UK Column News - 2nd July 2025

Good afternoon. It's Wednesday, the 2nd of July just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Call News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me Bev video link today are researcher and activist Sandy Adams and journalist and peace campaigner Vanessa Bailey. Now in a few minutes, Charles, we'll be reporting on the latest geoengineering news. Vanessa will bring us the latest news on Gaza. And Sandy, we'll be covering the House of Commons debate on egg

donation by young women. But we're going to begin with the question of whether or not the UK is a dictatorship. Now Alex Creole writes the Thinking Coalition Substack and his latest article asks exactly that question. Now the the latest reason, or at least the latest reason why the question arises, is that the text of the What Does an MP Do page on the UK Parliament website has changed at some point in the last couple of weeks.

I'm very pleased to say that Alex Grill joins us now to discuss what has changed and when it changed. Welcome to the programme, Alex. Let me begin by asking you how you came to discover the change in the text, because I don't imagine that this is a page that people look at as a matter of routine. It's a special kind of weirdo to be tracing the changes in UK parliament website.

But seriously, I was actually looking at explaining to people on Substack how the vote on the decriminalisation of abortion to birth was a breach of the MP's requirements to represent the public and represent their constituents in, in the Houses of Commons. And when I went to look at the definition to show people, look, this is what they're supposed to do, a completely different text came up. And I sort of checked several times through, through the

archive system as well. And I, I, I worked out, yes, exactly. There'd been a very significant change. OK, welcome back. Apologies for the technical issue there. Not quite sure what happened, but there we go. Anyway, Alex was talking there about the changes to the Parliamentary House of Commons website, the Parliament website and the role of MP. So let's just let's just run through what those changes were. So this is what the text used to

say. The public The UK public elects Members of Parliament to represent their interests and concerns in the House of Commons. MPs consider and can propose new laws as well as raising issues that matter to you in the House. This includes asking government ministers questions about current issues, including those that affect local constituents. And well, this is the text that has it has been changed to It now says MPs work both at the UK Parliament and their local constituencies.

How and where they work is largely up to them to decide. There is no job description on a contract of employment for MPs, nor any rules on how they how they should balance the competing demands of these two roles. However, MPs must abide by standards of conduct, rules and conventions. So this is quite a a a change and in fact, Alex, all mention of elections and representation have been removed from the page as a whole.

And just as bad as that, MP's constituency work seems to be considered as a second role to whatever they do in parliament from now on. So what's your take on this? Why have they made this change? Well, I think the first thing is to to recognise this change has obviously been made very deliberately. These things don't get done by

accident. And we've seen in the past, you know, when definitions of things like pandemics and vaccines and all other things change, then sort of bad things tend to happen afterwards. They, they tend to be sort of weaponized, those new definitions. And my my guess is that, you know, as we get more into a sort of dictatorial top down system of government, they're just trying to re educate people into the idea that MPs don't actually represent constituents and the public.

They're actually performing almost a technocratic function of some description. I think it's it's seeding the idea that we're moving to a less democratic system as my guess. Well, I mean, I've argued for a long time that the role of MPs has already changed in the sense that rather than representing constituents views in Parliament, they tend to represent policy views to constituents.

And, you know, often we see a massive disparity between the comments made in the House of Commons by an MP and what may be said by people on social media or whatnot. There seems to be a disconnect in general. But this is taking it even further by removing the idea of of an electorate of elections from the definition. That seems like a pretty dangerous precedent to be, or certainly a dangerous direction to be heading in.

Yeah, I completely agree. And I mean, the reason I stumbled into it was trying to explain how Parliament managed to approve abortion to birth, which is something that, I mean, every survey I've seen says 90 plus percent of the survey respondents. Suppose I was trying to explain, well, how is this even remotely possible? And as you said, it's, it's happening more now that the parliamentary vote is, I mean, it's totally at odds with the views of the electorate and it's very dangerous.

And, you know, then to find in the meantime, as I was doing that research, that actually their job description had also been changed as very sinister. So I agree. And it's, it's been like that. I think it's getting worse. And it's been like that since politicians start setting their global agendas somewhere outside the UK.

As soon as you get into these 20302050, you're already suggesting that democracy in country is not that relevant because the big plans are set elsewhere over multiple election cycles. And in fact, we in the current climate, of course, the war agenda as well, they are taking no notice of whether there is any support for that policy

whatsoever. Yeah, there was quite a famous, I I looked at it the there was a sort of non binding resolution of Parliament to call for peace, which was also supported by the overwhelming majority of people in surveys. And as you said, Parliament voted against that non binding, kind of meaningless to be honest resolution to call for peace and

Gaza a couple of years ago. And, and as you said, you see it all the time in these decisions, The parliamentary action is diametrically opposed to what people want, as expressed in surveys and what have you. No, it's it's interesting that we've asked the House of Commons media team for a statement about this, but so far they've not responded.

