UK Column Radio

UK Column News Podcast 1st November 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-1st-november-2024

Duration:: 1h 3m
Broadcast on:: 01 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Number FDIC. Good afternoon. It's Friday, the 1st of November, 2024, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me today, we have Mark Anderson and Debbie Evans. Welcome to the program, both. Now, we're going to get started today with a new piece of legislation introduced last week. Where I say it's a new piece of legislation. It's a rehash of an old piece of legislation that the Tory government had attempted to push through, but didn't get it through in time before the general election. This is called the data brackets use and access bill, and the scope of this is all encompassing. So it's a bill to make provision about access to customer data and business data to make provision about services consisting of the use of information to ascertain and verify facts about individuals. People to read this on their own, but it's talking about registers of births and deaths. It's talking about making provision about the disclosure of information to improve public delivery, public service delivery, and make provision about the retention of information by providers of internet services and connection with investigations in the child deaths. It talks about online safety and all these kinds of things, but really, this is all about data protection, and the aspect of this today that I want to focus on is digital identity. So just to remind everybody what digital, the government's archetype on digital identity is. They said that one type, this is going back a couple of years, one type of digital identity which could be developed under the trust framework is similar to a wallet, but created securely on your device. It lets you store various trusted pieces of information about yourself. We call these pieces of personal information attributes. So that's important, as you will see in a second. And at the time, I think this is 2018 or so, they said this could include, or digital identity could include disclosing details from the government, such as your legal name, date of birth, right to reside to work or to study as well as details from other organizations, such as your professional qualifications or employment history. Now, the really excellent thing that the government has now announced that everybody will be extremely impressed by this, I have no doubt, is the Office for Digital Identity and Attributes. This has been launched in the last few days, and well, they have a nice blog on their website. This is all about, at least this organization is all about enabling digital identity. So they've created a blog post on their website called a way to prove who you are that is fit through the UK's digital economy. What they say in this blog post to prove who you are across the economy today, you have to use a patchwork of paperwork from the government and the private sector, proving your age in the supermarket opening a bank account, buying a house. These processes are complicated, time-consuming and expensive. There is a better way to check that someone is who they say they are. We call this digital identity, digital identity can make people's lives easier and unlock billions of pounds of economic growth. And they say in this blog, we're doing this without any form of government identity card. So don't worry, it's all absolutely voluntary. This system does not involve a centralized database, they say. Using a digital identity will be completely voluntary. You will be in control of your data and who it's shared with. And they say that instead of a centralized database, you'll be able to choose from a range of digital identity and attribute providers based in the private and charity sectors. So basically, you will go to Yodie or a bunch of other companies, potential companies will come on to that in a second and you'll say I need to verify my identity to this particular government agency or that particular company or to YouTube, whatever to prove that you're over 18. And Yodie will provide the attributes to the third-party company that is needed. So there's no centralized database, but you've got to trust these companies that are holding your digital ID. So if we come back to this, the government in the meantime has launched through UKAS, which is the United Kingdom accreditation service. They've launched something that they're calling the UK digital identity and attributes trust framework and they have been encouraging these trusted providers to join up and register with them. And so far, they have around 50 companies, Yodie being probably the one that people are most commonly used to, 50 of these companies have registered with the digital identity and attributes trust framework. And so, of course, the question is, is it voluntary? And the answer is, well, no, it isn't. Is it really because, of course, the UK government saying that, well, you can always fall back on to using the telephone if you want to get access to government services, but increasingly, government relying on digital identity in order to access government services that everybody has to do every day. And also, of course, if you want to go traveling, this is increasingly a problem as well because biometrics and digital ID becoming a feature of entry into the European Union. Also, if you're coming from the European Union or other countries into the UK, digital ID and absolute feature of getting across the border, if you're not coming across on a small boat, of course. So digital ID is effectively going to be mandatory because basically you won't be able to do anything without it. So just coming back on to the data use and access bill, then we've got to remember that this is a really great piece of legislation because the government tells us that it is. And they say that the bill will unlock and secure the effective use of data for the public interest without adding pressures to the country's finances. The measures will be central to delivering three of the five missions to rebuild Britain set out by the prime minister. And those three are kickstarting economic growth, taking back our streets in Debbie, I love this one, the building of an NHS fit for the future. So that's what this bill is going to enable. But I'm going to say to everybody right here that this bill can't be allowed to pass in its present form. It is all encompassing. It not only covers digital ID, but it's talking about data sharing abroad, data taking your NHS data, for example, and spreading it right around the world with various providers in various ways. Debbie's been talking about this over quite a number of months now with this bill needs to be stopped and I would just encourage everybody to get involved in stopping it. But Debbie, let's move on to the NHS and say welcome to the programme. And well, what's the latest on well, life and death perhaps? Well, yes, good afternoon, everyone, lovely to be here. And of course, we have the autumn