UK Column Radio

UK Column News Podcast 18th November 2024

Brian Gerrish, Ben Rubin and Prof. Diane Rasmussen McAdie with today's UK Column News. If you would like to support our independent journalism, please join the community: https://community.ukcolumn.org/ Sources: www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-18th-november-2024

Duration:: 1h 5m
Broadcast on:: 18 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

Eighty-eight percent of the work week is spent communicating, typing, talking, and going back and forth on topics until everyone is on the same page. It's time for a change. It's time for Grammarly. Grammarly's AI ensures your team gets the point across the first time, eliminating misunderstandings, and streamlining collaboration. It goes beyond basic grammar to help tailor writing to specific audiences. Whether that means adding an executive summary, fine-tuning tone, or cutting out jargon, in just one click. Four out of five professionals say Grammarly's AI boosts buy-in and moves work forward. It integrates seamlessly with over 500,000 apps and websites, is implemented in days, and is IT approved. Join over 70,000 teams and 30 million people who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit Grammarly.com/enterprise to learn more. Grammarly. Enterprise-ready AI. Good afternoon. Today is Monday the 18th of November, 2024. Just after one o'clock, welcome to UK Call of News. I'm your host, Brian Gerisch. Delighted to be joined by Diane, Beggapod and Diane. Elizabeth and McCuddy, and also Ben Rubin. Now, we're going to get straight off with Ukraine. Things in Ukraine with respect to the war are getting very serious. We could say very interesting, but the clear information is that Russia is winning on the battlefield, and this is causing huge consternation in the US, the UK and the West in general. But as always, we're going to have a look at how BBC is dealing with the matter, and this is their primary headline today, "How long-range missile striking Russia could affect Ukraine war?" Well, this headline is a result of the declaration by the Americans that the Ukrainians are going to be allowed to strike into Russia. Now, this is part of the comment in the BBC article. I don't think it will be decisive. A Western diplomatic Kiev told the BBC, but they requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. However, it is an overdue symbolic decision to raise the stakes and demonstrate military support for Ukraine. It can raise the war cost for Russia. Well, of course, this is the usual disingenuous BBC reporting, because essentially this is not going to help Ukraine at all. It's going to possibly cause damage on Russian territory, and that is going to result in the Russians backlashing. And since the Ukrainians are losing on the battlefield, and that is across the front, the Ukrainians ultimately are going to take additional casualties. So the West is into its old game of doing anything and everything it can to prolong the war. And in this news, we're going to suggest one of the reasons why that desire to prolong the war is going to happen. But if we want to get more detail about what's actually happening in the Ukraine war, then actually we need to see what the BBC is talking about with its BBC Russian service, because, of course, people overseas who are being funded effectively by the BBC license pair are getting very different news. So here's the headline in BBC News Russia. The grinding jaws of the Russian army have Ukraine's defenses in the Donbas really fallen to pieces. And this is part of the text. Ukrainian politicians and military figures openly spoken of the front falling to pieces. The collapse of the front is down to short supplies of men and ammunition, as well as unstable command and control. This is break down on the battlefield. The Russians are advancing. The Ukrainians are clearly starting to break. And, of course, what happens in this state on a battlefield is that the losing side, the Ukrainians are going to take more and more casualties as their defenses fall apart. The article went on. Remember, this is not designed for the British audience. It's truth, which they have to echo back into Eastern Europe. So another quote in this article, the situation is very bad, but not yet catastrophic. The hope is that the Russian offensive will be slowed by bad weather early this month. The hope is that Russian offensive will be slowed. Well, this is nonsense, of course, because the offensive is growing. It's not going to slow, and Ukrainian casualties are increasing all the time. This is another indication of the BBC's duplicity in reporting over Ukraine, because if we look at their YouTube feed, the BBC, of course, is allowed to be on YouTube. The UK column is not, but if we look at their feed for the Russian channel, there is no transcript or translation in order for the UK viewers to see what they're actually saying. And in the background, the BBC back on the gloating about Russia's war dead, and they say that they believe the Russians' war dead now tops 70,000. In fact, there are many sources saying that those sources believe Russian dead exceed 100,000, but the BBC is saying 70,000. The BBC simply fails to talk about the horrific level of Ukrainian casualties. Now, in the background, how is the BBC putting this propaganda together? Well, they're working with media Zona. And they say that BBC Russian and the independent website media Zona have collated these names, along with names from other open sources, including official reports. Well, what is media Zona? It's simply a collection of journalists who are overwhelmingly hostile to Russia. And of course, according to information on this site, we started with the help of participants from Pussy Riot, which was the group of young ladies who, amongst other things, desecrating churches in Russia in order to get their political dissident views across. So BBC reporting accurately, we don't think so. This is pure propaganda, but ultimately paid for by the BBC license pair, but you're not going to get full service of all the information that's collected through media Zona and elsewhere. Now, I'm going to end this segment by saying that this is an allegation made by the Grey Zone. It says that leaks have shown that there was a secret British military cell, which was which was or has been plotting to keep Ukraine fighting. And in the article, there's mention of Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland. Now, this is just the report by Grey Zone. We haven't seen all the factual information yet, although there is some email links released. But this is an extremely interesting headline because it agrees with a wider approach being taken by the US, UK, and the EU at the moment. And that is indeed to keep the bloodshed in Ukraine going at all costs. Now, I'm going to, before we bring Ben on to talk about the climate cabal, I'm just going to say that investigation into the Ukrainian war, but also into climate and what is happening at a global level for the climate agenda, strangely also leads back into the slaughter on the battlefield in Ukraine. And we'll be dealing with that a bit later in the news. Ben, welcome. What have you got with the global climate cabal? Yes, thanks Brian. Brian, UK column. Good afternoon. It's great