That's perhaps not surprising. Of course, we'll update everyone if they do, but are you shocked by the fact they haven't provided a response to this issue yet? No, not, not at all. And you know, as we suggested, this is very deliberate. These things are quite serious and they don't get done by accident. So we're actually intending to write to the speaker, probably

with our usual sort of allies. Hopefully the Heritage Party and others will join in with that, and we will ask them to, well, we'll sort of more or less require them to replace that new wording with the old wording. And we'll argue that the new wording is completely inappropriate and needs to be deleted. And we don't expect a lot of traction with that. But we're just going to keep on pushing that if we can. OK.

Well, thank you, Alex. I mean, you're going to be joining us an extra letter, but in the meantime, you're talking about way and so on. How do people follow your work? Well, there's sub stack thinking coalition and the website is thinking coalition.org and those are good places to start. Twitter is at thinking slow one. Thanks for that. Thank you for that, Alex. Now just before we move on, Vanessa, maybe I could just ask you what your thoughts are on

this. Do you have any comment to make on on the fact that apparently there's no open acknowledgement that the electorate doesn't count? Well, I mean, we've been heading into a stealth dictatorship for some time, haven't we? And I think one of the earlier signs for for both of us, Mike, was the sudden closure of the access to government spending over 25,000, which we've talked

about multiple times. But everything else from COVID to the wars that they're waging and enabling and facilitating without any consent from the electorate in the UK. But it's, you know, we are, we're, we're living under a dictatorship while pointing the finger everywhere else in order to facilitate war and militarism. It's it's horrible. Thank you for that. Now the UK government has debated A petition about

outlawing all forms of geoengineering, Which seems to have brought out a false binary argument of a choice between net zero or wet weather, sorry weather modification. Now, Charles isn't with us today, but he has sent us this report on on that debate and the implications. Thanks Mike. Geoengineering brought back into the public square by this recent petition on the subject of geoengineering. Make all forms of geoengineering affecting the environment illegal.

Signed by 160,000 people rather more than in fact, and therefore to be debated in the House of Commons now in order to ensure that all present would be on the same page.

The House of Commons Library produced a briefing document about this in which they were keen to make the various points that whilst there had been funding for modelling research to understand the potential impacts of solar radiation management deployment, which is effectively treating the sky with chemicals in order to reflect the sun's rays. Or at least say the theory goes that it wasn't actually going to be happening. There is also a clause about

what they call chemtrails. They say the term chemtrails refers to unsupported theories that the long lasting trails of condensation sometimes left in the sky by aeroplanes, brackets, contrails, closed brackets are produced by the deliberate spraying of certain chemicals into the atmosphere.

So the debate itself took place on the 23rd of June and this was led by Roz Savage who was keen to concentrate not so much on what she described as being natural methods of geoengineering such as planting Woodlands and encouraging growth of peat bogs etcetera. But she also lumped in with that carbon catcher, which is certainly not in any way natural. But what she was keen to talk about was the unintended consequences of technology such

as SRM. She said that humanity does not have a good track record on on this. Weather systems are immensely complex, interconnected and not well understood. Altering sunlight could potentially disrupt monsoons or shift jet streams, or trigger droughts in some regions whilst causing floods in others. Of course she's quite right to point this out. And Angus MacDonald went on to make the point that mains gas at the moment is 6 pence per kWh, whilst renewable energy is

selling at 24 pence per hour. So again, he was highlighting the the point that frankly, this situation at the moment is simply untenable on economic grounds. Nick Timothy significantly asked about Aria, the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, and the fundamental point of his question was to ask why would you fund something when you say

you're not going to do it? The response from the permanent Under Secretary Climate, who is Kerry McCarthy, said that Aria was conducting cautious, controlled research aimed at improving the understanding of SRM risks and impacts, but it is not deploying SRM technologies. I say again that it's research will not release any toxic materials, nor will it alleviate the urgent need for increased decarbonisation efforts.

There is no substitute for decarbonisation, which is why we are pressing on with our missions for clean power and net zero. Now the fundamental question remains unanswered, which is why would you research something if you're absolutely not intending to practise it? But either way, the point that falls out of this debate is that we are continually presented with a false binary and in

casting SRM as the demon. It is very obvious therefore that pushing people towards the net zero agenda is the desired outcome from this. And of course, what it does is it removes the debate from that particular issue in that there's no proper rigorous scientific examination of either the necessity for it or indeed the consequences of it.

It's very hard to demonstrate in any meaningful sense that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would make any difference to climate that could actually be ascribed to that change. Now this brings us on to the action of 0 Hour, effectively a site for campaigning and activism on this very subject. And notably they have backed the Climate Nature Bill, which of course was put forward by Roz Savage, and that was as a private member's bill.

It's been through the House for its first reading and comes in for its second reading, having been deferred from January next Friday, the 11th of July. Now the reason for pointing you towards that is really to make the point that it's just simply not a grassroots activity or campaign.

