling you? Very, very quickly?
16:08
It's telling you that this is about bringing power closer to
16:12
the people. This is bringing centralised
16:15
government control alongside every man, woman and child.
16:21
There's no ifs or buts about it. It is bringing power to a
16:26
controlling level alongside everybody in the community.
16:31
If we look at some of the details in there, they run some
16:35
questions. So here we have why can't things
16:38
stay the same as they are? Well, actually what they're
16:42
really telling you is all of this is going to happen whether
16:45
you like it or not because the government has decided without
16:49
bothering to consult anybody in this country.
16:52
We know that some people don't like change and we understand
16:55
it's difficult for those working at the councils that will no
16:58
longer exist. There's a lot of jobs are going
17:01
as a result of this programme at work.
17:03
And then the killer statement here, it is a fact that local
17:08
government reorganisation is going to happen.
17:11
Therefore doing nothing is not an option.
17:14
Well, this is a, a bizarre statement.
17:17
If it's going to happen and you don't have any say in it, doing
17:21
nothing is, is not an option. Doing something is an option.
17:26
But what are they telling you? It's telling us that Devon
17:30
County Council, as one of many county councils and a District
17:34
Council, S hams council, will cease to exist after this
17:39
process. So as we see the world's that
17:42
they're building, Ben's just covered that What's happening at
17:45
the same time is the existing structure of governance in this
17:49
country is being destroyed. And if we go on to the last one,
17:52
the big lie, the financial position in local government is
17:57
not great and hasn't been good for some time.
18:00
It's therefore essential that the model of local government is
18:03
reformed. But if we listen to the news
18:07
about Ukraine, for example, the government has unlimited
18:11
billions to prosecute that proxy war in Ukraine.
18:15
But apparently we haven't got money to look after people in
18:18
local communities through their councils.
18:20
So I'm going to say this document, to me at least, is a
18:23
lie from start to finish. It's propaganda.
18:27
Another question, isn't this a takeover?
18:31
No, no, no, they say this isn't about taking over, it's about
18:34
the running of services with less duplication.
18:37
But many people would say that Plymouth City Council can't run
18:40
the services in Plymouth, so how are they going to expand it?
18:44
So I'm going to add this, to me it certainly looks like this is
18:49
a takeover of the smaller units of governance by Plymouth as
18:54
what been a city state. Certainly sounds like it, yeah.
18:59
And if we continue here, is this a land grab?
19:03
Well, Plymouth City Council says it isn't.
19:06
The new council would deliver services but not change land
19:10
ownership. But Plymouth City Council is the
19:12
very council that imposes its plan for the city on on people
19:18
living in Plymouth. And of course that impacts on
19:21
people around it. So you don't elect or people
19:25
outside the city don't elect the councillors, but they're going
19:29
to plan our our own smaller communities.
19:33
And if I just bring the big conversation back on screen
19:36
again, let's remember what they tell you at least honestly early
19:41
on in this document. And that is that it is bringing
19:44
power closer to the people. So a new system of control and
19:48
governance has already been built in UK.
19:53
Ben has given you a lot of the details of 1 model in
19:56
Oxfordshire. But of course, what we know is,
19:58
or what we can safely assume is going to happen, is that now
20:02
this new model of governance has been built, the old model of
20:07
governance is going to be collapsed.
20:12
Take us on Ben. That's.
20:13
What they're doing and actually that, that last slide there
20:15
bringing power closer to the people, right.
20:17
This, I hear this line all of the time and the people in this
20:20
system, by the way, there are some good, well meaning people
20:23
in that system. But the, the, what do they say
20:25
about the road to hell being paved with good intentions,
20:27
right. There's a lot of good intentions
20:29
here. I will, I will, I will give
20:30
people that. But this idea that bringing
20:33
power closer to people is good for the people is completely
20:38
untrue, right? This is very much about
20:40
totalitarian authority getting its arms around the population
20:45
in order to force them into doing the things that the state
20:48
wants them to do. That's what this is all about
20:51
right now. One of the organisations, and
20:53
there is a whole ecosystem around this.
20:55
We're going to talk about this a lot over the coming months.
20:58
This is the direction of travel. This is the agenda.
21:01
This one organisation, right? Slap bang in the middle of it
21:03
all. Collaborate CIC Yeah, Community
21:07
Interest Company. Importantly, that's a new type
21:10
of structure, which I'll come back to a bit later on.
21:14
But Collaborate is apparently about building a collaborative
21:18
society. This is a communitarian neo
21:21
Marxist Fabian. Whatever term you want to use
21:24
society, it's not based around individual liberty, freedom of
21:28
expression, private enterprise, natural law, any of the things
21:32
that are the foundations of our nation that are being eroded and
21:36
destroyed by organisations like this.
21:38
Quite frankly, just have a little bit more of a look at who
21:41
they are. So they're apparently for social
21:43
change. Whenever you hear that social
21:45
change, social innovation, social transformation, you know
21:48
they're up to no good. Collaborate is an innovative
21:51
social consultancy, pioneering collaborative thinking and
21:55
practise to tackle complex challenges across the UK.
21:58
They say this on their website. We are, we are living in a time
22:01
of transition, a fate accompli, A bit like your communication
22:04
from Plymouth Council there, right?
22:05
This is happening. We are reimagining public
22:08
services. So this is all about I'm putting
22:10
more power and control into the hands of the state.
22:13
They've actually written their own manifesto for a
22:15
collaborative society. We'll provide a link to that.