to be here. And I completely agree with your statement there, Brian. The climate conspiracy ultimately sits right at the heart of everything that's going on globally at the moment. We called it the climate cabal. We spoke about this last week. We spoke about the involvement of the British royal family and other component parts of the British establishment in coordinating this internationally. And we're going to hear now from Simon Steele, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, reflecting on the first week of COP 29 in Azerbaijan. We're at the halfway point of COP 29. And this is a crucial COP. We're calling it the finance COP, because we know that finance is the enabler for greater climate action. But it's not just about numbers and figures. This is about people. This is about human beings. It's about lives and livelihoods and how we provide the protections that are needed to protect them against the ravages of this climate crisis. And we know that this crisis is hitting every country, every community throughout the world. But we also know that if we get this right, bold climate action can improve the lives and livelihoods of our people. Be that with better health, better jobs, more jobs, stronger economies, cheaper energy. I think he's nervous. I don't think this is going very well. That was a very, very poorly delivered piece of communication from the UN's top climate change representative. There was a lot of repetition. There were clearly multiple takes and edits to deliver what should be a core message. He should know that inside out. You might have noticed some funny hand maneuvers going on as well, which was slightly hidden by the subtitles. But I think he's under a lot of pressure and things aren't going particularly well. He did say, you know, it is about people, right? It's all about people and improving their lives. But really, it's about money. It's about finance, which is the first thing that came out of his mouth. And Diane's going to talk about that a little bit more in a moment. In the second half of that film, that was a clip. There's another section to it. We'll provide a link so you can go and watch it if you want to. But he did celebrate some progress that has been made relating to Article VI of the Paris Climate Convention. That relates to carbon markets. And those are designed to incentivize climate action by enabling parties to trade carbon credits with each other, generated by the reduction or removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This is a really complex and arcane and entirely synthetic financial instrument that they constructed. And I think that these are as dangerous as credit default swaps, which led to the 2008 financial crisis, right? There's an explainer which will provide a link to on the World Bank website. The World Bank is absolutely at the heart of this. Not least because they've been holding a lot of the funds that are being used to fund climate action. And entertainingly, or not, it's probably not that entertaining, it's probably tragic. They've recently just revealed that they've lost $24 billion. They just lost it. And actually, it could be up to 10 times that amount. So they've been holding this money since last year for the damages and reparations fund, which they were already charging more than 20% management fees for. And they've subsequently, on top of that, just lost a load of money. So this is a racket, this is for my money, this is a criminal enterprise. And Diane's now going to talk a bit more about the financial dynamics of play here. Thanks, Ben, and hello, Brian. Good afternoon, everybody. Yeah, I have a little bit to report on just some of the detail on how the finance part of this is all working. Starting with the opening ceremony of COP 29 last week, we had COP 28, president Sultan Al-Chabere, giving the entire speech about climate finance, saying the critical success factor for all climate progress is finance. And he went into some details and keywords that I did some more research on to kind of figure out what this all actually means. Because I think it's difficult to think about funneling billions and trillions of dollars around the world for those of us who are not in the club. If we look at some of the details from the UN document and the WF documentation, we see from the UN, for example, how the different banks and the different bilateral, multilateral financial organizations are working together just for $100 billion, which, again, is just one portion of what they want to do with this overall leading up to 2030 and perhaps beyond. So the climate finance framework has, again, the $100 billion target, which was not met by 2020. So they are now saying, "Well, how are we going to go even past $100 billion?" But they're saying, "It's really important now we have to go faster to accelerate to get to this higher level of funding that we want to see." And so we're talking about the bilateral concession, the multilateral concession and development finance system. So you can go into more detail and read the full report if you would really like to. The World Economic Forum, working in lockstep, of course, with the UN, talks about the risks to the world for two years and 10 years. In the next two years, according to their 2024 report, extreme weather and pollution are in the top 10. Misinformation and disinformation is at number one. I'm not sure how, but in 10 years time, misinformation and disinformation goes down into fifth place. And the top four over 10 years are related to climate as well as number 10. So how do we get to those different places over 10 years versus two years? We'd have to read the report a little bit carefully to find out. But really what we're talking about is the financial situation. And the WEF said back in 2023 that the World Meteorological Organization, which is a UN agency, has talked about the economic toll of the extreme weather and how, again, the billions and trillions of dollars, whatever, are coming into up to 2019 and beyond is continuing to add up with all of the money. What's interesting about this is that they actually cite on this page an academic paper that talked about extreme event attribution or EEA, a methodology that examines how anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions had changed, how everything was happening. So basically, it's our greenhouse gas emissions that's causing them to have to spend all of the money. My question, though, is how are they going to get the billions that they want for the finance to change whatever is happening, as well as the billions that they say that they're already spending to clean up with the disasters that are happening. So we're kind of doubling our money there, really. One of the ways that they talk about different countries is to deal with the finance situation is the collective quantified goal on climate finance. You can go into a lot more detail by looking at this website, which, again, is from the UN. Basically, they're saying how much more we need prior to 2025. There was a floor of US $100 billion and going forward, we need even more. So once again, this doesn't show the significant amount. It might be even more than we think. We don't really know, but really, we just need billions of dollars sent to us. One of the companies that was