Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 3rd of January 2024, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host Michael Robinson joining me in the studio today. Charles Mallett, Welcome to the programme, Charles. Thank you very much. And we've got a happy new year to everyone. And Debbie Evans is joining us by video link as usual. And Debbie, let's get kicked off then because, well, the health service continues to collapse. It does indeed. Happy New Year everyone.
And it's not too happy for people waiting for treatment in the NHS. Because of course we know the junior doctors have just started a six day strike. This is the longest in NHS history. Started at 7:00 today and it finishes at 7:00 on January the 9th. Now this means all doctors under consultant level. That doesn't include GPS, and it also doesn't include military doctors either. So it's possible that you may see some military personnel in
hospital for the next 6 days. But crisis in the NHS and more worry too, as Japanese researchers have they've just put out a study saying to expect or predict a pandemic of heart failure. Now this is being blamed on COVID-19 and the study apparently shows that people who haven't had the vaccine are more at risk because COVID is the cause. Now obviously we know of the huge problems that we've seen with serious adverse reactions with regards to the COVID-19 vaccine.
There doesn't seem to be any research into that. And I can tell you that most people that I speak to that are unvaccinated don't appear to be having heart trouble at the moment. Well the question is what is the reason reason for this? Is it to cover up, let's say, any speculation or any discussion or any analysis of whether COVID-19 vaccines are responsible for the heart issues that are clearly happening and excess deaths in general?
This was tweeted out by Leo Varadkar, the Irish tea shock on the 2nd of January yesterday. No excess deaths here, that's in Ireland during COVID pandemic. OECD report says as Health Minister hails high vaccine uptake and this is linking to an independent dot IE article this article. The headline is no excess deaths here during COVID COVID pandemic. So the question is what was this about? Well the OECD published or at least the Irish government published this graph based on
the OECD statistics. And of course the OECD had decided that really the statistics over excess mortality just didn't seem to be quite right and needed the the models were being used, didn't seem to be quite right and maybe they needed to be adjusted And so they have been adjusted now and you can see there that New Zealand had the adjusted figures are in the light blue of course had apparently the lowest excess mortality with looks like about -4% excess mortality.
Ireland looks like about -3 or so that looks like the 4th worth, the 4th best. In these new adjusted figures we can see the OECD average in the middle there with the red bar and to the right of that the UK, the United Kingdom is has a reasonably significant excess mortality even with the adjusted figures, the worst countries there the likes of Turkey, Costa Rica, United States significantly worse than the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Colombia and Mexico.
Now the reason that they're saying that the figures could be made negative with respect to Ireland is because they say they have now adjusted for population growth and so on compared to population pre COVID-19. But of course, for two years nobody was allowed to travel terribly much. And so it's a population increase has happened certainly in 2023 as a result of immigration and so on. But there's some questions to be asked about this still.
But the problem is that if we go back a year or two, we see headlines like this Ireland's excess mortality rate fourth highest in the EU and that's from Breakingnews dot IE and from the Irish Examiner here. Funerals delayed as increase in number of deaths puts mortuaries under pressure. These were from, well, that was from January 2023. So it's all a bit unclear how the OECD has arrived at this
particular claim. Let's have a look at this because of course the the big question that remains in the big elephant in the room is whether we're seeing the same excess mortality in Africa and we certainly didn't with during the COVID years themselves. So this was the New York Times from 2022 trying to cope with this fact, with their headline Trying to solve a COVID mystery mystery. Africa's low death rates. And here's LSE, the London School of Economics from May this year.
Africa's COVID-19 statistics highlights bias and excess death modelling, so they're all flailing around trying to find an explanation which for excess mortality, which doesn't involve vaccinations. And I just find that quite an
incredible situation. In the meantime, the MHRA, because of course they do great things, have announced the new well, they announced this actually in May last year, the new international recognition framework and bringing this back on screen because they have now stood this up.
It is now formal and any medicine coming into the UK that's recognised by other certain other countries can be applied for and get an automatic pass by the MHRA because the international recognition framework is now live as of the 1st of January this year. Let's look at the other countries we've got Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, United States, European Union and European Economic Area, including the various member states are all involved
in this. And So what they're said, but we don't need to worry because what they're saying is as a sovereign regulator, the MHRA retains ultimate authority to accept or reject applications submitted under the IRP. But the shared global expertise inherent inherent in the IRP process is designed to result in a more rapid, efficient and cost effective process for applicants. At launch, the MHRA will partner with regulators in those countries and we'll just that'll just be issued in for various
various medications. So Debbie, that must make you feel particularly positive about the New year and of course we must recognize the MHRA taking a leading role to become at least it would like to see itself as the global regulator. Well, this was always the intention obviously from the the get go the global regulator. But I I think it's going to be very interesting the next board meeting. So perhaps people that are watching might like to ask some questions because grab your ticket.
Now the MHRA board meeting which is scheduled for Tuesday the 16th of January 10:00 to 12:30. Now please submit questions prior to I think it's Monday the 8th of January there 2024. They won't accept questions afterwards but a lot of questions to be asked. Our eyes are completely focused on the MHRA for the for the foreseeable future. So please join me for the MHRA Board meeting and grab your ticket. But staying on health.
And I see this week that Sky brought out a story about the RSV jab would cut baby hospital admissions by more than 80%. Now we've talked about this before, this injection that they're giving to babies. This is not a vaccine, This is a monoclonal antibody. The study included 8000 babies up to the age of 12 months. And we've had interviews with Doctor Roz Jones on previous occasions, consultant paediatrician and we've been saying RSV respiratory center
seal virus. Most children make an unremarkable, which in medical speak is a good recovery. They do not need these injections. So please parents, grandparents, please inform everybody, um that that may need to know. Moving on this year, if we do get our election and the Labour win, we can look forward to Labour's new plan to open up the NHS to private entrepreneurs.
