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UK Column News Podcast 4th October 2024
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We had heard yesterday, thanks to Vanessa, for sending it through, that that was likely to happen. It has now happened. And of course, this is because Israel's justifying this by saying that that crossing was being used to bring weapons from Syria into Lebanon. So the military spokesperson from the IDF said the IDF will not allow the smuggling of these weapons and will not hesitate to act if forced to do so, as it is done throughout this war. So that was what he was saying there on X, but then also on X, he posted this post will just do a quick translation of this, issuing a warning to the residents of a whole sway the different villages in South Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah's activities force the IDF to act against it forcefully. The IDF does not intend to harm you. So for your own safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and head north of the Awali River, save your lives. Anyone who is near Hezbollah elements installations and combat equipment is putting his life at risk. Any house used by Hezbollah for its military needs is expected to be targeted and evacuate your homes immediately. Be careful. You must not go south. Any southward movement may put you in danger. We will let you know when it's safe to return home. And of course, these are exactly the same types of messages that were sent to people in Gaza. So what was the reason for attacking this particular border crossing? Was it because, as they claim, weapons were coming into Lebanon via Syria? Or was it because people escaping the continuing bombardment of South Lebanon were leaving the country into Syria through that route? This is exactly what we saw in Gaza over the last number of weeks. So I'm extremely skeptical about any Israeli claims on this one. In the meantime, of course, the ground war continues. This is the Guardian saying that it Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with Hezbollah in Lebanon. What's of note is that German media in particular was carrying the photographs on the front page. I think it was built on the front page of that newspaper. The photographs of the eight soldiers killed. In fact, the numbers gone up to nine now. But of course, they have not carried any photographs of anybody killed as a result of the Israeli action in this. The Israeli media has been pretty quiet about the number of casualties on the Israeli side. They have been determined to say that 100 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in South Lebanon operation in the past day. Some 100 Hezbollah operatives have been killed during Israeli operations in Southern Lebanon in the past day, according to IDF assessments. But a lot of commentary on social media showing this video clip of Israeli helicopters arriving in South Lebanon. This is just over the Lebanese border from Israel in order to remove casualties from the battlefield. Very striking imagery here, and it's not clear just how many people have been killed on the Israeli side or injured, but certainly the commentary from the Hezbollah side is very clear that it's been significantly higher numbers than the Western media is presenting at the moment. And so the question is then why would Israeli media be saying very little or the Western media be saying very little about this? Maybe we get a hint about that from this. The cradle pushed out this tweet a few days ago saying the Associated Press has withdrawn a video Israeli forces taken on 30th of September after it was ordered to buy the military. So the kill notification from Associated Press says that the reason for killing the story, the Israeli military sensor has ordered the Associated Press to remove this video, please delete from all platforms. And so if we've got that kind of control of the narrative coming from the Israeli side, okay, this was before the incursion across the border into Lebanon, and they were, they would argue that they were wanting to protect their troops and so on who were sitting on the Lebanese border from Hezbollah getting any foresight of where they were. That's neither here nor there, this level of control of what is published in the Western media is quite incredible, it seems to me. The Russians though have been also evacuating people from Beirut, the Russian aircraft arrived at Beirut airport yesterday. But in the meantime, Vasily Nabensia, who's the permanent representative of the United Nations, has issued a statement on Israel's invasion of Lebanon, pretty hard words. He was saying that he was warning against what he described as a dangerous illusion. It's becoming increasingly clear that the Israeli leadership is looking to trigger a direct conflict between its main regional adversary Iran and the United States, and will spare no effort to do that. So amongst other things, that's what he was saying. And so that's a pretty dangerous situation. In the meantime, Germany, if we move on to Ukraine, the German Chancellor Schulz is now demanding a peace conference on Ukraine. And that's, again, not particularly being reported in Western media as far as I can see, the Russian media, if we just put that back on screen for a second, Russian media talking about this was Tass, and saying, according Schulz is saying, we now need a conference in which Ukraine and Russia will take part, and we need to take create the conditions for that. So some people starting to get cold feet, it seems. But bearing in mind the peace conferences that we've had over the last couple of months haven't involved Russia at all, which is particularly ridiculous. But just quickly, then the spectator here with the headline Britain's half-hearted support for Israel helps no one. Well, this is talking about the capability of Britain to arm Israel or to take part or assist in the Israeli efforts. But this follows on from an article in the telegraph with quoting Ben Wallace, talking about the level of weapons and the fact that now the RAF, nor the Type 45 destroyers that are in the region are actually able to deal with the Iranian attack the other day. We just wanted to point out that we have been informed that HMS Diamond, in fact, is so ill-equipped that the forward arsenal has been converted into a gym at the moment. So they do not have any weapons in the forward arsenal at all at this moment. So perhaps Ben Wallace is correct. Now, just to end this little segment, Ben Wallace himself has now decided that he is going to go and work for Boca Group, which is an American British arms investment company. He said he can bring a dose of reality that this is not about lobbying the government for defense contracts. It's about picking companies that will be in demand by somebody in the defense sector. So he's going to use his inside information of