mentioned in the opening ceremony speech by the COP-28 president was Altera, which is a company that he seems to have an association with, because he's from the UAE because this all happened last year in Dubai at COP-28. Initially, they are committing $30 billion, and by 2030, we are going to mobilize up to $250 billion. So who is involved in Altera? There's a lot of connections going on here, including, according to this press release that came out on the 14th of November last week, in relation to the Rockefeller Foundation. Of course, we see them once again. So we have a lot more details in all of these documents you can see in the show notes, and we'll take a break and climb it for a moment and come back to it a bit later in the news, Brian. Thank you very much for that, and we'll just reinforce with a statement to our audience. If you're not sure about why climate is so important, the climate agenda is driving all other global agendas and those are filtering through into national political policies. This is happening on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. This is the key agenda that people need to pay attention to, because everything else spins off it. We will be back for a little bit more on this subject. Before we do a huge thank you to everybody who's supporting the UK column financially, we can only do what we do with your financial support. So I want to say once again today, a huge thank you for everybody who is making a paid subscription to keep us running. Now, you can support us in a number of ways, you can make a donation, you can take out a membership with us monthly, or for the year, or you can take out a lifetime membership as many people have done. And of course, you can also purchase from the UK column shop, and we'd like to point out that on the subject of health, you can make a purchase from Clive to Carl, and UK column receives a small commission if you choose to do that. Now, we produce material to be shared, and we do our best to get it out on as many platforms as possible, but of course we're regularly censored. But the key platforms are all there. And of course, if you're a member with UK column, comments can be made and you can see those. So if you like what we're doing, we need your financial support, not only to keep going, but also to expand and to produce more material, which is what many of you ask us for. Now, just a little email here after my comments about Remembrance Sunday, so a person here said that they just been catching up on a Monday, UK column news, and they wanted to point out the emission of military metals, usually adorned by royalty at Remembrance Services. And so the viewer says, "Do you know why it was decided that Charles should not wear the metals other than he most likely wasn't deserving of them in the first place?" And the person then goes on to say that they were their mother at the weekend and watched the Remembrance Service of the Royal Albert Hall, which was broadcast by the BBC. And they were perplexed to see the slow hand clapping by Princess Anne and Keir Stormer, how much more blatant do they need to be in evidence in their, quote, disrespect for those who suffer for their sake, keep up the brilliant work. Well, of course many people now starting to see through the charade of the wars, terrible subject, and we'll report more. Now, coming up interview tomorrow at one o'clock is Charles Mallet with Brian Reisinger, and this is about the painful demise of the small American farm, and what can be done to undo the damage. This is probably a timely interview, because of course tomorrow big farmers demonstration in London, and I can say to the audience that Mike and I will be there somewhere amongst those crowds. Now, I'd also like to say that on Thursday my interview with Reverend Dr Stephen Sizer is going out on the subject of Christian Zionism. Dr Stephen Sizer did an interview with the call back in 2023, but now with events unfolding in the Middle East and the horrors of Gaza. A longer and more detailed interview with him about where this pernicious Christian Zionist agendas come from, and why we need to pay attention and recognize it for the problems that it causes a motive interview. I've no doubt for many of the UK column viewers and supporters, but this is absolutely an issue which we need to get into. I'd also like to say I've got another CIA interview coming up with Pedro Israel Porter. Very interesting that people working within the US intelligence system or formerly working within the US intelligence system are coming to the UK column to talk about what is really happening behind the scenes in the American deep state. So I think that brings Ben you back on screen with us to take us into more about the climate change agenda. Absolutely. And we've talked about finance, but as much as this is about finance, it is also somehow about gender. Let's hear again from Simon Steele at the UN. Boulder Climate Action can drive forward huge benefits right across societies. It can drive much wider opportunities for women and girls in all their diversity to reach their fullest potential. And it can help drive forward the real world, real economy changes needed to overcome this crisis. But more than this, equal participation is a right. It is our responsibility to make sure every voice is heard. In my role as an international gender champion, I remain deeply committed to this. I will continue to highlight how gender responsive approaches enable more effective climate policy. Advocating for the inclusion of gender considerations in climate finance policies and allocations. And working with governments to increase spaces and opportunities for women in all their diversity, be it in COP or in climate action on the ground. Women and girls in all their diversity, they really do have a way with words, don't they? So that film was put out to mark 10 years since the adoption of the Lima Work Program on gender, which came out of COP 20 back in 2014. And that has forged progress apparently in key areas to promote gender equality and women's empowerment. It was reaffirmed in 2020 at COP 25 with an enhanced Lima Work Program on gender and its gender action plan, where they combined bold climate action with progress in gender equality, as it is one of the most effective strategies to break away from businesses, use your scenarios and drive transformative change. This is being used as a way to destroy traditional social structures, not just in this country, but all around the world and to use women and girls as agents of change funded by the UN and its affiliates. It's all over UN communication this year from Antonio Goteres, the UN Secretary General, everywhere women and girls are taking action to confront the climate and environmental crises. There's loads of money flowing into it as you'd expect this year again from the World Bank saying that gender responsive financing initiatives, which take into account the diverse needs, roles and responsibilities of people of all genders, not just women and girls, actually all genders have proven to enable more effective and cohesive climate action benefiting society as a whole. So they're putting a lot of money into this. They're giving high-powered jobs to women and girls on the ground in the respective nation states. In order to