UK Column Radio

UK Column News Podcast 18th October 2024

Mike Robinson, Mark Anderson and Debi Evans with today's UK Column News. If you would like to support our independent journalism, please join the community: https://community.ukcolumn.org/ Sources: www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-18th-october-2024

Duration:: 56m
Broadcast on:: 18 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

At Sprout's Farmers Market, we're all about fresh, healthy and delicious. Step into our bulk department to scoop up as much as you like from hundreds of bins filled with wholesome grains and limited-time goodies. Visit your neighborhood Sprout's Farmers Market today where flavor fills every scoop. [MUSIC] Good afternoon. It's Friday the 18th of October, 2024, just after 1 o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host Mike Robson, joining me today by video link. We have Mark Anderson from the United States and Debbie Evans from Cornwall, of course. Now we're going to get straight on with the situation globally, with war and so on. So let's look at the Middle East first, and of course, the news yesterday of the death of the Hamas leader, Sinwar, as a result of Israeli military activity. As you can see, there are U.S. Central Command, very excited about that. But the narrative from people in the meantime has been, well, maybe this event will finally require or encourage Israel to call a ceasefire because they've achieved that goal. Netanyahu very clear that he is not going to be stopping any time soon in the meantime. But as we head back to Europe and over to Brussels, the NATO Defense Minister's meeting is going on because, of course, they are trying to busy, trying to work out how to keep the Ukraine war going as Ukraine is systematically losing. So this has been taking place yesterday and today. And, of course, yesterday, President Zelensky was there on the podium with Mark Ruder. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to President Zelensky, dear Volonie Mier. It is great to welcome you here in Brussels. We last met in London after my visit two weeks ago to Kiev, and, of course, we spoke about Ukraine's most urgent needs and how best NATO can continue to support you. So, as he mentioned, he was in Kiev a couple of weeks ago, then he and Zelensky were both in London a few days ago. We mentioned that last week. And at that meeting, which the press did get the chance to ask a couple of questions at not very much, though. Zelensky was giving a briefing to Starmer and Ruder about his great new plan for how Ukraine is going to win the war. And these are the main points. And this, again, is being discussed at the Defense Minister's meeting today and yesterday. Ukraine joined NATO, permission to use long-range weapons on Russian territory. A contaminant of Russia using what they describe is non-nuclear strategic deterrence from within Ukraine's borders, joint protection by the United States and the European Union of Ukraine's natural resources. I don't wonder whether that would extend that to maybe electricity supply and so on. And then, finally, most interesting, this last point is when the war is finished. They are saying that they want to replace some of the United States troops stationed across Europe with Ukrainian soldiers. And I think that should give people pause and really ask, why would people want Ukrainian soldiers to be stationed in their countries in Europe? We can talk about that maybe a bit in extra. Mark Ruder had more to say. It was the first meeting when we had Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand participating in this format. A clear sign of our deepening cooperation in the face of our shared challenges. The war in Ukraine has shown that instability in Europe can have far-reaching consequences across the world. And that countries, thousands of miles away, as far away as Iran, China, and even North Korea, can become security spoilers in our own backyard. Our world is closely linked, and so is our security. So there we go. We get to see who the enemy is as far as NATO is concerned. Anyway, Iran, China, North Korea, they have brought Japan, Australia and so on into this defence minister's meeting in order to continue building a sort of dialogue with them in order to try to increase the pressure on China in particular. But clearly, the war drums, the rhetoric, is not dying in any way, shape or form. And that, again, is echoed by our own defence minister, John Haley, who, if we just put on screen there, is over there speaking to his Estonian counterpart because Britain has signed a new defence roadmap, as they describe it, with Estonia. This involves cooperation on missile defence, but other things as well. So they're going to stay in the British Army's fourth brigade, held at high readiness, ready to defend NATO's eastern flank, as they say, in addition to those deployed in Estonia. And so they are going to lead what they're describing as the new diamond initiative to integrate NATO's missile defences, while also pledging to develop new long range cutting edge missiles, improving the alliances collective air defence and offering opportunities to the UK defence industry. So we keep building the war narrative and this is starting to have an impact on the minds of the young in Europe. And so this from Germany, this is a survey run by Shell, I believe, asking for particularly young Germans attitudes to various things. And what they've discovered is that the fear of a wide-ranging war is at the top of the priority list 81%, consider that to be the most serious threat that they see at the moment. That's followed by economic concerns with 67%, describing a fear of poverty and way down the list actually are things like climate and migration. So the war agenda on people's minds, but the leadership absolutely determined to press ahead with it. Debbie, let's move on then to energy in the UK. And in some ways, this is related to war, or at least to the various excuses for war, climate being one of them. Well, yes, good afternoon everyone, lovely to be here and we're facing perhaps a winter of uncertainty and we've got what is it, 12 days to the budget, Rachel Reeves, we've got energy costs soaring, so not a good mix, but for you youngsters, this wasn't this long ago and for many of you, how many of