effectively creating the wars that we're seeing at the moment to now go and work for an investment company and tell them where they best invest their money. You couldn't make it up, could you? Debbie, let's come over to you and move on from the subject of warfare and talk about, well, net zero, I guess, to a certain degree, but our future homes. Yes, good afternoon, everyone. Lovely to be here. And if my voice sounds a bit croaky, I do apologize. I've had a bit of a cold this week. But yeah, let's look at homes. And of course, we've got 26 days to the budget. And this is money. We're warning that the budget is going to be painful and secure. Starmer has laid the groundwork. And also, not just this is money, but the financial times, they've also said this is going to be very painful. So if we go further on and look at the BBC, they're telling everybody to take your energy readings, take your meter readings, because of course, we've got a hike in tariffs. And then end fuel poverty, of course, they're very worried about pensioners, as we all are, because they're not going to get their winter allowance. And according to end fuel poverty, it's going to cost the NHS 1.5 billion a year to look after pensioners who are cold and living in cold homes, 2.3 living in poor housing. And if we go to the government UK 2021 plan to drive down the costs of clean heat, we can see that what they actually want to do is to replace the old boilers. And this is in collaboration with their Department of Business and Energy. So what do they want to do? Well, they want to reduce the cost of heat pumps. And we'll talk about heat pumps. This is really setting the scene for later in the news. So they want to help install low carbon heating systems, a total of 3.9 million in the scheme with 60 million in an innovation fund. And I have to say that Ed Miliband has just announced another 50 million to keep this heating pump fund topped up. So a lot of money going into this for low carbon. So if we look at the future homes delivery plan, and there is one, when we start to look at this, actually is the delivery plan from industry. So let's look at who they are supported with, because this is the delivery hub that's going to be a focal point. So everything's going to go through this hub. And because it's industry led, you can expect to see a lot of names. So let's just have a look at some of the names. We've got Barrett, Energy UK, we've got the Environment Agency there, Imperial, off-GEM, off-Watt, RSPB, Water UK. And they are all going to collaborate with a load of other very familiar names. And I've got two slides here, because there are so many of them. I won't name them all, but you can see Red Row and Whimpy and Wayne Holmes and Taylor Whimpy and Barrett and pretty much everyone. And I think there's even another slide there. Yeah, I'm not going to read all the names on there, because there's loads. And the Energy Saving Trust are talking about retrofitting the UK's housing stock. Now, how appealing does that sound? We're going to have to refit every single home. And in order to do this, the governments are going to make it attractive. They're going to give grants. But more about this, a little bit later in the news and we'll see the cunning plan that they've all got lined up for us. Thanks, Debbie. And of course, this whole heat pump idea isn't a Labour Party idea. It's a Tory Party idea. So this was being pushed by the Tories in the previous regime. And so we've got a uni party, as usual. There's no change here, just acceleration. So Mark, let's move on then. And well, a coalition for Prosperous America. Well, this is a quick review of last week, Mike, the coalition for Prosperous America. I reported on near-shoring and that coalition's concern about near-shoring. And the headline, then, was Mexico is growing as a new China hub, 2020 for exports already breaking records. And what I found is near-shoring, which involves large countries transplanting their industry to other countries to avoid tariffs, among other goals. I found that near-shoring is connected to the Global Cities scheme. And of course, one of the main hubs of the Global Cities scheme is in Chicago. And accordingly, the partnership of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which is the former CFR there, and cranes Chicago Business a long time, weekly publication, and World Business Chicago, a public private economic development outfit. Their collaboration came up with this logo, Chicago Global. Very witty. And we'll move on from there. And I'll describe this connection between near-shoring and Global Cities. First of all, a quick review. What is a Global City? A Global City is a city that has a significant influence on the global economic, cultural, and political landscape. These cities are typically centers of international finance, business, and trade. Very important. That's the focus today. And they often serve as hubs for transportation and communication networks. Global cities are also known for cultural diversity, the ability to attract talent from around the world, etc. There's no definitive list of Global Cities, but Common Ones, New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Dubai. Of course, Chicago is a rising star in the Global Cities movement, as I've often reported on UKC. And we'll continue. What we have next is five features that define Chicago's role in global trade. This is from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Illinois, and its largest city, which is Chicago, play crucial parts in the worldwide trade landscape. Understand what those parts entail. We spoke to World Business Chicago, and so World Business Chicago is sort of at the helm on this. And an important point to make at this point before I go on is that the Global Cities movement and the connection with trade sees individual cities and individual states within the US as equal partners making negotiations with foreign countries. There's a long-standing constitutional rule in the US Constitution itself that says no state shall enter into compacts with other countries without the express permission of Congress. And in fact, many in Congress are very skeptical of these kinds of things as Reuters as recently reported. So these organizations in Chicago and elsewhere are basically advocating that cities, which are subdivisions of the states themselves, enter into these foreign compacts on very shaky constitutional ground. Now that being said, on this slide, it notes when the pandemic snarled for foreign imports of everything from semiconductors to strawberries, shoppers and businesses in Chicago and beyond learned the hard way how complex and interdependent global supply chains are, making sense of international trade issues can feel like doing a 5,000-piece puzzle in the dark without the box and all this stuff. But another important point here, Mike, is