drive this agenda forward, it taps directly into this widening ideology gap that's opened up between young men and women. We spoke about this at the start of October, Daniel Sachs, if you remember commenting on something which I believe has very clearly been artificially created by the UN, ultimately. You know, this communication and all this money flowing into this agenda is having an extraordinarily divisive effect on our populations. It's also coming from the media. We talked about this enormous increase in the use of divisive terminology. These statistics relating to the New York Times and the Washington Post. You can actually see since 2010, which quite neatly aligns with this lemur agreement. We've just spoken about the massive increase in words like patriarchy, gender discrimination, sexism that are driving into this, right? And how is that playing out in the climate agenda? Well, we're seeing people like this being thrust into the limelight. This is Clover Hogan, who is a rich, British young woman who lives in Bali, who's kind of presenting herself as a new Greta Thunberg type, right? She's a climate influencer, and she makes this remarkable statement here on the right-hand side. I was just invited by a major broadcaster to do a COP 29 interview with a climate denier. Their justification was since America has just elected a climate denier, we want to platform all perspectives. I can't believe we're back here, she says. Are we going to really open up the science for debate? And then we're really going to validate literal conspiracy theories with a platform. Unfortunately, Clover, science requires debate. That's how science works. So, shutting down debate isn't scientific, right? But unfortunately, she's out there saying this stuff. She's got a big audience and a lot of traction, a lot of people hitting like on this and agreeing with it. We're also seeing people like this, so this is Emma Pinchbeck, who is the new chief executive of the Climate Change Commission, who's been thrust into this very high-profile international role. And this was the first post that she put out when she announced on day one of her new position. You can see on the right-hand side there, it says, "Today's my first day at the Climate Change Committee." And it started completely in line with my expectations of CEO life to date. I was woken up by my two-year-old hitting me in the face with a very hungry caterpillar book. I realized I still have a heavy cold. I forgot the five-year-old's book back at school and then only made the train by two minutes. Now, I've worked with female leaders and they were exceptional leaders, right? And they didn't talk like this. And there's this kind of little girl type mentality, identity that's being presented that I don't think is particularly helpful or useful. And it's not a good representation of female leaders, to be perfectly honest with you. How else is it manifesting? It's just here now from Fiona Mackin at Global Optimism. It's half-time here in Baku, and things are challenging. At the same time, G20 leaders are currently meeting in Rio, and we need them to unlock success at Cocktailino. We're asking for two things. We need them to move the money, agree on a high-ambition, new finance goal in order to deliver and meet the needs of emerging markets. And we need them to publish the plans, submit their 1.5-degree-aligned national climate plans in order to provide the investment-positive policies to unlock private finance towards a successful transition. We, over 38,000 businesses and many civil society leaders, are getting behind this because we know it's not game over. It's game over. Yeah, it's a nice, well-presented, non-threatening face of the climate agenda in order to get people to trust it, ultimately. I think that's what a lot of this is about. Now, that young lady there, Fiona Mackin works for an organization called Global Optimism. They are absolutely in the middle of this. They are a global thought leadership and content platform run by the three people you can see on the right-hand side there. Cristiana Figueres, who used to do the same job as Simon Steele, I spoke about her last week, she works with Prince William, and also the guy called Paul Dickinson on the right. And Tom Rivett Karnak on the left. I'm going to talk about these guys more in the coming weeks there, as I say, right in the thick of all this stuff. Not least at Koch, where Tom Rivett Karnak expressed the fact that he's experienced something that he hasn't felt in a long time, pride in his country. He's proud of Britain, he's proud of Ed Miliband. Unfortunately, the UK appears to be flying solo on a lot of this stuff, and I think the wheels are starting to come off as Diane's going to talk about now. But more as well as the UK's direct involvement in COP 29 and how that compares to other countries in the world. It's interesting to note that Cure Starmer was the only G7 leader who is present at COP 29, and the UK sent 450 delegates by plane with all of those carbon emissions, which was the 11th largest contingency of any country in the world, and by comparison, the United States, despite having a much larger population, sent 405. And, of course, Joe Biden wasn't there, none of the other G7 leaders as well. The UK says that the 2035 target for the nationally determined contribution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% on 1990 levels. Now, what does that mean exactly? Well, basically in 2022, what we had said was that, well, they said that 68% was our target by 2030, and now they have increased it to 81%, although NDCs are at least supposed to be updated every five years, and they were not due for an update, so I'm not really sure where that change came from. But it's in line with the Paris Agreement that every country has to determine for itself in its own context what they are going to contribute in terms of their donations, their contributions, their actions, and these kinds of things. So Ed Miliband, our Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, was at COP last week having a fabulous, wonderful time. Let's take a look at his video from that he posted on Twitter saying that COP 29 is a chance for Britain to show climate leadership on the global stage. This government believes that climate security is national security. Okay, so what are you doing, Mr. Miliband? I'm feeling energized and a bit tired. So I've just come from recording a podcast called Outrage and Optimism. My Outrage World for the World hasn't acted earlier. My Optimism is that the world really is acting. You just really feel the energy here of businesses, of countries, of people pushing ahead. This transition is just happening. Now, it needs to happen quicker, and it needs to happen in the right way, it needs to happen in a fair way, it needs to happen in a way that benefits people, but it is happening. I could describe it as a global forcing mechanism. It puts people on the spot. Imagine in your own life being put on the spot to say, what are you doing? If you're running a 5K and every year you've got to say, well, how much faster are you running the 5K? It's saying to global leaders, this really matters. Are you doing your bit? And people want to show that they're acting, they're doing something. We are only 1% of emissions. That's why