you remember this? Have a look. How much is a sack of coal now then? What? How much is a sack of coal now then? 15. It's not bad? No, that's all right. Good job. The coal man, um, always on the streets, remember, but not anymore, because as we know, and as Charles Mallot has been talking about recently, we've seen the early phase out of unabated coal generation in Great Britain, this was the response to the consultation back in 2021, the industrial strategy, and it goes on to say that basically they were bringing forward from the 1st of October 2024, linking out or phasing out coal, and also they mentioned they're an enforcement authority which will be designated to verify compliance, and all of this, of course, has been confirmed by the BBC, as they confirmed that the country's last coal power station, Ratcliffe on Saw has closed, and again, Charles has reported on this, but what next? So the National Grid, well, the National Grid's gone green, and this is a little video to show you who the National Grid are. [Music] [Music] So there we've got the National Grid, and I think my question is, is will renewable energy sustain us in winter? So how sustainable are renewable energies? And blink if you miss it, but in September, this was announced that the new publicly owned national energy system operator is going to pave the way to a clean new energy future, and this in essence, and we'll be talking about it a bit later in the news, but this in essence is going to bring all, well, everybody together, the electricity and gas network are going to be under one roof. This is launch just on the first of October, and I wanted to look more into this, but as I say, we'll come up to it more in the news, but for now, I wanted to see how sustainable we are, so I went back to 2019 to look at the electricity supply emergency codes. So what if we don't have enough electricity? What powers do the government have? Well, what they say is that they can deal with an emergency, or they can call an emergency code in the case of a civil emergency, any natural disaster, or actually any emergency, and they say that they could go on to look at unpredictability and the fact that the public may be required to take measures, but what electricity codes can be used? And if we go on to look in the document a bit more, it says that they will make a public appeal to the members of the public, please, you know, can you restrain on your electricity supply if there is an emergency, or if we can't supply you for whatever reason? So I'm going to just highlight the fact that these emergency codes are in place, and if you just jump to the next slide, I want to just highlight this, because if anybody is looking for the future and prepping, and I must admit, I am a bit of a prepper, you can go to this website, which is powercut105.com. You can put your postcode in, you can see what availability you have in your area, and it tells you to prepare, so please prepare to care for other people around you and to share any information you've got, but we'll come on to a bit more about it later in the news. You'll see why. Yes, thanks, Debbie. Mark, sticking with climate in a sense, but particularly the media is continuing propaganda, I suppose. Oh, absolutely, Mike. In terms of getting rid of coal in the UK, the question, of course, is why? Well, our passive emissions, we're told time and time again, are to blame for heating the planet. So this segment I call Mass Media Cartel Alarmism 101, the Guardian, everybody's favorite paper, 14 October, trees and land, absorbed almost no CO2, we're told last year, is nature's carbon sink failing? Oh, no, oh, no. Interesting. I'm not sure how you can even measure that. Continuing with that, just touching on a bit of this, it begins each day at nightfall as the light disappears, billions of zooplankton crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface, the feed on microscopic algae, then returning to the depths at sunrise, the waste from this frenzy, Earth's largest migration of creatures, they say, sinks to the ocean floor, the waste does, removing millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. Who knew? In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded preliminary findings by an international team or researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest plants and soil as a net category absorbed almost no carbon, which seems to me at least at first blush to be impossible. But we can comment more on extra if we want to get into that. Anyway, the 2023 breakdown, the Guardian continues of the land carbon sink could be temporary without the pressures of drought or wildfires. That's very important to keep in mind. Without those pressures, land would return, they say, to absorbing carbon again. But it demonstrates the fragility of these ecosystems with massive implications for the climate crisis, reaching net zero is impossible without nature, etc, etc. We'll keep going from there. And Andrew Watson at the University of Exector, or Exeter in the UK, however you say it, he had this to say, none of these models, of course, models, computer models are used in a lot of this to measure these things. None of these models have factored in losses, such as the wildfires in Canada last year that amounted to six months of US fossil emissions. But what's missing in all these arguments? Well, let's move on and explore a little more. Reuters is hopping on board with the Guardian, World's Forest failed to curb 2023 climate emissions study fines. And again, they're not really very generous on describing how they know, how they can measure such things. But the other angle, another kind of fresh line of inquiry in all of this, here's the air of news, a rather obscure publication, Saudi Arabia, one of the driest places on Earth, takes major strides in cloud seeding to combat water scarcity. And there's a link there that people can utilize to read more about these things. Now, this is out of global losing Canada. Could cloud seeding help Canada fight wildfires? Well, we just heard from the Guardian and so on that wildfires are a problem, and that reduces carbon absorption even more. But now we see that there's a technology that could fight such wildfires. You never hear a peep about that from the Guardian, you never hear a peep about that from Reuters. And