So they're basically looking at ramping up and accelerating clinical trials at home health tests and promoting the NHS app which seems to be being picked up by an awful lot of people. Also yesterday I picked up a copy of the Times because I was alarmed by the front page which says cancer diagnosis. So they're going to be diagnosing One Britain a minute
by 2040 with cancer. Now this is a warning from Cancer Research UK, which of course we've done work on before and we know that Cancer Research UK is funded by Big Pharma. But if we look further into this article you can see that the plans are to wipe out cervical cancer by 2040. There'll be a smoking ban, so that will reduce lung cancer. AI will be reading scans and X-rays. Do you trust AI? I don't. There will be cancer vaccines And the Holy Grail blood test.
Well, you might remember that's the early test for cancer. Grail was a company that was formed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. And of course they're going to be doing lung screening too. And then who remembers the good old days where you knew who a nurse was when you walked into a hospital? You knew who they were because the uniform. Well, I'm sorry folks, but the uniform is again changing for this year into a new national
uniform. And apparently the chief nursing officer says that patients are getting too confused with all of the uniforms. Well, I don't know about you, but if you see the next screenshot, the myriad of different uniforms that are set to hit our wards, it is absolutely insane. And I certainly wouldn't be able to remember who was who based on that chart. So it looks as though it's going to be doubly confusing.
And then my final slide for health really on this segment is that Somerset Council are saying that they're heading for bankruptcy because of the significant while the rocketing, rocketing care costs. So there's going to be a national 6.5% rise in council funding this year, but they just can't keep up with it. I think. Look for more council bankruptcy bankruptcies associated to
healthcare. Thank you, Debbie. Now, Charles, Speaking of finances, and we're not talking council finances but public sector finances. We are, and we're going to look at how the government's been spending your money since it's the start of the year.
So we'll go back to data from 2023 provided by the Office for National Statistics. And these are the public sector finances released just before Christmas and they describe how the relationship between UK public sector monthly income and expenditure leads to changes in deficit and debt. So the first graph and of course statistics can be drawn up and interpreted in a number of different ways.
But this shows the the government borrowing and this is on the left hand side is goes back to 1994 coming up to 2023. So you can see the enormous uplift in borrowing in 2020.
To set that in context, we will go on and have a look at the borrowing expressed as percentage of GDP, gross domestic product and of course the coronavirus restriction pandemic period is dwarfed by those of the 1st and 2nd World Wars. But what's interesting to note between the two points is that not only have there been periods of surplus, but also the cyclical nature of the way in which government manages finances.
Now I'm afraid we are sticking with graphs to be able to illustrate these points and the next thing we'll go on to is the net debt. So again, not not talked about, probably enough in mainstream media, but net debt is running at more or less 100% of GDP now, which as the graph says at the top here, hasn't been seen since the early 1960s.
So it does illustrate the predicament that we find ourselves in, at least in terms of how the government is managing the money that it takes from the taxpayer via all the various means and mechanisms. So that's the the borrowing side of it and the debt side of it. The next thing to consider is how on earth is the government actually spending this money? Where's it going and what are they doing with it?
So we'll just bring on screen something from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, their tax lab part of their website, which has a colourful pie chart here. And the reason for wanting to put this up on screen is first of all to draw your attention to the absolutely enormous segment which is labeled other, And in effect that's items of expenditure that aren't annotated in enough detail to be able to provide detailed
breakdowns. So there's an awful lot of room for manoeuvre, in effect for government being able to hide exactly what it is and where money's going, something that UK column has concentrated on a lot in the past. But but also what's interesting to note is the the quantity of health spending, and indeed the way that the IFS explains it.
So we'll just read what's gone on screen now, which is that the major trend of the past 70 years has been a steady increase in the share of national income devoted to government spending on health, and a corresponding decrease in the share of a national income devoted to defence. So between 1955 and 2023, health spending increased from 2.8% to 8.4% of U kg DP. Now, what's interesting is how
the IFS described this. They say that the rise was offset by a fall in defence spending from 7.6% to 2.2% of GDP, and they refer to this as a peace dividend. They say this peace dividend allowed the government to spend more on health without increasing the size of the state. I would say that last clause is extremely questionable in many respects. First of all, has there really been a peace dividend?
And if we're to believe that there has is it really being genuinely offset by anything that we can describe as a health dividend, I would put it that that again is extremely questionable. So we'll just go on to a couple more graphs just to again set the context. But this is this is government spending overtime just to get a sense of of where we are and again this is by percentage of
GDP. So we're at the right hand side of the graph now with the enormous blip for the for the COVID-19 restrictions and when the economy was effectively damaged, hopefully not beyond repair, but but absolutely very
considerably. And then just retrospectively, we'll just close by looking at statistics provided by the DWP and these show the the benefit claimants, 53% of households in the United Kingdom are now receiving benefits of one sort or another and this shows the allocation of where they're going. Debbie's spoken at length about the PIP Personal Independence payment and the disability living allowance which are shown there and tally up to well over
4 million recipients. But but just to give an idea of the of the damage that can be done and how it's sort of that there has been an immediate sense of some sort of recovery. We can see that whilst state pension recipients have gone up, employment and support allowance fell by 6.2%. This sorry, this is going back to to immediately following the restrictions back to 2022 job seeker allowance fell by 35%,
housing benefit fell by 7.9%. So the the reason for for showing that sort of historic data is just to you have an idea of first of all how the government are managing the money that we give to them, but also how the economy if given the chance can bounce back. So obviously much more data to come out of course this year, which will be reported on when that happens. OK, thank you. If you like what the UK column does, you'd like to support us.
community.ukcolumn.org is the place to go and you'd be very welcome as a member there. Your support very much needed. You could pick something up at the UK column shop Let's not forget the MHRA not fit for purpose T-shirts. We want to keep that campaign going and but do share material you find on the platforms, especially ukcolumn.org UK
Column extracts.co.uk. Now, very briefly, tomorrow at 1 PMI had an interview with Ben Pyle, climate campaigner that will be going out tomorrow if you want to understand a little bit more about what's going on with the climate change narrative and how that fits in with many other narratives that we are hearing about at the moment.