22:17
Go and read it. And as I said, they're a
22:19
community interest company. And this CIC thing is going to
22:23
come up a lot. Interestingly, it was
22:25
introduced, introduced by Blair in his second term in around
22:28
2005. So I think this new structure,
22:31
communitarian structure has actually been introduced 20
22:35
years ago to come to fruition now, right?
22:38
This is the kind of planning that we're seeing.
22:43
From that period and I'll just I'll just add to that, Ben.
22:46
Of course it was in the Blair era that the change charity
22:51
Common Purpose was being run from the office of the Deputy
22:55
Prime Minister. So all of these things coming
22:58
now to the fore and we can see what what's been put in place.
23:01
Yeah, exactly. Very similar methods, culture,
23:05
the whole tone a bit very similar to Common Purpose.
23:07
This was founded in 2012, this organisation, Collaborate, and
23:11
he was founded by this guy, Lord Victor Adabawali, so very
23:17
prominent man. He's also got CBE by the way,
23:20
but I couldn't fit it on the top line there.
23:22
But sorry to undersell you, Lord Victor, but he was a Blair
23:26
appointee to the House of Lords, one of the first people's peers
23:30
back in 2001. So this was the transformation
23:32
to the upper chamber. This guy was at the vanguard of
23:35
that. He's the founder and the chair
23:37
of Collaborate, this organisation that we're talking
23:39
about. He's also, importantly, chair of
23:41
the NHS Confederate and that is a membership organisation that
23:46
brings together all of the healthcare system for England,
23:49
Wales and Northern Ireland, right?
23:52
This guy's extremely central to what's happening in healthcare
23:55
and the NHS is a crucial component, part of this whole
24:00
agenda. I essentially see it as a state
24:02
within a state, right, in terms of its culture.
24:06
Good description. Yeah, I think, I think it's the
24:08
way that we have to understand it.
24:09
He's also a non executive Co op, Co op heavily into this stuff.
24:13
And he was named according to his LinkedIn profile.
24:15
He's on he's been on the Black Power list every year since
24:18
2013. You know, whatever you want to
24:20
make of that. Now he's also on the the board
24:24
or actually up until a couple of months ago he was on the board
24:26
with this guy Axel Heitmula. And so he was a non exec
24:31
collaborate until last year for 10 years.
24:35
Concurrently he was and still he is a senior associate fellow at
24:39
the Tony Bear Institute for Global Change, specifically
24:42
focused on healthcare and he was the CEO of Imperial College
24:45
HealthPartners. So that's Gates Foundation money
24:47
right there. Yeah.
24:49
And he was also the director of strategy for the NHS Test and
24:52
Trace programme in 2020. All right, So these these are
24:56
the people who are driving the collaboration agenda.
24:59
And last week, couple of weeks ago, I think he was, they put
25:02
out this, what they call the building blocks of place based
25:07
learning. And they say we're at the brink
25:10
of a once in the lifetime opportunity to re examine and
25:13
reshape how local government operates in England.
25:16
Exactly what we just heard from Plymouth.
25:18
We know what works and we can see a better way, but we also
25:21
know it can be hard to make a shift.
25:24
So how do we make the shift? Well, we've thought it, we've
25:27
thought it through, and they've developed this thing.
25:30
So these are the building blocks, and we're going to look
25:32
from the bottom to the top and just examine their methodology,
25:36
their framework for understanding society and how
25:40
they're going to get their hands around it.
25:42
Right. So we'll start at the bottom.
25:44
We'll wait. There we go.
25:46
Lovely. So there are some systemic
25:49
conditions in place. These are things that need to be
25:53
in place in order for them to do their work.
25:55
So you have to take a strategic, intentional approach to
25:58
partnership across a place. Apologies for the appalling
26:01
language by the way, but this is how these people speak, right?
26:04
So this is basically you've got to be conniving and cunning and
26:07
thinking this thing through. The second point is trusted
26:10
collaborative relationships and behaviours.
26:12
So you need a network of people who are going to comply with
26:14
you. You need a culture of learning
26:16
that enables adaptation, which is actually true because things
26:20
are never exactly the same in every single location.
26:23
So you've got to test and learn and and and and and work out the
26:26
best approach based on exactly where you are.
26:28
And you need bold enabling place leadership, which means you need
26:33
leadership on the ground who are going to let you do the things
26:36
that you want to do right, really crucially.
26:39
And you need people on the ground who are able to
26:42
influence. You need opportunities for
26:44
people to come together. You need a real focus on
26:46
voluntary community and faith organisations.
26:49
Those are key systemic partners for collaborating.
26:52
The people that are trying to progress this agenda towards
26:54
collaborative working towards a communitarian system, right?
26:58
And they look at the system as a totality.
27:02
So interestingly, we normally talk about global, national down
27:05
to regional. They've actually got got rid of
27:08
the the global and the national. They started straightening at
27:10
regional and then counties, towns, cities and districts
27:13
you're building from the bottom up basically.
27:15
So neighbourhoods is at the top. And that's the most important
27:18
part of this for them. And a lot of this is to do with
27:21
the NHS, right? So they're using NHS language.
27:24
So a locality is aligned with APCN, that's a primary care
27:27
network, right? So they're already thinking,
27:30
probably because of Lord Victor's role with the NHS
27:32
Confederation, about how to zone out the country based on the NHS
27:37
and how it's organised, right? And then they're looking at
27:39
London boroughs, it's about 100,000 people in NHS
27:42
neighbourhood, which is the new organisational model for the
27:45
NHS, 30,000 to 50,000 people. And they're looking at
27:48
introducing, well, look, citizens assemblies.