They have a banner across the bottom of their website, shown here, saying they've raised nearly 46,000 lbs, but only from 720 donations, suggesting the people involved here have rather deeper pockets than the average man on the street. And I think that's the point very much worth making because this is absolutely an elite agenda.

And the other thing that has crept in recently and cannot be ignored anymore is the way in which human rights are now being weaponized in order to secure a future for people. That means that climate change is being addressed and references to indigenous people. We see here on screen the news story that the government to the United Kingdom has submitted a statement on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change to the UN Human Rights Council.

This course is backed up by a page on the United Nations website talking about human rights being a strong lever for progress in climate change. So in effect, this is beginning to manipulate but also invert the very idea of human rights in the way in which they might express themselves. And this goes back some years. The BBC here talking about the European Court on Human Rights being violated by climate

inaction. And this is the extraordinary case reported on previously by UK column that went up from the Swiss courts to the European Court of Human Rights in which 4 ladies who were all, I think over the age of 70, said the Swiss authorities were not taking sufficient action to mitigate the effects of climate change. They wanted human rights to be used in such a way that the government would have more rather than less interference in

their lives. Now a precedent has been set and this is now reflected back on this side of the Channel by this paper in the House of Commons Library saying that there is a new precedent for in human rights law, which is a a somewhat alarming progression to note.

But it's not all bad. And what I want to to close with is an engagement at Leeds City Council on the 30th of June in which we see here a still of Trudeau and Suzanne addressing the council in a a calm and reasonable way and therefore getting the best out of those that were there. And there's not time to show the video in this clip now, but I will have the link to it in the show notes.

And I really would encourage you to watch this council session session because they set their case out very, very well and they get the responses that they deserve in that there is a calm and reasoned counter conversation. And indeed one hopes that that after the meeting this will actually lead somewhere sensible. Now this was one of the replies of the one of the councillors present. In terms of worldwide emissions, Great Britain is 1%, Leeds is 1% of.

Great Britain. And if we go on, as Ed Miliband wants us to go on, with solar farms, wind farms, with electricity costs to industry the highest in the world, it will bankrupt the country. That's my view. We should. And if you remember this government came to power saying that they were committed to growth, well, you know, there's just no growth. So I believe we should continue with oil and gas and forget it.

Thank you. No. I I stopped the the clip there because you would have heard a very brief smatter of applause at the end and of course he was the only person that was applauded, presumably because he has managed to trap himself in the real world. Now the next clip is from another councillor and it's very interesting to see how propaganda does actually affect itself, particularly where hypotheticals and modelling are affected. So just have a listen to this.

Because once the average global temperature goes above 1.5° C, we get to what is known as a tipping point, which we can't return. So the positive feedback loops kick in. We already know that the ice caps are melting. We already know that the perma, the permafrost areas of the world are melting and releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. And when that happens, you get into a positive feedback loop, which from which it will be very difficult to recover from. That's why it's known as the

climate emergency. No, I have absolutely no doubt that she fully believes what she says, but her idea of a positive feedback loop is something that neither she nor anybody who dabbles in this area of what might be called climate science

can ever substantiate. And this represents the fundamental issue with the geoengineering debate, which absolutely will be 1. Not not just that we follow, but also that I would encourage you to get involved in because you can see from that meeting there that there there absolutely can be positive outcomes. Well, let's discuss a little bit

more about the positive outcomes, particularly from that Leeds event. And welcome, Sandy to the programme. You have some more on this. Hi Mike. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I mean as as as we saw from from Charles's presentation net 0 isn't working and Britain's are increasingly turning against net 0 as a bombshell poll reveals they're now they now fear the impact will leave will will actually

impact on the cost of living. The survey from the Merlin Strategy reveals that public mood has shifted sharply on net zero and asked whether Ed Miliband's Maddie. Her policies have helped or hurt their living standards. More voters more more voters are now agreeing, and they say they have. 38% have said that net zero has, have had a negative impact on their standard of living. So we're seeing this big backlash now and, and it's really heartening to see that happening in our, in our town

councils. You know, the survey really suggests that people are looking now at nuclear energy. And Charles's clip from the Leeds meeting from Neil Buckley particularly endorses this fact that people are losing, they're losing the whole, the whole narrative pro net 0. They're they're really winding it back now. I do have a clip from that same meeting with Suzanne Henderson

and Trudy from ukcitizen.org. I can't stress how important UK citizens work is. They have downloadable legal packs on their website to help you challenge your local council and then it's amazing. It's put together by Jane Lord who's a lawyer who is part of UK citizen.org. Amazing team they are. Do please look at ukcitizen.org and challenge your council because you're not alone.

People are doing it now. Now Trudy mentions the gunning principles in that same video and how they were not adhered to in consultations for massive solar farms occupying precious farmland. And she also mentions that in Pembrokeshire Council, they've recently moved their climate emergency to review as they're no, they, they're no longer confident that it was the right decision to make, which is

really encouraging. So it was really good to see so many councillors agreeing with her on that, on that, on that clip. Anyway, we couldn't show it all. But as Charles said, it's in the show notes. So let's just look at Suzanne Henderson speaking at Leeds about predictions that didn't happen. Thank you. Let's also reflect on a few predictions that all that never came to pass to pass. In 1970, scientists warned of a new Ice Age by the 21st century.