this is also from Global News, cloud seeding, which can cause precipitation by human intervention is an old method, but one that continues to be developed and explored. Some experts say it has the potential to mitigate these wildfires that are reducing carbon absorption, by the way. But more research is needed, which is fair, to evaluate how viable and effective it can be in the future. Interesting, as we move along, this becomes more clear. The Guardian's reporting mic is being done under the banner of a long-term reporting project called the Age of Extinction. How's that for subtlety, right? It's not like the climate challenges before us or environmental challenges or something more where we can all get involved. No, it's the Age of Extinction to cause fear, to cause uncertainty. Another thing for the youth to worry about in Germany, another thing for our youth to worry about around the world. A little bit more about the Guardian's Age of Extinction projects. Here's some other headline samples, collapsing wildlife population near the point of no return, report warns. Again, you wonder very much about the accuracy, and you see very little about how they measure these things. Another headline under the Age of Extinction project, Europe was a leader on saving nature, but now Europe's backsliding, and that could threaten global progress. And we'll continue. This is from the Desert Research Institute in Nevada, and it has some interesting things to say. Making it snow, I want to keep on that slide there, sorry. Making it snow, a brief history and review of the science behind cloud seeding, clouds, those enigmatic formations of condensed water vapor which drift above our heads and form rivers in the sky, they can take many forms. We tend to think of them as beyond human reach, but now scientists regularly harness their moisture and pull it to Earth, bringing water to a parched communities and landscapes around the world. And I've also learned in recent times, Mike, that you can even harvest fog, such as in Northern Africa, I believe that's where it's been done. And fog can be brought to condensation and put in pipes, and the water can be transferred to communities. It's actually called fog harvesting. But anyway, the main point is these mitigation efforts to cut down on drought, to cut down on wildfires, are not being reported under the rubric of this extinction project by the guardian that other papers are kind of aping and echoing. Anyway, all of this reporting, this ongoing project about the age of extinction is happening as the UN Climate Change Conference is going to happen in Azerbaijan next month. And I plan on tuning in, Mike, to cover that virtually. I'm going to sign up. Hopefully, they won't kick me off. And there's also two Brookings Institution events coming up, one today, later today, and another next week. And I plan on covering those as well, as best I can. But there's a little more we can talk about an extra that goes beyond cloud seating, coming from a former CIA chief in the United States. Hopefully, we can get to that today, but back to you, Mike, at this point, that'll do it. Okay, thank you, Mark. Okay, let's move on. If you like what the UK column does, and you would like to support us, we do need your support. The place to go is support.uk column.org. There are options to help us there. You could make a donation. You could join as a UK column member that gets access to the forums and so on, and also to extra. You could pick something up at the shop. Or if you buy something from cloud to car.com, we do get a small percentage from every purchase is made there as long as you use the link that's on this website. But we particularly need you to share the material you find on the platform on UK column.org. And share links are there on the videos and on the articles. And you can also look at the comments that are left by other UK column members, if you would wish. Now, we're very glad to say that we will be live streaming the Bristol event tomorrow. The details are on the front page of the UK column website at the moment. The cost is around 20 pounds. Unfortunately, because we're using a US-based provider, it's a dollar price, but it works at about 19 pounds of near. So, to join us for that, if you're not going to be there in person. I'd like to mention that a couple of people have pulled out because they aren't able to get to Bristol tomorrow. So, there are actually a couple of tickets available on the shop. If anybody would like to get a last-minute ticket, there are a couple there on a first-come, first-served basis. So, if you haven't managed to pick up a ticket for the event to come in person, then there is the opportunity. And we hope to see you tomorrow. Now, Mark, very, very briefly, because we mentioned this on Wednesday, your interview with Daniel New. Yeah, it's a really interesting interview. It really zeroes in on what globalism means and how the way your military is structured can tell you a lot about what direction your country is going in. And it also established very clearly that the UN is a government, not just a debating society or intergovernmental exchange. So, very interesting. It explores many dimensions and it kind of ties in indirectly with the WHO reporter guy coming in today in a very general sense. Okay, Brilliant. Thank you, Mark. And also the interview that went out at 1 p.m. yesterday and the excellence. What's wrong with Scottish education with Kate E. Deming. That's up on the website now. So, Diane was speaking to Kate about the Scotland's new curriculum for excellence, which she says is neither a curriculum nor is it excellent. Now, she runs a parents group for the Scottish Union for Education. So, if that's of interest, go and have a look on the UK column website. Now, let's move on to censorship and online safety because Ofcom has published their progress update on implementing the online safety act. This is their countdown to online safety as they describe it. And they say two months out from online safety laws coming into force because although the act was passed a year ago, it's just coming into force now because Ofcom has been going through a range of consultations and recommendations and so on. So, they say Ofcom has worn tech firms. They could face enforcement action if they don't comply with