UK Column Radio

UK Column News Podcast 15th November 2024

Mike Robinson, Debi Evans and Mark Anderson 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-15th-november-2024

Duration:: 1h 3m
Broadcast on:: 15 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 15th of November, 2024, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me today, we have Debbie Evans and Mark Anderson. Welcome to the program both. We're going to get started today with Rachel Reeves and her mansion house speech in the city of London. Let's just have a look very quickly at a couple of things that she said. So first of all, she said that we can't take the UK status as a global financial centre for granted because it's a highly competitive world and we need to earn the status and we need to work to keep it. She said that while it's right that successive governments made regulatory changes after the global financial crisis, that those changes have really gone too far and they had unintended consequences and so the Labour government is going to, the Labour regime is going to address those problems and remove a lot of the regulation that the city of London has been under since 2008. So she's saying the changes that she's setting out today when she made this speech will drive growth and competitiveness through investment and through reform. So how is she going to reform this? A long-term strategy to harness the strengths of the financial services sector making the UK a global leader in sustainable finance and of course, we all understand what that means. This is related to climate change, the net zero policy and so on. So sustainable finances, the way that she wants the city of London to go. But then she said, by reinvigorating our capital markets, by unlocking private investment through our pension funds. So she is wanting, as everybody will know by now, to merge 86 consul pension funds together to make these so-called mega funds and that that money will then be made available, she assumes, although she says that she's not going to mandate this to be made available for infrastructure projects. Now, people may have noticed by now that if you're looking closely at the screen that I have spelled Rachel Reeves name incorrectly there, it should be R-E-E-V-E-S, I've spelled it R-E-A-V-E-S because, of course, what she's doing is reaving. She is stealing effectively people's pensions for infrastructure. But just so that we get a feeling for how she was presenting, I'm going to apologize in advance for doing this, let's just listen to her closing few words from her mansion house speech. "We cannot rest on our laurels, where we have strengths, we must build them, where we have weaknesses, we must address them, and in everything we do, we will work together with you in partnership because that is what our country needs to prosper and to grow." Thank you very much. So that must have been an inspiring speech, they politely clapped at the end, I hope nobody felt too ill after listening to that. But the question is, what is the situation with infrastructure and why is she wanting to effectively gather up all this cash? I think in total it's going to be something I get $100 billion at the end. Well, perhaps this gives a clue, what's ailing UK listed infrastructure projects, this is from infrastructure investor, and they're making the point that basically there's no money to be made in infrastructure, therefore there's not much interest in it. The funds that are there for infrastructure projects aren't getting the kind of investment that they need, and so they are valued significantly less than the alleged value of the infrastructure assets that are being built. So this is part of it, of course. If we look at this then from EY, UK faces infrastructure spending shortfall of at least 800 billion pounds by 2040, says EY report. They're saying with inflation pushing project costs higher, EY report identifies 1.6 trillion pounds of UK infrastructure and capital projects that are currently unfunded. Now there's nothing new or unique about this, this has been going on for a very, very long time, every year the government publishes its infrastructure pipeline, which is effectively an Excel spreadsheet, which shows all the major infrastructure projects that are going on in the country, and where the funding for those is coming from. And while all of those have amounts of government funding allocated to them, the remainder is supposed to be provided by the private sector, and most of these infrastructure projects remain unfunded, because the private sector generally isn't that interested. So the aim here is to build these massive pension funds that are relatively large compared to the size of them as they stand at the moment, with a view to them being therefore managed by a smaller number of people who may be more inclined to head in this direction. But if anybody thinks for one second, what Rachel Reeves is doing here is in any way different, if there's been any change with the Labour regime's policy compared to the Tory party. And let's just look at this tweet from Jeremy Hunt, who's the previous Chancellor of the Exjector, of course, much to welcome in Chancellor's Mansion House speech today, broadly same strategy and approaches I announced in the Mansion House reforms last year, and finally important for UK tech, life sciences and infrastructure sectors. So Debbie, I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but really it's quite incredible that, again, we have policy which just seems to trundle on from the previous administration and the unit party in action, as far as I can see there. Yes, it completely is, and of course, we're mentioning life sciences then, we're mentioning data and infrastructure again, and I want to come onto that, actually, Mike, are we ready to go onto data and infrastructure, because you've been talking about it for a very long time, and I have to say that data is valuable, and Rachel Reeves, I love the way you spell the name, by the way, it does mean thief, data is valuable, and data is the new currency. It's our new economy, if you like, and data and life sciences go hand in hand. So digitisation, the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes, Mike's been showing you for ages, and in the UK currently we have got 67 million sources of data, that's how many of us there are in this country, and I'm going to ask you whether you are going to sacrifice control for convenience, because if we go back to UK Garver Plan for Digital Health and Social Care, this was a forward by Sajid Javed in June 2022, where he says, I am determined to make this app the front door to NHS services referring to the NHS app, new functionality and more value for patients every single month. My vision is one in which the app is an assistant in your pocket, well I would argue that it's a spy in your pocket, and it's a spy that's going to be very helpful to Rachel Reeves, and as we see on the BBC, we know that patients are going to get full access