And then on Sunday we will be hosting another symposium from the International Centre for 911 Justice, this time entitled Genocide and Empire in examining October the 7th and the geopolitics of the war on Palestine. So Professor Richard Faulk, Professor Atif Kabarsi, Vanessa Bailey, Aaron Goode and Kevin Ryan will be speaking at that will be hosted by Pierce Robinson, starts at 6:00 PM on Sunday evening. Please join us for that. Very briefly, Debbie, very briefly please.
Your blog is up. It is indeed, yes, and as you can see, COVID jabs are going to be sold on the High Street. But be ready for that because they're 100 lbs each. Can AI predict, predict your death? Yes it can. And plenty more about peace and security. Cybercrime. Sir John Edmonds, who's been knighted as the lock up professor. OK. Thank you. And finally a reminder then that Andrew Bridging will be hosting another debate that's on trends and excess deaths on the 16th of January at 9:30 AM.
He's asking once again for people to write to their MPs and make sure that they attend. OK, let's move on now. One of the features, particularly since the COVID, but actually before that, has been the issue of behavioural change and behavioural change applied psychology being pushed on all of us. And of course that the Spy B document being an exclusive for us at the time.
Public Contracts Scotland. I want to thank the viewer that sent this to me. Public Contracts Scotland has put this contract notification out because of course probably the original policy area where behavioural change was viewed as being important was energy efficiency. So this is a contract for the replacement of LED lights, St. lighting in Scotland. And if we just look at the title here, it comes under the heading of energy efficiency and
behaviour change. And actually this is something that goes right through the Net 0 documentation from very many sources. Let's just look at one of the sources. This is C Sustainable Energy Advice. This is a New Zealand based organization and let's just have a look at what they say about
themselves. Since its inception in 2011, C has worked with the User Centered Energy Systems or Users TCP by the International Energy Agency to lead the first global behaviour change research collaboration called Task 24 Behaviour Change in DSM for this research. C collaborated with hundreds of behaviour change experts around the world to figure out how to best tackle such a complex and messy problem, and in order to sort of visualise this Task 24 they produced this handy graphic.
So let's just have a look at this in a little bit more detail here. So they're talking about behaviour right in the centre of there and various rings around the technology, social infrastructure and environment. And then they're looking at and the types of change agents that they have in place that can help people change their behaviour. Decision makers being government through the government, ministers through policy and local government and so on.
What else we got here? We've got experts, of course. They're used to help us change our our behaviour. We've got the media up at the top there, we've got industry, we've got investors, so banks and so on, because money is a good way to encourage people to change their behaviour. We have other behaviour changers, and this might include social media, influencers for example, but also healthcare workers, education, our school children and so on.
And then we have of course ourselves and the type of NGOs, but Community NGOs, but also ourselves, our family and friends, because we obviously influence each other and we help each other change our behaviour, hopefully in the way that the government wants, don't we? So let's bring this on screen, just to give you an idea of the scale of this. So this is the Energy Institute and they've published this page, Energy Insight, Energy Efficiency and Behaviour Change.
And they're looking at international behavioural change mechanisms through the United Nations, through the World Energy Council. We've got Europe listed through the European Commission Director of General General Energy and the European Environment Agency. We've got the UK government through its Department of Energy and Climate Change. And that includes of course the behavioural insights team that
we've mentioned so many times. We have well smart meters derogation guidance, we'll talk about smart meters in a second. We've got non UK government organisations, Carbon Trust, Demos, UKERC, we've got academic institutions including the British Psychological Society, the Energy Institute, we've also got Stanford University ethos that we've got energy company initiatives from British Gas and EON, in particular other organisations including RAC and then other countries.
But this was what struck me. Over Christmas happened to catch a couple of advertisements for half price electricity. We can catch up on our chores. If you're a British Gas customer, we can cook our Sunday roast and so on. But the question is then who takes part? And the truth is that the people take part are people with smart meters. Of course, a smart meter is requirement and a smart meter is absolutely a key mechanism for
behavioural change. So this advertisement going on on televisions across the UK over Christmas, because that is an absolutely key part of the whole climate change net zero agenda, is how we actually encourage our US to do the right thing as the government would see it. And that is something that we have been really wanting to encourage everybody to think about just how much your behaviour is being influenced. Remember the Mindspace document says you won't realise it's being done.
Debbie Let's move on to education. Yeah, and let's stay on the theme of behaviour as well. And for people that are, you've got sharp ears. You'll notice that special educational needs won't be mentioned in this segment. And that is very important to remember for many reasons. So who's heard of the EWF, the Education World Forum? Gillian Keegan, our Education Secretary, has been celebrating role of international education and promoting the benefits at the EWF.