27:51
We can see their participatory democracy.
27:53
We can see their community wealth building, which is about
27:57
basically the destruction of private wealth.
27:59
Everything becomes owned by the community, ergo the state.
28:02
Ultimately, it's what they're doing here.
28:04
And parish councils, I can see up there Ben.
28:06
Paris parish councils top left. So actually, yeah, that's, if
28:10
you're reading the document from the top down, that's the first
28:12
thing that they noticed in the neighbourhood section, right.
28:16
And this is the the we're talking hyperlocal.
28:18
Look at the top line there, underlined in red.
28:20
Hyperlocal decision making, 150 to 1500 people.
28:24
They're going extremely granular here.
28:27
And what they're doing is thinking through all of the
28:29
different component parts of society that they want to
28:32
influence and get their arms around in order to force us, the
28:37
whole society, every single member of the population into
28:40
compliance with their new collaborative, communitarian,
28:46
globalised system. Right?
28:48
That's what this document is explaining to us.
28:51
OK. And there's a bunch of things in
28:53
there. So we talked about parish
28:54
council. We just get that back on screen
28:56
quickly. I'm going to talk through just a
28:57
few more. So community asset transfer.
29:00
So they're going to change the nature of ownership for existing
29:03
community assets. They're going to pump money into
29:06
into the into local communities using grants.
29:09
They're going to introduce things called community
29:11
businesses. You won't just have a business
29:12
anymore. It's a community business and
29:15
you can work for it, but you can never actually own it properly.
29:18
And also crucially, you can never establish generational
29:22
wealth over decades or centuries or even longer because
29:27
everything's owned centrally by the community and not by you as
29:30
an individual, right? You've got community champions,
29:33
community anchors, counsellors as community activists.
29:38
That's a big one there slap bang in the middle to this idea that
29:41
counsellors, you're not a counsellor anymore.
29:42
You're some kind of change agent who has to galvanised activists
29:48
and make things happen. You can't just do your job and,
29:51
you know, administer the, the, the really simple basic things
29:54
that we need going on in society.
29:55
You have to, you have to be constantly pushing towards a, a
29:58
new world order ultimately, right.
30:01
And then this, all of this is going to deliver the, the most.
30:04
I won't read all of these out because there's a lot in here.
30:06
We'll provide a link to it though, and I'd suggest
30:07
downloading it and having your own copyright because this is
30:10
these, this is the game plan for these people.
30:12
But you can see there in the bottom left, civic participation
30:15
and trust people with the power to change what happens in their
30:19
community. Power to change.
30:21
There's actually a charity called Power to Change that is
30:24
in this ecosystem and it's got people working right next to
30:27
Keir Starmer. And you know, this, this is
30:29
absolutely embedded into the whole, the whole of the whole of
30:32
the system and it's critical to Mission delivery, right?
30:39
So we talked about this organisation icon, the
30:42
Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods back in March
30:45
this year, I believe it was. They say there is no pathway to
30:48
Mission delivery without putting neighbourhoods front and centre.
30:50
And this is what David happened from the Behavioural Insights
30:53
team is spending his time working on right now.
30:56
This is his his project. They've also mapped out, I
30:59
showed this as well at the time, the entire UK looking at what
31:03
they call deprived neighbourhoods that they're
31:04
going to focus on for state intervention.
31:06
Yes, so they've got the whole country scoped out for being
31:11
brought into this new system. And as I said, this, this is
31:14
absolutely reflected in language and policy in the NHS, the right
31:18
centre in this. So we've got the neighbourhood
31:20
health guidelines saying that there's an urgent need to
31:23
transform the health and care system to a neighbourhood health
31:26
service, which again is about bringing power closer to the
31:30
people. It's not about people having
31:31
more power. And actually they're already
31:34
pouring billions of pounds into making this happen inside the
31:37
NHS, including this £1.5 billion programme for the plan for
31:41
neighbourhoods with 75 areas they've already identified.
31:44
And this whole thing is is already hit the road basically.
31:47
It's already hit the road, the organisation been set up, yeah,
31:51
across the whole of the UK and buildings have been built to
31:56
bring in this new system of governance.
31:58
So it's. It's real IRL.
32:00
Physical infrastructure is there.
32:02
It's happening, Yeah, crucially. OK, so you heard it on UK Column
32:08
News. We're going to do more of
32:09
course, on subsequent news episodes.
32:12
Just be aware while you get focused on what's happening
32:15
overseas or the dross of the BBC.
32:17
This is the real threat to people in this country.
32:21
A government which doesn't like us, doesn't want to help us and
32:24
it's going to bring in a new system of government.
32:27
But we know how it's being done. What are we going to do?
32:30
Well, the key thing is to get people together and make them
32:33
aware of what's happening. So that's a good time to remind
32:37
people that on the 18th of October we'll be having our UK
32:41
column on location in York. Absolutely fantastic venue.
32:46
We'll be well up country. And so Diane, we're very much
32:50
hoping that people in your locality and across the border
32:53
into Scotland will be able to join us.
32:56
So that's going to be fantastic. Now tomorrow at 1:00, it's not
33:03
an interview, it's a discussion. But I was, together with Gemma
33:06
Cooper, we are discussing in a very relaxed way the very
33:10
serious issue of the conference we'd attended back last Friday
33:16
and Friday week, if I've got my days right, And that was about
33:19
mothers who'd lost children to social services.