In 1988, NASA's James Hansen predicted parts of Manhattan would be underwater by 2008. A 2001 IPCC report suggests that snow would become rare in the UK by 2020. In 2008, scientists forecasted an ice free Arctic by 2013. We've heard some terms evolve too, from global cooling in the 70s to global warming and finally climate change when warming failed to match the projections. Right now, net zero is losing credibility, not in the just in

the UK, but around the world. Germany has shut down wind farms over cost and inefficiency and Audi is shifting back to diesel. Public confidence is waning as shown by the growing support for reform. So we ask, will you continue to support and allow these large scale projects to go ahead without challenge, even when they may not serve the public interest? So yeah, that was Suzanne Henderson from ukcitizen.org. And yeah, do go on their website challenge your council. Thank you.

Thank you, Sandy. Thank you for that very much. Now let's move on to international news.

And while things remain quiet with respect to Iran, at least in the meantime, Israel continues the operation in Gaza. What's the latest Vanessa? Well, an uptick in the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The first video just shows a very recent in the last 48 hours of bombing of the AL Baka Koff Cafe on the coastal zone of Gaza. So let's just have a quick look at the video.

So this cafe was jam packed full of journalists and and just people trying to find some kind of respite from the hourly or minute by minute slaughter that is ongoing. One particular journalist by an Abu Sultan was among the dozens injured. We can just see the picture of her up on screen. This was her yesterday. 25 people at least were killed and many others, of course, were

injured. And this is indicative of what Israel is doing and it's targeting particularly of journalists, but not only journalists. So in the last in 24 hours, this has been reported on X this morning, 105 Palestinians killed in the last 24 hours alone. Palestinian artist Frank Amina al Salmi was murdered by the Zionist airstrike on Al Baka Kafi in Gaza City on the 1st of July. She drew a portrait of herself a

few weeks before she was killed. So let's just have a look at the portrait that she drew of herself. This was her last painting and on the right is her last moment. And I have to say that when I was in Gaza in 2012 during the Israeli aggression, I, I personally worked with a team that were gathering testimonies from families who particularly lost children in the Zionist aggression.

Every single family told me that the child had some kind of premonition of their death on the day that they were killed, in addition to the starvation, the blockade, the everyday slaughter. Now we discover, according to many reports in local media, drugs have been found hidden in flower bags distributed by the US backed aid group.

That, of course, was created by Israel in order to control the supply of food and aid to the people, or in other words, to to use it as a lethal weapon and use it as a lure to bring people in to be killed. In a statement, Gaza's government media office said that prescription painkiller oxycodone, which is an opioid, was found by Palestinians inside the flour bags they received from the US run aid distribution points in Gaza. So of course, what is this going

to do? In addition to everything else, this is going to increase opioid dependency and also sedate anyone, of course, that that is unfortunate enough to to eat or use that particular flour. And just one image, which was in the same article, which I think epitomises what is happening in Gaza, the destruction in the background and people desperate for a single bag of flour to to feed themselves.

There are constant images across all social media platforms of children and and young people dying literally from starvation. And then finally, this was a report that I think originally came out in Hertz or in Hebrew media. Killing fields, the Israeli soldiers ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinians at the aid sites, the GHF sites. So what does it actually say? This is testimony from one of the soldiers who describes it as a killing field where I was

stationed. Between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force. No crowd control measures, no tear gas, just live fire with everything imaginable, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then once the centre opens, the shooting stops and they know

they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire, so basically what they say they're doing is in the morning they're shooting to prevent a build up of crowds and in the evening to disperse the people from the aid centres and of course they're slaughtering Palestinians in the process. Vanessa, thank you for that grim report. Once again, it is tragic, but we are going to talk much more about this in Extra as well. So anyway, in the meantime, we

if you like what the UK column does, you would like to support us, please have a look at the front page of the UK column website. There is a link there to do that now. Yesterday's interview with Will Keate is now up. This is Ben speaking to Will Keate on constitutional issues is now up on the UK column website. It's entitled to the natural order to have a look at that if you possibly can. Ivor Cummins is the guest on German Warfare tonight at 7:00 PM. You won't win if you're

unhealthy. He's absolutely right about that. So please join us at 7 for that. Another reminder of a date for your diary, which is the 18th of October 2025. And the theme is going to be Health for UK column on location in New York to join us if you can. Details coming very, very soon with some pretty exciting speakers. Sandy, let's just mention that yet again, another event that you're involved with has been cancelled.