to their medical records and their patient records, this is a digital revolution on a single patient record of the NHS app, and of course bringing it right up to date, where streetings is announcing that diabetics are going to get smartwatches and also actually smart rings, which I will feature on another news, the aura ring, it just don't even start me on the ring, but you're going to have apps to monitor you. So the NHS app is far more important than you can possibly imagine, here's the website, if you don't know about it, you do now, this is how you can get the NHS app if you want to. We've talked about it loads of times before, tons of articles on the column about it, this is just one, the news on the 30th of August 2024 when we were talking about the app, but as I said, the app is way more important than you can ever believe, and I just want to remind you of how important it is to the NHS boards, and note they're almost salivating at the thought of the rollout of the NHS app, have a listen. When the apps focus on people that need the NHS to support their illness, we've got a full programme coming up over the next 12 months to move the vaccination screening programme onto the app, because we know that patients who book their own appointments are more likely to turn up for them, and the more patients we can get screened, vaccinated the better. We're putting the digital health check onto the NHS app, I have to say to start with it's not going to be amazing but, and I shouldn't say but I should say hand, and we have to start somewhere, which is allow the patient to order their home testing kit and send it back, because we know over the next year, two years, five years, that home testing kit will be available on their phone, it will be available electronically, and if you don't believe me, I looked yesterday at the camera that sits by the bedside that takes all of the vital signs of the patient in front of them without touching the patient, and when you then think about what that might do to the new hospital programme, and how that tech can evolve, and when we talked about virtual wards earlier on, how do we connect the virtual ward technology into the NHS app, so that citizens can use that and monitor their health data, most of us have wearables on us, the future of how we use our NHS app and giving our citizens their digital account to manage their own healthcare is stunning, and for those that don't believe, and there are some, we are saying, I think very conservatively, that we want to move a third of all of our health interactions to being digital first over the next five years. There is a remark at the very beginning of that, that I hadn't noticed before, where he says that he wants to support their illness, he doesn't want to support their health or support their cure, support their wellness, their illness. Well, no, absolutely, this is all about being ill, this is not about well, I mean, let's face it, the pharmaceutical companies don't make any money off well people do they, so this is all about illness, supporting illness, diagnosing bad illnesses, we'll come on to look at that, but where is your data going Mike, because as we know, we've spoken many times about it and so has been, we all have Palantir, so Peter Thiel, a private company, CIA connections, £330 million contract, originally, you know, he only bid £1 for this contract, but looking further on into Palantir, proud to serve the NHS they say, I bet they are, using the Foundry key tool, this is the NHS's biggest ever exercise and operational data integration, and of course, we come back to the vaccine rollout, but you know what, apps are being added all the time, and I have to say I haven't included it in this news, but Ping and Book is the latest one, if you go to the search bar of your browser and put Ping and Book NHS, you can Ping and Book, a breast scan, or a cervical smear, well my message to the NHS, thank you, is Ping off, however, I am going to show you another app that they are adding, and this is going to be added to the NHS app, this is the NHS West Yorkshire, they launch this, the support app for unpaid carers, please note that, unpaid carers, they are going to be in collaboration with Fitbit, Alexa, it's going to be remote, it's going to hold medical records, but let's look a little bit more at what is care networks because this is what they are called, where they say supporting a loved one has never been made easier, but what does it actually mean, when we look at core functionality, what it actually says is that they are going to use a secure collaboration, a shared calendar, real time messaging and document sharing and management of your loved one, and they have even coined the phrase very nicely, share to care, which means integration, they are going to integrate this in 2025, so it's not long, they are going to use this for your loved ones at home and if you can't care for them, if you are at work, if you are busy, they are going to jump in using home devices such as Google Home, Alexa, AI personalisation to look after your loved one, so what does it look like on the actual app, well when you go and look at the pictures that they show, there you can see right in the middle, it says you can't get it more plainly than that, trackers, because that is what it's all about and what is the integration framework that they talk about, well they talk about this integration, you've got this Yorkshire and Humber care record integrated with the NHS, also integrated again with Fitbit and what did concern me was a comment that they had on their pre-launch feedback, which actually says, I love the way that it takes all of your information, it makes it easy, but it also makes it easy for employers because many people, many carers have to have time off work, have to look after their loved ones, so there's employees benefits too, enhancing the workplace, because now employers who are carers, they don't ever need to get depressed anymore, isn't this fantastic, this little app is going to make everyone feel much, much better and there's solutions, so you know this is going to make a huge difference to the workplace, 2.6 million people apparently quit their jobs to care for a loved one, well you won't have to anymore now, because you can have the app and there's more benefits, I mean please do go and look at this app, because really it's huge, but the benefits are that you'll get reduced stress, improved health and your own company can have a branded app, how exciting is that, looking at the stats, we can see that women are more often or not the unpaid carers, so we've got 5 to 10 million carers, 162 billion of unpaid care going on with over 1.5 million providing care for exceeding 50 hours, now here's a very short excerpt from CareWorks's little video, have a look. [Music] And there you go, the music drives you mad doesn't it, but this is the app that's going to look after your loved one when you can't, so please, those of you that are watching, if you