budget. So Sky News have been reporting that is the biggest day to day increase in NHS spending since 2010, and that's what was announced. And so I think to myself, well, this is a lot of money going into the NHS, but where has our money been going? And you might remember on Wednesday, Charles was mentioning at the time the budget was being delivered that there was going to be a COVID corruption commissioner. So I want to just remind people that actually this isn't new news. The BMJ announced back in July that there was going to be a COVID corruption commissioner to be appointed to recoup the billions lost to contract fraud. And on top of that, civil service world also announced around the same time that recruitment had begun and they went on in the article to say that Rachel Reeves will not tolerate any waste and will treat taxpayers' money with respect. Well, that's a big comment, isn't it? But apparently she did talk about the COVID corruption commissioner back as shadow chancellor. So this isn't a new thing, but where's our money been wasted? And I want to introduce you to an organization called Transparency International UK who produced this report called Behind the Masks and it lists the corruption red flags in the COVID-19 public procurement. Now, before I show you a few figures from their key figures, I just want to, because I haven't got time in the news to go into Transparency UK in depth, I just want to tell you that they are a registered private limited company and charity. They are the UK's leading anti-corruption organization, big statement. They're a global movement, an interesting, interesting language here. They have a hundred country chapters, right, chapters, and they want a world free of corruption. And in case you want to know who they advise, they advise NATO. And in case you want to know who runs them, they're run by CEOs from all sorts of private organizations, big companies, and ex-government political advisors. So just to give you the low down on Transparency UK, but the report does go on to say some very worrying statistics, so key figures from February 20, 20 to February 2023, the UK signed £1 trillion pounds worth of contracts through five bodies, the Department of Health and Social Care, Collaborative Procurement Partnership, the UK HSA and Crown Commercial. And what did this money go on? Well, let's look at testing for a start, testing 23.6 billion and PPE 14.5 billion. And the problem is that the UK had no competition. We just went for the first deal. We could get, unlike Europe, who stopped that practice, probably quite sensibly. But let's look at some more statistics because there are currently 135 high risk COVID-19 contracts, three or more with corruption, red flags, totaling a huge 15.3 billion, would you believe? And this money has got to be somehow recouped. If we go on to the next slide, which will tell you about how many contracts and how much they were worth, we're looking at 10 contracts worth 223.7 million. They went to micro supplies. Now these were the supplies that couldn't roll out the large projects. And I mean, please go back and look at this report because there are too many statistics to talk about in the news. But finally, on waste, we're looking at 14.9 billion has been written off in the last two years, some extraordinary statistics there. And perhaps we'll talk more about them in extras. So in summary, what did they realize? Well, they thought that it would probably be a good idea to investigate these 135 high risk contracts that have cost you and me 15.3 billion. And they ought to maybe think about how the UK changes its procurement system, which isn't rocket science, is it really? And they're going to strengthen safeguards against impropriety. So that's what they're going to do. And that's where your money went during COVID. Now I just want to go on a little bit more about the budget and how it affects the NHS and the sky news have brought out the fact that we're going to get the biggest tax rise since 1993. So as quick as we're trying to recoup money, we're going to shovel money into the NHS. But where's it going to come from? Largely, it's going to come from national insurance, which goes up from 13.8% to 15%, which is meant to be raising 25 billion for the Treasury. But at what cost and to who? And why am I concerned about this? Well, let me explain. Let's go back to assisted dying, and the Daily Mail have just bought out this article saying that MPs and peers are calling for a public inquiry into assisted dying. People are getting cold feet, and they want a Royal Commission set up, which the Prime Minister can do. Why are they getting cold feet? Well, I just want to remind you about Canada, and in Canada, we've got the medically assisted in dying scheme, the made scheme. And what happens in the made scheme are a number of things, but in particular life ending drugs are sent to patients with no follow-up as to what happens to these drugs. So they're being used for self-administration, death at home. So where are we going to be dying, death at home, alone, possibly, or maybe a death hub, which brings me on to hospices, because just recently in the House of Lords, there was a debate on the 21st of October regarding the funding of hospices, because although hospices are free, they're not fully state funded, only a third of funding comes from the state. The rest, they have to get for themselves, their deemed private organisations. And on July the 26th, a hospice UK reported an urgent call to save the end of life care, because the hospices are going to be threatened by cuts, and they've been a House of Lords debates, sorry if I missed that slide, but there was also a House of Lords debate on hospices. But ironically, hospice UK think that labour are going to help them, and they're really not, because as the iNews reports, the end of life care is to be stripped back, because if the NHS can't fund hospices, then basically they're going to close, because they have to use their own funding to cover that national insurance rise. And this brings me on to even more about assisted dying and where we're going to die, and how people are going to die, because the Telegraph report that terminally ill people are being coerced to end their lives for insurance payouts. The article in Telegraph goes on to say that terminally ill people are risk being pressured so that relatives get a payout, because assisted death is treated exactly the same as death from any other illness with regards to insurance companies. They also go on to say, what if the policy is near to expiry? What happens then, are relatives going to be pressured by their families to take their own lives before the insurance policy expires, and Professor Bill Noble says that many will die before their time. So what does this all mean? Well basically it means that if someone dies because they've been legally helped to ingest a lethal substance, insurance companies are likely to pay out, and what do the insurance companies say? Well, Zurich have said that no formal policy regarding