OK, Well it's my great pleasure to welcome Brian Garish to speak to Common Knowledge this afternoon. Brian has a career in the Navy, the senior service, before leaving this evening, a service and starting up his own business and then finding out how much corruption there was in this world. And from then on he's become effectively an investigative journalist and he set up the UK
column. And the UK column for me was a lifeline when I in 2020 when I was searching around what's going on, I was suddenly awake and everyone said go to UK column. That's where you'll find the information that you need. And I'm eternally grateful to Brian for setting up UK column and for all his marvellous work
since then. So Brian's going to tell us something about, I think we're going to first of all, discuss the current state of play in the UK and in the world in general, and then we'll go on to some other subjects after that. But Brian, thank you very much indeed for joining us here and I'll hand over to you. Richard, thank you and the team for the invite. Absolutely fantastic to get myself all the way to the granary there, the jig room.
I think you're all in. And from what I can, what I can see, it looks, it looks very nice and yeah, really great to get the invitation. I, I just say to you that I was a bit poorly a few weeks ago and I, I just felt that this time I needed to ease off a bit before Christmas. So I, I, I apologise for being with you in a virtual sense, because I'd much rather be there in person.
But yeah, things caught up with me a bit and I'm pleased to say I am, I am recovered now just and we'll, we'll leave it at that. So I, I think what you're doing is, is great. Well done for setting up common knowledge Edinburgh. I think we need more groups like this across the country because this is spreading the word amongst teams of people and there is still very much a need to do this. And you know, in a personal way with people being together and able to chat because this, this
gives it a strength. And a lot of what we're fighting requires people, I think, to be together physically, to be in contact, exchanging information in, in a physical way. Because at the end of the day, this is what it is to be human. And I'll, I'll just then put a Little Rock in the pond and say, because what we're fighting is absolutely against humanity. So the, so the more human we are, the stronger we are.
I also wonder whether I can be cause a little bit of trouble because you, you gave me 3 points. You gave me the state of things at the moment. You asked about the movement to war and you asked me about the setting up of the UK column. And I wonder whether I might ask very nicely just to kick off with setting up the column because it has a particular meaning. And I'd like to share that with you.
And I think it would be a good sort of foundation for them going on to talk about other things. So would that be OK with your permission? Absolutely, absolutely fine. Yeah, OK. And before I get talking, how long have we got to, you know? We've got two hours in this room. Two hours. OK, right.
That's, that's brilliant. Well, the reason that I wanted to kick off with how the UK column got started was because there have been a number of things that have prompted me, particularly over the last year, to talk about this. It's not something that over the years I've made a very big thing about, but the time has now come, I think, to talk about these things because it leads us into matters spiritual.
But the other thing is that next year is the 20th celebration, the 20 year celebration of the UK column, because January next year, we'll have actually been running for 20 years, which seems almost unbelievable to me. But it is rather wonderful that somehow, despite all the things going on in the world, UK, worldwide, the UK columnars managed to keep going. So I'll just tell this little, little story in in the shortest
time I can. And I absolutely welcome any questions people have got because a few months ago we were. Invited to the Hope. Music festival, which was was really excellent and I was due to talk as the rest of the UK column team were we always find we don't quite know what we're going to talk about until maybe a couple of days before it sort of comes to you. If you try and force it, you, you think I don't know what to talk about and there's no point worrying about it.
I felt you just sort of sit back and eventually what you're going to speak about will come. Well at the Hope Festival that didn't happen and I ended up the day before really starting to think what am I going to do? And I thought just wait. And then when I actually got in my car to drive, as I am driving into my head very strongly came just tell them how the UK column really got started. And so that's what I did.
And if anybody in the audience wants to see what I said because it was recorded live at the festival, just put Brian Gerrish my story into the search bar on the UK Column website. So I'm going to give you a little flavour of that in person this afternoon. But if you want to see what I said to the audience there on a lovely sunny day in In the Hope Festival, you can have a look at that recording on the UK Column
website. So if we divide this thing into two parts, I think most people know that the UK Column started out really with myself and some other people in Plymouth coming across fraud and corruption in a very big way in the city. And we initially sort of met as a small group of people and talked about what was going on. But one one day that we decided the key thing was to actually publish something.
And a very nice man called Chris, who'd got a little printing company, set out the format for an A4 sheet printed on both sides. We decided to call it the Devonport column, Devonport being an area of the city in Plymouth. It's an area close to the naval base, so well known. For me and we, it was a bit private, eye ish, a bit tongue in tongue in cheek. We were taking the Mickey out of some quite serious things happening. We were poking a big stick at
the City Council in particular. The first month we printed 500 copies and next month we printed 500 copies. Nothing happened. The third month we printed 500 copies. And then slowly we started to get phone calls and we started to get people contacting us saying, well, if you've seen that and you've talked about this, you really need to know this and that is going on. And in the fourth month we had a massive expansion. So we got an A3 sheet of paper and we folded it.
So we got 4 pages and we covered that with text and some cartoons and some humorous stories. And those were distributed around the city. And we did that for a few more months until a very nice man said, I think you need a little office space to make this happen properly. And he he was kind enough to pay for us to have a tiny room. We had nothing in it, but that was to be the start of the the UK column. So that was one part of the
story. But about the same time I experienced something which was very strange when it happened. It's still quite strange to talk about it, but it's got a strange and wonderful aspect to it. And, and I'm going to tell you, and this is absolutely true, the man I will talk about in a couple of minutes called Paul. A friend of mine called me on the phone about an hour ago, and I haven't spoken to him for
quite a few months. And I just thought how strange that on an afternoon when I'm going to be talking to some people about how I got started and Paul was key to that, Paul calls me. So is that another little coincidence? Maybe it is, but my story was that while we were discovering all of this horrible stuff going on in Plymouth and we were talking to other people in UK, so I'd learnt that it was happening in other cities.
Fraud and corruption, people being bullied and intimidated by the establishment, the local authorities, plus some other nasty stuff going on. I was at home one sunny day. I, I can't tell you the month, I think it would have probably been about June, July time. And I was sat at my desk working and the phone rang and it was my friend Paul. And I'd known him for quite a few years. He, he was an architect by profession and he'd spend a lot of time working down in Cornwall.
He called me. He said hello. He said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm producing some reports, I'm at home. And he said, no, you're not, you're coming to see me. And I said, Paul, I can't. I got to produce these reports. And he said, no, you're going to come and see me. And I said I can't, I really can't. And he then said to me, well, when can you come? And I said, well, I've got a free day next week. And he said, that's no good.