have the NHS app, would you consider deleting it, if you know somebody that has the NHS app, would you consider suggesting to them that they delete this, because this is the digital front door, this is the front door to a digital health, a digital hell, in my opinion, and we are giving you the information, this is informed choice, this is what informed choice is all about, so here's the choice, you decide we're going to start an army, we're going to do something, every little helps, can you help us scrap the app and send, #scraptheappviral, please do help, because it really will make a huge difference, and it will kick the government right in the guts. Thank you, Debbie, thank you for that. Mark, let's come over to you now, and of course, this week Trump has been announcing his appointment for his cabinet and his non-cabinet positions, what's your view? Well, it's a mixed bag for sure. The general statements to make up front is that so far I'm seeing much less of a outright globalist pedigree, Mike, in his choices, no obvious or detected council and foreign relations members, for example, or any of the other major think tanks from Washington and that greater area, which is somewhat encouraging. We can start with this slide, and I'll give some more overview as we go along. For national security advisor, we're looking at an actual Florida congressman, Mike Waltz, W.A.L.T.Z. spelled like the dance. He's a colonel retired in the National Guard, a combat decorated green beret, former White House and Pentagon policy advisor, small business owner, author and proud father, the first green beret to be elected to Congress, born in Florida, raised by a hardworking single mom, et cetera. He has served his country his entire life, this is from his own bio. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute with honors, served 27 years in the Army and National Guard, retiring during his second term in Congress. After being commissioned as an army lieutenant, he graduated Ranger School with a selector for the elite green berets, et cetera, et cetera. For his actions in combat, he's gotten four bronze stars, including two for valor. So we've got somebody that's gotten his hands dirty. You might say someone who's been on the ground who's going to be national security advisor. That's a bit different than predecessors in recent times. His service continued at the White House as well as at the Pentagon. And this is a little bit interesting, however, as a defense policy director for secretaries of defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates. Now, they were very globalist oriented. Of course, Rumsfeld has been cited for corruption his entire life. This doesn't necessarily indict Waltz, but it's worth mentioning. Waltz also advised the Bush administration on policy. He then carried out in the military, kind of playing both sides of the fence there, his experiences as a soldier and policy advisor inspired him to write the book warrior diplomatic green berets battles from Washington to Afghanistan. And those proceeds went to charity, including benefiting a green beret fund. He also wrote a children's book Dawn of the Brave, a Christian book that teaches children the importance of service, which is notable. I will move on and start covering some of the others. Other Trump nominees who like Florida US representative Mike Waltz must leave Congress to serve in these topics, executive posts. They include representative Matt Gaetz, a nominated for attorney general. He's also from Florida. He's undergoing an ethics probe right now. However, New York US representative Elise Stefanik, she's going to have to leave Congress to be ambassador to the UN for Trump. Of course, JD Vance, US Senator out of Ohio, leaving that Senate post to be vice president and another Florida Congress member, US Senator Marco Rubio to be secretary of state. And he's being tapped for that partially mic because he's been involved with intelligence committee's and other key committees in Congress. So he might seem like a strange fit for secretary of state, but Trump insists otherwise. Now going on here, this is from the House of Representatives press gallery. And it shows the party break down 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats in the house. And it has two vacancies for representative Bill Pascrel out of New Jersey, a Democrat that passed away in August. And Matt Gaetz, a Republican who resigned his Congress post to be attorney general. But I'll note that one of the consequences of the way that Trump is going about this, Mike, is that those that you might call good people, good conservatives, many of them constitutionalists are being pulled out of Congress, pulled out of the Senate and house positions, and even out of governorships at the state level to serve in the Trump administration. So there is a trade off there, a dependable MAGA America first, conservative Republicans are no longer going to be in the legislative bodies to a degree. And that might present some challenges if those seats are filled by right Republicans, Republicans in name only, who are more old school GOP and tend to be more globalist. So that's a dynamic we have to look at. Now, looking at this slide to explain a little bit about how the system works in Florida and Ohio, the governor appoints a replacement U.S. Senator who will serve until the next statewide election. Ohio governor Mike DeWine and Florida governor Ron DeSantis each will appoint someone to fill their state's respective Senate seats until a special 2026 election can be held. The 2026 elections winners will serve the remainder of JD Vance's and Marco Rubio's terms. That's how it works. Thus those winners would have to seek reelection in 2028. You serve full six year terms if you serve a full term in the U.S. Senate. Both DeWine and DeSantis have long histories with Trump, though the Ohio governor Mr. DeWine is one of the few prominent Republicans who declined to endorse Trump's 2024 bid. And DeSantis relationship with Trump also has been a bit cold after the two men faced off in the GOP presidential primaries earlier this year. However, these two Republican governors are expected to work in their party's best interests given Trump's decisive victory. So that's how it's shaping up in terms of those matters. Now who will replace JD Vance as Ohio Senator? This is according to the pro life life news.com. So this is a a socially conservative news outlet that's looking at social issues. I won't get into all of this some replacements for JD Vance in the U.S. Senate since he's going to be vice president include Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan. He served in the State House for more than a decade and became a state senator. However, he upset conservatives by sponsoring Ohio's version of the Equality Act. An extreme LGBT bill that would strip away protections for free speech, religious liberty, privacy, girl sports and conscience rights for anyone with moral objections to same sex marriage or