Yes, it has indeed. The The witch hunt continues in in Glastonbury and surrounding areas where Clive de Carl, Richard Robes and myself have been cancelled yet again. This is the fourth time now and we'd even chosen A venue outside of town. But somehow the, the, the community Solidarity Stroud and community Solidarity Glastonbury have got to them. We are dangerous people and we are right wing and we're dreadful and we cannot be allowed to speak. So free speech is gone in my

location I'm afraid. So we are battling this obviously. But it's, it's just, you know, it's a sign of the times at the moment, how censored we are becoming and how we are living as, you know, as Alex mentioned earlier. Yeah, we're living in a sort of politburo now where we're not allowed to have free speech.

And it's pretty awful, yeah. OK, well let's see if this one does go ahead because there's a distant meet up taking place on Sunday the 20th of July. It's a full day event and seven speakers including yourself and Andrew Bridgen. Indeed, I'll be speaking about devolution among other things. And, and yes, it should be a really good event. It's a beautiful place, Goffin Land.

It's this lovely in nature, big barn and field and the weather should be good and we're hoping for a big audience there. And we are not censored in Gough Inland, it's privately owned. Fantastic. Thank you. And finally another event coming up. The glitch in this is part of the Matrix Tour of Stratford upon Avon Saturday the June the 28th and this is related to yellow boards activity. So four teams of yellow boards coming together for a day of community outreach.

Details will be in the show notes and the graphic is on the screen at the moment. OK, let's come back to Palestine

related issues. And as expected or at least as forecast, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has laid a draught prescription order in parliament which will prescribe the group Palestine Action. So she has also included two other organisations in this order. And by doing so she has acquitted Palestine Action with the Maniacs murder cult and the Russian Imperial Movement, which are both paramilitary or at least have parliament military

links. Now this will make it a criminal offence to be one of these groups or to invite a or recklessly express support for them as they put it. And I would like to them to define recklessly, which of course they don't do. Parliament is now going to consider and debate the draught order. And if passed, the order will make it an offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison to belong to or to support the

groups. Because let's never forget, the first duty of government is to keep everyone safe. And for the avoidance of doubt, that last sentence was dripping with sarcasm. The keep everyone safe trope. It's a storytelling convention which they have made up to justify the dictatorship they've created. So we're back on that theme again. And now the Home Office says that quotes prescription is

ideologically neutral. By deciding to prescribe these three organisations, the government is demonstrating it's 0 tolerance approach to terrorism regardless of its form of underlying ideology. And you know this is a pretty extreme step by effectively taking people who were protesting in a particular way and calling them terrorists now.

Palestine Action's response said quotes bundling Palestine Action, a domestic civil disobedience protest group, and with foreign neo Nazi organisations further highlights how unjustified and preposterous the Home Secretary's proposed prescription of Palestine Action is. These foreign organisations are the kinds of groups they say that prescription was designed to target, not protesters who disrupt arms factories and spray paint on warplanes to protest

war crimes and genocide. Now, isn't it interesting that the Home Office took no similar actions with respect to Just Stop Stop Oil, which employed largely similar protest tactics? Could it be that the activities of that group suited the government agenda at the time? Vanessa, I'd be very interested in your thoughts on this because this seems to be once again evidence of dictatorship and certainly massive overreach.

Yeah, I was interested to see in the government statement text that they talk about violence and serious criminal damage. While of course the British government is enabling violence and and serious criminal damage to Gaza and to the occupied territories of Palestine. Not to mention Syria and the rest of the region where the UK has through its militarism and proxy forces, destroyed much of the region.

And then the fact that Palestine action, which is protesting genocide that is enabled by the British government is conflated with neo Nazi groups or white supremacist groups, which is the Russian monarchist group, while again, the UK is supporting neo Nazis in Ukraine. So it's as you said, Mike, it's dripping with hypocrisy and and I mean, it's just becoming insane. We're becoming little Israel rather than Little Britain, as far as I can work out.

Yeah, well, that's a reasonable point to make. Alex, I'm going to hijack you here because I realise I haven't primed you for this question, but I just wonder if you've got any thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, militarism is is bad news. And as I said in that, in that sort of non, non committal vote on peace, that's what people wanted here right at the beginning of the Gaza conflict. And Parliament just voted that proposal down. It's it's the same thing. They just keep pushing these

forever wars. And we know they Johnson scuppered the Istanbul talks in April 2022. I don't I don't believe anybody in the UK essentially would support that move. You know, the protagonists have agreed a peace out, outline peace agreement and it's the UK, the Prime Minister that goes in and destroys it. I don't believe there's any support for that kind of activity. But that's what the government does. They are. They are warmongers. Thank you, Alex.

OK, Vanessa, let's come back to you then.

We've talked about Gaza, but you've been hinting for, in fact, going much further than hinting for quite some time now, the likelihood of serious trouble in Lebanon. What's the, you know, related to the Syria situation? What's the latest on that? Yeah.

So first of all, let's just play this video and I'll talk over it. So these are attack theory elements controlled by Geelani or Ahmad Al Shalaar as he's now known as the unelected president of Syria, backed by the UK and US coalition and of course by Israel.