33:22
So very, very interesting discussion and very nice to see
33:27
Gemma Cooper on camera with us for that.
33:30
So do TuneIn tomorrow at 1:00. We've also got Germ tonight at
33:36
7:00. He's going to be having a look
33:37
at women's liberation, enslaved women.
33:41
So that will be a very interesting interview with
33:44
Rachel Wilson. What else have we got coming up?
33:48
We've got the Irish Medical Council, they've got a meeting.
33:53
So that's tomorrow, Tuesday, the 10th of June at 1:00 PM, our
33:57
Irish Medical Council, Kingdom House, Dublin.
34:01
And after essentially after three years of vindication, but
34:05
independent medical regulators are still being sanctioned and
34:10
Irish doctors are still being persecuted and and censored.
34:14
Sorry, medical regulators are still sanctioning the doctors.
34:18
Irish doctors are still being persecuted and censored.
34:22
So this is the opportunity to stand up with people in the
34:25
medical profession in Ireland. Now, Diane, let's bring you on
34:30
screen. You've been very patient.
34:32
We've had a lot to cover today. And I know that in extra time, a
34:37
team of three of us here going to be talking a lot more about
34:40
what's happening in the country. But you've been out and about
34:44
and you've also been really doing some great work to
34:50
increase the amount of material on UK column website.
34:53
What have you got? Yeah.
34:56
Thanks, Brian. Hello, Ben.
34:58
It's great to be here today. I just want to go through a few
35:00
things first. So before I get into what I was
35:02
up to over the weekend, just just a reminder, and I've
35:05
mentioned this the last few weeks.
35:06
On Thursday I will be speaking in Defensive libraries.
35:10
This is sponsored by the Buckingham Academic Academic
35:13
Freedom taking place at the University of Buckingham.
35:16
It is a free event. If you're able to join us, I
35:18
would love to see you there. I've I've heard some rumours
35:20
that there are some local UK column viewers who will be
35:24
joining me as well as the Macademics, which should be a
35:26
great event. Please join us for that.
35:29
What else do we have here that I've got going on?
35:32
Got for the Finetti Residential School Scottish Parliament
35:35
debate, which is actually a very serious and important event.
35:37
I covered this a couple of weeks ago the, the updates on the sort
35:41
of the legislative side in, in Scottish Parliament.
35:44
I, I mentioned a debate would be happening and it is happening.
35:47
I've confirmed it's this Thursday the 12th, 12:45 PM and
35:52
you can either watch it online at scottishparliament.tv or if
35:55
you're able to go and get a ticket to go to the public
35:57
gallery, you can try that as well.
35:59
I would like to note that because of all of the work that
36:02
UK column has been doing for for the past three years is the
36:06
reason directly that I believe that it's made it to the floor.
36:09
This is in in relation to Alex Cole Hamilton, who's one of the
36:12
MSPs who have been supporting Fanethi from the beginning, and
36:15
Colin Smith, who's one of the constituent MSPs of one of the
36:18
Fanethi survivors. And his statement, which got us
36:21
a floor debate is based on the evidence that I submitted
36:24
directly to Scottish Parliament in support of the petition to
36:28
get the ladies justice. So I, I just want to thank
36:30
everyone who's been helping us for the past three years to get
36:33
it to this point. From here, I wanted to talk
36:36
about some of the material that we have published in the past
36:39
week as our commissioning editor.
36:41
This one is by a member who actually I met in our recent
36:45
event, Dan Cheltenham. Her name is Hayla Bolchowski.
36:48
She wrote this called whose dreams, the LGBTQ plus
36:51
Manchester housing scheme. It's a, it's a local thing in
36:54
Manchester, but you can see very clearly some of these bigger
36:57
things that they're talking about and how it's happening in
36:59
one particular locale. Got a few more articles to look
37:03
at here. This is by Doctor Pierce
37:06
Robinson. From stand nerve agent attacks
37:08
to chlorine gas, the Syria chemical weapons storytelling
37:10
continues. This is part of the series that
37:13
Pierce has been writing for us around the, the, the chemical
37:16
weapons narrative and serious and very obviously serious
37:19
information. And that piece as well.
37:21
I've got another one here by Andrea also, who is this is the
37:26
second piece she's written for us.
37:27
Again, another member that I met in Cheltenham.
37:31
This is an issue around the tariffs, looking at the Trump
37:34
tariff policy and free trade and some really interesting things
37:38
to think about in this article. So and what else do we have
37:42
here? This is the one by Doctor
37:45
Yopzlan Friva. This is Part 2 of his three part
37:49
series looking at the banking and financial system.
37:52
The first one was about how central banks operate.
37:54
This one is about CBDC, central bank digital currency, which I
37:58
know is of particular interest to a lot of UK column viewers.
38:02
This series is only available to members, so you need to be
38:05
subscribers of UK column to view the content by by you.
38:09
So please do look, think about signing up and and looking at
38:12
these articles because they're very important.
38:15
Excellent. Thank.
38:15
Thank you very much Diane. And I'll say to our viewers that
38:18
of course, we can only do what we do with your financial
38:21
support. So if you're not a paid up
38:24
member of UK column, please join the UK column because it's all
38:28
our paying members that allow us to do what we do.
38:31
And as you are about to to show us, Diane, the attack on any
38:36
form of free media is about to skyrocket.
38:39
So if you value the UK column, please, please do support us.