new duties when the time comes. So, what are they talking about? They're saying in the space of six months, we consulted on our codes and guidance for illegal harms, pornography, age verification and children's safety and submitted our advice to government on the thresholds with the term in which services would be categorized and subject to additional duties. And I've highlighted age verification there because this is a key part of what they're doing. They are along with the United States, as we will see in a minute, using children's safety as the main sort of clarion call for this whole thing. They went on to say Ofcom was already secured better protections from UK based video sharing platforms, including only fans and other adult sites introducing age verification. So, I thought we should have a look at what only fans has done just to give you an idea of what is expected in terms of age verification and where this is likely to go. So, only fans says that they use a combination of technology and human moderation, teams to verify age and identity of creators and fans. The tools, policies and procedures we use to verify age and identity are always evolving to reflect best practices and they're looking for things like a full name, verified email address, postal address, date of birth, valid government photo ID, standalone selfie, selfie while holding their photo ID, social media account handles bank account information and in the United States, W9 and Social Security number. Now, those are, that's what's required if you want to be a so-called creator on only fans. But if you want to be a fan on only fans, you still have to provide much of that information. But then the question, if we just put that back on screen for a second, then the question of how easy is it to do this? Well, aside from whether you would be willing to hand over all that information to this organization, this is just one typical comment from Reddit. It's so difficult getting verified. I rarely use X or Insta. I'm not the kind of person to post selfies every five minutes on Facebook. Unless I find a way to levitate my passport in front of me, they'll have to put up with my fingertips covering the edges, seventh attempt field. And so where does that take us? If people are, why people are putting this amount of effort on to getting onto that website, the first place I leave up to you, but nonetheless, if people are having to try seven, 10 times to try to get verified for this, where do we end up? Well, of course, we end up with a convenient digital government issued digital ID, which is really what the end goal for this is. And then coming back onto the issue of, of common the report and categorized services, they say that categorized services will have extra obligations under the act, such as giving users more tools to control what they see, because we've got to educate people on misinformation and disinformation, and make sure that they can then implement that so they don't see inappropriate content. And then they go on to say that categorized services will need to be ensuring protections for news publishers and journalistic content. We'll be talking more about that at the Bristol event tomorrow. And the other thing that they mention is that these categorized companies will have to produce transparency reports and consistently apply their terms of service. And of course, there could be a problem between ensuring protections for news publishers and consistently applying terms of service. So we have to see how that will work out in the end. But in the meantime, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the pressure starting to build on the idea of these categorized services, only being the bigger services, off comes recommendation so far as the category one services, for example, are really the only the biggest with with more than four million users on a daily basis. But a bunch of charity, sorry, if we put this on our have written to care stalker, really begging for this limit or this size to be reduced to much, much smaller providers of services. They're saying we've got to protect children by making sure we capture smaller forums where children might be coming into contact with content that is not appropriate. And as I say, children being used as we've mentioned for many years now, children being used to the excuse for that. The UK and the United States have just signed a new online safety agreement, a new joint government working group to protect children online. So this is bringing the British model into the United States. Now, how this is going to go, how this is going to work with the constitutional protections on freedom of speech, we have to wait and see. But in the meantime, in the US, they are continuing to push this idea that children need to be protected from bad material online. And in order to do that, we've got to pursue things like age verification and all the other protections that are provided under the online safety legislation in the UK and in the EU. Debbie, let's come back onto the issue of electricity and whether blackouts are likely. Well, yes, we've got rising energy prices like soaring across the board. And we've also got there saying that, you know, rising energy prices, people are self rationing. They're turning their heating off. Maybe they're not even putting their heating on. They're not having hot meals. This is going to have an impact on the NHS. And I happened to pick up this story in the telegraph this week, which says blackout prevention system mobilized as Britain battles low winds. This was a surprise notice. And it was issued by NISO, which we'll come on again to in a minute. And it was aimed at the capacity market. Now they say that it was triggered automatically, but it was warning that actually people may need to switch things off early and there may not be enough supply because basically we've got not enough wind. Can you believe it? But we'll come on to not enough wind. So NISO, who are these people that issued this cautionary notice that got a little bit misinterpreted? So they're the national energy system operator. They used to be the electricity supply operator, ESO. And they call themselves a planner and operator. And if we look more at NISO, we can see that they're apparently say that they're independent to government. They're