Well, we're not talking about the WEF, it's the EWF. So let's go and look at the Education World Forum and we can see. But it's the world's large largest gathering of education and skills ministers. They're going to be meeting the 19th to the 22nd of May and there's 120 ministers, over 114 countries.
So this is a big a big organization and with we see who supports it there's plenty of names that you're you're recognised just to read out a few McKinsey, Microsoft, Lego, National Geographic. Then you've got the Department of Education, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office and the department Common Trade. So a big organization. So let's look at the WEF because I'm seeing this word reset reset being used everywhere and
especially in education. So back in 215 they were talking about how to reset education and how to help. So we decided to look at the UK and to see how we were resetting education and resetting behaviour. This article in Schools Week says that this is going to be an alternative provision to support learners to reintegrate into mainstream school. So why are they not in mainstream school in the 1st place?
Perhaps they could be special educational needs and they're going to be using this CALM programme for mindfulness and mental health well-being. But in 215, also in Schools Week you'll see that Nicky Morgan appointed A behavioural guru. If you like, Tom Bennett's, his name is he already advised on teacher training and he is now being appointed to tackle pupil
misbehaviour. So if you go and look on the government's thegov.uk page, you can see that he has created a culture of behaviour management in school, and indeed he's even got his own page on the National College. If you see that slide next, you can see his face coming up there, so you know what he looks like. The National Have you got the slide for the National College?
That's it. And if you go to his bio on there, you'll see that this whole thing started really from a book he wrote called Running the Room. Well, we'll find out what room he was running in a minute. If we look at the early career hub, we can see that he wrote an article called Resetting and Rebooting Behaviour.
This is a man who doesn't have a lot of experience, as you'll come to find out, but he wants to basically outline class routines, make children practice till they get it right, sell the benefits, which means basically making a pact with student and teacher and always follow up. Well, I can tell you now that will not work with special educational needs children. It's not a one size fit all at all.
So we've now got behavior hubs. UH, the DfE have been investing 10,000,000 lbs into behavior hubs. So I went to look at the behavior hubs that they're rolling out and you'll be able to see them in the next slide there. Apparently they're transformative and these are behaviour hubs that are actually within mainstream schools. They're actually there. So who is Tom Bennett, I hear you ask yourself?
Well, Tom Bennett started well his his dad was a taxi driver, his mum was a nurse and he did a degree in philosophy and then he kind of drifted into nightclubs and Soho nightclubs. So he modelled his children's behavioural plan basically on
what he saw at nightclubs. He did a PGCEA teaching and then said, well there's not a lot of behaviour going on here, so I need to specialized in it. But actually when you deep dive further into who Tom Bennett's is, you can see that he was an ex nightclub bouncer and he has used the behaviour that he's witnessed in a Soho nightclub to devise this whole behavioural
policy. Now I don't think he was terribly good at it because he actually got barred from running a nightclub because he couldn't control rowdy night goers. This was a a bar called the O Bar. So do you trust Tom Bennett's with his behavioural techniques for your children? And where are they in reset?
Because I heard from a youngster during the Christmas holidays to say that her whole floor of her school had been turned into reset, which was separate cubicles separated by glass sounded like a prison to me. And while I was carrying on looking at education in December, the gender questioning children, non statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England, the draft was brought out. Now this is intended for schools, colleges and teachers.
And you'll see the foreword has been written by Gillian Keegan, MP, Secretary of State for Education and Kenny Badenoch. And you can see some of the things that are happening in the consultation. I haven't gone into it in depth because it's a big document, but you can see single sex spaces, toilets, changing rooms, showers, all sorts of things are in this consultation. So please go and look at it.
Although I think there could be backlash from this because as the MailOnline a warning schools that follow government trans guidance are at high risk of successfully being sued and apparently schools seem to be hiding children's gender switching so that they don't want families informed. So keep an eye on that story. But I think what was most terrifying was the the news that dozens, well, a lot of children under 5 have been referred to the NHS transgender service.
Now, I mean, I I don't even know where to start on this because these are preschoolers. There were 382 youngsters aged 6 and under and seventy of those were three or four and they were being referred on for transgender counselling. They've now actually admitted that maybe this should stay to under sevens, but even that's bad enough. And then also I saw this story about the Welsh government using teenage girls to attract migrant men.
These are schoolgirls, 14 year old girls to attract migrants into Wales and I think we've got a short bit video to show you now. Hello and welcome to Wales. We understand being a refugee isn't easy. They go through so much. Fleeing your country is difficult, but Wales wants to help you feel welcome. The Welsh Refugee Council here to help you. You can contact them here. Wales is seen as a nation of sanctuary. We welcome anyone and everyone. We recognize your skills. And talent.
The Welsh Refugee Council offers a lot to support. Not only this, but Wales offers free. Education and health. There are many job opportunities here in Wales. IKEA works closely with the Welsh Refugee Council, providing jobs for refugees that come from all over the world. We understand that you've been through a lot and that is why the Refugee Council is here to help you. Thank you for listening. So do you know what's going on in your child's school?
Thank you, Debbie. OK, election, Sam, I just want to very briefly mention this. So the ultimate election year. Sorry, this is still you Debbie, is it? Yes, I'm quite happy to go into this. If you want to go into this segment now, yeah, I didn't realise, but it's the ultimate election year. So apparently 64 countries plus the European Union are all heading for the polls, which is a combined population of 49% of of of the population heading for the polls this year. Yeah. OK.