These are basically gathering to to to take up position on the border with Lebanon. If we have a very quick look at the map of Lebanon, I've pointed out there the Red Arrows down to the east of the Lebanese border with Syria as effectively. The two top arrows are where these takfiri elements, most of them the foreign fighters. So the Uyghurs and the Chechens and the Afghans and so on that have been sent to these borders in the northeast and the east of Lebanon.

And then in the southeast, of course, we have the Israeli incumbent on Mount Hermon, which is effectively on Syrian territory, but as you can see, overlooks as far as Beirut on a good day. And then to the far South of Lebanon and up to Sider and to Beirut, you have the threat of further Israeli incursions and an increase or an intensification in the Israeli bombing.

And then in fact, just yesterday, if we play this video, this demonstrates that there are Takfiri cells gathering in Lebanon. There was 1 captured in the north of Lebanon a few days ago, and this is in Dahe, in the southern suburb of Beirut, where the local people actually detected an ISIS cell of terrorists who were gathering with weapons and materials to conduct suicide bombings or IED

bombings in the southern suburb. And of course, this is during the month of Muharram, which is one of the most holy months for Shia and Muslim in particular. And coming up to the night of Ashura, which is the night that Imam Hussain was martyred at Karbala. And that's on Saturday.

So obviously, we're bracing for the potential of attacks here in Lebanon. And then we have this is Tom Barrack, basically Trump's envoy to Syria, who's also been parachuting into Lebanon. Barrack's proposal marks 2 pivotal weeks for the Lebanese state. So what does this actually mean? Of course, he's also been shoring up for Jolani presidency in Syria. This is from Lebanese journalist Madwa Osman, who many people will probably know. And what does she actually say?

So what is the US demanding from Lebanon? So disarmament, full disarmament of Hezbollah within the next two weeks, which of course is not going to be accepted. And that goes beyond UN Resolution 17 O1, which was a withdrawal from South of the Litani River to the north of the Litani River. But now Barack is basically saying no full disarmament normalisation with Israel, with Syria and Lebanon, handing of Lebanon over to Jolani, which explains the build up of the troops on the border.

And the cost of rejecting the deal is far less than accepting it. So that's the gauntlet laid down there by Madua Osman. And of course, what they're also attacking is the Hezbollah banking system, because many people don't how it's portrayed in the West is that Hezbollah is raising money to fund its. Terrorist activities or in our view their resistance activities against Zionist invasion and

occupation of regional land. And in reality what people do and it it's not only the Shia Muslims in Lebanon, they take their gold to the Hezbollah banks. The gold is kept and a loan is given without any interest payments at all. And when the loan is paid back, they can come and get their gold back. So this is a no interest banking policy which they're looking to shut down in favour of, of course organisations like the IMF and the World Bank and American backed financial

institutions. And then of course, on the back of this we have Trump signs an executive order lifting the majority of sanctions on Syria. And then this is the Zionist author Barack. I think behind the scenes Israel is communicating with Syria through at least four different channels including Netanyahu's National Security Advisor, Mossad Director, Foreign Minister Gideon Tsar for political strategic dialogue and the Israel Defence Forces for day to day military coordination.

So this is quite extraordinary. Syria appears to be heading towards being effectively a satellite state of Israel. And then finally, we also have operations ongoing in Iraq. 3 suspected ISIS members were killed in a Kirkuk operation in Iraq in the last again last 48 hours. So ISIS has clearly been deployed and triggered in Iraq to attack the resistance factions there.

And if we have a look at the kind of map of the region, you can see the the filled in red circle is where the attacks by ISIS against Iraqi resistance factions took place near Kirkuk, again very close to the Iranian border. Syria, in the view of the Zionist alliance, has been taken out of action. That remains to be seen. Of course, there are still resistance factions acting inside Syria and the Syrian Army soldiers that left into Iraq and Lebanon when Damascus fell in December last year.

But you can see there that basically what Trump and Netanyahu are now doing, the ceasefire has allowed them to pivot back to try and weaken the two strongest resistance zones, which is Lebanon and Iraq, prior to then probably restarting the war against Iran. And I mentioned last week that we've started a blog or a section of the blog at UK Column News called Syria Centric, a regional analysis.

And this week I'll be looking at the Iranian backed Ring of Fire and all of the resistance factions that would be activated should there be a restart of aggression by Israel and the US alliance against Iran. And that should be published and up at the website tomorrow. Thank you for that. I mean, just very, very briefly, briefly, what are your expectations on that last point? When do you think it's likely that aggression will start against Iran once again?

Very difficult to tell. There's potential for false flag on American soil, but I think for now they're going to focus, as I said, on weakening and destroying the resistance in Lebanon and Iraq initially. OK, thank you for that. Now let's come back to the UK then.

And Sandy, there's been a debate in Parliament with respect to IVF and egg donation by young women in the UK. What? What exactly are they doing here? Well, I mean, I, you know, I find it quite concerning really because on Thursday the 26th of June 2025, Members of Parliament debated the issue of egg donation by very young women and adverts targeting women for their eggs in a debate in Westminster Hall.