that these interdependent global supply chains have been made intentionally complex. They're complex by their very nature. So they establish these complex supply chains, and then they expect us to navigate our ways, our way out of these things, of course, with these globalist groups at the helm. So they basically create the problem, then they want to create the solution. But solving that puzzle is part of Carla or Roscoe's job as head of foreign direct investment at World Business Chicago, where she works to attract foreign companies to the city and will wind up with some important quotes from Carla or Roscoe of World Business Chicago. And note some of the things in here. Here's what she said. Trade in the Chicago area looks a little bit different than the rest of the state. Japan was Chicago's largest trade partner in 2023. Again, kind of strange that individual cities are negotiating with entire foreign nations, with nearly 8 billion imported through O'Hare International Airport, followed by China and Germany, which imported roughly 5.5 billion and 5 billion respectively. Canada is fourth on the list with 4 billion in imports at O'Hare, and Mexico doesn't crack the top five. And we'll continue to expound on this. I won't read this whole thing, but it notes that in the first six months of this year, O'Hare International Airport, a single airport in Illinois and the outskirts of Chicago was the country's third largest trading port by trade value, accounting for 5.3% of the nation's trade. Only the ports of Los Angeles, which is huge, I've been there. And the port of Laredo on the border with Mexico ranked higher with each handling about 6%. The data bears that out smartphones, medicine, and vaccines were among the largest categories of imports at O'Hare. And on the export side, life sciences were key with products like medicines, vaccines, medical instruments, and pharmacological regions comprised over a quarter of O'Hare's export value. What's interesting there is we're putting vaccines on long-distance travels each direction rather than each nation in the world producing its own vaccines if they're really all that necessary. And so these vaccines are put on long supply change, which makes them prone to spoilage if they need to be refrigerated, and all sorts of unnecessarily long distances involved in this trade. But to wind up Chicago remains, excuse me, China, get this, China remains one of Illinois's largest trading partners, but the trade balance is shifting in an Illinois's favor, it's saying. But the most important part is the final quote, "After the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced, vulnerabilities and supply chains, especially for high-tech goods like semiconductors and so on." After that, policymakers started talking about French-shoring, onshoring, and near-shoring. In other words, moving supply chains out of China and into the U.S. or friendly countries. So in order to shorten the supply chains, they're basically just going to take Chinese industry and begin moving it into the United States. And I believe I have one final slide. Here's what Carla said in summary, "We are open for business. These Chinese companies are looking to manufacture now in Chicago. They understand the power of the U.S. market and they'll keep their products in the market." So rather than creating factories in terms of the global assault look in Britain or in the United States for American workers, American-owned factories, for American workers to own good wages, they're going to move Chinese companies into the U.S. to shorten the supply chains. A typical globalist solution for globalist-created problems. There'll be more on this, of course, in the weeks to come and in the months to come because it's an ongoing issue, but that'll do it for now. Well, thanks, Mark. It may be an extra. We can talk a little bit about why it is that American companies aren't able to set up these factories for themselves. I think there's an interesting conversation to be had there. But in the meantime, if you like what the UK column does, you'd like to support us. The place to go is support.uk column.org. And there are options to help us out there. You could make a donation or you could join the community as a member. Memberships start at £5 a month. And you could pick something up at the UK column shop or from CliveToCarlo.com where we have an affiliate relationship. So thank you very much to everybody that is supporting us financially. We do need your ongoing support. It is really appreciated. But please do share our material on the various platforms. We've got share links on all our content on the website there for Facebook, for Telegram and so on. And if you're interested in the comments, you can click on that link to read them. Now yesterday at 1pm, Charles' interview with Juan Jiro in Doyle went out and got a very good response. So she's talking about the fact that governments make everything worse. So she's talking about Marxism, racism, the effects on universities and on wider society and so on. But the effects of governments these days. A reminder that on Sunday at 11am on Brian's YouTube channel, assuming Brian's YouTube channel still exists by then, and we will talk a little bit more about that in a second, is episode 6 of Walking the Dog. And he will be speaking to Charles on that episode to join him for that at 11am if you possibly can. Very few tickets left now for our event on the 19th of this month. If you can possibly join us for this, please do come along. It's going to be a fantastic day with some really interesting speaking from Pierce Robinson, David Miller, Peter Ford, Bob Moran, Ahmed Malik, Katie Joe Murphy, Claire Wells Harrison, Sonya Paulton, Rachel Matthews and the UK column team with some other support as well. So do join us if you can for that. A reminder that Andrew Bridgion and Carvin Jones are discussing capitalism versus climate change tonight at 6.30. Tickets are available at fixer.co that's F-I-X-R dot co and you need to search for capitalism versus climate. And then tomorrow there is Glasgow Peace March. This is being run by Stanford Peace dot co dot UK. It's meeting at George Square 1230. Sorry, that's on Sunday, the 13th of October. And so join them there. Apologies got that did wrong. So that's Sunday, the 13th of October, George Square for that. And also we just wanted to highlight Mark, the alternative view live stream, which is the second or the follow up to the smartsies and surveillance agenda. So this is the update and you will be taking part in that. Yes, and some of what I reported today, a small part of it will be part of the overall report. Okay. Thank you, Mark, for that. Now let's come on then to assist the dying. Now you may have noticed that a week or so ago, the so called the circle Paul does is described was used for the first time in Switzerland to remove