Thank you. I think that was that was that Then we've got election officials see a range of threats in 2024 from hostile states to conspiracy theorists. Yeah, indeed. And and this, this looks like, you know, I'm talking really about Black Swan events here and the US elections could be what they're saying is could be jeopardized because of cyber attack or ransomware or anything
else that might happen. So the elections are definitely we're wondering what's going to happen, and plenty of people are actually quoting Black Swan events. Right. OK. Well, we'll have a little bit more on that in a minute. But before we get to that, let's head over here Charles and abortions. Thanks Mike. And in fact, specifically to do with legislation surrounding not actually abortions but the zones or buffer zones as they're being referred to around abortion clinics.
So I've got a headline here from the Catholic Herald, Scottish Catholic group Lambasts world's most extreme abortion buffer zone. So this is from 2023.
But a group of Scottish Catholic Bishops has come out and spoken against the proposed legislation, which you may find is ringing a bell in terms of legislation that was passed in England in 2023. But they said as part of their statement, to remove freedoms from peaceful, law abiding citizens sets a chilling legal precedent for everyone, including those who support abortion.
We believe that calls to introduce buffer zones around abortion facilities where there have been no reported incidents of harassment or intimidation by participant, sorry participants in peaceful vigils are mistaken. Such vigils bear tangible witness to our common freedoms of expression, speech and assembly. So what is it they're actually
talking about? Well, it's the bill in the Scottish Parliament at the moment, which is put forward by Julian McKay. It's the proposed Abortion Services Safe Access Zones Bill. And the reason for talking about it now is the calls for written evidence, closed just before Christmas. But interestingly from the text here, or rather alarmingly, this includes any behaviour that might stop a person from getting an abortion or make them feel
scared or upset. I've underlined that because so imagine that people might be going to have an abortion without already feeling scared or upset Is a strange stance to take on the matter. But further down we sit we see that it would also be an offence if a person behaved in these
ways in other places. If their behaviour could be seen or heard from the safe access zone, for example, where someone's house is within a safe access zone boundary, they could commit an offence if they do something which could be seen through their window by a person in the safe access zone. So straight away we're we're moving into the area of thought crime exactly as we were in England and Wales with the
slightly different legislation. But in a sense there what was happening was that the what has happened is that councils, local authorities, have been given the power to create public spaces Protection Orders within which they can either prohibit or they can mandate certain behaviours. And the one that received particular attention last year was silent prayer and in effect the Well, they didn't actually undo the legislation.
But of course the ludicrous position was that the authorities police had to ask the would be offender whether or not they were in fact committing an offence, IE praying. So how anyone was supposed to tell was not possible to determine. We'll just have a quick look at the part of the legislation itself. So we've got the safe access zones here.
The last bit of this is what I want to draw your attention to, which is that each safe access zone consists of each public area of land within 200 metres or such other distance as extended. So it's an enormous area potentially that could be covered by this. We'll then go on and look at the offences.
And again, part of the point that the Catholic Bishops were making is not only the attack on freedom of speech, but also the point that a lot of you know this is already captured by existing legislation, particularly here as we see at sea causing harassment, alarm or distress, which is covered by a multitude of other parts of existing legislation. The other point to make here is that the that specific rhetoric is all to do with disapproval of abortion.
In England, the Public Spaces Protection Orders were put out to deal particularly with any comment on abortion, whether in support or against. But this is all anything that's negative about abortion. So again we'll just go on now and have a look at the another thing that that is very very open to interpretation and it's terribly subjective part of the bill, which is that where a person does an act in a safe access zone constituting an offence and the ACT has a
continuing effect. It does not matter whether the person referred to is in the safe access zone at at the time the person does the ACT. So the the bones that that are created by this bill are absolutely enormous and I spoke last year the close of last year about the the Super complaint about police abusing the powers given by section 60 and it's hard to see that legislation such as this wouldn't be open to
similar sorts of abuse. We'll just go on and have a quick look at the extension of sorry, wrong we've we've anyway, if we just go back. Yeah sorry the the extension of the zones which may be approved by ministers if the operator of the area puts forward a proposal to extend the area. Also it's worth noting that ministers themselves may of their own accord extend the zone.
It's not at all clear why they would be intervening without any previous complaint or comment from the abortion centre itself, but again, extraordinary power to grant a minister. So and now we'll just set this in the context of the overall sort of abortion picture. Now the next lot of statistics are from England and Wales really because it's a larger sample size. But I just thought it was interesting to note that statistics annual statistics from June 23 are delayed till April 24.
These come from the 2021 statistics, but they do show the overall trend, which is that over 200,000 abortions were conducted in England and Wales during that period, which is the highest number since they started in 1967 and to age standardise that. The trend is of course exactly the same, 18.6 abortions per 1000 women. So it it is a massive uptick as you can see since 2016, which
comes at a considerable cost. So we'll just look at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service which says that the in a sense the NHS foots the bill for almost all of the abortions that are conducted, whether or not they take place in a private facility or not. Private facilities of course can be paid for by the individual but but in almost all cases are funded by the NHS at a cost. Here there is a a scale so it's hard to determine exactly what the figure would be.
But but ranging between 480 lbs up to 15110 lbs. So it's a very significant part of a health budget. Because of course this is termed as being essential healthcare and therefore any any sort of dissent, as it were. At least that's the way it's being put is, is not. To be tolerated. So I would just leave you now with something I talked about briefly last year, which is the
fetal sentience committee bill. Now this has been sort of seized upon by the pro-life lobby as being a possible chink in the clouds, because this is due to set up a committee which will determine the very tricky area of fetal sentience. So we'll we'll keep an eye on that and indeed on the abortion buffer zone bill itself. Yes. OK, let's come back on to the issue of elections then. And well, here is the independent this morning.