Now the debate was led by DUP Health spokesman Jim Shannon MP and highlighted the increased numbers of women aged 18 to 25 coming forward to donate their eggs. The fact that adverts frequently offer the 985 payment to women for their eggs upfront. The adverts don't list they, they don't list the health risks basically in these adverts now.

In October of last year, the Human Fertiliser and Embryology authority, the HFEA, raised the cap on payments to women for their eggs, raising the raising it from 750 pounds to 985 lbs per cycle. And since then adverts for egg donors have increasingly targeted younger women.

This demand has caused a knock on effect within the industry with pressure on IVF clinics which are going to to what some could consider extreme lengths to recruit new donors because because of the demand for for for eggs by childless couples. In 2020, the London Egg Bank, which boasts of having the largest UK donor base, was criticised for targeting students at a welcome event at King's College London.

It's clinic also attended A freshers fair run by the University of Kent Canterbury Christchurch Students Union in 2019. The concern is that young women students struggling financially at university or you know, in general life could be incentivised to donate eggs. And more recently it's begun promoting it's freeze and share scheme on social media. This offers younger women free egg extraction and two years of free storage in exchange for giving up half of their collected eggs.

Now this is yet another example of targeting a different demographic. This is single women who've delayed having children due to poverty and career pressures or simply not finding the right partner who go for the freeze and share option because they fear their fertility is is running out. And you know this would save a woman thousands of pounds. The average cost of collecting and then freezing at woman's eggs is 3350 lbs.

The fertility in industry is now worth 5, 553.5 million in the UK and is growing faster than the general economy in in 2021, the London Egg Bank alone registered a profit of 784,000 and 600 and I think it's yeah, just so nearly 700,000. So once harvested and frozen, the packages of 6 or 10 eggs can be bought from fertility clinics by childless couples, with prices starting at 5750, raising huge concerns that private clinics are profiteering from the on the back of women's body

parts. And I, I have to agree with this. The the HFEA says payments to women are compensation to reimburse women for their time and expenses and that the donations remain altruistic. But the view of many women's rights campaigners and we've got here, the Women's Rights Network are campaigning for this to be stopped. And you know that women as young as 18 have become multiple egg donors and can donate up to 10

cycles. So, you know, and, and young, young women are being contacted on Instagram by couples who want their eggs. I mean, it's an absolute racket.

So what we're finding is that, you know, it's not a painless, uncomplicated procedure, you know, like sperm donation, it's got huge risks and dangers and the woman has to be injected with her hormones and before and after harvesting and this can result in ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome which can be very dangerous and in some cases may cause ovarian cancer. The Department for Health and Social Care have not undertaken any studies into the long term

risks of their harvesting. Now I've got a quote here from from a lady from De Montford University and she says to. To fulfil the demand, increasing numbers of young, healthy women pass through technologicize and geneticized modes of selection where their eggs are retrieved and offered to patients with almost unfettered promises of success at eye wateringly high prices. And there's another one from the Doctor Thanos Papa fans. Oh, I can't pronounce it anyway.

Something Greek. He's the chief executive executive of a fertility clinic and he said increasing the compensation for egg donors in the UK to 986 lbs is justified as it better reflects the time, effort and medical risks involved in the donation and helps address the current donor shortage. Now, you know, this is I, you know, I can't help feeling that they're playing God here. And we have to think about the human element of this.

In 2005, it was, it was made law that these these potential children, when they're 18 can come and find their biological mothers. So there could be a risk that some of these mothers who donate eggs very young may not even have the chance of having their own children. And then 18 years on, multiple children could turn up on the doorstep saying hello, mummy. And you know, it, it, it is a

potential nightmare. And I really feel that if you, if you can look at I've put the put the link to the debate in the show notes, do write to your MP. This is, this is human body part harvesting in my view. And I think something has to be done about it. And I'm really pleased that Shannon has taken this to, to Parliament. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you for that. Now staying staying in the UK, steel production is back in the

headlines. Here's Charles again with the details. Thanks Mike. Steel returns to the headlines a few months after There was an enormous amount of panic about measures to keep the plant at Scunthorpe going belonging to British Steel, and we're now told that the UK has introduced new trade measures to support the steel sector. Now this government document saying they are aiming to better protect domestic industry from unforeseen surges in foreign imports as part of the plan for

change. Now that reads rather like it's something aimed at China, perhaps at the behest of Donald Trump. They also talk about delivering on the government's commitment to rebuild Britain's industrial strength. Now this is really the fallout from a document published just last week, which is the new trade strategy from the UK. And really the the most significant parts of it, if any of it is to be taken at face value is, is really to look where it's come from and what

its aims are. And of course, in fact, when you read that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are committed to growing the economy and decarbonising our businesses and infrastructure, the entire aim looks completely untenable because of course, those two things would appear to be in conflict with one another. Now pulling strings behind the scenes here is Poppy Gustafson, Baroness Gustafson as she now is the Minister of State for Investment.