assisted dying has been set up, but they do consider any claims sympathetically as a case by case, but they do highlight that most people will have been terminally ill and will have claimed on that policy prior to that. However, I do feel we're going down a very slippery slope, and I do feel that death is going to cost us an awful lot more over to you, Mike. Yes, but as we were talking about on Wednesday with the level of death that we're carrying at the moment, maybe death is the only option for the country. That's probably why there's so much pressure coming on and so much propaganda in the mainstream press about it as well, but sticking with the assisted dying situation. If you remember a few weeks ago, we were talking about this, the circle pod, and the fact that it had been used for the first time in Switzerland to enable somebody to kill themselves, and that the people involved in enabling that had been arrested by the Swiss authorities. They are still in custody, on demand in Switzerland, but the creator of this device has decided that he wants to make another one. This was all 3D printed and so on, so he's taking it to the Netherlands instead, since Switzerland is clearly unsafe for him, and that's being reported by the mail online, who could consider this to be an exclusive, but what I find particularly interesting about this is that this whole process is being enabled by two organisations, one called The Last Resort and the other called Exit International. We'll come onto that in a second, but this, just find this coverage of it extremely interesting because this is in the Netherlands they're talking about, the fact that the next one is going to be built in the Netherlands, and just looking at the, if you go and look at this website and look at this article on the website, the background there, which is all beautiful countryside and so on, is all animated. It looks very enticing, very pleasant, very smooth, very soft, very gentle, and of course that is encouraging people maybe to think this way, but if we just have a brief look at Exit International, I just thought it was slightly amusing, perhaps in a right sort of way, that the doctor behind the suicide pod, the circle pod wants AI to assist end of life, so they are absolutely pushing not only to make it easier and easier for people to end their lives in this way, but perhaps to make it an automated process so that maybe no human can ever be prosecuted under these circumstances, we'll talk a little bit more about this and extra, I have no doubt, but Mark, let me welcome you to the programme now, and let's talk a little bit more about the future of money. Yeah, a week ago yesterday, the Washington Post hosted the future of money, and last Friday, I put part one out there in terms of my reporting, and that people can refer to that and refer to last week's UK column to see the substance of that. Part two, just to give it a little more depth, was mainly Craig Vosberg, the Chief Services Officer of MasterCard, and I have a video in a moment, but I think we have a quote first from him. This is what he had to say. I don't expect cash to disappear. I think cash will always play a role in every economy to some extent, every economy he noted. I do think there is additional opportunity for digital payments to continue to displace cash, but I think there will always be a role for cash. And one detects a little bit, Mike, just a tinge throughout this part two, a little bit of kind of double talk going on, in a way it's good news because they say cash is always going to have a place, but I do detect a little double talk at any rate. There's a little bit more about what Mr. Vosberg had to say. Looking ahead a bit, how likely is it that we are headed towards an entirely cashless future? How soon might that happen? What are your thoughts there? What are we seeing? Yeah, it's an interesting question, and I heard that asked to the previous speakers as well. If you look around the globe, there are vastly differing levels of cash still in circulation in different country markets. In some markets, markets like the Nordics, which are extremely digitized to the point of cash being very, very low single digits going on the border, verging towards non-existent to other markets, including very mature economies where cash is still a prevalent way to pay. I think there's an element of this that has to do with societal preferences and values. There's an element of this that we'll have to do with government policy. I don't expect cash to disappear. I think cash will always play a role in every economy to some extent. I do think there's additional opportunity for digital payments to continue to displace cash because there are benefits around convenience, particularly as things continue to digitize, commerce continues to go more and more online. Even things as historically cash driven as paying to ride the bus or the subway, back in the day when we used to put cash in a machine and get a token, now you hold your contactless card at the terminal or you hold your phone and you're making that payment with your credit or your debit card, those kinds of things are beneficial to society. They are beneficial to consumers. They're hugely beneficial to those transit systems that are taking a lot of cost out of the system. So we'll continue to see areas like that where digital payments will proliferate, but I think they'll always be a role for cash. So that's a little bit more about what Mr. Vosberg had to say. Now in this next slide, we're referring back a little bit to part one for continuity's sake. S.Y. Prasad, the noted author of a book called The Future of Money, Cornell Professor and Brookings Senior Fellow, he was asked the likelihood of a U.S. Central Bank digital currency for the U.S. He answered rather surprisingly, highly unlikely, I think the U.S. is going to resist that, like any other good central bank, the Fed will move forward only if there's broad public and political support for it and we are not there yet. So this kind of is illustrated, Mike, of what went on a week ago, Thursday, to complete that report in that program hosted by The Washington Post, clearly they're kind of putting their finger in the wind to see what kind of public support they have for these things. A little bit of double talk in there, I think, is detectable, but on the other hand, it's good news in a way because I think there is reasonable public resistance against a cashless society. So we'll keep an eye on these sorts of issues as they come along so we can go back to you now, Mike. Yes, thanks, Mark. And well, it's interesting that those comments were made because they were absolutely echoed by the governor of the Bank of England, as we will see in a second. Before we get to that, though, let's just bring this up from Juniper and they're talking about the rise of CBDCs globally and stable coins as they describe it between 2024 and 2031. And they're saying that by 2031, the number of CBDC transactions will have risen to 7.8 billion per year by 2031. So that's not