Hello, I'm Charles Mallett with the UK Column interview and I have with me today Chris Coverdale. But really, Chris, I'm welcoming you back to UK Column. Thank you very much indeed for joining me. Thank you very much, Charles. Welcome. I'm very happy to be back. Good. And there's going to be an awful lot to go through.
We last convened just over a year ago and we are recording on the eve of budget day, which makes everybody think about the way in which the government is spending or perhaps slightly less diplomatically wasting our money. And it's not controversial to perhaps put it out that that we're not always altogether happy with the way in which the government spends our taxes. But just in a sort of brief sense, why is it that there is a specific issue with the
lawfulness of paying tax? Very important. The important it goes back to our agreements with the rest of the world never to threaten or to use force and to settle all
disputes peacefully. Now Britain has been breaching those international agreements and laws for over 80 years and the important issues associated with that is that warfare is paid for by taxpayers so that every war we've been involved in, and there's 84 since the Second World War and eight big ones since 2001, each one of those has been funded by taxpayers. Now in 2001 the world made it a
criminal offence. Sorry, in 1998 the world made it a criminal offence to engage in all crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and conduct ancillary to genocide. And that we adopted that and enacted an act of Parliament in 2001 in Britain saying that we will enforce the laws and including the law of conduct ancillary to genocide.
And it's that that is the payment of tax is relevant because every payment of £100 of tax contributes somewhere around 10 lbs to the department, Ministry of Defence, and they use it for murder and killing and wars and genocide overseas. And that means that taxpayers, whenever we pay tax, are complicit in genocide overseas. So that really is the summary of it. Excellent.
And it's a very useful summary to have Now if you're listening in and that rings a vague bell, but you can't quite remember why you've heard Chris talking about that before. The interview that I refer back to when we did speak a year ago was called the hang on. What was it called? I've gone in, it was called tax resistance and a declaration of
sovereignty. And it's a, it's a very, very detailed interview and it goes into much more of the background that Chris is referring to. If you haven't listened to that, then I, I might recommend that you come out of this interview now and go back and listen to Chris's from that point. Because what we want to deal with today, Chris, I think are,
are some of the other issues. Last time we spoke largely about the legal background, but also what the individual actions might be. And I think today we'll look at perhaps corporate or or indeed sort of community actions to be taken in this regard. I think one thing I'd like to say, having referenced the budget already, is that the defence budget at the moment is £60 billion. For the the year we're in, it's expected to go up to about £62
billion. And just as a frame of reference, it's, I think it's interesting to note that that figure is lower than the annual turnover of the Tesco supermarket. So of course it is a significant figure, but it just goes to show how the, the power that we hold in terms of where we put our money, Tesco of course, is able to turn that much over because people are willingly giving money to, to the organization. You might say the same thing about what we're doing with the government.
And the issue, of course, is, as you say, 1 of law rather than necessarily choice about what we think the government should be able to spend our money on. I think that's an important distinction to make. But I, I would be interested to hear your thoughts though on the areas that fall outside of what it is you're referring to. So for example, we, you know, the NHS by and large is selling drugs and pharmaceutical products that we know to be harmful.
What's your position on our attitude towards the way in which government spends money in other ways? Well, again, it goes back to law, Charles. The important bet is that the laws we've passed actually make it a criminal offence for our leaders to cause harm to people because of their nationality as part of a government policy.
So the COVID lockdown activities and the several things associated with that were in fact crimes of genocide because they were killing innocent British people through the issue of the medical interventions of one sort or another. You know, the lockdowns, the madazolam poisoning of elderly people in care homes and other things. If you really look into what the law says, it is a criminal
offence by our leaders. And so really, we should be charging, you know, Boris Johnson and Witty and one or two of the others forgotten the name of the minister anyway. Hancock. Yes, Hancock and those with crimes of conduct ancillary to genocide. Yeah, so very, very instant point, isn't it? Yeah, they deliberately murdered and knowing that if these were unsafe and causing harm to people, they called them safe and effective and got everybody in Britain to take them.
That was quite an appalling crime. Yeah, it absolutely is. And it and, and in fact it leads neatly into to the next thing that I, I sort of want to discuss because it is specifically with regard to the military action. We've talked previously about the law, you know, the, the ratification of the Rome Statute and everything that's sort of come thereafter, and in particular the actions that are taken by armed forces and the,
the definition of terrorism. Now there's an awful lot there, but I thought a, a way of getting into that perhaps would be to to recap and perhaps flesh out the our versus goal 2013, because that points towards the, the, the well actually a, a document that you'd written prior to that about matters in Afghanistan concerning then Lance Corporal Joe Glinton. I wonder if we might just talk a bit around that.