When can you come and see me? So I said, well, I could come and see you tomorrow. And I was thinking, why are you saying this? Because I've got quite a lot on my plate anyway, because I've known him for a long time. I thought, OK, I'll do it. I asked him why, why do I need to come and see you? And he said to me, don't worry
about that, just come. So the next day I fairly early about sort of, I don't know, 8:45, I'm in my car driving from Plymouth down to Truro in Cornwall, where he lived. That's, that's about an hour and a half drive. And as I'm driving in the sunshine, I'm thinking to myself, what on earth are you doing? Because I'm driving to see, albeit a friend, but I have no idea why I'm going. When I get to his house, I parked the car, I knock on the door and a lady I've never seen
before answers the door. And I said, oh, I'm Brian, I've come to see Paul. And she said yes or no. And I said he's Paul in. And she said no, he's out with the dog. And I felt a little bit frustrated because I already committed quite a bit of time. And she said, would you like to come in? And I said yes, thank you very much. And I said to her, I've no idea why I'm here. And she looked at me with a rather strange expression on her
face. And she said, well, actually, you're here because of me. And I said, OK, that's interesting. How does that work? And she said, well, you'll find this very strange, but sometimes I get very vivid dreams, and sometimes I feel as though somebody's talking to me. And then there was a pause. And she said, and when this happens, it's a message from God. And I paused, and I probably swallowed. And I looked at her and I said,
OK, and how does that affect me? And she said, well, I had a very vivid dream and you were in the dream. And I said, I don't know, sorry. I said, I don't know you. So you, how do you know me? And she said, oh, well, Paul told me about you. So you were in the dream, Brian. Paul, your friend was in the dream. And another man who's a friend of mine, also called Paul, was in the dream. And I, I looked to the earth and this was so utterly bizarre. I didn't quite know what was
coming next. And she said, well, it was a very intense dream. And when it happens, I, I, I got a message. So I said to her, what's the message? And she said, oh, that's The funny thing. I don't know. So I'm feeling that I'm in the middle of a really strange situation. She said, would you like a cup of tea? And I said, yes, I think I'd like a cup of tea. And she put the kettle on. I sat down at the kitchen table and she produced a cup of tea.
And, and lady's name was Jackie. And I said, Jackie, tell me a bit about yourself. And the next minute she started to tell me about the fact she was a single mother. She'd been through some tough times. She was a devout Christian and sorry. And so she, she gave me a little bit of history and then she started to tell me about a project she started quite some time earlier, about a year I think.
And she, she got very young children, very early primary school going to residential homes, care homes for elderly people. And it was called the Reminiscence project. And basically the children got a lot out of meeting the elderly people and hearing about their
lives and careers. And the elderly people loved the young children coming into their facilities because it, it brightened things up. And as Jackie told me this story, she said it was all going beautifully until a lady got involved and she said she could help me with some funding to make the project bigger. But she got involved and then things didn't go as well as they had been going. And then she said she had a friend, another friend who was a
a lady and she could also help. And then I discovered that the 2 ladies were in a relationship together and the deeper they got into the project, the more my project seemed to fall apart. And eventually she told me a specific part of her story, which was pretty personal to her, so I'm not going to repeat it here. But at one point she paused and I found myself saying, and I'll tell you what happened next. So Jackie looked at me and she said, well, how, how would you
know what happened next? And I said to her, well, because what you're describing is happening in Plymouth. It's happening all over the country. And there are specific techniques which are used to destroy things which are good for people. And I'll tell you what happened. So she said, OK, go on. Then you tell me what happened. So I told her what happened next. And she said to me, that's, that's incredible. And that's exactly what
happened. And I, I again said to her, this is, this is happening all over the country. And I think that we need to get out and about and we need to warn people about what's happening. We need to talk about what's happening and we need to warn them. And the moment I said that to her, her whole demeanour changed. And she said to me in a very authoritarian voice, this is exactly right. You are to go out, you are to travel, you are to talk to people, you are to warn them
about what's happening. And then the next minute she suddenly said, oh, my goodness, I'm sorry. I get carried away. And I found myself saying to her, no, you've just given me the message. And when I said this, it was as though the words were coming out of my mouth, but they weren't coming from my brain to my mouth. And so I sat there in complete astonishment because effectively this this woman told me that it was going to be my job to get out and teach people and warn
them what was happening. But of course the circumstances she'd done it in were quite extraordinary. And so my head was spinning at that moment. My friend Paul came back from his dog walk and a conversation started, much of which was about what was going on in the
country. And eventually I left them to drive back to Plymouth. And as I'm in my car driving back, there was a bit of it was a bit of black humour against myself because I found myself thinking, I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm not trained for this. There's a bit of my old military, I think coming to the fore. I'm not trained for this. And as that thought came into my head, there was a a beep on my mobile phone. And that was a text message coming in. And I didn't look at it.
But when I got home, I looked at it and it was a text from Jackie. And it was a little quote from the Bible. And when I went to the Bible to read the passage, which she texted through, it absolutely answered those concerns that were in my head. And I'll say to you that over the next 2-3 months, sometimes couple of times a day, sometimes couple of times a week, if ever I felt that I was in a position where I didn't quite know what I was supposed to be doing, the phone would go beep.
And that was a text message. And invariably it was a biblical quote from Jackie, which if I read it, seemed to head me in the right direction. So those 2-3 months had gone by. I was doing this basic work with the UK column and clearly it was about spreading the word about what was happening. And then one afternoon about 3:00, there was a it was a Saturday. There was a knock on my front door and I opened it and there was a man called Ted standing there, very big man. And I knew him.
Previously I'd known him through UKIP and I was very surprised to see him there. And he was stood with an overhead projector in his hands, one where you put the old acetate sheet on to project it onto the wall. And I said to him, Ted, what what are you doing? And he said, well, I'm not really sure, but my wife and I were having a clear out and we thought you would need this.
And he handed the projector to me and I reached out and took it. And I said, come in and have a cup of tea or something because I wanted to talk to him to find out really why he'd come. And he said I can't stop because my wife's after me for some errands. Hang on, I'll get the screen. And then the next minute Ted had gone and in my hall was an overhead projector and a screen. And the effect of that was about a week later I gave the first ever talk, which was in the the Methodist.
No, sorry, it was in the WI Hall in my village. About 17 people came. I talked to them about what was going on in the country. We got to midnight and they wouldn't leave. I was telling them to go home. And that was my first talk. And that talk, ultimately, I'm not sure how many I've done in the 20 years, but it's up around the 300 and that includes travelling a lot around the country in order to talk about what's going on.
And before I pause for a bit, at this stage, once I'd had this message, anything that was needed to help me or us do what we were doing seemed to appear. Never too much, never excessive, but we were given computers, we've given chairs, we were given everything we needed for our little office, and if we ever felt we were short of something, it seemed to come.
And that included a steady flow of very small funding which enabled both myself and other people to travel and to give talks and warn people about what was happening. So this was a very positive thing. But interestingly enough, and this is something which is good to talk about, I was given a message to go and teach people about what was happening. It was warning them. It was lifting stones to show them what was going on. And for many, many years, I never felt that I was given a
message to go and preach. And there's an interesting little distinction between the two. But. If this early phase was was a very positive spiritual thing, at one point on one occasion I went to a location which I've been to before. It was a, it was a flat. It was actually in Southampton. Went to meet some people I knew very well. And when I stepped across the threshold of that flat, it was as though something leapt on me and I felt extremely ill. I know my wife was very concerned.
I think she thought I was going to have a heart attack or something. But in my head I, I, I came to the conclusion it was a spiritual attack and something pretty dark and unpleasant was attacking me. And for the next, I'll say for the next couple of days, well, probably into a couple of weeks, it was as though in the first instance I was shown the light side. And then when I got a taste of that, it was as though somebody said, well, OK, I'll show you what the other side's like.