somebody from this planet. Now this works by flooding the chamber. The person lies inside this, it floods the chamber with nitrogen and causes your oxygen levels to collapse very, very quickly at all at the push of a button. So it makes, as I say, killing yourself pretty easy and probably a lot easier than drinking the concoction that the dignitas gives. But nonetheless, that was used for the first time. The people that facilitated this assisted death were subsequently arrested by the Swiss authorities. And there hasn't really been any update on that since then. So as far as we know, they're still arrested. But why are we mentioning this now? Well, because the Simon case, the cabinet secretary has issued a letter, here it is, about a forthcoming private members bill, which is going into Parliament on the issue of assisted dying, sorry. So let's just have a look at what he said in this. As a long standing convention for such issues of conscience, the Prime Minister has decided to set aside collective responsibility on the merits of this bill. And he said, and any others covering the same subject matter, that that means that ministers can vote or not, however they wish, so nobody will be whipped for this particular vote. He said in the letter, the government will therefore remain neutral on the passage of this bill and on the matter of assisted dying. And he also went on to say that, however, that ministers should not be commenting on this publicly, that although they don't have to disavow anything that they've said in the past, basically, they shouldn't be making any statement and they need to be very firmly reiterating the idea that anybody that's that any vote on this is done purely on a personal basis and has got nothing to do with the government. So there we go. Question is, why is this coming back? We've mentioned this before, just run through it very briefly again, because this is really an important issue. The Office wrote for budget responsibility a few weeks ago published this fiscal risks and sustainability report in which they were making the point that by 2070 or so the UK was likely to have a government debt reaching something around the region of 300% of GDP is currently at 100% of GDP. So massive pressure in an aging population with not enough people of younger age generating income for the government. They are going to be borrowing more and more and more in order to support the social care and the health care that's needed for this aging population. And of course, as we've mentioned before, we've seen so many comments and narratives in the mainstream press. I keep highlighting Matthew Parris because this was the most egregious example of it. We are without question going to be coming under a lot of pressure to end our lives as quickly as possible. So if you remember, he said in his comment piece that within a decade or more assisted suicide will be seen as a normal road for many to take and will be considered socially responsible and even finally urged upon people. And of course, with the use of the likes of the circle pod, this becomes a very easy thing to do. We might be commenting a little bit more about this in a minute, but in the meantime, you've got a health update for us. Yes, I have a little health update and we've all been very concerned about children's mental health. And I just want to refer you to this report, the mental health of children and young people in England, 2023, wave four follow up to the 217 report. Now, I've just taken a couple of quotes from this report, please go and look at it in its entirety. But it says in 2023, one in five children and young people aged eight to 25 had a probable mental disorder. That was 20.3% of eight to 16 year olds, 23.3% of 17 to 19 year olds, and 21.7% of 20 to 25 year olds. On the next quote, it attributes a lot of these mental health issues to climate. So just over half 54.8% of young people aged 17 to 25 years reported being worried about the impact of climate change. Now, we know that there is a condition now that's called climate anxiety. But I'm concerned that we are over prescribing and prescribing children anyway, antidepressants and antipsychotics. And in this report here from ABC, you can see that we're prescribing them more and more. And this is this is not to be something to be proud of. Children should not, in my opinion, be taking antidepressants and antipsychotics at all. And in Australia, the figures have doubled in 10 years. So when I saw Dame June Rain talking on NICE's 25th birthday, when NICE is actually quite nasty, when I heard her gloating over children's antidepressants, I thought you might like to listen. Have a listen, Dame June Rain. Over the last 25 years, NICE has unquestionably had a game-changing impact on health and care, not only in England and Wales, but much more widely. Looking back from the very first review of Sanamavir to the work on therapeutics during the COVID pandemic. And then today's challenges of new medicines for obesity and dementia coming along, NICE has applied its rigorous methodology independently to review effectiveness and value. And the clinical professions have followed NICE guidance with ultimate benefit to patients and care. From the regulatory perspective, we know that the alignment of a NICE guideline with our statutory information for health professionals and for patients, it's essential to achieving the maximum benefit and minimum risk. And a great example here would be the use of antidepressants in children. And who could possibly forget the impact of NICE guidance on use of dexamethasone in people with severe COVID infection. That change of clinical standard of care on the same day as the evidence from the recovery trial became available. The evidence of NICE's impact on health and care is itself gold standard. What is most to be celebrated now as we look back is the way in which NICE has changed thinking, not only here but worldwide, about the importance of robust, independent health technology assessment. So there you go. You've got the gold standard. If you've got the MHRA and you've got NICE on your side, what more do you want? But to finish off this segment, interestingly, after Mike's segment on assisted dying, I caught Professor Christopher Whitty talking in a lecture. Let's see what you think of it because I know that Mike and I might have slightly differing views. So here's Professor Christopher Whitty about talking about quality of life over quantity. What do you think? Our optimistic point is I think there's also often an assumption, including a kind of popular narrative, that once it gets you'd rate is you're going to have dementia and you're going to be living in social care. And that's the way it is. The data do not back that up. Most people in their late 80s and 90s do not have dementia, are living independently, and have good qualities of life. And