38:44
Sign up, become a member for that very modest monthly
38:47
subscription. We need more members if we're to
38:51
whether the storms coming and those storms are coming without
38:56
any doubt. Now the other thing I just
38:59
wanted to say this is a little bit unusual.
39:01
I'm going to do it because we had such a nice email.
39:04
I can't promise it to everyone, but Craig's mum Margaret is 80
39:11
years old today so we wanted to wish her a happy birthday.
39:15
So there we are, special birthday.
39:17
Happy birthday, Margaret. Well done.
39:20
OK, now Diane, you've been out and about and it's been quite
39:23
incredible that in going to some academic events you have
39:28
stumbled really into the belly of the beast which would silence
39:33
alternative media. And also it's working hard to
39:37
create waves of change in our society.
39:40
Tell us about where you've been and what you've discovered.
39:44
Yes. So yesterday I was at an event,
39:47
a whole day of events actually, at the University of York.
39:51
So they have a yearly event which is called the York
39:54
Festival of Ideas, which is kind of a range of things that sort
39:58
of go on for in this case it was from the 31st of May to the 13th
40:02
of June. I think there's, it says over
40:03
150 free events to educate, entertain and inspire.
40:08
Now you might wonder why they would offer 150 free events.
40:11
And so I decided it was a really important thing to look at how
40:14
they're actually funding these. So if we look at these are a
40:17
couple of pages directly from the official programme for the
40:20
entire event. So the University of York is
40:23
obviously the main sponsor. They get their money through
40:27
research funding. I'll look at in just a minute
40:29
just the Brown Tree Foundation and the train service L and ER,
40:33
which is part of a major train operator up here in the North.
40:36
So if we look at some of these fundings, in particular the
40:40
Higher Education Innovation funding is the particular
40:43
funding scheme from the UK Government's Research
40:45
innovation, part of the UK Research Councils that funds
40:49
these kinds of programmes. And this has a budget overall of
40:52
£260 million. Obviously not all of this meant
40:55
to the University of York, but a lot of it did go to funding
40:59
these events. And the what the point of this
41:01
type of innovation funding is what universities called
41:04
knowledge exchange, which basically means that the
41:06
universities feel that they have a responsibility to share
41:10
whatever their work is at the university with the wider
41:12
public. Which then invites people from
41:14
the public to be able to do things like this and come into
41:16
the university for free and see what they've been doing.
41:20
Another funder that was listed on that page from the programme
41:23
is also, if we can put that up up here is another foundation
41:26
which is called the Joseph Brontree Foundation.
41:29
And Joseph Brontree was an important person in the history
41:32
of York. You can look him up if you're
41:33
interested. But he was known at the time as
41:36
a philanthropist. And so several of these trust
41:38
related organisations that he created have really evolved over
41:43
time. And now he's, it says their
41:45
motion is that they are a social change organisation.
41:49
So going back to what Ben was saying earlier about social
41:51
change not being up to any goods, it says that this part of
41:56
their mission as well is to speed up the transition to a
41:58
more equitable and just future where people and planet can
42:02
flourish. So we're seeing once again
42:04
sustainable development level language Agenda 2030, UN
42:08
language built into this sort of local charity that has been a
42:11
major funder for the festival of ideas.
42:14
And we can also see that part of the programme, the, the overall
42:18
the programme was called making waves for this entire two week
42:21
period. So this was this year was the
42:24
anniversary of Joseph death. And so they've got 2 programmes
42:27
that have been particular to honour him. 1 is about benefits
42:32
of economic growth and 1 is about sustainable futures
42:35
through regional growth. So again, we're seeing this
42:37
globalist language coming straight through into this
42:40
particular event. Now, what I went to on Sunday in
42:44
particular was, again, there were so many things.
42:47
You can't go to all of them. But if we go into what I was
42:49
actually attending on Sunday was this series of three panels.
42:55
So I've got just some photos here to kind of show just what
42:57
it was like on the day. You can see there's kind of a
43:00
big open area where there were several exhibitions and a lot of
43:04
these were for children, which was kind of at odds with the the
43:08
panels that I attended. But anyway, here's I'll just
43:10
take you through some photos of what they were doing for
43:13
children. I can talk about this a little
43:14
bit more in extra as well. So if we go through these
43:17
photos, different academic departments, the research
43:21
programmes, the ancient crops featured food, plants and
43:24
prehistory. So there were things on history
43:26
and archaeology. We can go through these fairly
43:28
quickly. We can just go 1 by 1, some
43:30
robots. They invited me to come play
43:32
with the robots, the remote controlled robots that I was
43:34
allowed to spin around on the floor a little bit.
43:37
I don't know the purpose of them, but there they were.
43:40
We have, what else do we have? L And ER, so again, the train
43:43
service, whether it's one of the sponsors of the festival of
43:46
ideas, they have a set up for children building wooden trains
43:50
and, and, and you can do have sheets for colouring on trains
43:53
that coloured pencils out for the children to play with.
43:56
This was from archaeology, so pieces of ancient buildings and
44:01
stone walls and so on from around Yorkshire in the area.
44:05
So some little bit of archaeology research for
44:06
children. Originally I thought this was
44:08
part of an art department, but it was actually maths and
44:11
physics looking at different structures and how pieces fit
44:14
together in nature. And they wanted to know if these
44:16
actually occurring crystals or other natural materials.
44:20
And so they were having the children try to play with those.