transgenderism. See, so there's risk involved that people like JD Vance leaving the Senate might be replaced by those that are particularly liberal Republicans. Others include other replacements for JD Vance include Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Lieutenant Governor John Husted, Attorney General Dave Yoast and James Timken, who was Ohio's Republican Party Chair for about four years. And so these are some others to keep an eye on. That top one, of course, is a concern given his very liberal views for a Republican. Now, one of the big announcements, Mike, and this just came out last night, mainly in terms of making it official. RFK Jr. Yes, it's true has been named to be the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary. This happens to be from NBC News. President-elect Donald Trump on 14 November picked RFK Jr. an anti-vaccine activist, NBC declares, who dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump to lead the DHHS. Trump made the announcement on his social media platform Truth Social. I am thrilled to announce RFK Jr. as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Trump wrote, "For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Kennedy himself said, "We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic." NBC went on to say that during his presidential campaign, Kennedy developed a national profile for his criticism of the COVID vaccines and childhood immunizations. He's claimed that vaccines are tied to autism despite evidence to the contrary. NBC insists the appointment of Kennedy's 70-deleted HHS ends the days of speculation about what health role, if any, the former independent presidential candidate, turned Trump advisor, would play in the upcoming administration. And Kennedy has promised, or excuse me, Kennedy has claimed Trump promised him control of these public health agencies. And allegedly, Kennedy will come down to take a closer look at the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies that have been so pro-vaccine in the past. There's some other slides here that a lot of this can be looked at after the fact, or people can do freeze frames or look this up later. But I have some New York Times listings for the Senate confirmations. The Senate confirmation is required for these nominees. That includes Attorney General Matt Gaetz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, not soon to be former South Dakota Governor Homeland Security, Christie Noem, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who formerly was Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of National Intelligence nominee is Tulsi Gabbard. Some media outlets are calling her isolationist. We got EPA Lee Zeldin, UN, Elise Stefanik, also currently in the House. And of course, Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And the next slide shows where there's no Senate confirmation required. One that's not listed here, though, Mike, is Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas Governor, who's going to be the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. And he's noted for being very pro-settlement and very stridently pro-Zionist and pro-Israel. So it's a little difficult to see how we'll get a lot of impartiality out of Mr. Huckabee. And given the time left, we can do some of this in extra. I also have some slides on how the 17th Amendment works and how the states appoint replacements for senators that resign and things like that. So we'll take a harder look at that, Mike, if we can in extra and explain a little bit more about how the system works. So back to you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you very much for that. Now, in the meantime, then a news article came out in the New York Times, headlined Elon Musk, met with Iran's U.N. Ambassador, sorry, Iranian official say the tech billionaire, a top adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, was reported to have discussed ways to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States. Many people are asking what this is all about. Then it even happened. Now, the United States hasn't offered any kind of confirmation that this has happened. This came from two unnamed Iranian sources apparently, but has been described as positive and good news by some. But the question is, what is this about? And well, the suggestion that I have been told is that perhaps Musk, if he did meet with the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. was there to basically suggest that perhaps sanctions could be lifted under certain circumstances. Perhaps there is an economic or a business opportunity there if sanctions were lifted. But the question is, what would be the return on that? And it seems that the suggestion is that Iran would be perhaps taking a backseat, as Israel completes the work that it needs to do, as it precedes itself to need to do. And certainly there are other hints that this is what might be going on. Because, for example, just today, Iran has come out in support of U.N. resolution 1701, which is all about creating effectively a demilitarized zone along the southern edge of Lebanon, sorry. And so this effectively would be perceived as being a withdrawal of support for Hezbollah, for example. So there's many, many questions to be asked. I'm sure Vanessa will have more on this next week, but many, many questions to be asked if this meeting did happen as to what exactly was going on there. Now, if you like what the UK column does, you would like to support us. The place to go for that is support.uk column.org. There are options to help us there. You could make a donation. You could join us as a member. And of course, joining us as a member gives you access to extra, which we produce after each of the news programs, the various levels of membership there. You could pick something up at the UK column shop that helps us out immensely. And if you buy something from cloud to car.com using our affiliate link, then we get a small percentage of each sale, although it doesn't cost you any more to do that. But we do, of course, need you to continue to share our material, share links on the videos and the articles that are on the UK column website. And if you're a member and you want to read the comments, you can get a link there for that as well. Now, yesterday at 1pm, we pushed out a discussion that I had with Matt Errit entitled The New Age of Sorters, UFOs, MKUltra and the Cold War. And this is all about the third episode in his documentary series about the people, mostly, if not all, globalists who have been pushing a very pro global governance agenda for many, many decades, who seem to be the same people that are pushing extremely hard on the idea of aliens visiting from outside and so on. So watch that if you haven't seen it. And by coincidence, this week, there is a second congressional inquiry into UFOs. And we have published an article from Matt on that to follow up on that to read that, if you can as well. And Mark, briefly, we have published