I'm very happy they're on this. This planet and everyone around us rate up in on this planet. But there are people who are also living in pain disability and can see no back way backwards from that. So my third sort of general point on this is certainly my experience as a clinician, and I think I'm very confident if you ask most people at most high streets. If you say to most people, you're now 80. I can give you three years of life in disability with debt, with poor quality of life, a lot of indignity, or two years in good quality of life. Which do you want? People should make their own choices, but I'm very confident based on polling and other data, and most people would go for the former. What does that tell us? Well, that tells us what we should be doing is going for quality of life over quantity, once you get to a certain point. Allowing independent choice for individuals, absolutely should be their choice surrounded by their family. But actually for most people, and much of medicine, if you do more, you will extend life, but potentially make life less high quality. That does not conform with where most people actually are in terms of what they wish. And I think we should be honest about this, and say this very clearly to the public. Do you want us to go for always extending life at all costs, or do you want us to be principally aiming at quality of life? Because I'm very confident most people, not all, would choose the latter. So what would you decide? Maybe we'll discuss it in extra? Yes, I think we will. I think we will discuss that a little bit in extra. Now let's come on to the issue of censorship, because well, Kenny and I were somewhat surprised this morning to find that, no, maybe we weren't that surprised. Okay, but we were surprised at least to find that all our YouTube channels were shut down at the same time. And so this was clearly more than just a piece of content that had been identified on our channels. This was a coordinated action. So we've just been playing with YouTube recently to see what's possible, what causes strikes, what causes various sanctions from them. But neither channel had been in a per state that way at the moment, those strikes on the channels. And certainly his channel, his extracts channel, had just been approved for monetization. And then within a day or two of that, it's all gone. So that's clearly a coordinated action. And well, we just wanted to let everybody know that that was going on. We find it slightly amusing in some respects. But maybe we've got something we can do about it. Now we'll talk about that more in the not to distant future. But the other thing that's happened this week is that we've had our annual communication from the wonderful folks over at NewsGuard. Now everybody, we talked about NewsGuard the other day. But I wanted to highlight one particular aspect of this, because in the email that we received from NewsGuard, they said this, our review of the UK column website, our review find examples of content on the site that appears to be egregiously false or misleading. And one of the things that they highlighted was this symposium that we ran in February, this year on entitled in Medazalam, murders, exposing state sanctioned involuntary euthanasia. And in their email, NewsGuard said this. In fact, there's no evidence to support claims that Medazalam or any other drug has been used to euthanize elderly patients in the UK. Moreover, there's no evidence that the UK government undertook systematic euthanasia during the pandemic. This symposium was a group of people who had been adversely affected. In other words, they had loved ones, they say, murdered by the National Health Service using morphine and Medazalam. Right, these were witness testimony, witness testimonies, these were lived experiences that were being expressed. This was not, you know, a piece of journalism or third party information. This was people who had gone through something which was truly horrendous for them, in the sense that they lost a loved one, loved one, through the use of Medazalam and morphine, and that there were irregularities in the medical notes in some cases. And so for this, cried to come along and say that this was somehow egregiously false or misleading is in itself egregiously false and misleading and hypocritical. So just wanted to highlight that we've got to remember that NewsGuard is one of the organizations that social media companies use to make a decision on whether they're going to target a particular channel or a particular content creator. And so, you know, the ratings that these organizations give to people like the UK column or the other individuals out there are important in that sense, and that sense only. But don't worry because Melanie Dawes is going to is right into the rescue, at least as far as continuing censorship agenda is concerned. She's been interviewed by the Financial Times in the last couple of days, and she's absolutely determined that the Online Safety Act is going to give the opportunity for strong action against tech giants. Now, this isn't strong action against tech giants who are shutting down channels that the UK government doesn't like. This is strong actions against tech companies that break new rules on content moderation. So in other words, she's absolutely determined that an even stronger content moderation regime comes into force. So she said, we've got some pretty strong parts here under the Online Safety Act. There'll be some websites who we need to take strong action against, and we're gearing up for that now so we can be really fast. So they're basically planning for 2025, which is when the main regime under Online Safety Act comes into force. But we don't need to worry, because maybe she's not going to be in the job for very much longer, because Simon Case, who we mentioned earlier in the program, has resigned and will be leaving his role as cabinet secretary very soon. And apparently, the word on the streets is that Dame Melanie Dawes is going to take over from him in that role as cabinet secretary. So maybe she'll be moving to even bigger and better things as a reward for the great job she's done so far out of calm. We'll keep you posted. Okay, Mark, sticking with Central ship or at least freedom of speech. Give us some good news. Exactly, Mike. That's what this is. Good news amid the chaos. We're all tired of the strangulation of the low agenda. Well, Peter Vlamming, a teacher in Virginia, came out on top in a five year lawsuit, Virginia School Board to pay 575 grand, quite a tidy sum, changed policies to end ADF lawsuit on behalf of wrongly fired teacher. The ADF is the Alliance for Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group that I'll be quoting somewhat today. And we'll move on to talk more about Vlamming's victory. This happened in Richmond, Virginia. Here's a press release from the