And so these were pretty amazing experiences, but for a very long time I didn't feel it was my place to talk about them in too much detail. Because when you start to talk about spiritual things, you can very often find people put up walls or they accuse you of various things. And I, I didn't want to compromise good research with maybe getting a reputation that I was trying to say something about myself rather than to give a clear message. But that was my story as to how things got going.
And then of course, as the UK column team built, Mike Robinson in particular came on board. This provision of what we needed continued. And I'll say maybe because I, I can't prove it, but maybe this spiritual support is the reason that we're still here after many trials and tribulations 20 years, 20 years later. But the key bit is that in the
very early days. It was certainly demonstrated to me that what we're really into was a spiritual battle and I will talk about the subjects you've asked me to talk about. But it's fascinating to me how in 2025 I meet more and more, more people who are coming to the realisation that we're not up against men and politics. We we are in this spiritual battle. And ultimately it's understanding the spiritual battle.
I think that will give us the the know how and strength to deal with these things, which are clearly. Becoming more and more visible. So on that note, who, who am I addressing? Richard? I'll I'll say if anybody's got any questions or wants to challenge me, I'd I'd be delighted to respond. That's that's fantastic, Brian. I think what I'll do is I'll ask people from the audience if they have any questions at this point to come up here and ask you the question.
Has anyone got any questions at this point, those experiences they'd like to share? Yeah. So there are a number of people who come and can speak to you and ask you. Brian, I'm Andrew Walden. I'm the Treasurer of Common Knowledge here in Edinburgh. First of all, I'd just like to thank you personally for sharing that experience with you, with us. So it's actually incredibly moving and I think very important what you've shared with us.
I think my, my question is essentially in terms of the struggle you've described, you know, between spiritual struggle, are you hopeful that the forces of light will prevail? Well, I, I, I can smile and say that's that is the very positive mesh message. Because if you if you stick to relatively simple scripture. Of course, we're told clearly the battles already won. But we've still got a roll of foot soldiers to make sure that
our part is done. And, and the reason I express it that way is because many people, when they start to see and feel and experience what's happening, it places a great pressure on them. And maybe maybe I also felt this in the beginning, that you feel the whole weight of everything is on your shoulders too. Sorted out to deal with it, to fight, fight it. But the reality is that, you know, we're not the general running it.
Our job is to do our best with all of the skills that we've got wherever we are, but we haven't got to be worrying that we've got the overall responsibility to deal with the situation. What worldwide, Somebody else has got that on their shoulders, and I'm going to say that's God's part. We just do what we can. Thank you, that's a wonderful answer. Yeah. Hi, Brian. Thanks for your talk.
When you said that there was techniques that people use to sort of break up functioning organisations, you know, could you describe some of those techniques? Yes, certainly I, I've seen in Plymouth, I saw this happen where it was clear that local communities were being attacked and in particular Devonport, this this key area in the city where I'd been heavily involved because I tried to get a what was a positive project off the ground to help create jobs
around building a wooden boat. But essentially, if you had a group of people, the local community who were coming together to do something positive into that group would become would come a number of people. Might it might be one or two or it could in bigger groups be, you know, three or four more people. They initially appeared to be allies of the project. They initially appeared to be very good people.
But once they got involved, they would slowly but surely start to break down the good relations in that group. So there might be little rumours and accusations spread around the group, and of course people don't know whether it's true or not. And then they start to become suspicious of one another. And then the net result is that the group, instead of being a nice tight team doing good works
together, starts to fragment. And in some cases where we've seen this happen, you can have quite a big group of people, say up to 6050, sixty people who were doing some really good stuff and then it's like an explosion. The whole unit that's been working together breaks apart with accusations and sometimes some quite vicious stuff between people who were previously good friends and getting on very
well. So a lot of the attack was by, by these people coming in masquerading as other people who wanted to help. But what they then did is is spread rumours or they started to challenge the natural leaders in the group and say we've got a better way of doing it. And, and slowly but surely, this would pull the, the group apart.
And I'd, I'd just qualify this statement again, sorry, I should have probably repeated the, you know, the question for the, for the audience, because your question was, you know, how, how have I seen groups being broken up? But this is a very common technique.
And one of the places that it's happening a lot is in the Church of England. So within church groups across the country where you've got more conservative congregations who are really trying to get a baseline established again of right and wrong and what's good and moral and what's not. These people come in and eventually the the people who are trying to do the right things become attacked and
ostracized from the church. So that, that, that's one technique, but the other technique which became really became apparent was the use of applied psychology. And this could come in a number of forms. The first one I I was aware of was the Delphi technique, whereby if you have a a group of that same members of the public who are attending a meeting, they're challenging a policy from the local authority into the public group would be
injected a couple of people. They disperse themselves through the audience and it was their their job to ask questions or to challenge in a way that started to steer the whole group. You can go online and have a look at the Delphi technique and
see how it works. But in the early days for, for me, we, you know, going back to sort of 2012 onwards, this was happening in a lot of meetings where in Plymouth the City Council was absolutely bulldozing over the wishes of local people to get the city council's projects in place, completely trampling on the wishes of the local people.
And it was very interesting that when I got contacted by people from other cities in UK, invariably where there were regeneration projects, especially those using large amounts of European, European Union funding, these Delphi techniques seem to come with the funding. So those those are two of the key ones.
But I was later to learn, of course that Delphi technique is a specially structured application of applied psychology in order to steer people in the in the way you want them to go. But there are other more sophisticated techniques of which Neuro linguistic programming was one that I was to discover was being used. And there are many people trained in NLP.
And if I mention it, I always get a bit of push back because people will say, well, I did an NLP course and I'm not a bad person and I'm only using it for good. And I'll say I recognize that. But I'm not talking about people who are trying to use it for good. I'm trying to use it. I'm trying to talk about people who are using NLP for nefarious political or personal agendas. But NLP is a form of hypnosis. But probably a good way of
describing it is mesmerism. That by the use of language and grammar, you can you can draw people's attention and you can focus it in particular directions. You can reframe individuals so that they have a new set of beliefs and one of the key places that we we discovered this was being used and was being talked about was in actually it was 2010, the government produced a document
called Mindspace MINDSPACE. If you search for that online as APDF Mindspace and leave a couple of spaces and then put PDF, you'll find a Cabinet Office document where the government was boasting of being able to change the way people thought and the way people behaved. Saying in in the Cabinet Office document, people will not even know this is being done or if they realise their behaviour is being changed, they won't know how it's being changed.
So these are very sophisticated and clever applied psychological techniques, but we started to see them in the very early days. They were being used for criminal and malicious purposes and then we began to see those techniques formalised into government documents where they were boasting.
And probably the worst case of this type of application of NLP occurred during the COVID lockdown when the Sage team, the so-called expert team the government had put in place, it had a smaller team working with it called Spy B. And in one of their minutes, they said that they needed to make people more fearful in order to get them to adhere more closely to government policy. And so I'm, I'm going to look you all in the eye. You're there as the audience.