the monetary value. That's the number of transactions, 7.8 billion transactions, and they're suggesting that the transaction value would be in the region of $1.6 trillion by 2031. Well, this was all being discussed a few days ago—well, in fact, a couple of days ago at the International Banking Seminar. This was hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Group of 30 in Washington, D.C. This is the 39th International Banking Seminar. And Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, was speaking about CBDCs. Maybe he was echoing some of the comments that Mark has just been highlighting. Let's listen to a little bit of what he had to say. Are there reasons why in the retail space, digital payments need to be done in a newly created central bank digital currency? This is the point that Shatter Kantor, who was very eloquent on. So APIORI, I would take a slightly different view and say that actually I think commercial bank money, i.e. the banking system, is the best home for that innovation. But this is very important, but if that innovation is unlikely to happen, then central banks have to decide, are they the only game in town and what do they do? And the fact that we haven't reached a conclusion on that question justifies why for me and why in the Bank of England we're continuing to prepare for retail CBDC. Because to be frank, we haven't yet seen enough evidence that innovation will happen in the commercial banking system. So that's very clear, if the commercial banks don't step up and bring in the types of attributes that we would expect to see with a retail CBDC, then the central banks will continue to go ahead with it. So when the Fed's saying that they won't, well, as Mark has alluded to there, there could be a bit of fork tongue going on. So basically, he's saying to the central bank or to the retail banks, get a move on. You're not moving fast enough, you're not innovating fast enough. But then he went on to talk about cash. But I think it follows that if we are broadly indifferent whether retail payments are made in central bank or commercial bank money, then there isn't, in the retail area, so much an anchor role for central bank money. But it doesn't mean there's no role, let me be very clear on this, it has to be clear on this. It's not around about ways saying we don't need cash, actually, absolutely the opposite. We should supply cash as long as the public want cash, and certainly the evidence in the UK is that the public do want cash. So I think that's an extremely important point, and he's making it very clear that as long as there is demand for cash, the central bank will provide cash. So perhaps that gives us a clue as to what we need to be doing in order to avoid being sucked into a retail CBDC, or in fact, even if he's saying that the central bank of England wants to see retail banks providing the same types of attributes that we are so concerned about with retail CBDC, then we want to make sure that cash is maintained as a mechanism of exchange to avoid that even. So a pretty clear message there, it seems, but that's on the retail side, but what about the wholesale side? Because of course, wholesale CBDC is another issue, and as I've said before, I'm not certain we need to be quite so worried about it as we are with retail, because wholesale CBDC is all about international transfers between banking systems and so on. This report here from payments, the new value equation is talking about this, but they're talking about, in fact, artificial intelligence again, and artificial intelligence machine learning no longer being optional extras, but essential tools for everything from fraud prevention to customer service. I'm not sure what kind of customer service they're expecting to see from AI, but that's what they're arguing for, but on the wholesale side, we talked a few months ago about Project Enbridge, and in fact, if you're at the Science Beautiful Festival, we were talking about the fact that Project Enbridge had reached minimal viable product status, and this is a project or it was a project of the Bank for International Settlements to allow for wholesale CBDC transactions internationally, and so on. Well, here is the man himself, Mr. Karstens, and well, he has announced that, in fact, the Bank for International Settlements has handed Operation Enbridge over to the retail banks or the central banks of the countries that were involved in this in the first place. Apologies. So that involves five or six different countries, because basically the Bank for International Settlements doesn't seem to be terribly involved with that anymore. So we will keep this related. Now, the Enbridge project, of course, is led by China, and we'll see whether what's actually going on here is that there's a problem, because BRICS is also wanting to create its own CBDC bridge for wholesale CBDCs, but we'll keep an eye on that. OK, now let's just move on. If you like what the UK column does, and you would like to support us, the place to go for that is support.uk column.org. We do need your support. Increasingly, we need your support, so please make a donation if you can, or join as a member. There are various membership levels there, if you can possibly do that. Pick something up from the UK column shop, helps us greatly as well, and we do get a small percentage if you buy something from Clive to Karl.com doesn't cost you any more to do that, but we get a small percentage of every sale there. Do share the material. We're going to be coming onto Media Trust, but we're going to be coming onto online safety again in a second. Please use the share buttons and share the UK column material everywhere you possibly can, and of course, if you want to see the comments, there's a link there for that as well. Yesterday, the interview with Montgomery, Tom's wear died, and well, we have a short clip for that. If you haven't seen this, watch this short clip and then watch the full interview later on if you possibly can. We've got to wake up, we've got to have that blitz spirit if you like. You've got to put a nice suit on, get out, speak to people, and keep going on, because if you don't, what's the point? We can't live even if we feel that the situation is determined. We still have the free will and power to push on and win. We can do that, and hopefully, people will follow suit for the likes of you, for the likes of myself maybe, or for the likes of Ramese, who you've mentioned, who've met, who've been fighting against the lockdown stuff, for the likes of Alan Miller, who were together for the likes of Andrew Bridgen, figures out there that are fighting hard and still every day, even as we are pushed down and pushed down and pushed down, wake up and go, no, well, I ain't doing this and fight back. There is definitely hope, but only if we kind of pull together in unity, because as people we have power, we are the majority. So do watch that if you possibly can. And very briefly, Debbie, your blog should be uploaded this afternoon. What have you got this week? Well, I'm going to be asking everybody a question, are we heading towards federalism? Is the UK heading towards federalism? And what is the difference between devolution, loads of other stories, but also I'm particularly concerned with, are we going to have a sick winter ahead? Thank you, Debbie. Right. Mark, let's come back to the meantime. The question is, does anybody trust the media anymore? Very few, Mike, and this is one of the most significant examples that the media is losing the people's trust. This is quite the story. Here's Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, and he wrote this October 28th opinion piece, "The hard truth, Americans don't trust the news media," pretty straight ahead headline. In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists in the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress, and that is a feat. But in this year's Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. And let me tell you, that is an achievement. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Get those words. Something we are doing is clearly not working. You think? Moving on from there, of course, Jeff Bezos is the Amazon founder. He bought the post from the Graham family in 2013 for $250 million. During his tenure, the news organization has focused on digital subscriptions as print has declined. Anyway, he goes on to say in this very same editorial, and this is worth quoting at length, "Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from, and just as important as the first. Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate." It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing in the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn't see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fallen credibility and our decline in impact. But a victim mentality he says will not help, complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility. So Mr. Bezos is bearing his soul here. It's confession time, and he went on to say, "Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters are going to say, 'I'm going with newspaper A's endorsement.' None." What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias and non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it is the right one. And, of course, Mr. Bezos is a Bilderberg regular, I believe he was on the steering committee of that secretive organization. This is just a sample mic of some of the news reports flashing their headlines and ticker tape headlines across the screens. Bezos defends Weibo, which is Washington Post, as subscribers flee and board members resign. That's CNN, and CNBC noted on one of their flash, let's go back to that, CNBC noted. Bezos defends the decision not to endorse. Washington Post sheds 200,000-plus subscribers since this decision, which would be electronic subscribers or digital, 200,000, they're claiming, 200K. Anyway, there was a link in Mr. Bezos's editorial to Gallup, and the link leads you to this. Americans' trust in media remains at a trend low, trust in political and civic institutions highest for local and state governments, lowest for the media and the U.S. Congress. A little bit from that Gallup article, Americans continue to register record low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the media to report the news fully accurately and fairly, similar to last year's 32%. Americans' trust in the media, such as newspapers, TV, and radio, first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year. For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media, or 36%, than trust in a great deal or trust in a fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express not very much confidence. So there is some nuance here, but there's a chart. What this chart basically shows, Mike, is starting way back in 1972. There was three things to indicate. The top one is a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the media. The middle one is not very much confidence, and the bottom one is none at all. You'll notice that the one that was none at all, way back in the '70s, has only risen a little bit, the one that's not very much has been almost a flat line, and the one that was a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the media has had the most precipitous decline, all meaning in kind of a mediocre middle. But 36, 33, and 31, a very significant having little or no confidence in the media, a very significant percentage. And as we wind up here, it's worth recalling that the Washington Post was bought, I should say created, excuse me. It was created by a former Federal Reserve banker, Eugene Isaac Meyer. He was chairman of the Fed from September of 1930 to May of 1933. After leaving the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Meyer became the publisher of the Washington Post, serving in different positions for the newspaper until his death in 1959. So he actually created the Post, he was publisher of the Post from '33 to 1946, and according to Bezos, he thought the same way, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse in presidential candidates is not enough to move us up very far up the trust scale. It's a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning and not some intentional strategy. So in other words, he's saying, Mr. Meyer, who founded the Washington Post, would have agreed with him just to make that clear. I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo, Mr. Bezos wrote, of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. That was made entirely internally by the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos said in his all-important announcement. So this mic is one of the most significant admissions I've seen by a flagship journal of the American media that the trust in the media is at an all-time low and people just don't believe him anymore. So if there's anything that you would call good news, it's this. At this point, we'll go back to you. Thanks, Mark. Well, that's sort of sticking with this theme because let's bring the World Economic Forum on screen and they have published an article yesterday entitled "Why Younger Generations Need Critical Thinking, Fact Checking and Media Verification to Stay Safe Online." So they recognize there's a massive falling in trust in the media, but basically the way that we solve that problem is to indoctrinate our children in the right kind of thinking. Because, of course, the type of critical thinking and fact checking and media verification that the World Economic Forum is talking about here perhaps may not be the same as our own. But in the meantime, of course, in the UK Online Safety Act, getting very close to full implementation now and we're starting to see a flurry of activity in the mainstream press and other places about whether it's fit for purpose. So here's the BBC asking, saying the Online Safety Act is one year old, has it made children any safer? Of course, the answer to that is no, because it doesn't actually be implemented yet. Although it was given Royal Ascent a year ago, it has taken this long