a whole system. They take on a whole system approach. They give impartial decisions and advice to government and regulator. Sounds to me like a private public partnership, right? So, yeah, let's have a look at the shareholders. So this is the department for energy security and net zero with together with off gem. And what are their primary duties? So their primary duties are effectively threefold, net zero, efficiency and economy and security of supply. But they also have secondary duties which are facilitating competition, consumer impact, which is a little bit of word soup, to be honest, but are we going to have to turn things off? Whole system impacts, are we going to have enough to supply us? And facilitating innovation, which they're very keen to do. So here's the leadership team. We've got the board, we've got the independent NISO board, but we've also got a nice screenshot of the leadership team. And there's a lot of people, and I'm not going to go through them all. Please do go and have a look at the NISO website. But we've got Fint and Sly, who's at the helm. And we've got Katya O'Neill, who's the chief operating officer. So Fint and Sly, he's been in the business. So he's been in the trade in the industry for a very long time. He was the director of the National Grid ESO prior to that he was CEO of Air Grid Group. So he is industry and he's an engineer. But here's a little bit of video to introduce you to NISO. We're undertaking the biggest change in energy for about 100 years. To ensure that Britain can thrive and that its economy can go from strength to strength, we need to make sure that we transform our energy system to deliver clean power. What we need is a single collaborative plan across the industry and to stop thinking in siloed ways across different industry groups and different types of factors. The heart of NISO's mission is ensuring that we are delivering for people, for communities, for the economy and for society. Right across the business, there's a team of really capable, innovative people who are hugely excited about the opportunity that NISO presents at this inflection point in tackling climate change, which truly is the challenge of the generation. Fundamental to NISO is the ability to bring an impartial, independent voice into the mix that can really take a whole systems view on the transition, the challenges, the trade offs that need to be made and ultimately how do we get an optimal outcome for consumers. So looking at the whole system together will create the opportunity for us to have an efficient transition and a speedy transition. That's why NISO is so important. The local environment will be cleaner with less air pollution, it'll mean jobs and the opportunity for people to see the benefits of a decarbonised energy system in their locality. Now what's going to be important is that industry and government and other stakeholders collaborate really closely as we move down these paths because the answer today won't necessarily be the answer tomorrow. It's about ensuring that whole ecosystem comes together to deliver for the country. Hope we get a lot of wind and sun but also on the board at NISO is Dr Paul Goldby. Now Dr Paul Goldby was the chair of NASA Air Traffic Control. He was the CEO of Eon, non-executive director of National Grid. He was a chair of Costain Group, that's a builder's, quite a history there, a part of the channel tunnel I believe and he's also a member of the Prime Minister's Science and Technology Committee and the stakeholders of NISO as well, they go on forever too, off-term government, crown estate, offshore wind developers, nature conservation bodies, political representatives, technology providers, trade organisations and they've also got a lot of publications on their website so please do go and look. But what are they dealing in? Well they're dealing in a changing energy landscape and how they describe this is how are we, the United Kingdom, going to store, source and protect our energy and our environment to make it all affordable because we're paying so many prices. So yesterday we were reliant on fossil fuels, power stations, coal, oil, natural gas, the coalman basically and today we are continuing apparently to rely on fossil fuels which is giving us higher prices which is why we have to look to tomorrow where we're going to pay lower prices if we have renewable energy so we'll be looking at wind, solar, biogas, hydrogen, hydropower, this is all going to be intentionally smarter and flexible perhaps maybe you're not as cynical as perhaps I am but they also, NISO have got a lot of roles because they're also looking beyond 2030 so they've got a national blueprint for decarbonised electricity system in Great Britain and looking further into the blueprint you can see that the world is according to them going to look very different. Now the graph on the right, although there isn't a very big distinction between the bold and slightly lighter colours, the bold colours are basically 2023 and the light colours are 2035 so you can see that the reliance on fossil fuels is shrinking, storage is going to expand, onshore wind expansion, solar expansion. So with all of this in mind NISO also forecasts for the winter ahead which is what we're looking at right now so they published the outlook for the winter ahead and their key messages that they look at, Catia O'Neill very very generously gave a welcome and said that she was fairly sure that they could cope this winter however if we look at the key messages that they put out they say they're confident they can meet demand, they expect sufficient operational surplus although they do note that there's going to be low wind and that there will be tight days. If we look at the preparations that they're making for winter 2024 to 2025 they'll say that they're continuing to work with government, with the regulator of the national gas stakeholders to make sure that we've actually got enough to go around but have we and when we look at the generator availability on the NISO website then they're hinting there that late October to mid-December there's going to be the lowest available generator capacity and we're going to get low winds and they're expecting high breakdowns so that's really filling us with a lot of confidence right but also NISO control what comes