And I'll say, if you just think about this in simple terms, if you have a, a thought process, could political thought process, we'll call it, where you're going to use fear and you're going to and or you're going to change the way people think where they don't even know you're using these techniques on them. These are pretty evil techniques. And this stuff is now running rampant through local authorities and central government. So those are some of the techniques being used. OK.
Thank you. That's very interesting. Hi, Brian. Hello. Hi, my name is Mark Wilkinson. I'm the chap that phoned you on Friday night. Hello. Hello, Mark. So nice to meet you. So a couple of things I'd like to know what your reaction was to our conversation. You know, like in with with a bit of hindsight, yeah. But the, the question is, is really regarding this issue of movements being infiltrated. And, and I would like to be a lot more generous.
And, and you know, the favorite thing that I like to ask people to do is to shoot me down in flames as much as possible. OK, so please do. But I'm being a little bit naive, possibly by being generous.
And, and what I'm, I think what I'm seeing is that when you've got an organization or a movement and they've been, and they've been, they've been existing for two years, three years, you know, and, and people within the movement start to feel that the group is not achieving what they were hoping it would achieve and not achieving what they were expecting it to achieve. And, and I think that that, that, that is very, very natural.
It's very, very natural. For us to fail as as individuals and as communities and so on. You know, I've, I've, I've had several businesses which, which inevitably they all eventually fail. Yeah. I mean, they, they were successful for a period, but
then they eventually fail. And, and I suppose what, what what I'm saying is that is that is that to what extent do you think that there is an argument for saying that people are trying to scapegoat their lack of success by starting to question whether they've been infiltrated or not? So they can then blame someone else for their failure because, because, because one of the, one of the, one of the biggest, you know, things that people like to do is to blame other people for
their, for their failings. And, and so to what extent do you think that is actually happening? And, and it's not that these groups have been infiltrated. What? Well, again, just, I'm sure everybody could hear what you were saying in the room. But I, I, I'll just so on the telephone the other day, you
talk, you talk to me about. The idea of, of being able to help people achieve more by by the way they, they operated in groups and it's been clear to me over the years that you can see groups of people coming together with a particular objective and and they really do some they do some good work.
I mean, council watch just comes off the top of my head and that that's utterly brilliant Where you've gone from a couple of people starting it off to the fact you've now got people going into council meetings and challenging them in a very measured and structure way. Where the challenge is all based
on facts and figures. And this thing causes the, the council, whether it's a City Council or, or, or a smaller local council to really have problems because now they've they've really got to justify policies that they're putting forward. So you can see groups of people who achieve good things on their own. But you are absolutely correct. The very often you can see people that have come together to do something and it never
quite seems to work. And eventually somebody will be pulling in One Direction because they think the key thing to be targeting is X and somebody else will be saying no, no, no, we should be focusing on why. And this ends up with a split and then the group breaks down or, or explodes in a, in, in a pretty vicious way. That certainly happens and I
recognise that. But I, I'm, I'm going to stick to my guns and say that particularly if you have a, a group that's working well and it's tackling a local authority or, or even some form of non government organization that's, that's pretty close to the government and the establishment. If they are starting to have success and they are having public meetings, I would not be at all surprised that those meetings are not infiltrated by people who are actually. Trained in order to help ferment
the dissent. So I think both things go on, but I absolutely take your point that groups of people have a sort of predisposition to to falling. Out with each other, particularly when they're not clear on what what the aim of their efforts is about. Right. Thanks very much, Brian. OK. Thank you so much for everything that you've done for 20 hours. It's just been quite extraordinary, so thank you. Well, it has been extraordinary.
It still is. But what what's unbelievable is, is the wonderful things that happen. I think I think maybe this might be a. Actually, Richard, sorry, Richard, if we could just give a minute for people who are on Zoom to have ask any questions like Mark Anderson from my, our colleague from UK column is has his hand raised. So I think he'd like to ask something as well. Yeah. Good. Great. Either way. Hello, Mark. Hey, Brian, how you doing? Fine.
Yeah, nice program. I, I didn't quite sign up right on time when you started pretty early here, kind of on a Sunday, but a nice idea kind of retracing the steps of the founding UK column. When I was there recently, I picked up a copy of the Newspaper UK column. Of course, you started mostly with print from 2006 and it, it was really interesting to read those bellwether foundational issues. You know, the British
Constitution group. I, I, I found through some other early issues that were in the office lawful rebellion, British Constitution group, you know, pretty soon there's stuff about common purpose and common purpose really has been one of those foundational issues for UK column that I, I hope they keep hitting on because currently if I'm wrong, common purpose sort of embodied in a more organized, extensive, rather sinister way.
It embodied a lot of these techniques you're talking about, correct Neuro linguistic programming and a more organized and deep seated wide-ranging way of subverting what you might call better government as subverting proper ethical approaches to things subvert subverting in a way the biblical foundation of the moral foundation of the country. It's so it seemed like common purpose became a a a a particularly nasty manifestation of what you're talking about.
Well, that that was absolutely, that was absolutely true. Mark And of course. When When We Discover and Common Purpose was started back in 1985 by a lady called Julia Middleton. It's an incredible story because this thing grows like Topsy and huge amounts of money come into it from big banks. Including Deutsche Bank, but when you try to dig into that side, it was difficult to do.
But within a few years that they were boasting in, you know, in the very early days of it, they were boasting of having 85,000 future leaders that were that what they meant by that is people common purpose graduates that they trained and these people were across society. They were particularly prevalent in public bodies, city councils, government departments, but everywhere fire service, police, NHS, in a very big way,
education. And so these people did the course and for many of them their views and values were realigned to the way that the common purpose wanted them to be realigned. So something that I've said on many occasions when I've talked about Common Purpose is it's absolutely wrong to say that everybody who's been on a course and involved with it is a bad person. Because the truth is, most people did not really understand what Common Purpose was doing when it was training them.
But nevertheless, Common Purpose trained its graduates from from young teenagers all the way up to. Mature people in mature jobs. Including pretty senior jobs, chief, chief constables or chief executives of big organisations. And those people were then used to cede this new, I'll call it liberal, liberal political thinking across their own
institutions. And moreover, they were encouraged to open the doors of their institutions and organisations and companies to more common purpose training. So it, it was a, a very insidious, it is a very insidious organization that was like a Trojan horse that got inside organisations to, to reframe people with the political stance of the common purpose. And, and I, I'm afraid I can't remember the man's name, but in the very early days, I gave a talk on the stage and I was
talking about common purpose. And I said wherever I encounter it, there's something I can't put my finger on. I can't quite, it does things, but I don't really know how it how it manages to do it. And at the end of the talk, a man came up to the stage and said to me, Brian, when you said you couldn't put your finger on it, he said, I'll tell you what it was. They're using NLP. And at that stage I'd never heard of NLP. But subsequently I was going to do my own research.
But I was also to meet, I met people who were trainers, NLP trainers. And this is where I began to understand that common purpose. I'm going to call it Trojan Horse because that's the best description, but it was, it was getting its people inside organisations and then using the sophisticated techniques in order to change the views and values of other people. And in my opinion, this is one of the reasons why we sort of started to see an explosion of
new thinking. We might call it woke now when the early days nobody was calling anything woke. You just knew that old values were being trampled on and in was coming what I now see as an increasingly dangerous liberalisation coupled with the woke agenda and, and I'm happy to argue the toss with people, but I, I now see that as a very, very, very dangerous decay of our society.