But, but in summary, what, what was the, what was the issue particularly concerning terrorism and the actions of of the armed forces with regard to R versus Gaul? In that particular case, Mohamed Gaul was arrested and charged with a crime for putting a video onto the Internet taken by the Taliban of a successful attack on Britain's armed forces in Afghanistan. And that was considered to be a criminal offence by Muhammad Gul, by the police.
And they charged him and successfully prosecuted him under the Terrorism Act 2006. Part of the defence case, however, was, well, what does the definition of terrorism mean? Because he was quite specifically he, he understood that. And we need to make sure that when defining terrorism, we don't just focus on military activities overseas, but the actions of taxpayers and others supporting acts of terrorism.
And the Terrorism Act 2000, which contains the definition of terrorism, is quite specifically about the funding of terrorism and not just about terrorism. And so this is where it came in for me. Is that that case quite clearly said that if you look at the definition of terrorism in the international, sorry, the the Terrorism Act 2000 Article 1, you'll find that it covers the military and quasi military activities of the British government.
And for the Supreme Court to say that the military and quasi military activities of the British government meet the definition of terrorism is have not been taken notice by the government at all. They just continue to do it. They know they are committing terrorism.
And the important bit behind it is that every taxpayer who funds the government, knowing that some of the money will be used for the purposes of terrorism as it is defined in the law, commits a criminal offence for which they could be put in prison for up to 14 years. And Chris, just just remind us, what is the piece of legislation that that deals with that
specific issue? That's the terrorism 2000, sections 15 to 18, making it quite clear that the the three things, if you ask for money, collect money or pay money to somebody else or another institution, knowing that it will be used or suspecting that it may be used for the purposes of terrorism, you commit a criminal offence. So that that's very clearly laid out in the law in the Terrorism Act 2000, sections 15 to 18. OK, OK.
And then I think with that, we're talking about, girl, the Taliban, you know, I mean, fascinating to see, of course, what's happened 20 odd years on. But just to come back to the, the role of the armed forces in this, because I think it, it's very easy to have a focus on government and to forget that their actions, of course, do have a very serious knock on effect and an actual fact that these acts, unfortunately, are carried out by people who mostly are members of the armed forces
who signed up to in effect, serve their their country. Now the Terrorism Act, the the part of the Terrorism Act, I think that you said was was sort of dealt with in in our versus goal in a, in a not totally above board way meant some, some
bits were sort of missed out. But but I think, yeah, right at the start in terms of the definition, I think it's it's worth noting that it's makes specific reference to terrorism, acts of terrorism or threats being for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
And then to set that alongside the way in which rules of engagement are set out in Joint Services Publication 398, which deals with the rules of engagement, in describing rules of engagement by saying that they encompass political direction together with operational and legal provisions. And I think that's something that's not really talked about very much.
The fact that rules of engagement are not in fact solely based on either the threat faces faced by personnel in the armed forces or indeed by the specifics of that operational or the legal background, but that there is this political element now I think that that deserves much more scrutiny really than it ever get. I I don't know what your comment would be on that particularly. Absolutely. I mean, I completely agree with
you. And this goes back to the system we've had in this country for 2-3 hundred years. We have an inherited role of commander in chief so that no British service person can go overseas without an express command from the commander in The Commander in Chief is responsible in law for upholding the agreements we made in the United Nations Charter never to threaten or to use force and to
settle all disputes peacefully. But unfortunately, Queen Elizabeth and now Prince King Charles are failing to uphold and enforce those laws, those agreements. They are the world's most important agreements and our leaders are failing to uphold them. And I find that appalling. And of course what happens is that the Prime Minister at that time earlier was Tony Blair, now it's Rishi. Sorry, Keir Starmer, I'm out of
date. They are ignoring the law which makes it a criminal offence for them to send our troops to to war. And it's just appalling. And so something we have to do, something as taxpayers to try to ensure our leaders uphold and enforce the law. Absolutely we do. And this is this is really what we want to get to just just before we do. I mean, I think you know already what we talked about it.
It's it is fascinating to consider how the continual evolution of what would really be described as propaganda has moved us so far, far away from considering what terrorism was when it was first described. And of course that's reputed to go back to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror from 1793, when specifically it was act of state sponsored violence
and state sponsored terror. But of course, the whole thing has been inverted for political expedience and the the, you know, the way the Terrorism Act is written now is almost suggests that the state cannot itself be responsible for acts of terrorism. But, but I think that's not really the way that we should view it, is it?