through what's called the interconnectors so there's a whole big website please do go and look at it here's the map on the right just to tell you where we're working with our neighbors and where the pipelines are but if we're looking at low winds how are we going to be relying on renewable energy so if anybody does believe the Met Office I'm just putting it out for reference they are actually forecasting that we get a cold winter frost and fog which obviously a cold winter is going to mean you increase your energy supplies because you're going to want to put the heating on otherwise you're going to get sick or get hypothermia but they're not forecasting winds and just to tie up this segment also NISO are very interested in the up-and-coming hydrogen strategy which is a whole news of its own and if you want to go and look at more above that please do here's the road map it'll take you right through to the mid 2030s onward so a big agenda and should we be prepared for a cold winter and perhaps a dark winter possibly yes I think there's quite a few things to unpack in that for extra so I'm looking forward to that a little bit later Debbie now let's move on to health issues I'm going to start off with with this story from the United States it's quite horrific so this is from NPR and the headline is horrifying mistake to take organs from a living person was averted witnesses say so this is what they say they're quoting a nurse he was moving around kind of thrashing like moving thrashing around on the bed and then when we went over there you could see he had tears coming down he was crying visibly so this is somebody that they'd wheeled into the operating theater in order to remove his organs for transplantation so just keep in mind this he was crying visibly because I'm going to show you an article from the UK column website in a few minutes later in a few minutes which which will come back to this point anyway this article goes on to say the procuring surgeon he was like I'm out of it I don't want to have anything to do with it it was very chaotic everyone was just very upset so the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time and she was saying that he was telling her that she needed to find another doctor to do it that we were going to do this case she needs to find somewhere else and she's like there's no one else she's crying talking about the coordinator because she's getting yelled at so the article that we published on this topic was back in 2018 it was by dr Mike Williams it was entitled no time to die and I just wanted to pick a couple of bits out of this because he's saying that fresh organs are good dead ones are bad that of course is a problem for those in the medical profession that want to remove organs as fresh as possible how can they justify that the solution to that problem came partly from advanced procedures to artificially maintain a breathing body once pronounced dead the other part of the problem was solved by defining a new criterion for death brain death he mentions that a quite gruesome part that I hadn't understood was well at least at least in an aesthetic as administered to the organ donor prior to removal of the organs right just in case and he says well he then shows a screenshot of a discussion on a nurses forum and he goes on to say in case you missed that no anesthetic is given only drugs to maintain the body and one other a paralyzing drug called a non depolarizing blocking agent yes a drug to paralyze you while you take the organs with no anesthetic and the point is that sometimes that paralyzing drug that isn't fully effective and sometimes people are still flailing around as described in the article from the United States I just want to highlight this paper which Mike Williams cites in his article entitled brain death should it be reconsidered because a large part of what Mike Williams is talking about is this definition of death and so just wanted to highlight one part of this because it says also during the early stages of organ removal lacrimation effectively crying it's tears basically obviously there's other things involved in crying but nonetheless is a common phenomenon so what this scientific paper saying it's common for tears to be coming from the body as the organs are being removed and so the point that Mike Williams was making in 2018 and the point which is again being reiterated by this article from the United States is is our definition of death correct and I think there are lots and lots of questions to be asked around that sticking with health then mark bring us up to date with what's going on with the World Health Organization's pandemic treaty well that massive treaty is not done yet and they're meeting next month to continue on that it's been kind of lingering amid their bureaucracy anyway James Rogoski the noted researcher on WHO and the treaty and the international health regs he got with me recently he sent me this I condensed it down a bit it's an announcement who action item on the pandemic treaty the WHO seeks to reach an agreement regarding the proposed pandemic treaty by November 11th I encourage you that's anybody reading and hearing this to speak out against the treaty ASAP he's even suggesting please record a video expressing your opposition to the WHO's proposed pandemic treaty agreement if you're so inclined feel free to record whatever you wish to say speak your mind there's no time limit to your video post the video on the video hosting platform of your choice and send Rogoski the link so he can include your video ended up coming article anybody either side of the pond that wants to do this can do that there's the link there a sub stack link to Rogoski's website and his phone number he doesn't mind me giving this out and he asked he asked that people text him first three one zero six one nine three oh five five is a Skype handle is there James Rogoski dot sub stack dot com that's his column so that's how people can get a hold of him but what's he talking about what's the who actually up to well this is it back on 20 September 2024 the WHO announced government's progress on negotiations for the pandemic agreement to boost global preparedness for future emergencies and they basically laid it out here substantive progress on the draft agreement increased involvement of civil