44:23
We have some bones from animals. So again, the archaeology
44:27
department allowing children to see these things and, and, and
44:31
put their hands on things directly.
44:33
We have what's the next one we have here the history archive.
44:36
Yes. So this was all about looking at
44:38
the archives and trying to get children to challenge them to
44:42
see if they could read very old handwriting to understand if it
44:45
was possible for them to see what the words were at different
44:48
levels of, of complexity at the ancient DNA lab.
44:52
This actually was was encouraging children to sort of
44:55
share their DNA, which is a little bit scary considering
45:00
what we know about some of the genetics programmes that have
45:02
been going on recently. But that was part of the the fun
45:05
apparently. And there's the zoo archaeology
45:07
lab. So once again, looking at, you
45:09
know, sort of animals from history and, and kind of what
45:12
this meant for science. So not all terribly bad, but
45:15
again, really different from what I would have expected from
45:18
the panels that I was attending. Here's one more from the stable
45:22
isotope lab next to the ancient DNA lab.
45:24
So getting children, I guess, trying to get them interested,
45:27
science, engineering and all these different disciplines that
45:30
they offer at the university. Now to go to the grown up part
45:34
of the day, which took place in the same location, the same
45:37
venue. This was the series of three
45:40
panels that I attended. The entire day of panels was
45:44
called A World in Crisis question mark, asking questions
45:48
about democracy and so on. So this was, there were three
45:52
panels that I attended throughout the day.
45:56
I will, if we go on to the funding, I'll come back to the
45:58
panels in just a minute. The the funder, the major funder
46:02
for this organisation was the Merrill Centre for Legal and
46:05
Political Philosophy at the University of York.
46:09
They used to be called the Morrell Centre for Tolerance.
46:11
So you could go into a long sort of academic rabbit hole to
46:14
figure out what tolerance actually means.
46:16
You can see at the top it used to be the morale centre for
46:19
toleration. Their website has not been
46:21
updated for about 10 years as far as I could tell, but they
46:24
have changed their name in recent times to legal and
46:26
political philosophy. So there are again three panels,
46:30
the the, the 2nd and the third one I will talk about an extra.
46:34
So there's some interesting and very alarming to you political
46:37
discussions that took place in those.
46:39
So I've just got photos of those two for now.
46:41
Here's a panel called a New World Order question mark and
46:46
some of the people included, Evie Espinal, for example, used
46:50
to work with UN Women UK and there's some academics on the
46:54
panel. And the other one that I was at
46:56
the end of the day was the next one was is Europe safe question
47:02
mark. And again, we have some
47:04
academics and a lot of the media people that were part of these
47:08
panels were contributes to Guardian and and other very
47:12
mainstream sources. The one that I want to focus on
47:14
the main news because there's so much here to talk about and
47:17
hopefully I can get some reaction from Ben and Brian at
47:19
the end of this was this one called, and this is the
47:22
particular one that I was the most interested in is the first
47:24
one in the morning called Disinformation, Polarisation and
47:28
the Future of Democracy. So there was a, in their
47:33
opinion, a particularly illustrious panel and what they
47:37
were doing, the splitting themselves up into presenting us
47:40
with the problems that they see and then from there trying to
47:45
give us solutions about what they see are the problems.
47:48
So let's break this down a little bit more.
47:51
If we go into the people that are participating in the panel.
47:54
So the chair of the panel was this lady called Joan Concannon.
47:58
She is the director of external relations for York University,
48:01
which is a quite high up position in any university.
48:05
Looking at you see here that part of her job is supporting
48:08
delivery of institutional objectives, income generation,
48:11
advocacy, reputation, global and local partnership and
48:15
stakeholder engagement. So at any UK university this is
48:17
a very important role, very strategic role for a number of
48:20
reasons that I can go into another time.
48:22
The two panellists that presented us with explaining
48:25
what the problems are. The first one was Doctor
48:28
Christopher Featherstone, who's an associate lecturer at the
48:32
University of York in the the politics department.
48:35
He's been a contributor to The Conversation, which is sort of
48:38
an academic propaganda website if you ask me.
48:41
France 24, LBC, he had a lot to say about Trump, as all of these
48:46
people did, actually for the whole day.
48:48
So positioning himself as an expert on foreign policy in the
48:52
US and the UK. Professor Aurelian Mundone, I
48:56
hope I'm saying that correctly. It's professor at the University
48:58
of Bath. He talked about reactionary
49:01
politics used a lot of, in my opinion, rather polarising
49:06
language, which I thought the point of the panel was to
49:09
overcome polarisation. But anyway, if we go to the the
49:13
next slide, I've got a photo here of a book that he Co
49:16
authored just a couple of years ago called Reactionary
49:19
democracy, How racism and the populist far right became
49:22
mainstream. So he is the first author on
49:25
that book and we can also see that his publisher, Verse of
49:28
Books is advertising, just by coincidence, the top of the page
49:31
that they are celebrating Pride Month with 30% off their Pride
49:34
Month reading list. And so those were the first two
49:38
panellists and they presented what they saw are the problems.
49:41
So let's take a look at what they said the problems were.
49:44
This is a very quick summary. This isn't everything, but here
49:46
are the main things that I took away from it.
49:48
These are direct quotes. The problem is that people are
49:51
believing different sets of facts.
49:54
So they're not saying that every set of fact is wrong.
49:56
They're just saying that there are sets of facts and some of us
49:58
are believing the wrong. There was a lot of criticism
50:01
about Trump being the problem. One of them called him an empty
50:05
core and they made jokes about the quote rubbish.