an article by you here as think tanks create news outlets, old school journalism is dying amid huge conflicts of interest. Yeah, I know I look short compared to that Chatham House door. I am not Frodo on the Lord of the Rings. It's a huge door. Anyway, it's an interesting article in that, yes, over time, think tanks are operating more like news organizations and a little bit of vice versa. And I think what readers will find that most likely this is indicative of the news industry, the legacy news industry trying to reinvent itself amid falling subscribers amid falling viewers, sometimes precipitously. So yeah, give it a read. There's a lot of implications. And I think it's largely good news for the incident media as well. Thank you, Mark. And Debbie, your latest blog is up. It is indeed a bit of a bumper one, a little bit salty as well, actually, NHS app, of course. Should we move away from the term care and also transgender? Look at trans species. That's in my blog this week. Okay. Thank you for that, Debbie. Okay, let's move on then to Brexit without the exit. And we're going to start off here with the wonderful governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Billy, who speaking yesterday as a public official, he said, I take no position on Brexit per se, but I do have to point out consequences. He said the impact on trade seems to be more in goods than services, but it underlies why underlines why we must be alert and welcome to and welcome opportunities to rebuild relations while respecting that very important decision of the British people. The question is, is anybody respecting that very important decision of the British people? Pretty certain, Andrew Billy isn't and pretty certain this lady isn't either because Rachel Reeves, again, at her mansion, how his speech said, our biggest trading partner is the European Union. We will not be reversing Brexit or reentering the single marketer customs union, but we must reset our relationship. Now, of course, they have already begun doing that. And so, okay, they're not going to reenter the single market or customs union, but the question is, are they going to build infrastructure, diplomatic infrastructure, which is effectively the same sort of thing? And I would suggest that they are. But really, the point of this raising this issue, again, is to follow on from the report on Wednesday, where we're talking about defence and security. And so, as we made the point, Lucy, back in July, we're talking about asking what can the new government's proposed UK EU security pact achieve? And the key word there is key acronym there is EU, because what we're talking about is defence infrastructure in the European Union being controlled at an EU commission level. So it's perhaps unsurprising, then, that this was being tweeted out by David Lammy this morning. Sorry, actually, in Wednesday, apologies. A pleasure to meet my friend, Joseph Burrell. Now, Joseph Burrell, of course, is the EU's or the European Commission's effectively foreign minister, Special Representative, as they like to call it. And David Lammy here saying together, we're laying the foundations for enhanced British EU cooperation, including through a new security partnership to tackle shared challenges. Both of us are focused on putting Ukraine in the strongest possible position this winter. And as we mentioned, our weather state, of course, this is largely being driven, or at least a momentum is largely being driven by the Trump win. But that wasn't the only thing going on over the last couple of days. We have signed a new defence agreement with Romania, deepening our cooperation as NATO allies, our nation stand united in support of Ukraine, as it continues to resist Russian aggression. So we continue to build our way back into the EU. And my question of the question of my lips is, where is Nigel Farage? And of course, he has been in the United States. But he said nothing about the meetings a couple of months ago between Starmer and EU leaders to effectively bring us back into some form of arrangement with the European Union again. But Nigel Farage is speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday at Prime Minister's Questions. Let's just have a listen. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am sure the Prime Minister and the whole House would wish to congratulate Donald Trump on his landslide victory last week. Hold on. I will hear the question. Thank you. But within a couple of days, we learned of a third assassination attempt, charges have been laid and behind it, are Iran's revolutionary guards. Has the time not come, Prime Minister, to prescribe what is so obviously a terrorist organisation? And in doing so, not just do the right thing, but maybe men's some fences between this government and the incoming presidency of Donald Trump's, given that the whole of his cabinet have been so rude about him over the last few years. Well, I am glad to see your member making a rare appearance back here in Britain. It has been so much time in America recently. I was half expecting to see him on the immigration statistics when we see him as a plan. But he may have first. I did congratulate the incoming president last week. And the point he makes about Iran is a very serious point. We will work across the House and with our allies on it. Obviously, on question of prescription, we keep them under review. Thank you. So it seems to have forgotten about Europe altogether. Now he's pushing a pro-Trump agenda and focusing on Iran here in this case. And the question is why? I pretty sure he probably wants to form some kind of back channel between Trump and the current regime in this country. But nonetheless, Farage would never engage on this issue of European defence in any kind of really effective way. And he seems to have abandoned anybody that is pro-Brexit in more recent times. So we'll talk about this much more in extra and in future reports. But my question then is what is driving him at the moment. But anyway, Debbie, let's move on back to you and testing in the NHS. Before that, I just have to say that Keir Starmer has spent 60% of his time out of the country since he took office as Prime Minister, just saying. But anyway, I'm fed up. And I think a lot of our viewers and our audience are fed up too, because I am being bombarded by texts, emails. I'm being infiltrated by the NHS. They seem to be infiltrating every single part of our lives. And I would like to once again tell them if it's not through the app or a text or an email to ping off. So let's look at bowel cancer screening for a start. So according to the NHS, anyone over the age of 54, or between the age of 54 to 74 automatically gets a bowel screening kit. Again, as you said, Mike earlier, this is supporting illness. If somebody was wanting to do a bowel test for me to see if I'd got bifidobacteria, enough bifidobacteria in my body, that would be fantastic. But like you said before, we're screening for illness. This is again, for