society and non-state actors in the commitment by all parties to sustain momentum for it's a pandemic agreement where the hallmarks of the 11th meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body which comprises the 194 member governments of the WHO and that 11th meeting ran in September in Geneva but now the 12th round which is what Rogoski's talking about Mike the negotiators will resume discussions at that 12th round between the 4th and the 15th of November Rogoski feels that it'll be around the 11th of November possibly that they'll finalize this treaty that we've been watching for such a long time I will get into all of these there's a couple of quick quotes from WHO sources this is from Nina Jamal head of pandemics at a global edible welfare organization there's a growing urgency she says for an effective pandemic agreement that does not only prepare us for the next pandemic but helps prevent it including the one health approach that we've learned so much about not all of it positive and there's one other thing I believe this is precious met so-so an African lady the intergovernmental negotiating body co-chair from South Africa she said there was progress on the fundamental areas of the draft agreement between these 11th and 12th rounds or or yeah these rounds that they're going through including research and development regulatory system strengthening one health pandemic prevention technology supply chain networks and a new system for increased access to pathogens of pandemic potential and sharing of benefits such as vaccines diagnostics and treatments following nearly three years of negotiations countries are now focused on the remaining and most critical elements of the draft treaty agreement to protect the world from future pandemics and she even goes on to say that every country will maintain its sovereignty and will maintain their control over a national health decision making under the UN system that is something that we have to watch very carefully it's very easy to say but according to the UN philosophy and the overall way that the UN system works that's something that they can slip out of pretty easily so there's a lot of lip service toward national sovereignty it's not necessarily real but that's the latest mike people can get involved through nagassiragussi suggestions and that treaty that many of us haven't heard about in a while this is what they're trying to do by the 15th of November no later yeah thank you mark thanks for that uh debbie you've got some health news as well yeah there's so many health stories to cover i thought i just cover a few today on the news so let's look at the government pledging further say action to strengthen patient safety because we do definitely need that apparently patient safety is at the heart of the government's plans for health care reform and dr penny dash has done a report has written a report into cqc and how she's identified that they had significant failings which hampered its ability to identify poor performance in hospitals care homes and gp practices what they're wanting to do is to restore public confidence um however the report was so bad that dr dash has been asked to conduct two more reviews um to look at patient safety and she's going to be looking at also the care quality commission maternity program she's going to be speaking and looking into the national guardians office health watch england a very own henry etter hues patient safety commissioner health services safety investigation body i didn't know there was one of those watch this space and nhs resolution so not good news but we knew that all along right um and then another news another news from sky who have um conducted their own investigation and are reporting sexual misconduct now this article is really quite troubling it goes on to say that they're in with paramedics there seems to be a culture of groping misappropriate jokes some have been threatened with rape pressured into sexual acts one even attempted to uh to take their own life after being locked in an ambulance and sexually sexually assaulted by a colleague and shockingly a birds of female surgeons are saying they've been sexually assaulted by a colleague and two-thirds sexual harassed so um this is not good when it comes to whatever we're seeing in the nhs it's bad enough with patients but we see what's going on with staff too moving on to covid uh very quickly because there's a new xec variant that seems to be causing great concern uh it's a hybrid of two existing variants i say that in inverted commas but of course it gives the authorities a really good excuse to tell you to grab a jab and let's stay on jabs for a minute thank you to at care and russ on x who sent me this asking if bedford hospital has violated the mureberg code one by financially incentivizing people by methods of coercion please go and have a look at his x but let's blow that image up because it says it's true do you know you can win 250 pounds because if you've had your flu jab you'll get put into a draw where you could win your 250 pounds but don't worry because if you've already had the jab if you can prove that you've had it show your evidence you can still enter it into an email um i'll leave that for our audience to decide what they think of that and then anybody would think that eli lily are doing the united kingdom of favor because they're launching a real world study which basically means an experiment on the on the british public to see how tuz this tuz this i was dreading saying this i've been practicing it but it's obviously not worked tuzipad tied i'm terribly sorry i have honestly been practicing it which is a medication that was designed for diabetics diabetes too it's in injection again it's been proved by the m h it's been approved by the m h r a and now they want to use it on benefit claimants because they say that because a britain has become a lazy place and people have got fat it's it's it's the sickness bill the pip the disability rates have gone shooting up and here you can see economic activity and we're treating getting his uh getting his two pet penithin saying that um basically it's a significant burden obesity nobody is giving any credence to the fact that there are a huge number and increasing of vaccine injured and if you're interested please do go and look