You're quite right. And in fact, the international law makes it clear that it's anybody and it can even include the commander in Now, unfortunately, the justice system in this country, the Ministry of Justice issued a document in 2017 or 2018 which states that state actors have state immunity. Now that is completely incorrect and we must find a way of correcting that.
We should not allow these sort of false, deceptive documents to go out and be taken into account of by the whole of the civil service and everybody else. It's wrong and it needs changing. Under the Rome Statute, this applies. Genocide applies to everybody in Britain, including the monarch, the Prime Minister, members of Parliament and all civil servants, as well as the military military officers. OK, that's a, that's a very
important clarification to make. I, I think we've referred to the to the Rome Statute and, and what sort of come to pass since then. I think the International Criminal Court and and its role should just be mentioned at this point. And I just jotted down a couple of statistics off their website because I do. I do think it is pretty astonishing that over the last two and a bit decades, they have secured just 13 convictions from
37 cases. They've issued 61 arrest warrants and there have been 4 acquittals. But the rather staggering detail, I think, is that they have a staff of 900 and that their budget for the year is nearly €200 million. Now, is that value for money, Chris? I think you've answered your own question there. There's no way that's value for money. And the trouble is, if you've got 900 staff it's almost impossible to get anything done
at all. You need a small committed team for each accused person in court. Idea is, now look, let's get into the sort of the big business side of it. There's always, certainly in the mainstream, there's always an enormous outcry when the likes of Amazon or Google or whoever it may be are not seen to be paying their taxes. And yet we are absolutely talking about the the possibility or at least the influence that corporations not paying taxes would have on
government. Are we possibly guilty themselves of being a bit inconsistent in the way that we view the corporate influence upon governments? Yes. I mean, that is a major problem in this country. People don't understand how the system works, unfortunately, and it's all a bit beyond their normal experience and therefore they just accept what they're told. But we have a major problem with
the the big industries. I mean, the banks and others are owning and controlling the Bank of England, which controls the government and controls all financial transactions in this country. We have to do something about that. So yes, I'm fully with you there. It's a problem. But so, so on that and, and, and this very significant question of, of who influences who, particularly given the, the cycle of money and the control that comes with it.
When one is considering how the behaviour of government is to be affected, we can be fairly certain that that action at the ballot box doesn't really do anything apart from change the colour of the, the part, the incumbent party. Where do you see the the sort of break in point into this cycle, as it were, concerning money? I think the issue is you raised it earlier and that is corporations.
Corporations contribute about 9293% of the taxes to the government on which the base the crimes are based on. If without that money coming into the government, the government could not wage war, could not initiate the NHS problems and everything else. So it really based on. The amount of tax that every business pays every year and it's huge amounts. It's 92% of the income.
So if we're talking about an income of a trillion pounds, you can talk 920 billion of that is coming from the Tescos of the world, the banks, the large organizations and others who deduct PAYE from there staff and send it to the Revenue and Customs. They deduct National Insurance contributions and they that is used straight away as if it was a tax. It was originally meant as an insurance to cover people's pensions and other things when they retire. But that's totally false.
It is a tax and it's National Insurance, PAYE, VAT and these sorts of expenditures, taxes mount up to huge sums of money. And of course it's the large, the large organizations who aren't transferring these to the government. I think we mentioned last time a good example is Wetherspoons, which most people go, you know, it's a very popular public, public house chain and with hotels and others and their tax
bill last year was 840 million. Now that's an extraordinary amount of money coming from one organization. It's about a thousandth of the total income to the government just from that one organization. Now what we need to point out to the directors of these companies is that it is a criminal offence. They are committing 3 serious criminal offences, certainly 2 anyway.
When they deduct PAYE and National Insurance from a person's salary and hand it to the Revenue and Customs, that is a criminal offence by the directors or managers of that business, so we need to tackle that. We absolutely do. Now let's just go back one, because the, the reason for that and the reason for referring to all these taxes and, and at least the, the point of confluence that that links all these things together is the
Consolidated fund. Just just tell us a bit about the Consolidated Fund and why it's so significant in all of this. Yes. Well, it's really the print, the way we've been collecting taxes and using taxes since the 18th century. In 1787, we set up a new system in this country where all revenue, all government revenue went into one pot and all expenditure came out of the same pot. And that has been the case since 1787 and it's still the case
now. A lot of people don't understand, for instance, the link between council tax and the Consolidated Fund. I get I've had immense problems trying to persuade public servants that council tax when, when they raise council tax from me or from any other taxpayer, it goes into the local government account for your council and that account is owned and controlled by central
government. And So what happens when it goes in, if I pay £2000 into that account, it immediately is credited to the Consolidated Fund. This is all revenue for the government. And so, and then what happens to it is that it goes Parliament then decide how much should be sent back to the council as a grant from central government so that the council can do all those things which it is required to do with the money. So it it's a circular process in a way.