we've got to work with others. The other 99% of emissions. And don't believe this stuff that Britain can't have an impact. We passed the Climate Change Act in 2008, and then lots of other countries followed. It's showing what can be done. Countries may be different in their stages of development, where they are. But everybody's got the same outlook, which is we need to do the right thing for better lives today, and we need to do the right thing for the generations yet to come. So, that's great news. He said the quiet part out loud that the UK is only 1% of emissions. But we have to work with the rest of the world, and for some reason lead the world. Even though that we're only 1% of the other 99% are responsible for whatever they think is happening. This article from the Guardian where he talked about his view is that renewable energy is now unstoppable, just as Mr. Billaband is himself. So that's really, really good news for us in the UK. There's some information from the World Economic Forum about whether your country's economy will suffer or benefit from decarbonization. And I'm so happy to announce to everyone that the UK, again, is at the forefront of all of it. And we are known as an inclusive green adopter country, which means that we have a lot of income that we can send to this benefit of the poorer countries and so on. And what we can do, we can take all of the money that we apparently have, which I don't think most of us are seeing that right now who live in the UK. But we're going to send all of this money because we are green and we are inclusive and we are part of making this equitable transition happen to whatever it is that they want us to transition to. But the good news, though, I think is that we're starting to see some mainstream media sources that are not agreeing with everything that's happening. There have been a lot of polls falling apart in top 29 with lots of leaders not coming. Here's an article from the Guardian, which I think my friend for sending this to me saying it's high time to end the sorry, this is not the Guardian, the telegraph. It's high time to end the Saluda Chris GOP, Jamboree, but it just won't die. Nice little poem there for us. And we said is that basically there's 65 private jets that flew into Baku last week, compared with 32 the same week last year, that he sees that the process is to try to extract trillions of pounds. And from rich countries to poor countries, so these climate reparations, these whatever it's going to fix. And so I think we're starting to see that the mainstream media as well as other countries are starting to see through the scam. And I think that's the one positive thing that we can maybe try to take out of this, Brian. Possibly. Is there something positive about this? We will see, but the key thing is that I can tell by comments coming in our chat today that people are absolutely gripping to the fact that this is the key driving agenda for everything that's happening in the world, even if we get into areas of defense. Let's have a little look through this section and somebody was kind enough to point out octopus energy to me, and a little bit of research was very interesting. So here they are. We're making energy fair, clean and simple for all using technology. Let's look at a little promo video to see what they've got to say about themselves. And yes, you will have heard the music before. Our mission is to drive the energy transition faster and cheaper than anyone expects. The world urgently needs a sustainable energy system. At octopus, we're working hard to make that happen. Our tentacles stretch through our energy and around the globe. It all starts with customers. We power millions of homes around the world with green energy, fair prices and award winning service. Getting those fundamentals right means people trust us. Some, enough to look at energy in a new light. We reward customers for making the most of green power through cutting edge products like fan club, saving sessions and intelligent octopus. In our fan club, customers living next to an octopus turbine get half price electricity on windy days. With intelligent octopus, EV drivers get a discount for letting us charge their car when there's plenty of green energy to use. In saving sessions, customers get paid to unplug to avoid fossil fuels. We don't just stop at home electricity. We're making electric vehicles and heat pumps the easy choice. Then, getting them into homes and driveways at scale. With the right combination of heat pumps, solar and batteries, we're even building zero bill homes. This electrifying world needs more green energy to power it. We're one of Europe's largest renewable investors. We operate six billion worth of generators like wind and solar farms. And we're aiming to build much more, enough to power 50 million homes by 2030. The magic that unlocks all of this is Kraken. Kraken is an advanced operating system for utilities. It supports more than 50 million customers worldwide. It's a blueprint for a sustainable energy future. Moving away from fossil fuels opens up possibilities we would never have imagined. Our job as a company is to build an energy system to create a renewable world that is better for citizens than the world we're leaving behind. So, I let that run because this is the corporate propaganda going out to hundreds of thousands of millions of people. It's just about the energy to heat their homes and run their cars. Well, it's not because at the end you got the message there. Whether you picked it up, this is about renewables to change the world. This company thinks that they've solved all the energy problems. Now, they're going to change the world. But let's have a look at them because back in 2016, they say they were launched by e-commerce entrepreneurs with a vision of using technology and data to bring affordable green energy to the world. By 2020 in a mere four years, they were valued at over two billion. How do you do that? Well, let's go on through their chronology. In 2021, it's valued at approximately five billion, and by 2023, it's valued at eight billion, not bad going for a small company. One of the clues as to why there's been this meteoric rise. Well, perhaps this is a start. Here's Gavin Patterson under the World Economic Forum. I'm talking about its critical that businesses reevaluate their digital transformation, etc. And he goes on to talk about the route to business recovery and growth post-COVID-19 must be coupled to sustainability in order to create a fairer society for all. And during the pandemic, digital has become a lifeline for every business to create inclusive economies, digital training and re-skilling. This man is into everything. He can solve the world's problems and he can make huge amounts of money as he's doing that. But he's got power and influence because this is a picture of their website where apparently Ruby is talking octopus with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. And notice that Boris and Richie are standing there very attentively, like two school children, while they're being lectured as to how the world is going to be in the future. But this is some of the language by octopus energy, and I've seen this before many years ago. They say in 2016 we were a tiny British energy supplier disrupting a broken