Putin to run as independent. Sorry, that's not this morning. That's the 17th of December Putin to run as independent candidate in Russia's presidential election. Here's what it means and the sub headline is Putin will be up against a selection of harmless candidates in heavily staged elections in mid March next year. And of course that was published in mid-december so that's mid March this year that they're talking about.
And Debbie was mentioning a couple of minutes ago major elections right around the the world it seems at the in this coming 12 months or so. But I just had to laugh at the idea that heavily staged elections in Russia when in the United States we have Donald Trump. Now what? Whether you like them or loathe them, has been blocked from the GOP primary ballot in two states already. We'll see how many more follow
suit. And of course, he's still being prosecuted as hard as he possibly can at the moment. And PBS News are there asking can he still run for president? And then we have this because Sam Bankman freed of course in prison at the moment for fraud because of his cryptocurrency business which went out of business. But of course he was also funding the Democratic Party to the tune of $100 million or so. And so this particular tweet saying Sam, Sam Backman free donated $100 million in stolen
custom customer funds to U.S. politicians, today the Department of Justice announced that they're dropping 6 charges against them and will not prosecute him for a political campaign finance violation. Are you surprised? The most corrupt Department of Justice ever. So that was put out on the 30th of December. So quite an incredible situation that we're happy to to throw these allegations around at Putin. But the election certainly in the United States probably know
better. And I I wonder what's going to happen at the upcoming British general election. Certainly lots of heavy influence going on there, not least from Tony Blair. But Debbie, sorry, you mentioned Black Swan events. I did, yes. And it's also interesting to know that Taiwan elections are this month, January, so everybody's holding their breath. But looking at Black Swan events, let's remind ourselves what the World Economic Forum put out just a couple of years ago.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken our economies and societies to the core. He's shown us how vulnerable we are to biological threats in the digital world. Similar risks are being overlooked right now. The cyber attack with COVID like characteristics would spread faster and further than any biological virus. It's reproductive rate would be around 10 times greater than what we've experienced with the coronavirus.
To give you an idea, one of the fastest worms in history, the 2003 Slammer Sapphire One doubled in size approximately every 8.5 seconds, infecting over 75,000 devices in 10 minutes and almost 11,000,000 devices in 24 hours. Fortunately, at least until now, cyber attacks have not impacted our health the way pandemics have, But the economic damages and therefore the impact they have had on our daily lives have been equal and sometimes even greater.
You see, the only way to stop the exponential propagation of a COVID like cyber threat is to fully disconnect the millions of vulnerable devices from one another and from the Internet. All of this in a matter of days. A single day without the Internet would cost our economies more than 50 billion U.S. dollars. And that's before considering the economic and societal damages. Should these devices be linked to essential services such as
transport or healthcare? As the digital realm increasingly emerges with our physical world, the ripple effects of cyber attacks on our safety just keep on expanding at a faster pace than what we're preparing for. COVID-19 was known as an anticipated risk. So is the digital equivalent. Let's be better prepared for that one. The time is now. So is the time 2024? Well, it would seem that a few
people are saying that yes. And one of those is Gary Cardone. He's a US entrepreneur, and he's warned that the a Black Swan event in 24 could derail the 2024 US elections. He's convinced that something's going to happen between now and August. And he's not alone because the CBS reporter Catherine Herridge was also and you can go and this was on Face the Nation and you can go and listen to this. She's also warned of a Black Swan events and it's coincidence.
Serendipity, I don't know. But a film coming out in April this year called Civil War, which is all about 19 states in the USA, seceded from the US government, which creates a new Civil War and it's basically a race to the White House. So I think we've got a little trailer of Civil War. 19 states have seceded. The United States Army ramps up activity. The White House issued warnings to the Western forces as well as the Florida Alliance, the.
Three term president assures the uprising will be dealt with swiftly. Let me know if you want to try anything wrong. I think that's aware there's like a pretty huge civil war going on all across America. We just try to stay out with what we see on the news. Seems like it's for the best citizens of America. The so-called western forces of Texas and California have suffered a very great defeat at the hands of the United States
military. Mr. President, do you regret the use of air strikes against American citizens? We're moving to DC today. You need to go down there. They shoot journalists on the side in the Capitol. Every instinct in me says this is death. What? Every time I survived the war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home. Don't do that. But here we are. There's some kind of misunderstanding here. What? Oh, you're American. OK, OK. What kind of American are you?
You don't know. The Western forces will reach the White House on July 4th, OH. My God. Get in the car. Move, move, move. You're going to hang back. I'm not hanging back. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. God Bless America. How likely is a Black Swan event in 2024? Bit of predictive programming there, perhaps.
Now I'm going to say thank you again to a viewer who sent me received an envelope today and inside it was, it was a newspaper cutting and the headline on the newspaper cutting was opinion. BBC now a threat to all local newspapers. So I thought, well, I'll go and see if I can find that online. And I just did a search on this particular search engine. But other search engines do exist and I encourage the use of alternatives.
But let's just Scroll down through this a little bit and see how widely this was published. And you can see these are all each, each line of this is individual local news, news organisations around the country, ending there with the Shropshire star at the bottom. So this is the headline BBC now threat all local newspapers, so let's just choose one of them. This is the Eastern Daily Press.
And let's look at a little bit of the text of this, because what they're basically saying is that in October 2022 the BBC had made plans to what they described as strengthened local online news. Now this is local BBC online news provision and the the local newspapers are basically complaining because the BBC is funded by the taxpayer
effectively. And therefore if it encroaches on the markets of these local newspapers, big commercial organisations, they have to try to compete with the BBC by through selling advertising. Whereas the BBC just gets this massive bun from the UK government and they're complaining that this is anti competitive and so on. Well, the problem is I would accept this argument from local news if they weren't accepting money from the BBC for these which are local democracy reporters.