Alliance dated 30 September to settle a lawsuit brought by the ADF attorneys representing a former Virginia high school teacher who was fired for avoiding the use of pronouns to refer to one of his students. The West Point School Board has agreed to pay the 575 grand in damages and attorney fees. In addition, the school board cleared Peter Vlamming's firing from his record and separate from the settlement agreement changed its policies to conform to the new Virginia education policies established by conservative Governor Glenn Yunken that respect fundamental free speech and parental rights. Very important. The Alliance for Defending Freedom, by the way, is an alliance building non-profit legal organization committed, it says, to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life. And we'll move on and describe a little more in-depth of what went down. The ADF is saying, as I noted, this concludes a five-year lawsuit, quite an onerous thing for Mr. Vlamming. ADF attorneys filed an initial $1 million lawsuit. It was initially more against the school board back in September of 2019. Vlamming taught French in the district for nearly seven years. The West Point School Board fired him after he stated he couldn't, in good conscience, comply with the superintendent's demand that he referred to one of his students using he/him pronouns inconsistent with the trans student sex. Vlamming tried to accommodate the student by consistently using the student's new preferred name, but by avoiding the use of pronouns altogether. But school boards ordered him to stop avoiding the use of pronouns to refer to the student, even when the student wasn't present. In December, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that it would reinstate Vlamming's lawsuit after a lower court had dismissed his case. So this thing went up and down a little bit, but that describes the basic central core of what this was about. Now, those new education policies just referred to, here's a headline from the ADF, Virginia's new education policies protect children and parental rights. And now we're going to quote one of the attorneys from that organization, Kate Anderson, no relation, of course. She's an attorney for the ADF. She said this, ADF supports Virginia's new education policies, which help ensure respect for parental rights. Parents are the primary caregivers of their children who knew and are in the best position to know their own kids' education and health care needs. Government officials and school administrators cannot usurp the role of parents in making those critical decisions. A very important thing here that's being established or reinforced, you might say, in this age of uncertainty. This report goes on to say from the ADF, Peter wasn't fired for something he said. He was fired for something he couldn't say. The school board violated his first amendment rights under the Virginia Constitution and Commonwealth law. And that's a quote from another ADF senior council. As a teacher, Peter was passionate about the subject he taught. He taught French. He was well liked by his students, and he did his best to accommodate their needs and requests. But he couldn't, in good conscious, speak messages that he knew were untrue. And no school board or government official can punish someone for that reason. We're pleased to favorably settle this case on behalf of Peter Vlaming and hope other government and school officials will get the message. We hope they'll take note of the high cost involved in failing to respect an American's constitutionally protected freedoms. Many people hearing this will say, "Amen, that's for sure." And we'll conclude with a quote from Mr. Vlaming himself, the Victoria's teacher and this long lawsuit. "I was wrongfully fired from my teaching job because my religious beliefs put me on a collision course with school administrators who mandated that teachers ascribe to only one perspective on gender identity. Their preferred view." So that's how this pans out, Mike. And we don't hear a lot of positive news like this. We don't hear it often enough. But hopefully this will give rise to more victories and push back on the won't agenda. This has been strangling us for way too long and really dampening free speech. And that truly is censorship. So back to you. Sorry, Mark. Who gets this money? Well, apparently it goes to Mr. Vlaming for damages and attorney's fees. It is quite a large sum, even though they initially sued for a million. I guess taxpayers would end up paying that. And maybe one could argue that the sum being paid is a little high, but certainly the principle involved is very important. So I think that's sufficient for now. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Debbie, let's come back to the housing issue. And of course, one of the other things that the Tory government did a number of years ago was to demand. That all properties in the UK reach an EPC rating of C or better. Now, this is the environmental rating that all properties are given. And if you want to sell a property, of course, you do much better if your property is a higher rating, because that means it's more efficient allegedly. But one of the problems that we have in the UK is that a lot of our housing stock is Victorian terraced housing or of that age. And of course, it's very, very difficult to increase the environmental ratings that we have now. What the Tories had tried to do was to say that if a house didn't meet an EPC rating of C or better, that you would not be allowed to rent that. There was quite a lot of pushback, because of course, that would have immediately taken a lot of property out of the rental market. And so that was kind of dropped by the Tories. But now we've got a Labour regime who, of course, are all about change. And whenever it says change, they mean we do exactly the same. So they are bringing this back, Debbie. They are indeed. And this segment is going to be if you own your own house outright, and you're saying yes, or if you rent, or if you've got a mortgage, this is all going to be applicable to you. Because when you look at the energy performance certificate, and let's have a look at it, because many people might recognise it more than have heard about it. So if you're buying a home, you're going to see an EPC rating. So it tells you how economic and how cost rated your home is. But this is the problem, you see. This is where we're going to find the problems, because you can see there you've got that tariff rating from between A and G. Now, most old homes, as you've just mentioned, Mike, most old homes will only get to the very best of a day. They cannot comply to a C. So it's new homes that are getting a C. So let's look at the UK government energy performance certificates, because, you know, as Mike's just said, if you're selling a property, if you're renting out a property, or if we're