at the eddowed interview that we had on the column who says that you know when he's he analyzed the pip and disability uh claimants and we've looked at it before soaring because of vaccine injuries but now we're going to give an injection for obesity when we maybe talk about that on extra two um so um quickly onto the world health summit because the world health summit has taken place it's just finished they're very proud of it 3,500 participants 140 countries 380 speakers and they're ever so proud of themselves because they've had loads of views on social media as well they've had 65,000 views on the the WHO website 21,000 views on the WHS but it was a donor event this was a donor event so let's actually use the correct language because as you'll see this was a WHO investment round in fact it was a begging bowl so here's a few of the speakers who said what Naveen Rao from Rockefeller's he wants to transform global health what a surprise we've got Jeremy Farrah who chief scientist formerly of sage author of spiked and of course welcome he's been in a CEO of welcome he's talking of the importance of trust I think that might be a bit difficult Jeremy if you're listening and Bill Gates he wants to bring together everyone's expertise who can pull resources to beat global challenges and you know what I'm just going to flip through the next few slides Mike because I'm probably going to get breathless telling you the amount of names so do go through them quickly so we're looking at all of the WHA's partners we've got strategic partners we've got general partners we've got premier partners we've got supporting partners we've got SEPI Siemens welcome GSK Roach I mean honestly just flip through the slides because it goes on and on and on Rockefeller's WHO we've got the club of Rome we've got civil society academia involved we've got McKinsey's involved there's their press their media partners this is just one huge big begging bowl for the WHO and just to prove my point here's an article from Reuters saying that the World Health Organization are absolutely delighted because they've now received one billion in pledges for their next budget and of course this is going to be membership for all the countries participating in the WHO so that's what we've got to look forward to and on a final note I'm sure many people have seen this story Blue Nose Day so whilst the WHO are raking in the money and telling us all the energy is going to cost a fortune and making us rely on renewables this school was planning to turn off the heating to teach children about climate change so they were saying to parents ever so sorry we're going to turn off the heating I'm very glad to say that they've now decided to do this in the summer term not in the winter term because of parents backlash over to you thank you Debbie thank you very very briefly the government has decided that because the prisons are too full and because a lot of the pressure on the number of prison places that are available is being caused by people that are on remand then the best thing to do is to give magistrates the part of increased sentences so in the past magistrates have only been allowed to give custodial sentences for up to six months and from now on they will be able to give custodial sentences for up to a year and what that means is that the lesser cases that are where people are sitting in remanded prisons they can be taken out of the prisons sent to the magistrates court in order to get their custodial sentence to be sent back to prison again and that's apparently going to reduce the pressure on the prison so if somebody could explain to me how that works please do write in um where does that take us then Debbie we've got a final video clip we have indeed and finally so for those of you abroad in the united kingdom in the late 60s and early 70s we had a situation comedy called Deafosto Park which featured a family in the east end of London called the Garnet family. I'm going to show you a little clip of Dandy Nichols talking to Eunice Stubbs those are the actresses that took part uh talking back into Deafosto Park and I'll just remind you actually that Tony Booth Lord Blair's father-in-law also was an actor into Deafosto Park but for now and finally it's over to Dandy Nichols and Eunice Stubbs. Christmas ain't but it used to be nothing is unless it's me getting older things was cheaper though not cheaper you could get five cigarettes for Titans then. Did they make them in fives anymore did they? Well you never see them. People smoke while I suppose. Yeah people do seem to be smoking more since the cancer scare. Worry I suppose. There was none of that then either. What? Cancer was all TB then. They could cure that now could they? Yeah I suppose as soon as they can cure cancer I'll think of something else to worry us with. My uncle Will used to say he reckoned it was the government. He used to give us all these diseases. They used to be tough man. They put them in our food that's what he used to say. You can taste it in the water sometimes. That's chloride. Well there you are. They put that in to improve the water. Don't improve the taste. My uncle Will used to say the only time they've got any use for us the only time the government's got any use for us is in a war. Rest of the time he used to say we're an embarrassment to him. Yeah he used to say that they only need so many of us to do the things that need doing the rest they'd rather be without. So they spray out food put things in the water to keep us down. Well they do it to wrap it. They used to grow all these own food. Everything. Well it could. He only had a window box. Over to you Mike. Well there's nothing I can say. I mean it's amazing how aware people were even then of what's going on and it yes you bring it back and it's more appropriate than ever. But anyway we'll leave it there for now. Stick around for extra. We're going to be a little bit short on extra today because we've got to get up to Bristol so but stick around for extra we'll be back in a couple of minutes. See you then. 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. And even better they offer access to experts and fast delivery so you and your warehouse can both keep your cool. Call 1-800-granger click ranger.com or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done.