So the BBC is providing local democracy. We've reported on this many, many times. But the BBC is reporting, providing local and funding local democracy reporting service to these local news outlets for them to benefit. So let's just have a look, what is the LDRS? The Local Democracy Reporting Service is a public service news agency funded by the BBC, providing provided by the local news sector and used by
qualifying partners. So if you're a local news outlet, you're a qualifying partner, you can get money from the BBC to fund your journalists and they say it's like a franchise. Now this this I think is the main danger with respect to local news, not the fact that the BBC is is competing commercially. So if we just put that back for a second, it says it's like a franchise, different companies with different approaches, but using common editorial standards and all publishing into the same
system. And those common editorial standards, of course, are the BBC's editorial standards and the the system that they're publishing into is the BBC's system. So that to me is the danger to local reporting, not so much the BBC encroaching into local news spaces. And if the local newspapers are worried about the competition from the BBC, maybe they should consider just doing a better job. And frankly, that's not too hard. But anyway, let's move on. Let's have a look at this.
Charles, I think this is you. It is, and we're going to go to the Horn of Africa, where there's been news in the last couple of days. First of all, we'll hear from the Addis Standard reporting. A historic memorandum of understanding with Somaliland sees Ethiopia secure access to
sea, diversify seaport. So this this is a story that in fact tells the reader that Ethiopia will have access to coastline for the first time since 1993 when Eritrea split and took that particular part of coastline. Almost immediately after this headline came out was a counter report, which the Guardian has written up here, and it says that Somalia vows to defend sovereignty after Ethiopia. Somaliland deal. Now why would that be and how is
it relevant to us? Basically The Ethiopians have been granted port access, but specifically if they wish to take it up, which presumably they do, to have a military base
at this port. And in response to that, Ethiopia has declared that they will recognise Somaliland as being a sovereign state, making them the first country in the world to do so. That's caused a lot of controversy within Somalia. So we'll just go on have a look at the next part of the text from the Guardian, which is taken from the government of Somalia. They say Somaliland is a part of Somalia under the Somali
constitution. So Somalia finds this step to be a clear violation against its sovereignty and unity. The Somali cabinet said on Tuesday. The agreement was null and void with no legal basis and Somalia will not accept it, it added. In response to this, the Somali government has recalled its ambassador in Ethiopia, for. So the relevance at the moment is significant in in many respects, and I'll just put a map on screen now to illustrate
what I'm talking about. Vanessa has spoken at length about the various effects, both economic and military, on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. So the area we're talking about is framed by that red rectangle. And just to point out that Israel's Red seaport is of course accessed via the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea up there at the north side of that port of Islet. So we'll just zoom in a little
bit on the area. And what we're talking about is marked by the red area, the port of Berbera, which will be accessible to The Ethiopians fire, a corridor which I'll come onto in just a second. So what I want to get a sense of is the British and other international involvement in the area. In fact, sorry, I will just go back one, because I've underlined Djibouti, the country
to the northwest militarily. Djibouti is home to Camp Lemenier, the Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa, which is the American forward base. From there, Africa Command. It also hosts a Chinese military base and it's therefore very significant. This looks like Ethiopia are also going to be able to operate militarily within that area, particularly when we find out what's been going on behind the scenes. So I will just move on to a report about UK investment into
training Somali troops. So we've got from September last year a further 5 million in funding going to their security forces and that is on top of significant amounts of money that have gone in there since 2020, 247,000,000 to to ATMOS and indeed direct training operations between the UK military and the Somali forces. Now what is not credible is that the UK would have had absolutely no idea that Ethiopia didn't have military designs on this coastal region.
Nevertheless, the next slide shows the UK ambassador at the time, Kate Foster, launched construction of what is called the Hargeiser Bypass. So we should see a picture here from May 2021 showing all the various vehicles that were going to start the construction process. And I'll just read to you what Kate Foster, the then ambassador to Somalia, said at the time, which is we are proud to support the Hargeiser Bypass, which is a crucial part of the Berber
corridor. Once this 240 kilometre project, in coordination with our Abu Dhabi and European partners, is completed late next year, it will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people by creating jobs, unlocking the region's economic potential, and ease the delivery of humanitarian supplies. Well, she might concentrate on humanitarian supplies and unlocking the region's potential, but exactly what does she mean by that?
And indeed, I go back to whether or not she would have had knowledge that Ethiopia had military designs. The UK is embedded in Addis Ababa, where we support the African Union Standby brigade, and indeed with close relations with what's going on in Djibouti with the Americans, it is frankly not plausible that she would not have known that this would have been controversial. So we'll now look at what Chris Heaton Harris said again back in 20/21.
He was then a minister, FCDA minister, and he says we have also forged A partnership with Dubai Ports World to invest in logistics facilities along the Berber corridor which runs from the coast of Ethiopia. These investments have the potential to drive economic growth and boost stability across the Horn of Africa. And he goes on to say again, those are hugely positive developments. And again, we are proud to play our part.
British International Investment, the Uks development finance body is investing in the port with Dubai Ports World as a part of a 1.72 billion investment into free ports in Africa. Free Ports is in red text there and I'll come back to that for a particular reason. But if you haven't heard of British International Investment, then I will just look into that now as we bring that on screen and they describe on their website what it is they're set up to do going back to 1948.