building a new property, you have to have an EPC, which is valid for 10 years. How do you get one? Well, you have to get your own one, I'm afraid. And you do have to pay for one. And also, if you don't get one, you can be fined. Now, I understand that this fine is about £5,000. So it's pretty severe. But are you exempt? Well, who is exempt? There are some people that are exempt. So if you've got a standalone building with floor space of less than 50 square meters, if you're due for demolishment, if it's a listed building, conservation, or a place of worship, there's others there, you could be exempt. But when I went to look at the House of Commons library, in July 2024, the housing and net zero, they say that the EPC is not for purpose. The EPC is the energy performance certificate is not fit for purpose, because it's based on pricing. So normally, a gas central heated house will cost less than an electrically heated house. So therefore, the EPC rating is better on a gas heated house, because it's cheaper. So they've decided that this isn't good enough. And how can they decarbonize homes? And this is all about decarbonization. So the targets that they've got are pretty, well, they're a little bit, I think, ambitious, but they want to get everybody, that's old houses, new houses, everybody to an EPC bank by 2035. The Scottish government are looking at 2033, and the Welsh government and the Northern Ireland government, they don't actually have, they haven't published a strategy as yet. So how can we decarbonize homes? What are they actually going to do? Well, this is interesting, because they've said, look, there is no legal requirement, but that big word there currently, there is currently no legal requirement for existing homes to be retrofitted, or for low carbon heating technologies, such as heat pumps, to be installed in existing homes. But in order to incentivize homeowners, and that's exactly what they're going to do, a bit like the scrappage system, if you remember rightly for cars, they're going to provide homeowners with what they call financial support. So how is this financial support going to be seen? Well, according to the government, there's going to be an uplift. So the average semi detached house, they want to have 30% lower emissions, 75% lower emissions, sorry, on an average semi detached house, and they say that heat pumps are going to become the primary heating technology. Now, if you're in Scotland, they're going to use this passive house standard, which is basically you're going to be heated by the sun. So let's look at a bit more of these, and what are they actually going to do? Well, they say they're going to lower the cost of heat pumps between 25% to 50% by 2025. Now currently, the cost of heat pumps are around between 10 and 14,000 pounds, but they want to deploy 600,000 a year by 2028. They want to phase out gas boilers by 2035, so that all heating systems in all houses will be compatible with net zero by 2050. And as I said, Ed Miliband has just put millions more into the heat pump fund in order to keep this going. So I went to money saving expert to look at what kind of heat pumps. I mean, there's such an array. I think we'll have to do a separate news item just on heat pumps, but we've got air water heat pumps, we've got air, air heat pumps. And some of these schemes, you have to have your whole central heating system taken out. Now, this is the scheme for the UK. I don't know what's going on in other countries, but I'm sure in other countries will hear what your plans are. So in some of these schemes, you have to have your whole heating system taken out. So it gets very expensive. What's the lifespan? Well, actually, they don't know. They haven't got a clue. They say it's difficult to say, but they say it's similar, similar to a gas boiler. But in extreme temperatures, they are actually less efficient. Although they say they still work at minus 15, they say that they are actually less efficient. Now, Charles on Wednesday was talking about Jeff Bezos and his Earth Fund. And he was also talking about the fact that we were trying to electrify everything, and we don't have enough electricity in the grid. Well, I want to point to this Financial Times article where the Bezos Fund has committed 500 million to join IKEA and Rockefeller in renewable energy push. Now, not only have they done that, but we've got loads of money coming in from the World Bank and multi-lateral banks. But I also want to highlight this startup company. Now, this is Microsoft and Jeff Bezos are backing this startup company called BlockPower. Now, BlockPower operating out of New York, and they've greened apparently more than 1,200 buildings by actually electrifying them all. So their ambition, if you go to the next slide, their ambition is actually to electrify every single building in the United States by leasing landlords the necessary equipment to make that transition. Now, I think we're probably going to hear from the CEO in a minute, but to actually electrify every single building seems incredible, but they've got loads of money. And this money has been coming in from pretty much everywhere. You can see their Microsoft, Bezos, again, you've got Exelon, American family insurance, and from their own website, from their own, they're literally their own website, BlockPower's website, they say they're boasting of the Bezos 5.5 million pound grant that they've had in this little startup company. And what are they? Well, I've just taken a couple of screenshots from their website, smarter greener, healthier upgrades. So it's time to upgrade. But you know what, let's listen to Donald Baird, the CEO, telling us about what he's intending to do, because you know what, this is the silver bullet to climate change. Have a listen. Here in New York City, 67% of all the greenhouse gases from the city of New York come from the buildings. So how do you turn a building into a Tesla? A Tesla is you're taking the oil and fossil fuel equipment out of a vehicle, and you're replacing it with smart computerized, all-electric equipment. That's what we want to do for buildings. We want to take out the oil and gas boilers and hot water heaters. We want to replace them with smart computerized, all-electric equipment. Key pumps are like a silver bullet to climate change. Well, what is an air source heat pump? If you think of a two-part all-electric air conditioner that can go backwards and forwards into reverse, meaning in the winter it provides heating for your home, and in the summer it provides cooling for your home, but it's run entirely on all-electric clean energy. It will be economically better for us as well to not have to rely on oil. Not having to sweat through the heated parts of the house and, you know, getting a jacket for the cooler parts, and just so it'll be healthier. Taking fossil fuels out of your building