for off-come to get their act together and many people suggesting that even at this point it hasn't got its act together yet. So here's Hollywood. The Hollywood blog, a digital tightrope, a tightrope will the Online Safety Act deliver on its promises and they say within, with two months left until the Online Safety Act comes into force, it seems the bill could punch well below its weight. Since it received Royal Ascent, campaigners have been warning the act does not go far enough. Well, the main campaigner warning about this is the Molly Rose Foundation and this was set up by the family of Molly Russell who ended her life at the age of 14 in November 2017. The case, but as a result, the family have run this campaign in order to try to get social media companies in particular to take certain types of content down. This is part of the argument and perhaps this part of the argument could be supported. But of course, alongside this comes an art of about misinformation and disinformation and the whole censorship situation. Now, the Molly Rose Foundation has published this article one year on from Online Safety Act, strengthening the act to protect young lives and they're talking about actually revisiting the act in order to strengthen it and so on. But the question is what have the social media companies been doing so far to deal with this particular issue of child safety at least? Well, YouTube here, just an example, has set up a youth and family's advisory committee. It's stacked out with what they describe as independent experts that they're working with to try to deal with these issues. TikTok has set up its youth council which has held its first meetings. They call this a new initiative with an organization called Presidio Safeguarding and that's made up of young people between the ages of 15 and 18 representing a range of communities and countries apparently. We have Meta introducing Instagram Tina counts which is supposedly tailored for youngsters. And then we have of course the online digital ID companies helping Instagram in this case provide new ways to verify age. So the regime is rolling out as we speak. What else have we got? TikTok. Well, this is just before the general election launching a UK general election center. I'm quite sure equivalent situations are happening in the United States but sticking with the UK. This was the first platform release date to claim they were the first platform to launch a dedicated election center. But in the meantime of course the other organizations that are out there trying to claim that trust is with them are the fact checkers and here's full fact talking about the need to revitalize the online safety act in order to help fact checkers turn the tide on misinformation. And so they're saying that one year on from the online safety act becoming law it's clear that the vast majority of misinformation tackled by fact checkers remains out of its reach. That's out of the reach of the online safety act but it could have been so much better. So they are really complaining about that. Then we've got on the other hand the telegraph here highlighting David Davis, Sir David Davis now talking about the online safety laws posing as a substantial risk to the economy. And he is saying in this that while online safety acts intended purpose to make the UK the safest place to be online is welcomed. It's current design and scope post substantial risks to our economy and society. These businesses he's talking about the smaller businesses which have probably come under the regulatory regime often lack the resources of larger platforms like Facebook and X and that they're disproportionately burdened by this uncertainty. And he's basically saying that the regulatory cost for every user on a smaller platform might be as much as 40 pounds whereas the regulatory cost for each user on one of the larger platforms just through economies of scale are more likely to be about 40 pence. And so of course this causes major problems for the smaller organizations if they want to compete with the larger organizations. And of course that's part and parcel of what the online safety act wants to do because that the inability of the smaller companies to compete means that the larger companies which are much more inclined to follow the government narratives basically maintain their market dominance but just ending with full fact again, off com should move now to set up its advisory committee on disinformation and misinformation. Well this is part and parcel I think it's section 50 of the online safety act. So the requirement to set up an advisory committee on disinformation and misinformation is in the online safety act and off com is moving ahead with that in the next month or so. So clearly a number of different things going on here but a lot of pressure building to relook at the online safety act because it isn't doing quite what some people would like it to do and we'll see how that develops over the coming days and months. But in the meantime Debbie you've got sort of more on the same type of theme. Yes I have indeed let's stay on misinformation and disinformation because I'm going to show you who trained Marianna Spring, who is pulling Marianna Spring and UK sorry BBC verify springs we're going to find out. So let's look at an infodemic, what is an infodemic, I'm just going to show you this slide from the WHO because they obviously are looking at the definition of an infodemic which is slightly different but it covers all generations so they are looking at it for health too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environment during a disease outbreak causing confusion and risk taking behaviours can harm health and that lead to mistrust there we go again with the mistrust in health authorities. Now misinformation has always been around but when did this become an industrial complex of it's very own, do you remember this? >> Can you give a question, Mr. President elect, since you are attacking our new organization sir, can you say, Mr. President elect, can you give us a question, can you give us a question, can you give us a question, can you stay categorically that nobody, no, Mr. President elect, that is not appropriate. >> Fake news, that's what he said and they decided amongst themselves that fake news was not the term to use because it could include satire and clickbait headlines. So I want to introduce you to the Wardle Deccar Schahn, I do apologise for the pronunciation there, framework of information disorder, so no more fake news, that's gone way now and now we have information disorder and if we look further into it we can see that information disorder, this was a publication that was commissioned by the Council of Europe and it was written in 2017 by Claire Wardle and Hussein Deccar Schahn, I do apologise for that. So I want to go and have a look at the authors, in particular let's look at Claire Wardle and have no fear, we don't have very far to go and look because the World Economic Forum, she's got her own page, she's a journalist that started