And the reason that she's worth mentioning is that she was parachuted into the House of Lords for this particular role coming from the cybersecurity company Dark Trace. And of course, Dark Trace was in the headlines last year for the bizarre coincidence of the deaths of its founders, Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain, within hours of each other.

In very strange circumstances, one might say, but also because of Gustafson's links to GCHQ, among others, and indeed her critical place in pushing AI for the government.

And I think noteworthy at this point to mention that Dark Traces motto, let's say on their website is Cybersecurity That Learns You. Now what that has to do exactly with British Steel at the moment perhaps is is less than clear, but the emergency legislation has quite clearly changed the direction of British Steel. We're looking at their website now and they have a news item from the 19th of June saying there's been a £22 million project to enhance UK

infrastructure and national security supported by British Steel. So of course, they're now saying on their website that their primary goal is to deliver strategic environmental and economic resilience for key strategic areas of the UK manufacturing economy, including defence, transport and energy. Now this is under the banner of something called Ignite, which stands for Indigenous Green Steel for Net 0 Innovation, Technology and Enterprise.

Now this is a, a big change of direction for British Steel and it does absolutely reinforce the point. The government have very much changed the way in which this industry is going to be able to operate. And this is in collaboration with Swansea University exploring how cutting edge university research can accelerate industrial decarbonisation. This word again, which really doesn't seem to fit with manufacturing as we think we know it.

Now this is only really a brief look at what has been going on. There's a, there's a lot more detail to go into, particularly concerning the situation with trade relations in the United States and the history going back to the, the recent tariff situations, the, the, the sort of tariff wars instigated by Trump. Now for more of an update on this, please go to the UK column website and look out and ask. And I wrote entitled The Steel Trap, which will give you

further detail on this. And of course, this does form a very key part of where we are set against the Strategic Defence Review and indeed the National Security Strategy, because the effort here is to link everything together in order to coordinate the population and effectively give the government carte blanche to do things under the banner of national security. Well, thank you very much to Charles for that and we're going to end the programme today.

Back to Sandy and, well, what's James Dyson been up to? Well, I wish he'd stick to Hoovers. I mean, I once had one of his Hoovers and it was the most overly engineered piece of equipment I've ever had. And I feel the same way about what he's doing in the UK right now. He's just launched his new Future of Food vertical growing system in Carrington in

Leicestershire this week. It's a 26 acre glass structure, a Ferris wheel that's 5.5 metres high, sort of like a big rotating rig with optimised LED light exposure, with robotic UV, pest control, climate automation, all singing, all dancing. Technocratic nightmare, I call it. The point is that this is a technocratic takeover of our farming, you know, into corporate hands. So I've got a video here of of of what he's what he's he's the way he sees the future of

farming. So if we can have that. We need to produce food in England. We asked a group of engineers at Dyson what they could do. One of the things we came up with was a vertical growing system. I think this is the biggest rig, 24 metres long, 5 1/2 metres tall, each wheels 500 kilogrammes. It's like having a child. Every single boat I've got a relationship with we import all our strawberries in England except in the height of the

summer season. So what I've done is to build 2 huge greenhouses and from that we can produce the tastiest strawberries you can imagine. All the year round. Different growing system to get much much higher density fruit in a covered environment. This is stacking strawberries up

across these multiple levels. The challenge you then get is light levels and shadowing and making sure that the leaf in the leaf canopy gets enough sunlight to really develop, to make sure every plant gets the maximum natural energy from the sun so we can use as little energy as possible, supplementing that with the LED lights. How can we make it more

efficient? What technology can we bring in that will improve the quality, the taste of the food, use the land better so that we can invest further and make a difference to farming? Got a very high accuracy CO2 sensor as if humidity and temperature and then on the top there this is the apogee PAR sensor. So that detects only the wavelengths that the strawberry plant is interested in, and then we know how much we need to top up with our artificial light. We get a 2 1/2 times uplift in

the output of the greenhouses. This vertical growing system will allow farmers to produce the very best food in England and make Britain more secure in its own food production. We've got wonderful land. And we should be able to grow

everything we eat. Well, I don't know what you feel about that, but when our farmers are being dispossessed of their land and the natural resources like soil and sun are being covered with renewable energy centres and data centres, we've got this artificial, unnatural way of farming which I'm sure those strawberries look particularly nutrient deficient to me. And the whole thing is very expensive to run. It's it's madness. Yeah. Thank you, Sandy.

Well, I'm quite sure we'll talk about that and Extra. There's lots to discuss today. We are out of time for now though. I'm going to say sorry again for the technical issue at the beginning of the programme. So we're running a little bit late at the moment, but we'll be back in a few minutes of UK column. Member for UK column News Extra Alex Krill will be sticking with us for that, so do join us in a few minutes. Otherwise we will see you on Friday as usual at 1:00 PM.

See you then. Bye bye.