industry. So octopus appears to be boasting that it was able to help disrupt and presumably also destroy or increase the rate of destruction of the British energy markets and somehow they're proud of this. But of course the clue is you've got to destroy before you can build back better. But where did the help come from? Well, this is where we need generation investments. And this is an extremely powerful organization backed by this man, Al Gore, who octopus is boasting is one of their key funders. Now we can see whether support bases for the meteoric rise of octopus energy. So he said his mission has been the backing of world leading businesses. From day one, we've had the support of octopus group, a pioneer of renewable energy investment. Let's have a look at this little video clip. To your sustainability trends report, we'll focus on two very important outcomes of the global climate change conference that occurred at the end of last year. The first is a recognition for the first time that we need to transition away from fossil fuels. And we also agreed that we would try to triple the investment in alternative energy in the next five or six years. So the question really what we're trying to answer is, okay, we've made these statements. What does it mean? What is the roadmap to phasing out fossil fuels and tripling alternative energy? There is twice as much investment in renewable energy as investments in fossil fuel. And that's up from one to one just five years ago. So that's very encouraging. However, we should be seeing declines in the investment going into fossil fuels, banks and other financial institutions need to start ratcheting down the amount of money that they're putting into fossil fuels. And they're not yet doing that. So while climate finance is flowing and there is enough capital in the world to solve the climate crisis and the sustainability crisis, the capital is still not in the right place. So there is sufficient capital, but it needs to be moved to the right things. Moving to a more sustainable world is going to involve change. And there are so many people working in the fossil fuel industries and in other industries that will be affected by our transition. And what we have the incredible opportunity to do is help transition the workforce into cleaner jobs. So vast amounts of money and of course both what Ben and Diane in talking about things around the climate agenda are talking about the need to have trillions huge amounts of money for investment and change. And now from Al Gore and his organization, we're actually seeing exactly what they're doing. And amongst other things, they're doing it through octopus energy to transform the energy markets in UK itself. But let's listen to a bit more about what they had to say. 2022 is a year that has been both a source of optimism and cause for concern. We are enormously encouraged by the historic climate legislation passed at long last in the United States and believe that it's likely to powerfully accelerate the sustainability revolution. However, this transition is a global challenge and we must consider progress in some places against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis. There is a growing tension at the heart of Europe between near-term energy security needs and the necessary urgent action required for continued progress on climate. We mustn't forget that this is a huge opportunity to decarbonize Europe and we must make that a priority. So now you see it. This is about decarbonizing Europe. That means wiping out millions of jobs, completely changing the nature of society. And of course Ukraine is in the background. Now this is a brief clip from a lady talking about the energy industry in Ukraine. The war made us reconsider the way in which we should develop our energy system in Ukraine. My name is Yudhana. I am Ukrainian. And before war I was leaving my normal life working for energy company and building solar power plants for commercial purposes. Before Russia started destroying our energy system, we had no idea how dependent we are on one source of energy. By losing one nuclear power plant, which is now occupied the Parisia power plant, we lost 20% of our generation capacity. And nuclear was and still is a leader among the energy sources in Ukraine. Amidst the war, Ukraine tries to transition to clean energy while ensuring its energy security at the same time. Under immense pressure, we managed to plug into the energy system of European Union and we did it not within one year. But within a few weeks. So lots of things in that video, which we will try and discuss a little bit later. But of course the key thing is we're supposed to believe that before the war Ukraine didn't understand its own energy infrastructure. And now in the midst of a war, they're not trying to win the war, they're trying to implement a new energy policy to bring in renewables. This would be declared as madness by any normal person. But of course we already know from our goal that the agenda is to completely change the European energy system and the markets in order to go in for a supposed clean green energy system. And the Ukrainian war is obviously a useful tool to allow that to happen. A few people have said in the comments, who are these people and what are they? Well, I don't even know the answer to that. But certainly they seem to have little empathy for the normal human being trying to get on with their lives. Now the Daily Mail surprisingly got locked onto Al Gore back in January 2023, a huge piece about all of his business interests that were paying him 2 million a month. Not a bad little income. But surprisingly the Mail Online journalists were not able to find the links through to Octopus Energy and the disruption of the UK energy system. And I'll just end here by saying that of course we can also quickly find UK's King Charles, the green king in the background. And here he is speaking to Al Gore at the COP26 Climate Summit and then of course keep the king hosting a reception of Buckingham Palace with 200 business leaders, decision makers and NGOs ahead of the COP22 Summit in Egypt. So the king fully involved in an agenda to absolutely destroy current UK businesses and the energy market. Ben, let's bring you back in. Octopus, that is a big one. When you listen to Greg Jackson talk, we just heard a few little snippets from him there, he's the chief executive. Think about him as a front man that is delivering lines that have been written for him by somebody else. Go and listen to what he says again in the way he delivers it. I think that's what he is. I actually don't think he really understands what he's talking about to be honest with you. So we're going to head over the pond, just talk a little bit about some of the two in fact of the new incoming Trump administration. I'm going to direct your attention to this image, which popped up on social media over the weekend. If you look from Donald Trump, Jr's Instagram page, you can see Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr, sitting opposite his father, RFK, Jr also sat at the table there and then Mike Johnson, who is the speaker of the house, the ranking Republican official in Congress. The thing that was fascinating about this, we know that Trump likes a McDonald's, he invites people to the