at Cardiff University, she's now a professor at Brown University Public Health, that's in Rhode Island, she developed social media training for the BBC, BBC News, she's advised non-governmental organizations and governments around the world and also she's been involved with first draft which I'll come on to in a minute, she's also a senior social media officer for the UNHCR which of course is the UN Refugee Agency, so she's a busy lady, so let's look at first draft coalition and you'll see here that they launched a website to help journalists work with eyewitness media. Now Claire Wardle, here's that name again, she co-founded it and she says that she's trained over 4,000 people in the field of social discovery and verification, so when I went to wiki to look at first draft news, I found out that it was a project that was started to fight misinformation and disinformation online, it was founded in 2015, Open Society, Google News, Lab, Facebook, Twitter and in June 2022 more interestingly it closed down and it moved, so it was disguised by another name and it was disguised and moved to the Information Future Lab, so this is interesting, let's go and have a look at the Future Lab, this is Brown University School of Public Health, they are now the new home to Information Futures Lab, but what do they actually do, well according to the website they examine more than social media networks, they work with online and offline, they're multidisciplinary, they work with, well they work with pretty much everybody including government and they think in years not months and all about long term protection, so who co-founded this organization I wonder, oh surprise Claire Wardle, well Claire Wardle has now been called the world leader in the field of misinformation and verification and user generated content, so where we come full circle, since she is the world leader we come full circle back to information disorder and her Council of Europe report, but what does it actually say, well it tells you a bit about the authors, so we've already talked about Claire Wardle a little bit, but there is a little bit about the other author there, he's Iranian, Canadian and he actually pioneered blogging and as a result he spent six years in prison and then he authored a book called the web we have to say, but what is this information disorder all about, well let's have a look further on, we're looking at misinformation which is false information that has been shared but there's been no harm meant, we've got disinformation which is false information shared to knowingly cause harm and then we've also got mouth information and this is where it gets really interesting because this is genuine information that's been shared to definitely cause harm, so it's like private information that's been moved into the public sphere and this information disorder is, I mean please go and read the paper on it because it's very detailed but we have, basically we move on into three phases which are creation, production, distribution of information disorder and there's an agent, a message, an interpreter, I mean there is far too much on this to show on the news, so please go and have a look but what does it say about how did we get to this point because how did we get to this huge misinformation, disinformation agenda, well they likened it back down to the 2016 presidential election which of course involves President Trump which led to the immediate search for answers because there was frenzied reporting and all sorts of fabricated news sites but she's come up with loads of solutions, Claire Wardle, she's a very clever lady, she's here for everybody, so what do national governments do? Well national governments can commission research, they can map information, they can regulate ad networks, transparency over Facebook ad cybersecurity training and they can enforce minimum levels of public service news on to platform but that's not all, what can the media do, and this will probably be interesting to you Mark and Mike, the media can collaborate and agree on a policy of strategic silence would you believe, they can ensure strong ethical standards across all media, they can debunk sources as well as content, they have to talk about information disorder and they needed to produce more news but that's not all, we've got civil society as well, civil society need to educate the public into information disorder and they need to act as honest brokers but what else? It doesn't stop there, we're looking at education ministries and funding bodies and we need to work with libraries, that's if we've got any left that are open but you know what, don't take my word for it, why does misinformation matter, you know Claire Wardle is a very busy lady, she's got loads of training videos, let's look at what she says about misinformation. The WHO started talking about an infidemic at the end of February and what they were suggesting was that we were already in a situation where we had dangerous misinformation circulating around the corona pandemic and so an infidemic is essentially understanding that if false or misleading rumours or hoaxes circulate at speed amongst a population that are already scared it might lead to offline behaviours that could cause more harm, so yes we have seen a number of rumours and hoaxes already so we've seen one that suggests that in America the Centre for Disease Control are coming door to door and actually that's a scam, that's actually making people nervous, nobody's going door to door, we've also seen rumours circulating about tanks moving down, motorways in interstates and suggesting that there's going to be a lockdown in 72 hours, now whilst that is concerning and it's definitely elevating the risk it hasn't necessarily led to real world offline behaviours yet and imagine a scenario when people say this hospital has no supplies but this one does, you can still go there, you can imagine that we would be in a situation that could cause even more problems than we currently are facing with the virus itself but if we don't take information accuracy seriously then we have got, we're going to see some really serious problems, say to friends and family please don't share anything unless you are 100% sure that it is accurate because right now you can in the middle of the night when you wake up and you're frightened and you start scrolling through Facebook, share something without thinking and ultimately that kind of sharing right now can have real offline, real world calm. So there's Professor Claire Wardle, she's got loads of training videos and my final slide on this segment because there's so much more to say but my final slide is that when she's not busy training, she's busy writing papers and here we have a systematic review of COVID-19, misinformation, interventions, lessons learned where she's talking about microchips so more to come on Professor Claire Wardle. Yeah, I was just thinking that little video, clipper first didn't itch very well there, Debbie we can talk about that an extra as well but anyway Mark let's