illness. But it goes on to say that it's your choice. But actually, it isn't because you're going to get this kit sent through to you anyway. And uninvited yet again, for me, dropping through my letter box this week was another letter. And I just want you to take note of the red arrow where it says Southern Program Hub Guildford, because that is quite important. But before I go into my bowel cancer screening program experience, and we will go into it, I'm still shaking. So let's look at the difference first between opt in and opt out. So what is the difference? Opting in means that the power rests with you. You choose to give the green light. So if you say, yes, that's fine. If you if you want to opt in, great, you do it. But if you don't, it's sorry, you're not having my data. However, if you opt out, they say that silence speaks for itself. This is what's known as passive control. We've talked about it before, and I just want to highlight a couple of articles that we've looked at regarding nudge and sludge in a minute. But what is nudge and sludge? Because we've talked about it, sludge is a friction that makes it harder for you to do something. So a sludge, for example, will come on to it in a minute is actually you have to make sure that you physically opt out. If you're being nudged, it means that you'll be nudged in a direction to take something up or to be persuaded to do something. So for example, the NHS organ donation, right, we've talked about that before, and that is a sludge. So you have to deliberately and knowingly go and sign a form to opt out. Otherwise, you're considered opting in, and you can register a decision not to donate as well. So I just wanted to know what is all of this about what it's driving me mad? I really do want to say to everybody, please ping off because it's like the NHS are invading me. And I'm sure you probably feel the same. So is this harassment? So I went to look at the Protection for Harassment Act because I genuinely don't know, and this is where I'm asking the question. So if it's harassment, it says that a person must not pursue a course of conduct which amounts to harassment of another and which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment. So is it partly harassment? I don't know. Or is this Malicious Communications Act where electronic information of any description which is indecent or grossly offensive, and you could argue that this could be deemed as grossly offensive, causes distress or anxiety to the recipients or any other person? Or is it spam? And should we be looking at the anti-spam law which prohibits the sending of unsolicited marketing emails to individuals? And I don't know the answer to that question, so I'm throwing it out for our audience or for any lawyers or for any barristers. But I do want to highlight, as I said before, where we have mentioned this many times before. So just pop it into the search bar, nudges and sludges and spam, and I'm sure you're going to get a lot of articles, including those two, and I've written about it on my blog. So let's get back to the bow test, because I'm only going to highlight the bow test. It could be a breast scan. It could be anything. I'm just going for bow because that's what I got. And I was told, or at least I thought, that I'd opted out. And I got this letter and this glossy leaflet telling me that my kit was coming through the door. So let's look at multiple opt-outs and nudge theory. Let's look at this nudge theory. Have you got the next slide for nudge theory? I think so. I think we might have a conversation, because I got so, yes, we do. I think we do have a conversation. I got so cross, I phoned the department, the southern hub, to ask if I had opted out. Have a listen. No, no, this is in line with data protection, Mrs Evans. No, in order to remove you from the list, it does need to be in writing. So let me at least send a letter to you. Okay, read through the covering letter. And then if you do wish to sign and return then you're welcome to. Can I just check? Does this, will this cover me for all requests for all tests? Because I want to be opted out for all of these tests, whether it be a sputum test or a stool test or a blood test or whatever test? No, this is just removing you from the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program to just from the fit kits that we send. So have I got to call everybody else that's also sending me testing kits? Well, possibly. It really does depend on the protocol when removing someone from a recall list. I can't really comment upon how to remove your name from sort of other places. I just thought the NHS was the NHS, and if you did it with one, then it covered you for the whole of the NHS. I didn't realise that it had been fragmented into so many different departments that you have to opt out of every single department. Sorry to have to ask you so many questions, but I'm confused. No, no, that's fine. But it's, you know, some people they might not want to take part in bowel screening, but they might want to do breast screening and vice versa. So it's a personal choice, really, on what you want to do, but I can't really comment on how to remove your name from other screening programs. Okay, it would just be helpful. I think if there was a generic one where you could opt out from all of them and not have to call multiple numbers and try to track down multiple people to try and opt out of because it does seem like a waste of money when these kits are just being sent out and they're literally going straight in the bin. You know, it just seems like I disagree with you. No, not at all. So as you can see, I was a little cheesed off to say the least because I thought genuinely I'd opted out. And when I phoned that number, and I have to say too that I did inform the call center operator that I was recording the conversation and I would be publishing it. So I had made that clear. But I didn't realize that not only if I got to phone the southern hub number, and it depending on where you are in the country, whichever hub you set, whichever hub you ring. And then I have to get a letter which was sent to me first class, literally the next day first class in the post with a response that I have to send in a prepaid envelope look. So that's two first class stamps that the NHS have used for me to send this back. This will be going back in the bin back in not in the bin. It'll be going in the post box as soon as extras over. But you have to do this for every single test that you're going to get. And my argument and my question is at what cost? Because I reckon that call and these letters and the postage has probably cost around about £10 to opt out of every single of every single test. So this is a big deal, and I'm fed up with being pinged. But I just want to highlight too, nudge, because the nudge theory is just as important, because if you look at something like future health, and a lot of people are calling us about future health, and they're saying, we're getting