Does does that cover it, Mark? Yeah, it's important to to get that in there based on what you started talking about meeting with people and realizing something was wrong. Common purpose just took everything to a whole new level of corruption and subversion. And that's just been a a foundational issue for UK column that I hope is well maintained because it sounds like UK our common purpose has not went away that they're still operational and so.
Mark, if if I can just add a bit of course in in my journey to find out what this organization was and what it was about. I was stunned to find that it was operating through the office of the Deputy Prime Minister when Blair was in power. Prescott was the Deputy Prime Minister at that time. But of course later we were to learn from minutes that it was also operating alongside elements of the Cabinet Office in order to drive its people deeper into government.
So this, this organization working at St. level, getting amongst very small community groups, but demonstrating also that it could work, you know, at high position amongst really powerful people in central government. Yeah, exactly. Well, well, good stuff. Yeah, that it's very important to illustrate that. It really shows how far the subversion has come in. And I like your appeal to spiritual values, that ultimately it's a spiritual battle and we need God to see
this through. We can't do it on our on our own. I appreciate you outlining. That well, this is, this is a really interesting point is, isn't it? And I know that. Some people can find what what I'm talking about here is, is difficult. But if I say, isn't it interesting that one of the things that's occurred in recent years is the fact that the government has demonstrated it does not like people preaching on the streets, it does not like
people praying. And so we've ended up with these no pray zones around abortion clinics, for example. But just think about it, The government's so frightened of somebody standing there, not touching anybody, not saying anything, but simply standing and praying. The government's got to bring in a law to make that unlawful. And I'm going to say it makes sense to me because the government's agenda is inherently evil and it is the evil component which understands the power of. Prayer. And.
So exactly. That, in my head, is absolutely why you're now starting to see the government's turn against Christianity above all religions. It's Christianity that's got to be stamped out. Preaching of Christianity's got to be stamped out. Prayer has got to be stamped out. That's the reason. Even silent prayer.
Well, good stop, Brian. OK, well, I think this is a very good time for people to and including Brian to go away and get a drink and we will come back at, I suggest at 3:15 and continue with the other issues which we were going to talk about then. Is that OK with you, Brian? Well, that's absolutely brilliant because I will take a small walk and I will come for the next session properly equipped with with a beer, OK. OK. Well, we look forward to seeing you then, OK. All right. Thank you.
Refreshed. OK, OK. Well, I think it's probably time that we resumed. And what are you going to tackle next, Brian? Well, the first thing I would like to do, Richard, to say I obeyed the instructions. I'm able to hold up a glass. Well, stay to the play. Here we are at the end of 2025, coming up to Christmas, coming up to the end of the year, and what do we all think about things? If I had to sum up the country at the moment, I would be saying the common theme running across everything.
Is chaos and confusion. So we've got chaos in the NHS, we've got chaos on the roads, we've got political chaos, we've got chaos in the military. Every direction we go, the police, the courts are now in turmoil. And we've got to, we've got to get rid of juries. That's a particularly dangerous thing.
But what? What you see is everything which in the past may of our institutions, in particular our systems of governance, constitution, they might not have been perfect, but I'm going to guess most of the audience old enough to remember back to where you could say, yeah, nothing's perfect, but there. Was stability. There was order. People knew how the systems worked. There was an inherent fairness. There was an inherent morality. Of course, there were
exceptions. Some people were criminals or did bad things. But. Within the country there was an overall feeling of stability and a lot of that stability came from a historical stability it was to do with. Our history as a nation state and it was to do with the the people living in this country. And if we look out the window today, everything is chaos. Try and get an appointment to the dentist that sorry, the doctor's surgery. You can you pick up the phone?
No right dentist. Slip of the tongue there mentioned dentist. But of course, is it easy to get an NHS dentist? No, it's not. And many people now can't get dental treatment. Chaos in the hospitals, in the A&E departments, everywhere we go is chaos. This is not, in my opinion, this is not accidental. This is orchestrated chaos, and it's been orchestrated because as a nation. As as society, as communities, as families, we are being
attacked. And that attack in order to create a new political situation is first of all destabilising and destroying the old order. And the attack is so vicious that it isn't only about our institutions. It's come in to attack families and it's come in to attack the very nature of what it means to be a man or what it what it means to be a woman. And I often find myself thinking, what would people have said prior to or during or just
after the Second World War that. The the nation in years to come for them would be trying to say that a man was a woman or that men were going to be allowed into women's toilets and shower areas. What? What would people? If we go back into the 1950s, what would they have been saying about this? They would have regarded it as madness. But that madness has been imposed on the nation. And why have they done this? Because it it is breaking down
the whole fabric. We don't even know what's a real man or what's a real woman. And on top of it, we've got a really, really vicious attack on young children which is coming in via the sexualisation of very young children. Now, of course, what is coming through mainstream media in the pop circuit, K pop, all of the scantily clad female, some male role models which young children are picking up, that's one part
of the agenda. But another part of the agenda is what is actually being taught to these children in schools. And of course we've mentioned teams of people doing good work and into my head comes the ladies in South Wales, Public Child Protection Wales, where those ladies mums have been highlighting and exposing the really vicious, unpleasant sexualization of very, very young children by what what can only be described as obscene. Sexual education in inverted
commas. So in 2025 for me, we, we exist in a country which is at breakdown and very often you'll see a headline in the paper which will be broken. Britain, I think even Nigel Frage on several occasions says the system's broken. He's perhaps he was talking about immigration. And the moment I hear somebody saying broken Britain or reporting broken Britain, it makes me annoyed because it's not broken Britain. It's the fact that Britain has been broken.
It's deliberately malicious political policy which is being used to break down the nation state. And why is this happening? Well. There's a sort of little well, no, it's not a story actually, there's a man called Peter Drucker who was a an international business consultant and he was particularly skilled at a helping very big companies, global corporations to change their commercial structure could
be combined with branding. And one of the things that he talked about was that if you had a very big monolithic structure and, and it was doing its job, it was all working OK. If you wanted to get that structure going in a different direction, you had to destabilize it because people who were happy and confident in their jobs didn't want to be going in a different direction. They wanted to be carrying on with life. They were good at their jobs.
They were enjoying their jobs. And, and he was one of the one of the so-called business experts that said, if you've got a big organization and it's going to change direction, you have to destabilize it. And This is why about 10 years ago we started to hear people actually being described as change agents or disruptors. And when we went to look at what these disruptors and change agents said, you you can find people speaking about it on YouTube, they actually said.
Our job is to destabilise and challenge everything in order to get people thinking in a different way, and I think it's interesting that what I'm describing also comes under this psychological. The psychological tech techniques, because you're using people in a particular way to change the way people think and behave. So everything is about destabilisation and breakdown. And what I'm suggesting to you is that the reason this is happening is because the country's got to be shaken to
its roots. The institutions have got to be broken down South. People can't trust anything, they can't trust the courts or the police or if they're going to get treated properly in the NHS. This is deliberate policy in order to soften, soften this up
as to what comes next. Now just add to that that in the early days when I was beginning to realise something was badly wrong in the country myself, I'm seeing all the fraud and corruption in Plymouth. A man out out of the blue sent me a copy of a book, and the book was called The EU Collective Enemy of its member states, and it was written by a man called Christopher Story. I I met him about a year later.