White House and buys them a Big Mac and that's kind of crazy and slightly terrifying, especially when it's professional athletes and people like that. He's just tapped up, RFK, Jr on the right hand side there to be the leader of the US Department of Health and Human Services. So he's the guy, potentially he's going to be running the US health system. And here he is, on what looks like a private jet, eating McDonald's, and got a bottle of Coca-Cola next to him. And this is crazy, isn't it? You've got the guy running the health system coming in and promoting this as a diet. That doesn't make any sense. And who's benefit is this for? It can't be for the American people, right? This is about the shareholders, who owns these two organizations? Who owns McDonald's? Who owns Coca-Cola? Well, it's Vanguard, it's BlackRock, it's State Street, it's JP Morgan, it's Berkshire Hathaway, right? This is global corporate interests that Trump is gleefully cheerleading. Unfortunately, RFK, Jr, is also gleefully cheerleading, right? Now, there's been some discussion about, you know, he was a strong voice advocating against the COVID vaccine program, and he wrote a quite phenomenal book, actually, about Anthony Fauci, which I highly recommend reading. It's an exceptional piece of work that he put out, but this, to me, is just completely inexplicable, right? He has made a few public statements about Coca-Cola, and the fact that people are going to have to start eating more healthfully, that kind of thing. So, this popped up over the weekend. There's rumors floating around that he's actually going to require Coca-Cola start using cane sugar instead of high fructose syrup if he's brought into the position at the Department of Health and Human Services, right? And actually, he does have form on this front, so he spoke about this earlier on in the year as well when he was still running for president, right? So, there's some discussion here about him saying that if you want to drink a Coke, drink a Mexican Coke, there's Mexican Coke uses sugar and not high fructose syrup, which is less damaging for you, but this is a little bit like saying to a junkie that they have to stop using methadone and start injecting heroin again because it's natural, right? Or, you know, don't smoke methamphetamine, smoke crack cocaine instead, right? That's really the message that's being delivered here. And to me, it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever, right? The RFK's unit, RFK's unit's credibility seems to be going up in smoke. Now, there's one other potential appointment that I'm going to reference that I actually think is quite good. Actually, this is Tom Holman under questioning by Alexandria. I'm going to call her occasional cortex, but it's not there, is it? It's AOC from earlier on this month. Mr Holman, your name is on this. Is this correct? Yes, I say in that memo. So you are the author of the Family Separation Policy? I am not the author of this memo. You're not the author, but you signed the memo? Yes, a zero tolerance memo. So you provided the official recommendation to Secretary Nielsen on the United States to pursue Family Separation? I gave Secretary Nielsen numerous recommendations on how to secure the border and save lives. But it says here that you gave her numerous options, but the recommendation was option three, Family Separation. What I'm saying, this is not the only paper where we give the Secretary numerous options to secure the border and save lives. And so the recommendation of the many that you recommended, you recommended Family Separation? I recommend a zero tolerance, which includes Family Separation. The same as this, will you ever you a citizen parent get your rest of women with a child? Zero tolerance was interpreted as the policy that separated children from their families. If I get arrested for DUI and I have a young child in the car, I will be separated. When I was a police officer in New York and I arrested a father for domestic violence, I separated that father from the family. Mr Holman, will call to respect legal asylees are not charged with any crime. When you're in the country, legal is violation eight United States code 1325. Seeking asylum is legal. If you want to seek asylum, you go to the border of entry, do it the legal way. The Attorney General of the United States has made that clear. Okay. Tom Holman, Trump's borders are no nonsense, no is the legislation, doesn't bow under pressure under questioning. It appears to be completely focused on just this equal treatment in front of the law. I'd like five of those sent to the Home Office immediately, please. But unfortunately, that's not going to happen. And I think the net outcome of someone like that being put in charge of the US border means that we're going to see even greater waves of immigration coming into Europe. I think that's going to be the net outcome. So just two of Trump's picks there that I thought I'd draw people's attention to. Ben, thank you very much. I'm sure we're going to see much more turbulence in the world because that's part of the chaos and breakdown they need to build back better. But let's lift things up a bit. Diane, you prompted for a segment a little bit more uplifting today. We know that many members of the UK call them and people in our audience say, my goodness, the news is so terrible. We need something to cheer us up a bit. So what have you got? I decided it was really a good time to do something uplifting for sure. And I have some good things to report. So if those of you who are familiar with the work of the wonderful cartoonist Bob Moran, we've covered him previously through an interview that Mike and Charles did with him over the summer in the studio. And he was one of our speakers at our UK call among location events in Bristol last month. And you'll see in the back of the interview photo that we've got there that his cartoon spiritual war is one of the ones that we have in the studio. It's a reproduction. I'm sure of it because the original sold on his website for £75,000 and I can guarantee you we didn't buy an original. But what I would say is that his book, which he's been on tour with, was sort of sitting around the country for some book signing. And so I was able to catch up with him on Thursday night in Newcastle. And what I'd like to do is just give you a kind of an overview of how great the event was and just a couple of quotes that I've taken from the introduction to Bob's book. So I'm just going to read a few sentences because I believe these are the kinds of words that we all need to hear right now. He said, "I've stopped trying to comfort my audience by playing down the gravity of our situation or distracting them from it, which is what we are trying to do at UK column as well. But I want to show fully the tragedy of our times while offering reasons to be optimistic. There are many. The enemy's mistake is hubris. Total godlike power cannot be obtained. There will always be someone who refuses to conform. And that certainly includes all of us here. If you look at this particular drawing of the drawing side as well as the finished cartoon side, this is one of the things that's really interesting about the book is because you get to see some of the original sketches, what was going on in his mind as he