So, so fairly shortly after the the end of the Second World War, they were established as the Colonial Development Corporation in order to do good without losing money and that's changed a bit over time. In 2004, they were reconfigured to operate mainly as a fund investor. We had a pioneering role in establishing the private equity industry in emerging markets. By the end of 2007, we were working with 42 fund managers across 100 funds and lo and
behold, it's changed again. So by 2022, we were renamed as British International Investment. The new name signifies the increased breadth of what the organization does and highlights our role as part of the UKS offer to help developing and emerging countries meet their significant financing needs for infrastructure and enterprise. Well, again we come back to the question who actually benefits
here? Is it Somaliland or Somalia or Ethiopia or none of them because the partner that's been referred to Dubai Ports Worldwide is DP, sorry, DP World has a map here showing their global reach through this, this process effectively of developing infrastructure in countries. And of course the great part of this is that it enables them not to create the conditions for the host countries to be able to get product in rather more. It's question being able to get
mineral resources out. And the United Arab Emirates often not talked about in terms of Africa did trade worth $70 billion in Africa last year, which puts it on a par with the United States of America. It's very significant in the region and they say on their website that they know that creating and enhancing their trade partnerships is the key to unlocking economic growth in that region.
Through a focus on Somaliland, landlocked Ethiopia and other Horn of Africa countries, DP World aims to transform lives, find new logistics solutions and build the region. And compete with the Belton Rd. Absolutely. Yeah. So, exactly right. So, so there'll be a competition with China.
It's also worth pointing out that on the military side of it, Russia has long we've been eyeing up the Red Sea coast there and there's been in negotiations with both South Sudan and Eritrea trying to get a port in there. So. So we we may end up in a situation where we've got Ethiopia, China, America, Russia and indeed Somalia all with military capabilities along that
bit of coastline. So that that definitely worth is worth our attention, particularly since we are funding A considerable part of it because the investment platform is of course government sponsored. So I just have to show quickly now the government free ports, because this is actually a post European Union initiative which you may not have heard of free ports in the UK.
And they say that they're going to be new hubs for global trade, investment and innovation within the UK, create a favourable environment and exciting opportunities for businesses. By choosing to invest within Auk Freeport, you could access a wide range of customs and tax benefits as well as support from government around planning, infrastructure and innovation.
So obviously an attempt to effectively conflate this idea with developments going on in Africa and in order to exert both soft and hard power as they might describe it at the same time. So we'll keep an eye on that one for sure. Well, we will, because Plymouth is a Freeport already. I'm sure there are a number of others around the country now sticking with international things, but maybe not. Let's bring this on screen.
This is a letter from the Secretary of State, the Right Honourable Mark Harper to Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. And Mark Harper begins by saying, Dear Sadiq, but he's really complaining about Ulas. Let's a particular aspect of Ulas. Let's try not try to keep a straight face as you watch this. This is what he had to say. Thank you for your letter. Also signed by the Right Honourable Ben Wallace MP seeking my departments.
That's the Department of Transport support in allowing suitable vehicles to be donated, to be donated to Ukraine through the ULEZ scrapbage scheme, he goes on to say. As Russia's barbaric invasion of Ukraine nears second anniversary, it is vital the UK stands at the forefront of supporting both Ukraine's government and its people in
this valiant fight. Given your ULES expansion scrappage scheme has been in effect since August 2323, I'm surprised that you've not made contact until now, given the clear opportunity that your scrappage scheme could provide in allowing roadworthy vehicles to be sent to Ukraine.
So one of the points that we've made from the beginning of this conflict is that the West and the UK in particular, have been using the Ukraine as effectively A dumping ground for all the rubbish that we can't get rid of. And mainly up to this point it has been, you know, useless military equipment and so on. Now we need to get rid of our cars as well because of some government policy that says you can't drive it in London anymore.
And we're going to do that by dumping it on the Ukrainians. It's just hugely cynical. To me, it's just appears to be hugely cynical. But anyway, Debbie, let's end off with a video of about the British Army. Yes, have a look and see. Welcome to your six second update for January 2024 from the British Army UP. Lionel Typer commences in January.
Spanning 11 countries, it will be the largest coordinated deployment of UK service personnel for a generation to multiple multinational exercises across Europe. It will prove the British Army's battle readiness and commitment to NATO. A modern British Army fit for the challenges of the future requires us to adapt the way we train to meet the need of future soldier. Army Basic training will be changing in 2024.
The new Soldier Academy has been created unifying all Army basic training under one new organization recognized for its excellence in providing spiritual home for the British soldier. More details on the Soldier Academy will be made available later this month. Finally, are you interested in medical career in the Army?
And did you know that our medics developed their career by working alongside the NHS Army personnel from various medical disciplines currently treating military and civilian patients at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham? Search Army Jobs for further information on how to. Become an Army Medic. And that's the 62nd update for January 2024. I'm sure we'll have more to say about that in extra, but the fusion between the British Army and the NHS I found particularly interesting.
Yes, indeed. And we'll just very briefly Debbie and with this from Bob. Bob Moran, Fabulous. We're coming up to Epiphany. These are the three kings, the three wise men. And how wise are they? One is holding on to his gold. There was no pandemic. Another, instead of having frankincense, has got common sense. Climate change is a hoax. And the other one carrying unvaccinated sperm men can't get pregnant. Thank you so much, Bob Moran. Yes, indeed. OK. Well, we've got to leave it there.
Thank you very much for everybody for our first news of 2024. We'll be back as usual on Friday at 1:00 PM. Don't forget the interview with Ben Pilot 1:00 PM ukcolumn.org/live tomorrow. I'll see you in a few minutes for extra review. UK column member. Otherwise we'll see you Friday. Bye, bye bye. Bye.