He's no longer alive, but. One afternoon I sat down with a cup of tea to read that book or start reading it. And I opened it and within a few pages of the front cover was a table. And the table describes first of all the destabilisation of UK Western countries.
The destabilisation, sorry, first of all it was demoralisation, then destabilisation, then what it called the revolution period, the complete breakdown and, and the synthesis following the complete breakdown of the country was what it called normalisation, which was, which was a new society. And I, I looked at this table on the left hand side, it talked about areas of society, law, order, health, education, military. And then it said what was to be done to break up those areas.
And then it said what the result was. So if I gave you a really simple one with health, it said introduce junk food and the result was going to be a complete breakdown in the. Health and well-being of the nation. I can tell you that in the military, it said that the military. Was to be exposed to the gay agenda and women in the military, and the result was to be a weakening of military forces. Now I know to some people those two issues might be a motive, and I'm very happy to talk about
that. So sort of separate thing, but for me, when I looked at the table, my head said, this is happening. And one of the things I did is focus photocopied that table. And at meetings or talks that I went to give, I would show people the table without any context. I'd just say, have a look at this, what do you think? And you'd see them start to read it and then you'd see their browse get a little bit furrowed and then they'd say, but this is happening.
So just by seeing this table, which was a plan to demoralise a country, to destabilise a country to the extent that ultimately you can install a new political regime, this was all planned policy. Now unfortunately I lost my or I gave my loaned my copy of that book, the EU Collective, enemy of it, enemy of its member States to somebody who didn't give it back. But you can find that book as APDF online and you can see the the table.
I'm talking about yourself. But this is the meat of where we are today. If you feel that around you, everything is spinning. We can't deal with immigration. The police are off the rails. We can't deal with the child abusers. The courts don't run properly. We've got to get rid of juries. You can't get yourself seen in a doctor's surgery. You can't get your teeth fixed, children being sexualized. This is a whirlwind of chaos which is designed by very, very malicious people as a means of
attacking a whole society. And I'm going to say to you as my audience today in 2025, this is extremely well advanced now so that you can start to see people who are beginning to get fractious with each other as a result of the confusion and turbulence. And of course, helping to drive this situation. We have mainstream media such as the BBC, which is now completely out of control. It's it's not doing any proper questioning of politicians.
It's not doing any proper investigation to get to the bottom of stories. It's not challenging MPs properly over the grooming gangs. We can clearly see that the mainstream media is itself being controlled in a way that it's not helping the public get to the bottom of what's happening with a view to stopping it.
It's actually causing greater confusion and turbulence in in people's minds and coupled with that we've got a whole plethora of legislation which is coming through very rapidly making it more difficult for adults to go on social media to find out what's really happening. So the Social Media Channels UK column is one of them. But there are there are many
other good channels. They're all under pressure because we can see that the government is using its powers, often internationally as a way of shut, of shutting down media exposure of what's of what's really going on. So in my mind, it's very clear that UK is being attacked and the aim is to completely break this country down.
Violence on the street is good as far as the establishment's concerned because if you can get violence on the street then you can bring in emergency powers, emergency laws. Plus you can use the full weight of the police, armed police, riot police and indeed the military in order to help completely squash free speech in the nation. So to me, UK very, very dark in 2025 and this agenda of created chaos as the final step to a completely different sort of society. This, this is where we are.
What is the society that they're bringing in? Well, that's getting ever more clear to see, isn't it? Because you can. You've seen all of the reports to date on the surveillance state, and this may be everything from surveillance from of our faces through CCTV cameras to the fact that with now digital banking, the state is able to pry into the simplest transactions we might have as an
individual or as a family. On top of that, we've got the police being increasingly brutal and aggressive in their behaviour, to the extent that we've now got the police kicking in people's doors because they've said something which is hurt somebody else on social media. We've got courts taking children away from families because of
their political beliefs. And if you're saying that can't possibly be true, well take yourself back to 2012 when it was reported, across most of the mainstream papers at least, that a UKIP couple that had their foster children taken away from them because the local authority had decided that their UKIP beliefs were two extremist right wing.
And now we've got Lord Leveson, retired judge, who was the man that the government used in order to bring in the Leveson inquiry into freedom of the press. What did he achieve? Well, he actually achieved the exact opposite, which was the the press being made fearful of doing its traditional job of investigating and reporting.
Lord Leveson has just been used to do to carry out what he describes as an independent review of the court system where he's now recommending, supported by Lammy, that we should get rid of jury trials in order to get rid of the backlog of cases which have apparently been caused by COVID troubles and
COVID lockdown. We're going to get rid of the jury and from more minor trials you are going to be sat in front of a single politically appointed judge who will decide whether you are innocent or guilty. So what can I add to that? Well, probably I'll pause before we go on to it, but one of the key issues that I'm aware of is breakdown of the armed forces. We've now got to a stage where the British Army is barely capable of putting 20,000 men into the field into a combat situation.
And even if it got 20,000 men into the field, it probably could only keep them in the field for a matter of weeks. That's not my personal opinion. That's been reported quite widely as well. So we we've got a massive breakdown in our armed forces at the very time that we have a government that is working desperately hard to make people fearful of a Russian attack on Western Europe.
And indeed when they mention nuclear weapons to make people fearful that they're going to die in some nuclear Holocaust. So this is the reality of the UK we live in at the moment. But there's a reason for it. The reason is that we are being attacked. And if we are going to deal with the attack, we have to see it for what it is. We have to understand it. We have to understand the techniques being used against us.
And it's only then that we're going to be in a position to actually fight back and challenge and counter what's actually happening. So Richard, if I break there because I've sort of taken it that it leads into having a chat about Ukraine and World War. Three another happy subject for
us to enjoy our beer with and. If I could just quickly say that in the in the Zoom chat, Mark's put in a couple of comments that Mark Anderson again that I think are are very relevant to say broken Britain in inverted commas implies it's a passive process without deliberate sabotage. And he also put in a couple of reminders. 1 is that Bilderberg helped create the EU and and he also said and to think we fund expensive militaries to protect us from China and other purely
external threats. OK. So at this point, I'm asked our audience to ask them whether they'd like to ask some questions of you. Brian, it's OK. Please do. Brian, I wonder whether my own perception is that we reached kind of what I would call peak walk maybe 2-3 years ago. And I think since then, you know, the, the kind of LGBTQ plus agendas, not so much in your face, not quite so much in your face as it was. I mean, they seem to be on the
back foot. I mean, here in Leeds, for example, we have an organization in Scotland called LGBT Youth Scotland. And although there's by charity law in their own constitution is supposed to focus on youth of certain age, years of age, plus they have been active in primary schools, you know, promoting their agenda, which is obviously
A cause of concern. But that said organization used to have an office here in lease, you know, that couple of 100 yards away from where we're sitting now, that office is now closed. And I think that's me as an example of their profile and strength in society is actually a bit weaker than it was say 2-3 years ago. It's obviously still there. I mean, if we're looking at the
Sandy Peggy case recently. But even there, you know, the judging question was mentioned asked of himself, you know, apparently using AI or something to get a really ridiculous judgement trying to justify the NHS fight for reasonable in allowing Dr. Upton to go into thank you women's changing room. So to my mind, there's I think of a bit of a background. I wonder whether the powers would be in a bit of a quandary because as you're about to discuss, they're pumping up the
war agenda. You know, we're going to war with Russia and Mark Reuters making these horrendous statements. You'd be ready for a war that your grandfathers and great, great grandfathers were familiar with. Terrible statements. But I wonder if in order to get people behind that, you have to kind of pull back on the LGBTQ agenda, which as you've said before, is not consistent with military vigour that one would imagine is necessary to fight a war that our grandfathers fault.