developed the full version. And here we have Boris Johnson drunk throwing up on the rules and with needles in his arms. So there we go. One of the ones that I think was pretty funny at the time and still is. So the event itself on Thursday night in Newcastle was announced the day before because he has tried to go to Newcastle in the past and was cancelled. And so it was very, it was announced on Twitter but really it was very sort of low key. I took a photo of the little book signing upstairs. That was the only sign anywhere in the pub where it was held on how to find him. So I actually had to ask someone where to go. So he was just trying to not have the event cancelled once again. I had a great time with these two. This is Julie and Steve. They are UK column members. They were at the Sounds Beautiful event over the summer. And they are going to the farmers protest tomorrow all the way from Newcastle. So we had a great time together. The next photo is me with Tanya Edwards who is a comedian who's worked with Bob on his show, Archpocalypse, and she was the editor of Bob's book, which by the way is called Bob 2020 to 2024, which basically highlights. The cartoons that he did over those four years. So there's a photo with me and Bob. I didn't realize even though I've seen him in person how tall he was, at least compared to me. Very tall man. Very, very nice, very sweet man though. And this is how he signed my book, which really warmed my heart. I have to say he said to Diane, keep up the great work at UK column. The truth will prevail. Best wishes Bob. I did a 10 minute video interview with Bob and I've just got a short clip from it here that I'd like to show. And I'd like to show the full interview somewhere else, maybe on our website or somewhere in the near future. But here's a short clip from it. I noticed you spend a lot of time talking to people when you sign them, which is amazing. What have you learned so far from people as you talked to them about your book? Well, the main thing everyone says is that they're very grateful for my work. It's a bit of a feel like they weren't alone. Because all of us who were concerned about this stuff that's been happening, felt very isolated. You know, and obviously lots of our friends and family didn't feel the same way. So people were immediately placed in a position where they thought they maybe were going mad because no one else thought that. And one of the things my work obviously did was show them that no, you're not mad, somebody else does think like you. In fact they feel such a conviction about this stuff and they've taken the time to draw a picture and paint it. Yeah. So you can't be mad. Yeah, I mean, and I think one of the best things we can do is to laugh at it when we can, because some of the humor and some of your cartoons just really puts things into perspective for me as well. Yeah, laughter is one of the key things to undoing the spells, trying to weave on us. And it's a great release because it's very sad and frightening what's happening. But you always have to laugh at it. So what is your plan for your next cartoons? Are you going to do some Trump things? I know you've done one with the heart first thing. I saw that one. Yeah, the Trump thing has really kind of thrown a bit of a curveball into the whole movement because it's yet another thing that's really divided people where a lot of people are very upset that I'm not jumping to joy about Trump. I'm not either. It's fine. So the cartoon that I was referring to, it says, I feel like my heart might burst. He did it Trump 2024. And so we can see what the implication is there with Trump and what role he had to play and what happened in our past few years. And so I've got what I looked at this weekend. What is Bob doing now? So he's clearly thinking more about Trump. And I've just got one short video clip that he retweeted of the weekend with the comments. Ha ha, this is hilarious. If you can watch this without realizing that they're screaming into your face that the whole thing is a complete con, you're properly lost. So let's see what he's talking about. They said he was done forever. He is done. He ends of this Trump era. The new faces, the new voices. The final chapter of Donald Trump. I don't know what the future of this party can be. The movement we started is only just beginning. The entire system went after. Carlisle was raided by FBI. New York indictment. I'm sweeping indictment. Donald Trump says he's been indicted again. I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. But he never stopped fighting for you. I will never stop fighting for you, your family and our magnificent country. And we will win, win, win. We're going to win, win, win. Thank you President Trump for fighting for us. The greatest political comeback in American history. Donald Trump has been elected president. Now it's time we fight for you. The only age of America. That's what we have. The best is yet to come. So that just proves the point there that he is an actor. To me that looks like a film trailer more than it looks like anything else. And I just want to leave the audience with one final quote from Bob's book. There will always be someone somewhere who is guided by their conscience. There will always be someone somewhere who has faith. And that in the end will be enough. Everything they're doing leads to their own destruction. You cannot have an assortment of people pledged to wickedness and deception without arriving at a certain point where in the total absence of love they turn on each other and destroy themselves. It's inevitable. It might take a long time and it is for us to stand apart. Diane, thank you very much. Well, that must be good because we've got a mixture of education mixed with humor, which I think is a really great combination. Now I'm watching the time here and I've got to say I think we've got to the end of the news today. We've ended on an upbeat note, so I hope that makes a lot of people happy. We're going to discuss some other subjects in extra. In particular, we're going to be having a little look at Edel Musk. And we'll also be looking at the big furor over Alison Pearson, the telegraph journalist and her ex tweet, whatever you do in ex tweet, I believe. And we'll cover that in extra time. I would say that occasionally people say yes, but why does UK column charge for extra time? It isn't that we charge for it. It's something that we give to the people who are kind enough to support us financially. So this is something extra that we do for the people that support UK column and help us keep going. So if you're not able at the moment to join us in extra, look out for the ones we do make public, but otherwise that's why we do it. It's a big thank you to the people who are paid out members. We must end there. Thank you for joining us. The news will be back on Wednesday at one o'clock. Extra will start shortly. And just a reminder that maybe amongst the many people expected in London tomorrow, Mike and I might be able to meet you. We'll see. Thanks for joining us. Bye-bye. [MUSIC] Feeling under the weather? Family Dollar has you covered. Battle every sneeze and sniffle this coffin cold season with great deals on over-the-counter cold, flu and allergy remedies for the whole family. Family Dollar helping you do more.