50:08
He says. They said Trump lacked an
50:11
ideology, and this is part of what leads to disinformation,
50:15
that other American presidents before him had an ideology,
50:18
which I guess somehow may have stopped disinformation.
50:21
They talked quite a bit over and over and over again about the
50:24
rise of the far right, the problems with populism.
50:27
Nigel Farage has mentioned, of course, the rise of inequalities
50:31
and the climate crisis are all part of the problems that we
50:34
need to solve. So we've got all these terrible
50:37
problems. OK, So what do we do to solve
50:39
it? So who was going to tell us
50:41
about this? Well, now we have Alexander
50:44
Hurst, who is an American who has lived in Paris for a very
50:47
long time, a Guardian contributor.
50:51
He has, he looks like he's, you know, maybe about, I don't know
50:54
how old he is, but he doesn't look old enough to have a memoir
50:56
anyway. He has one coming in 2026, which
50:58
is called Generation Desperation.
51:00
And the main part of the story is that he has basically won and
51:07
lost $1.2 million trading at mean stocks during 2020.
51:12
But so he goes, I, I don't know, the book isn't out yet, but he
51:16
talked about desperation, capitalism and all of the other
51:19
Main Street sources that he was sort of supporting.
51:22
So, so the, the the highlight of the panel, I guess we could say
51:27
was this lady herself. Her name is Jessica Cecil.
51:31
She is the non executive director of Digital Catapult,
51:36
but she is much more than that. She has a 30 year career in her
51:41
past being BBC veteran and working in a number of roles.
51:45
She positions herself as a media industry leader and an expert in
51:50
the field of disinformation. Now if you look back at UK
51:54
column reports from I think one or two years ago, you will see
51:57
the the Trusted News Initiative. And Jessica was responsible for
52:01
founding and creating this Trusted News Initiative, which
52:04
of course is founded by the BBC. She's got a whole of other list
52:07
of things on her CV, but let's take a look at the Trusted News
52:11
Initiative very quickly beyond fake news, BBC trusted news
52:16
initiatives. So it tells us exactly that this
52:18
is who we're supposed to trust. And don't worry, the BBC and the
52:22
partners along with them are going to be the ones to make
52:25
sure that we're all doing the right things.
52:28
So this is just a screenshot of just some of the many partners
52:32
that are part of this trusted news initiative.
52:34
So we see the major Associated Press, CBC, which is the BBC
52:39
equivalent in Canada. We see the tech companies like
52:42
Meta, Google, Financial Times, Twitter, which of course needs
52:45
to be updated. They haven't changed that to X.
52:47
That's, that's a little bit old now.
52:49
Reuters, Microsoft, the Washington Post also of our
52:52
favourites that are that are part of these trusted parts that
52:55
are under her trusted news initiative.
52:58
So what do they have to say about how what the solutions
53:01
are? Well, let's look at what I
53:03
again, these are just a quick takeaways from yesterday.
53:06
Basically, a lot of this came from Jessica saying that one
53:09
piece of legislation is not enough.
53:12
We need a much, much bigger plan to combat what she calls
53:16
disinformation. And she says, well, of course,
53:20
because it's her organisation, the Trusted News Initiative has
53:23
defined for the good of the people, a subset of
53:28
disinformation that poses an immediate threat.
53:31
And she gave election results as an example of what can happen
53:34
that could go terribly wrong if there is disinformation that's
53:37
being spread out there without their permission.
53:40
And then they can alert the big tech companies like Meta and,
53:44
and supposedly, I guess X now maybe in TikTok, all the major
53:49
social media platforms. And the other person who was the
53:53
other respondent to express the solutions, the, the one who's
53:57
the, the guardian writer and so on.
53:59
He said that the intervention and regulation need to be things
54:03
that set the culture. And here was the really scariest
54:06
part for me of one of the scariest parts out of all of it
54:09
that we really need to pay attention to is that he said
54:12
that that social media private companies such as X and TikTok
54:17
should be banned. X and TikTok should be banned
54:20
completely and that media media to be the only sources for media
54:24
content in Europe and the UK. Because it's to him it's
54:29
overwhelmingly obvious that the information that comes from
54:32
public media is so much more trustworthy than anything that
54:35
any other private organisation could possibly find out on its
54:38
own. So that is particularly of
54:41
interest. Now what happened from here was
54:44
I decided, of course I had to ask the question in the the
54:47
question national session. So I asked and I, I was just, I
54:51
was taking a lot of notes and paying very close attention.
54:53
And I asked why they said far right several times throughout
54:57
the panel as being the problem. Never once did I hear the terms
55:01
far left. And I asked, well, how can we
55:03
solve with polarisation if this is supposed to be a panel on
55:07
polarisation of the future of democracy, that maybe we
55:10
shouldn't be talking about far left or far right at all.
55:12
And that maybe we should just return to having civil debate in
55:15
our society to figure out what the problems are and what to do
55:18
about them and how to save democracy.
55:20
They had a very, very defensive response to my question.
55:24
One of them told me the far left doesn't matter because the far
55:27
right is in power, so we don't even need to talk about the far
55:30
left. Jessica herself, the the Trusted
55:33
Youth Initiative lady looks me in the eye, which is a big
55:36
lecture hall and she still looked at me directly from on
55:39
the bottom of the floor. And she said she did not use the
55:42
term far right. So maybe she didn't, but the
55:45
rest of them certainly did several times.