OK, OK. Thank you very much for that. And I particularly like your question because it, it inherently brings us back onto something positive. I, I think you are absolutely right that the woke agenda was pushed too far too quickly to the extent that it got under people's skin. But the key thing is once it got under their skin, what did they do? And the answer is they started to do things. They started to speak out of it, out about it. You would see, you might see a Daily Mail article.
And then if you want to see the comments underneath, there was comment after comment after comment, hundreds of comments where people would be saying this is utterly nonsense, It's ridiculous. We're not having it. And so it was the fact that people, in my opinion, it was the fact that people actually started to express not only as individuals, but but within, within their communities and publicly their deep unhappiness with the agenda, with the woke agenda. Plus they were ridiculing it.
And and so for the people trying to implement the policies once it became apparent to them. That that people saw it as something not only stupid and ridiculous, but they were ridiculing it. And then they are calmly saying we're not having it and they're starting to challenge. It where for example local local authorities were maybe bringing in trans into into the women's changing rooms as a simple
example. It was this public opinion, it was like an osmosis of public opinion which made the policy people realise they'd overcooked it and therefore they had to step back because if they pushed it, what they will be telling. More of the. Public is that this is a an aggressive agenda which we've got to enforce on you. So there's a little bit of a. I think a tie in here with Mark's point earlier when he was talking about how do we do
things, what can we do? But this particular subject, the backlash against woke has been utterly brilliant because it's been so simple for most people to do. They've simply got hot under the collar and have spoken out publicly saying they're not having it and it and it's produced a result. And I think this is this is a great teaching point for the fact that other subject areas could be dealt with in the same way.
So for example, the fact that you can't get a doctor's appointment by picking up a phone and saying I'm sick and I need to come and see a doctor. This should be dealt with by thousands of people coming out publicly and talking about it. But the irony is that many of them are not tackling that subject with the same vehemence. They're simply accepting it as a fait accompli. But first of all, I want to say
that yes, I agree. I think that the woke agenda and it's the policies have been stalled as a result of increasing backlash from the public. I. Think we have a question from Is It Rob? No, I actually I just joined you because. Oh OK, I saw your camera on, sorry about that. I was I was out in in a storm and managed to get home with the dog and my wife so I just OK I just logged in. OK, no problem welcome. Merry Christmas to you all, Merry. Christmas, Yeah. Yeah.
Do you have a question, Brian? Could I just the the state state of the nation according to you seems to be absolutely terrible. But do you think that this this actually leaves a space for new things to come, not the new things which are being imposed on us, but other things. So what what we're trying to do in common knowledge is to think about, OK, we understand what is trying to be imposed on us. What are the alternatives?
What do we think we really want? And can we start to create what we really want in the future rather than kind of looking back and wringing our hands and saying, oh, this, you know, everything's terrible. We need to look to the future and put in place things which will in some cases, replace what we have at the moment and be better than what we have at the moment. Yes, Richard, this is a really
good point and. I'll say I've never been shy on really ramming home to people how serious things are because probably I've, I've got a little bit of something still attached to me from the early days where you'd often be talking to an audience where they clearly did not understand anything that was happening around them. They were just, they were just happy and and you needed to start actually.
Getting into their psyche to make them understand, no, you can't just sit here and pretend it's it's all a bit of a joke. It's all a bit of cock up. No, we're we're dealing with orchestrated conspiracy. So I'm sorry if I've unleashed a bit of that on an audience where I know you've got people who want to do positive things. So I'm really. Happy to switch back the other way. I, I sorted out a couple of books while I was sort of
preparing myself for this. And one of the ones that came to hand is this is a little book by Vernon Coleman, who I got a lot of respect from. It's called Bloodless Revolution, and it then says, now we can change the world in one day. And this little book by Vernon Coleman includes, Hang on a minute before I see if I can just find the last paragraph. Well, it's it's over 200. It's 277 points of what can be done in order to make a
difference. And as I pick this book up, it sort of flicked open on a particular page. And what caught my eye was his .2200 and 50. And he says our first step to freedom must be to free ourselves of the party system and return to days when our parliament consisted of honest, caring individuals and who were, who were representing the people in their constituencies. And I'd, I highlighted it and marked the book on that one because personally, I think this is a very, very powerful
statement. If you look at the way society is being controlled, it's being controlled through a highly orchestrated party political system. And if we're to achieve some real beneficial change, we've, we've got to be breaking that party system down. Now I'm then going to say ideal and I'm friends with people in many of the smaller parties of heritage party comes into my mind and what I always say to them is you are doing a good job because you're helping to break down the monolithic party
system. But ultimately it's my personal view that if somebody stands to represent us in the community or us via Parliament, then they should be doing it as an individual and not under this orchestrated party system. So I just throw that that in as one example. But as long as people do understand that we're up against something really nasty, we can look at every possibility as to what we should do because exposure is still a very
powerful tool. Most people in UK have no idea what's really going on in the country. So when people do their research, maybe they're using parliamentary sources or they're doing Freedom of Information requests when they have got the factual evidence demonstrating what's wrong and what's being done inside the country. And that is delivered to. Other people in the country that simple research and exposure is itself a very powerful tool.
I mentioned the ladies in Wales, Public Child Protection Wales, they've taken their investigation of the grooming of school, young school children to the point where they've been able to produce their own written documents, helping to train teachers into what they should be doing. Some of their literature is able to use government statements on its sexualisation of children and they've been able to show teachers that the government's own policy fits grooming of
children as a criminal act. So that's a very small group have done it. I've also mentioned the the people challenging the council's council watch. You're another group that's set up. So I believe that we can be very relaxed about what we tell people to go and do and what they should challenge because people inherently were best in sectors that they understand.
So it's to me it seems logical that if you've got people who've been through the NHS, for example, they are the ones who should start to work out what they can do in order to challenge what's happening in the NHS and produce something better. So we can afford to be pretty relaxed with the people who are brought on board to fight. There's no need to be prescriptive.
And because I did pay attention to Mark when he was talking to me on the phone, one of the things Mark said was what would help people fight is if we can give them more black and white examples of this was the problem, this is what was done, This is why the counter turned out to be a success. So if we could, if we know what the problems are, if we can show people what works to bring down that regime or or build a better system, then we are doing the right job and we want that
message to spread. Well, that that's actually quite a good way of me giving some publicity to a conference that we're going to be holding in February, which is about basically empowerment of people. And the idea is to look at a number of different areas where people have seen there's a problem and they've taken the initiative and they've done something about it and they're on the way to making improvements in that, in that area.