come back to you and what's going on with the US election then? Well this has to do with the irrepressible garland fabrico of voters organized for trusted election results in Georgia and he gave a presentation this past Wednesday and it was a press conference and it was garland fabrico and david cross presenting secretary of state reports video admissions and forensic evidence illustrating that the secretary of state certified the wrong winners in both the 2020 presidential and US senate races they will demonstrate or they demonstrated how anyone can confirm these claims and how a faulty certification in 2024 this election can be prevented and we'll go on from there this is just a couple pictures I took from the presentation screenshots I covered it virtually the press conference new 2020 election evidence forensic findings by garland and there's an interview I did of garland a while back that's posted on the uk column website anyway we've got a video clip where garland recaps what was wrong in the 2020 elections and these have absolute and total ramifications for this election too these problems have not gone away so let's watch this clip and it illustrates the problems that have persisted since 2020 facts say that this is the least safe least secure and least honest election that we have ever seen in georgia here are the facts that every georgia voter needs to know a u.s. district court found on october 11th 2020 that the dominion voting system used in the november 2020 election is unverifiable to the voter and in violation of two georgia statues there are six sworn affidavits of counterfeit mail-in ballots in the phultan county election results that scale into the tens of thousands of votes the state farm marina video shows at least four violations of georgia election law approximately 43 000 DeKalb county drop box ballots have no chain of custody for us true votes geotracking research showed evidence about harvesting teams driving repeatedly to drop boxes in Fulton and DeKalb counties all 350 000 plus original in-person ballot images in Fulton are missing in violation of federal and state retention laws all 393 000 plus original ballot images in cob are missing in violation of federal and state retention law at least 17,720 certified in-person recal votes have no ballot images at all in Fulton county 18,325 voters had vacant residential addresses according to the united states post office all are parts of nearly two million original ballot images from over 70 georgia counties are missing okay those numbers pretty much speak for themselves again these are the problems from 2020 that are persisting to today but garland explained that there's things that people can do as i'll note in this final slide how to prevent such problems in 2024 monitor interim election results as they are reported this is being advised that voters citizens should monitor the interim election results as they're reported every interested citizen is called upon to screenshot these ongoing results results as they're updated and there's a website called voteifynow.org and it's an election tracking system and an app where people can share experiences and problems that they've seen and then that can be utilized and a quick explanation because there's a lot of things that are shared there by garland and all the missing ballot images what are ballot images a ballot image is a digital copy of a physical ballot typically in a jpeg photo format they are legally required this is garland's quote they are legally required by both federal and state law to be retained for about two years and garland added that secretary of states office that's brad raffensberger has wrongly told georgia counties that they need not retain the ballot images contrary to the law and uh you might recall mike um diane ser saw her election results making strange changes she would have so many votes and all of a sudden the votes would would drop down inexplicably that's why garland is uh advocating that people monitor the interim results and make frequent screenshots to make sure that the numbers are not making um inexplicable and hard to explain changes so uh that's um that's that's a bit of reality that the washington post might increase its credibility by reporting but i don't i don't expect the post to do that anytime soon just as an example of what the what the press could report if they wanted to restore their credibility but anyway back to you mike yes well just just to demonstrate that this apparently uh is not uh going away anytime soon a few people sent this through to me and thanks to everybody that did this video clip doing the rounds yeah i don't know if you've got any thoughts in this mark but it demonstrates that that again uh here we are in 2024 and apparently the voting machines miss uh voting on behalf of people so so that was very clear that that person was voting for donald trump uh but it ended up being a come out of harris vote and of course this was happening in 2020 as well and in fact kenny earlier on today was was looking back to see when we're the earliest examples of this type of thing and it was 2010 was the earliest we can find so this has been well understood for a number of years and it does fascinate me that you know the united states is the first to criticize georgia or other countries uh the election processes when they maybe are uh resulting in a result which is uh pro-russian uh but perhaps the united states is one of the worst examples of uh election uh capability and the on the entire planet but uh debbie uh let's finish uh also in the united states uh with janet yeland yeah let's finish with janet yeland and for people that don't know who janet yeland is she's the equivalent to the uk's chancellor of the exchequer she's the head of the treasury in the usa and do you believe in divine intervention because when she was doing a press uh press conference she was asked a question about what what the fate of the dollar was and keep an eye on the sign on her podium have a look at this a more on the near-term economic impact of these policies and over a longer time horizon how concerned are you about the potential impact of the dollar status as the world reserve currency um i think that probably speaks for itself yes indeed it does right thank you very much debbie thank you mark for joining us today we're gonna leave it there for now thanks to everybody that's been watching we'll be back in a couple of minutes if you're uk column members for some extra if you're not a uk column member please do join us and then you can join us for extra but otherwise have a great weekend we'll see one p.m. as usual on monday see then bye bye but there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally like growing up with a bank you can count on like being sure what you've earned is safe secure and local there's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community you deserve more from a bank you deserve an institution that stood strong for generations bank 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