these requests to fill in these questionnaires, and also give blood tests. You can see that over 2 million people now are participating, and they say they go on to say that they're bringing everybody together. This is the whole thing about future health. And if you do participate in it, if you do choose to participate, you will be given a £10 voucher to recognise your time and effort. And it's your decision, and this is what we're saying. We're trying to give you some information, an informed decision, informed choice. Do you want to carry on getting pinged? Do you want to get notifications from the NHS app? If you don't, hashtag, ping off, hashtag, scrap the app, please join us. Demi, just very, very briefly, this is sort of important. I mean, many people would be asking at this point, why would they not want to take part in a screening programme if this is about catching an illness early, or catching, identifying, maybe not catching the illness, but identifying the illness early? So in my opinion, this is about surveillance. And I did not, if I need the NHS, if I'm not very well, or if I'm worried, I will approach the NHS, right? That's my choice. I don't need the NHS to send me tests to tell me that I might have cancer, or maybe they're going to send me a false positive. I don't know, but I feel fine. I'm looking in the white mirror, and I'm talking, and I'm laughing, and I'm peeing, and I'm pooing, and I'm eating, and I'm drinking, and I'm breathing, and I look at good colour, and I don't believe I need this test. And I think it's a data harvest, and I think it's a massive invasion into your health. I'm not ill, I'm well, I don't need to be tested, and I think it's all to do with tracking, tracing, surveying, genomic testing, and DNA. That's just my opinion. Okay. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you for that. Mark, let's come back to you, then, and what's going on in the United States, climate related, but biofuels in particular? Well, what you're looking at here is a news clip I wrote way back in 2006 for AFP. Good news on the energy from Biofuel Expo, which was in San Antonio of Showcase America's alternative fuels future. And I was digging through my files and found this, and I got a little bit curious about how this fits into the current climate change regime that we seem to be living under, no matter who the president is. And moving on, just a little human interest note, I met the now late country star, rural Haggard, while I was there. He ran his RV with biofuels, and so did Willie Nelson. I attended a concert now long after that involving Willie Nelson, and he had BioWillie, which was the brand name of his own brand of biodiesel. And it was an interesting time. At that time, it was all the rage. So I got to wondering what's going on now. Well, this is a climate portal article. The link is provided there. This is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. January 9, 2024, so pretty recent, a little less than a year old. It says organic materials like corn, soybeans, or even wood can be turned into energy, either by refining them to produce liquid biofuels or by burning heat, excuse me, or by burning them for heat, which can then be used to produce electricity. Is this a carbon neutral alternative to coal and gas power? It asks one that doesn't add climate warming CO2 to the atmosphere. Some scientists and policymakers think so because plants recycle carbon when burned plants release carbon, but they also take up carbon from the air when they regrow. And the vegetation and the plants used for biodiesel are quick growing plant replant kind of plants. Moving on from there, this same MIT release says wood fired power plants also produce more CO2 than coal plants per unit of electricity produced. So in the short term, CO2 in the atmosphere can rise if bioenergy replaces coal. And other climate emissions are also tied to processing biofuels and bioenergy emissions that don't come from the carbon and plants themselves for all these reasons how biofuels are made and what crops they're made of is crucial to their ability to provide truly low carbon energy. Some studies have even concluded that in specific cases, biofuels may even lead to higher CO2 emissions than the fossil fuels they replace. So it's a mixed bag here. It goes on to say to measure the emissions associated with bioenergy, scientists must first calculate the emissions associated with their production, with their transport and their processing. That includes emissions from the farm machinery used to harvest them and the gasoline burned to move them to a processing facility. In some cases, it can also include the fossil fuels used to run the processing plant. But I would add, Mike, that those same arguments can be made about electronic vehicles, electric vehicles. There's a lot of conventional energy used to make them that is so called threatening to the climate and has a lot of CO2 emissions. So there's some kind of double thing going on there. This, I won't get into details. This is an Indian study from 2016 that also gives a nuanced view that biodiesel, in some cases, may be more, may even more CO2. However, if it's done right, it might actually have less so-called global greenhouse gas emissions. So there seems to be kind of a reconsideration of biodiesel and biofuels to a point here. But it's just interesting to see whether they'll actually make it back into the debate or not. Right now at MIT, I'll just briefly note that they're having a program December 4th, the briefing COP 29, Thursday, November 14th. Just recently yesterday, they had the EU ambassador to the US talking about climate change. And then they also had the MIT great climate policy debate also yesterday. I didn't see anything there about biofuels yet. But we'll see if biofuels will become a part of our lexicon of fuels. One thing I would note in closing, Mike, is that biofuels are used to a limited degree at the gas pumps in the US for diesel fuel. And the ethanol is often added to gasoline in the US. And if it's so important to have less carbon emissions, if that's so important, it would be a lot less of a transition to the American economy. And probably around the world, if biofuels were used, because that would require a far less dramatic change in our fuel infrastructure compared to electric vehicles, a much easier transition if these things have to be done. So biofuels, perhaps since they're used minimally, will make something of a comeback. And we'll see if that happens compared to electric vehicles, which would, of course, require a much more dramatic change in our infrastructure. So this is an evolving thing to keep an eye on, Mike. So we'll come back to you now. Yeah, Mark, you're not, you're not concerned that if there was any kind of serious move towards biofuels, you're effectively having to grow the product for that, which is replacing food production. Well, I don't know how much it would impact food production. That would depend on other land use policies, rapid urbanization, due to global cities that would eat up more farmland on the periphery of cities. There's a lot that would go into that. It is a concern. I just don't know what all the policies would be, and exactly what impact that would have that remains to be seen. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Okay. Let's move on then to the Don Sturgis and Quarry. So here it is. This is the independent inquiry into the circumstances of Don Sturgis' death in Salisbury on the 8th of July, 2018. Of course, the allegation is that Don Sturgis passed away as a result of Novichok poisoning. Now we've mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, there have been hearings going on, which have been streamed onto YouTube with a 10-minute delay and so on. But this week, this past week, we get into the secret squirrel hearings. So there's no streaming of this whatsoever and very little mainstream media coverage or any media coverage. There has been some, as we'll see in a second, but if we look at who we've had speaking this week or giving evidence this week, we've had Tim Salle Davies. We've had Commander Dominic Murphy, who was investigating the response to the scribbles. We have someone from Portendine, merely known as MK26, and we have had a number of others and so on, as you can see, on screen there at the moment. But anyway, the point here is Salle Davies, apparently, according to mainstream press and the little coverage about what she said, has said that she experienced nightmares following the scribble poisoning originally because she was really worried about someone picking up discarded nerve agent after the scribbles were poisoned. She said, and so she was worried about this, and she was particularly worried because Russian agents had been involved. And she said that she was concerned about the disposal by foreign agents of any residual nerve agent and whether they had disposed of the residual nerve agent. So that's very surprising because we've shown the video a couple of times. We've seen the quotes multiple times of her explaining what to do in the event that you thought you had come into contact with Novichok, which was to take your clothes and put them in the washing machine, or to wipe down your stuff with baby wipes and so on. So she didn't seem to be expressing any concern at the time, but now it's all about nightmares. But then we had this individual MK26, who was apparently working for DSTL at Portendine for 20 years. And he was saying that a sample the size of a third to a sixth of a grain of salt could have been fatal, a fatal human dose. And so he was asked if the bottle of Novichok that killed Don Sturgis was the same one that was used in the scribble poisoning several months before. And he said, I think I have tried to express my uncertainty because it's unclear exactly what the circumstances were finding that bottle and the assembly of that bottle. And so without that information, it's not possible to exclude that there were two bottles, but there seems to be a strange confusion here, because when we look back at the media coverage at the time, Charlie Rowley, Don Sturgis's boyfriend, was very, very clear that the bottle was in a sealed box. The bottle that Don Sturgis came into contact with was in a sealed box. So how could that have been the bottle that was used? Is it even a question that that was the bottle that was used to poison in inverted commas, the scribbles door? So this week has been very, very interesting with the little bit of information that we've got out of the Don Sturgis inquiry so far as they hold these hearings in secret. But the holes in the story continue to be exposed. And well, again, if you aren't following this story or you'd like to see the background to get onto the UK column website, search for the day of the scribble. And we will just leave you with this question. Where are the scribbles? So still needs to be asked because they aren't appearing at the inquiry into the death of Don Sturgis. There was apparently a statement read out, but who wrote that? We've no real idea. But anyway, we've got to leave that there for now. There'll be much more on this as more information comes out. But Debbie, let's just end with a couple of finalists. Oh, yes, let's. I just want to thank our wonderful viewers. You know, everybody's doing so much behind the scenes. If you don't think anything's happening, it really is behind the scenes. This is Hermine, one of our wonderful viewers. He's originally from the Netherlands, now lives in the UK. And she gets this little whiteboard look and she clips it to the front of her shopping trolley. And then she writes a message and she just changes it. You know, it could be you are being lied to. It could be watch UK column news on Friday or on Wednesday or Monday at one o'clock. Just such a great idea. Grab yourself as a whiteboard. Thank you, Hermine. Well done, brilliant, absolutely brilliant. And you know what, if you're in charge of the country and you're in charge of that, you know, that little button that everybody's talking about, what would you do? Let's have a look at, yes, Prime Minister. You don't need to worry. Why should the Russians annex the whole of Europe? They can't even control Afghanistan. Now, if they try anything, it will be salami tactics. Salami tactics. Slides by slice. One small piece at a time. So, would you press the button if they invade West Berlin? It all depends. On what? Well, scenario one. Riots in West Berlin. Buildings and flames. East German fire brigade crosses the border to help. Would you press the button? The East German police come with them. The button. Then some troops, more troops, just for right control, they say. And then the East German troops are replaced by Russian troops. Button. When the Russian troops don't go, they are invited to stay to support civilian administration. The civilian administration closes roads and temple half airport. Now, you press the button. Scenario two. Russian army maneuvers take them accidentally on purpose across the West German frontier. Is that the last resort? No. Right. Scenario three. Suppose the Russians have invaded and occupied West Germany, Belgium, Holland, France. Suppose the tanks and troops have reached the English channel. Suppose they are poised for an invasion. Is that the last resort? No. Why not? Well, we'd only fight a nuclear war to defend ourselves. How could we defend ourselves by committing suicide? I hope that's for everybody in a slightly lighter mood for the weekend. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you. Let's we got to leave it there for today. I'm going to say thank you to Debbie and Mark for joining us today. We'll have much more to talk about on extra in a couple of minutes if you're a UK call member. Otherwise, have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday, as usual. Bye-bye. 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. 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