So I think I personally think that that's one of the areas that we should be going into, showing people that they do have power, that they're not completely subjective subjects of people, that they actually can go out and do and make a difference. And I think that that's a kind of very positive thing that we can say. And what I'd like to add to that is and, and a smile as I say this, because it's a little bit of military background coming,
coming to the fore. But if you, if you look at warfare and you look at where minor powers have taken on major powers, the thing which has caused the major power the most problem is guerrilla style warfare. Now we're not talking about encouraging people to engage in
physical warfare. This is an information war mainly that we're we're in. But nevertheless, the techniques of guerrilla operations, I believe are very important, and that is that you train people so that they know why they're doing what they're doing. You train them, you give them the tools. In the real circumstance, it will be the weapon. But we're not dealing in
weapons. We're dealing in pen and paper and exposure and challenges and maybe demonstrations, but it's done in such a way that once you've given people the material and the encouragement, the training to go and do the job, they are allowed to go and and do that job in their own area. Because they know their own area best. And their own area may be a professional area, or it might be a geographical area, might be a part of the country where they really stay understand what's taking place.
But the reason I believe that our whole counter to what's being done should be in a guerrilla style is because every time you attempt a major response to these criminal political bodies and, and their and their support agencies, they are very, very good at attacking and bringing down orchestrated
bodies. Where there's a pyramid, can a pyramid command structure, one or two people at the top are the ones who are giving all the instructions and, and people don't move unless there's communications from inside this body, this authority. Now gorilla, the gorilla system doesn't work like that. Provided people have got the knowledge of how to fight, provided they've got the right tools to fight, they are largely left alone to to conduct the
battle in their own area. And because there's no central communications, no central command and control structure, it's very, very difficult for the opposing forces to break them down. This is one of the key reasons. Apologies to you, Mark. This is one of the very simple reasons why the operations of the Viet Cong was so difficult for the Americans to counter with all their might in Vietnam. But it's been the same in other guerrilla warfares.
Relatively small numbers of people, often poorly armed and equipped, cause big trouble for for bigger, aggressive military organisations. Brian, we haven't left very much time, but I just wonder whether you could say a few words about the push at the moment to get us to go to war with Russia.
Well, my first comment is that although we're seeing all the hype, I don't believe that they want us to go to war with Russia. They're more interested in how fearful they can make the Western population as a whole, because if they can make the population fearful enough, they can control the population more easily. And also they can bring in further draconian policies in order to control everyday life. So Free Press can be closed
down. We can have arbitrary arrests on the streets as a result of some accusation that you've you've helped to a foreign power. So I believe that the the big call that war is coming and we want to do this, and that it's fear. That's what they want. First of all, this is psychological attack on our minds. However, in doing this, are these people, they're intelligent, but they're clearly
mad and very dangerous. In doing this, are they taking us closer to a circumstance where they could trigger an expanded war with Russia? And I think the answer to that is absolutely they are. And therefore we need to be holding our politicians to account whenever we're hearing this war mongering rhetoric. Because OK, I'm a long time out of the military and was Cold War days for me.
But it's absolutely obvious to me that NATO, but also the European Union has been used as a vehicle to expand NATO military power eastwards. And the European Union has absolutely been on board with that same agenda. And for the Russians, and it would be the same if it was the Americans. Well, the example was Cuba, when, when missiles were going to be brought really close to the borders of the of the USA, the Americans had to say no, this can't happen. It's to do with warning times.
The Russians have had to say the same. So this war in Ukraine has been ramped up deliberately in order in the first instance for NATO, but more importantly the European Union to expand its empire eastward. And of course, Ukraine is such a huge attraction because of its vast food and mineral wealth. So that's been the other thing. And if you've never heard the term before, if you go into European policy going way back to just post World War, the phrase was from the Atlantic to the Urals.
The the policy dream for the European project was that the European Union would extend from the Atlantic to the Urals and that automatically means that Russia had to be brought into the project. As we've seen, Russia's not
playing the game. And now, in my opinion, that's why we've got this vicious, vicious backlash against Russia, where the Western powers are going to fight to the last Ukrainian in order to try and fragment Russia so that the European powers can claim the land east to the Urals. So I would not be relaxing over Christmas thinking we're all going to die in a nuclear war next year.
I don't think that's going to happen, but what I think we should be concerned with is that we've got such a vicious and mad rhetoric from our politicians calling for war and using terms of war, that we've got to call out these people before they do something silly which triggers conflict. That that's how I view it at the moment. Well, I think that's a fantastic analysis, Brian. I think we're just coming to the end of our two hours now.
So I'd just like to thank you on behalf of everyone at Common Knowledge for giving us such a, a broad understanding your, your very detailed analysis of many, many different situations. And I think it's given us lots of food for thought over the Christmas period and also a lot of positivity as well because you see that, you know, we shouldn't be people who are scared that we have power of ourselves. If you understand what's going on, we can do things about it.
And I think that's a very positive note on which to end 2025. So thank you very much indeed for giving up your time. And for giving us your many and many varied views on huge number of different issues. So thank you very much indeed, Brian. Well, Richard and team and also big thank you to Diane for helping to set this up and and and run the event today. Yeah, thank you for inviting me. It's been fun. I've still got some of my beer left, so the day's going well.
Yeah, I just want to end on the fact that we're coming up to Christmas. Christmas itself has changed, hasn't it? I I don't think it was something which I I felt as an individual, which was something you feel because you were younger. But for me, Christmas, when it came in years gone by, had a calm to it. Christmas was approaching and there was a an atmosphere which sort of took over. And now we're surrounded by more and more LE DS and flashing neon lights.
And it seems to me the more those lights appear, the less there's a feeling of Christmas. And I know we could have a deep discussion about what Christmas really is. But if we if we say that Christmas has always been regarded as a spiritual time of year, time where we should be reflecting and and refreshing ourselves, I'd encourage you to get into that mindset and do not underestimate the power of prayer. Because as I said early on, this is the Gov why the government wants to ban it.
Because the evil that that is driving the political agenda is very scared of prayer. So if over Christmas you get the time to be somewhere quiet, that's where all you need to be somewhere quiet and to reflect. And the lady said to me many years ago, but how do you actually pray? And I said, well, the thing to remember is that you're sat quietly talking to a loving Father. And that is the way that you can put your personal fears and worries across, but also you can ask for guidance.
And of course, you are also able to ask not for people to be hurt, but you can ask for people to be removed from power. And you can't ask for spiritual fortresses, the bad stuff to be brought down. So you can pray for yourself and your family. You can pray for the bad guys to be removed, but you can also pray. For. The troubling things to also be collapsed and lead to lead us into something which is how
people should be a loving world. And I get a lot of pleasure out of thinking that I'm here saying this to everybody in the room, but really feeling that for some reason, for me, 2025 was the time that I needed to change my language into the. Spiritual realm. So there we are. Well. Thank you very much indeed. It's been wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.