55:47
And there was then the conversation kind of drifted a
55:50
bit talking about building local trusted media sources.
55:53
So I guess I don't know, but maybe some of these new
55:56
government structures that been covered will be providing our
55:58
media in the future. There was also it drifted to why
56:02
there was so much panic about a trans girl in Florida who wanted
56:06
to play sports on the girls teams.
56:08
I don't know where that came from, but the the really, the
56:12
really interesting, exciting and I want to stay a good part of it
56:16
all was that several people came up to me after the session after
56:20
I asked my question and thanked me because they said you got it
56:24
right on. Because nobody was talking about
56:26
this. Nobody was talking about the
56:28
fact that they spent the whole time attacking far right and far
56:31
right populism. And the question of whether left
56:33
and right actually exists is a really good question, especially
56:37
because if we were trying to look at the future of democracy
56:40
and how to fight polarisation. But actually all it turned into
56:43
was them talking a lot about the far right and and fighting
56:47
disinformation. And saying that these sources,
56:49
including the BBC and all of their trusted partners are the
56:52
ones who are going to be telling us the right things.
56:55
That everything else needs to be stopped through government
56:58
control and shutting down private companies in any sort of
57:00
competition. So with all that, Ben and Brian,
57:03
I would love to hear your response to any of this.
57:07
Well, Diane, the first thing for me to say is thank you so much
57:10
for attending that event because this is a brilliant intelligence
57:14
as to what the other side are thinking and doing.
57:17
And you've also demonstrated by asking some, some good
57:22
questions, the panic that then ensues amongst these people when
57:27
you challenge them in the right way, reasonable direct
57:32
questions, this throws them into no man's land because nobody is
57:36
supposed to challenge them. So 1 you attended, you learnt
57:40
what they're, what they're up to and we've shared that with our
57:43
audience today. But then you've gone further and
57:45
demonstrated the panic that when you challenged them and then
57:49
what happened, you got support from people there.
57:53
So in one event, Diane, you're demonstrating all the things
57:57
which UK column would love all of our members to be doing,
58:01
which is getting out there, finding out what's happening,
58:04
getting amongst it and challenging it.
58:07
Because I, I'll just end really this segment on the parish
58:11
councils, which Ben pointed out they are targeting parish
58:16
councils because they're very worried about bodies that
58:19
control and support local communities.
58:23
So the power of the Roundtree organisation or any of these
58:27
other big organisations, they are huge.
58:30
They're very powerful in political sense, in a social
58:34
change sense, but who do they need to control?
58:38
Individual people at the bottom of the pile, at local community
58:44
level. So when people say we know what
58:46
you're doing and we're not having it, this is a huge
58:49
problem for them. I'll just let you respond to
58:52
that briefly, Diane, but I am clock watching.
58:57
Yeah, No, I just wanted to say that I, I think it's a perfect
58:59
example of how we do have the power to take back the power
59:03
that belongs to us as the people.
59:05
And I'm really happy, especially after such such an interesting
59:09
event yesterday that we will be having our next live event in
59:11
York on the 18th of October. Because it's pretty clear by
59:14
some of the local people that were there that see what's going
59:17
on. And I think it will be a
59:18
perfect, perfect opportunity hopefully for them to come and
59:22
and attend our event and get to meet other people and then we
59:24
can all kind of work against this together.
59:27
So I think it's not not all entirely a bad thing.
59:30
And have fun, work together and have fun.
59:33
Now I'm just going to end and say our message is clearly
59:37
beginning to resonate with the UK column audience.
59:40
Because over the weekend, I think it was, I had an email,
59:43
yes, it was on Saturday, I had an email come in where somebody
59:46
said is I've found this organisation, they're part of
59:50
it, aren't they? Well, I had a quick look.
59:52
Here's Neon. What a lovely group of people.
59:56
So a big thank you to the UK column viewer for supplying
59:59
this. And they are clearly seeing what
1:00:02
we're seeing this this organisation believes that
1:00:05
building movements, these are change movements, is central to
1:00:09
winning social justice. That's social justice for them,
1:00:13
not us. And if you have a look at the
1:00:15
funders, the one that should jump out immediately is the Open
1:00:20
Society Foundation. So Mr Soros has got his
1:00:24
tentacles in here, plus many of these other organisations.
1:00:28
So let's end there on a very positive note that it's clear
1:00:32
that UK column viewers at least are now seeing what's really
1:00:36
attacking them in this country. Yes, we should be worried and
1:00:40
concerned for people overseas in Gaza or Ukraine or America, even
1:00:45
as their societies come under attack.
1:00:49
But if we're going to stay safe in this country, we need to see
1:00:54
the threat that our own government is building with our
1:00:58
money, our own money. We'll be doing a lot more on
1:01:01
this. And I just want to thank you,
1:01:03
Diane, and you, Ben, for such a comprehensive news today.
1:01:07
Now, if you're a UK column member, you'll be able to join
1:01:10
us for extra time in a few minutes where we're going to go
1:01:14
through some of these issues at a slower, more jovial pace.
1:01:18
And that's one of the big advantages of being signed up to
1:01:22
the UK column. You can enjoy UK Column extra
1:01:26
where we cover a whole variety of issues in a very different
1:01:30
style, but lots of good information.
1:01:33
That's it for all today's news. Thank you very much everybody
1:01:35
for joining us wherever you are in the world.
1:01:38
We'll be back for another UK column on Wednesday at 1:00.
1:01:42
See you then. Bye bye.