can be complicated and expensive, but block power is built. Software to make it simple. We help you save energy, we help you save money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and of course help your building combat climate change. With the air and heating pumps, this will allow us to go green, but at the same time we will be able to effectively heat and cool the house properly. So that is how block power turns buildings into Teslas. So if you can't turn your house into a Tesla, your old Georgian Victorian house, perhaps, and you can't get it up to an EPCC rating, my question has got to be what happens to your home in the future? And as you know, we've talked about carbon credits and we've talked about techs before. So if anybody wants to know more about what I believe might be the new currency by stealth carbon credits, please go and have a look at UK Column News 30th of August 2024, where we tell you a lot more about techs. Debbie, thank you very much. Now, let's come to the BBC. And one of the first news is that Laura Kohnsberg, who of course runs a Sunday morning program, has embarrassed herself because she was doing an interview with Boris Johnson yesterday. And unfortunately, while she was preparing for that, she instead of sending briefing notes to her team, she sent her briefing notes to Boris Johnson instead by email, which made the interview completely untenable. And so they had to drop the whole idea. One of the questions that she might have been asking, Boris may have been about his attitude to COVID, to SARS-CoV-2, and to where it came from, because of course, Boris has published an old biography. And in that, he has now changed his mind because he definitely was saying previously that it was nothing to do with a certain Chinese lab. But now he is apparently convinced that the COVID was made in a Chinese lab. In his explosive memoir says the Daily Mail here, former PM rejects theory, it started in Wuhan market and says it's likely to be the virus was the result of a botched experiment. So this memoir is being serialized in the mail if anybody wants to become ill by going to look at it. But let's just have a look at his latest comments on this. So he said the awful thing about the whole COVID catastrophe as it appears to be entirely manmade in all its aspects. I would agree with this 100%, because of course, we would argue that the evidence shows very strongly that there was no virus, that it was entirely a manmade catastrophe in the sense that people were who'd went into believing that something was something else. And of course, as a result, we had all kinds of psychological experiments being run on the population, behavioral experiments and so on. He went on to say this, it now looks overwhelmingly like the mutation was the result of a botched experiment in a Chinese lab. He said some scientists were clearly splicing bits of virus together like witches and Macbeth. I have bat and toe of frog and oops, the frisky little critter jumped out of test tube and started replicating all over the world. So assuming you've stopped laughing, I really just wanted to remind everybody who it is that it's been pushing this narrative for so long. So let's start with the telegraph here. No one believed the COVID, Wuhan Lake theory, then the world changed its tune. And Matt Hancock pushing this idea and pushing the idea that they couldn't admit that it was caused by Wuhan lab link because they were terrified of upsetting China, Mike Pompeo pushing this idea. But probably the biggest voice pushing this idea from the beginning has been Richard Deolove, the former head of MI6, who has been claiming to subscribe to the theory that it's an engineered escapee from the Wuhan instituted virology. I just want to remind everybody who Richard Deolove is because of course he is the man who created the yellow cake narrative that brought us to war in Iraq in 2003. So his so-called intelligence gave Tony Blair the justification that he needed. He is the man that is ultimately behind the scriptball affair because he was effectively through Christopher Steele and Pablo Miller running Sergey Scripple at the time. He was very delighted to go to Ukraine in the not too distant future where he met a whole host of different people and pushed the idea that Ukraine needed to continue with its war and not go consider any kind of peace plan or negotiation with the Russians. Richard Deolove has been pushing a war narrative against Russia and against China for a very long time. But prior to that of course pushed the war narrative in the Middle East that resulted in our invasion of Iraq and so on. And so I would suggest very strongly that if anybody is looking at this narrative about Wuhan lab legs that you consider who's pushing this idea the hardest, why they might be pushing that idea the hardest and then draw some conclusions from that. But Debbie let's end with some final news. So and you know if you're tuning into extra please do tune in because we've got a very special song coming up for you in extra but my and finally today I'm going to give the last words to our great friends the vaccine injured who have recorded a little video have a look at this. I have a vaccine injury. I have a vaccine injury. I'm a gymnast. I'm an author. I'm an accountant. I'm a christian. I am a geoscientist. I'm a teacher. I'm a wife, a mother, a friend, and a sister. Well I'm a coach. I am a climber. I am a former dentist. I am a mother of four. I'm a dope mummy. I'm a yoga teacher. I'm a sister. I'm a medical scientist. But most of all I'm a diabetic human. I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I am a husband. I'm a lawyer. I'm a father. I am a son. I am a brother. I'm just like you. I have a vaccine injury. I have a vaccine injury. I have a vaccine injury. I have a vaccine injury. But my vaccine injury does not happen to me. So thank you so much to all of our great friends the vaccine injured and come back for extra because we've got a great song for you as well. Thank you Debbie and I would just end by saying of course if news guard is watching this is not fake news. These are people that are giving their own lived testimony and you know really how dare you suggest that that is in any way egregiously disinformation. I think what you are doing is pretty disgraceful. Okay we will leave it there for today and say thank you very much to Debbie and Mark. Thanks everybody for watching. Do join us in a few minutes for some extra. Have a great weekend if you're not and we'll see you on Monday. Bye bye. If you're a facilities manager at a warehouse and your HVAC system goes down it can turn up the heat literally. But don't sweat it. Granger has you covered. Granger offers over a million industrial grade products for all your operations including warehouse HVAC maintenance. 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