Now once they get it back, they also deduct PAYE and National Insurance from council employees pay and hand that back to the Revenue and Customs. So we are paying perhaps 120% of the money every year straight away into the government's fund and that's the way it operates. Now most people don't understand that at all and they, the Council will keep saying none of the money is used for the purposes of terrorism, which is not correct. OK, Thanks Chris that, that is a
very important clarification. It really is. And that of course harks back to the previous interview that we that we did together and the specific power that the individual holds. So I think I'm right in saying that the amount of overall income that the the council tax raises about 4% of of the total that goes into the the public
purse. So, so therefore, exactly like you point out earlier, the the significance of the corporations and therefore what can be done on that score really can't be overstated. To those people who are either within the the hierarchy of corporations or indeed in a position to be able to appeal to them, where on earth does one
begin to try to change things? I wish I knew a clear answer to that one, Charles. I have been trying for 20 years, more than 20 years, to try to get councils and government officials, public officials to uphold and enforce the law. But unfortunately the justice system in this country refuses to accept the fact that it is a criminal offence. And although I've been to court many times, I've been in court more than 70 times in the last 25 years.
Not once has a judge or a court official or an institution like a council or the Revenue and Customs accepted the fact that it is a criminal offense to hand money to a government if the government uses the money for a criminal purpose. And so how we really persuade them, I think we've got to go back to basics and say, look, this is what the law says.
It is a criminal offence for any person, that includes the company director to deduct the PAYE and National Insurance from their employees salaries and hand it to the revenue and customers. Now if we can take that to court and we've got to try and find some police force and some Crown prosecutors somewhere who are willing to take action on this and start criminal proceedings against one or two company
directors. And until that happens, I think we're not going to get anywhere unless we get a mass movement of people saying, right, we want this to happen. And you will not get any of our money and or any of our support in your organization if you continue to commit these crimes. OK, well, let's let's perhaps deal with a with a hypothetical, which is let's say we do have a company director or group of company directors who have it within their gift to do
something. What is it that they can do with regard to taxation and trust and that sort of thing? Right, this really gets back into the whole discussion we had on the previous interview about declarations and deeds of trust and and the role of the individual.
Now if you are an employee wondering about your the deduction of PAY in National Insurance from your salary, what you can do is write to your employer and say you have just discovered that it is a criminal offence for any person in this country to pass money to any other person or institution If you suspect it will be used for the purposes of terrorism or
war. If you say that to your company director, manager, whoever it is in the business and ask them to investigate this, they need to make up their own minds as to what the law means. And we've got several letters on our website that you can send in to people to try to persuade them in the first place to uphold and enforce the law. Now what they can also do is instead of just deducting the money every month and handing it to the Revenue and Customs is to
put it into corporate trust. Now we have a court, we've developed a corporate trust deed which enables any business to put all taxation. That's the business rates, council tax, income tax, PAYE, National Insurance, corporation tax, petrol taxes, alcohol taxes, all the other things.
Put it all into trust for the government or the and the councils and the DVLA until the end of their business year so that you know your monthly payment will every employees monthly payment will be held in trust by the company by trustees, sorry, not by the company, by trustees of that trust for the primary beneficiary. And the primary beneficiary is the government or the council or the DVLA. They can get the money if they meet the conditions written into the trust.
And the important thing is for us to write very tough conditions saying that none of the money will be used for criminal purposes of terrorism, war, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and all of it will be used in accordance with incomplete accordance with the UN Declaration on Principles of International Law. Now if that was happening and the government therefore stops the wars, stops their contributions to mass murder and genocide, and starts to act
lawfully, then of course they can have the money. But if they don't, then at the end of the year the money goes back to the people it's been taken from. So in this case it would be the employees will get their PAYE and National Insurance back. The shareholders will get the corporation taxes that have gone out back and the clients will
get the VAT back. Theoretically, I think the way to do it for clients is to reduce the prices the next time they come around to do business with the organization. So basically all of that can be organised within the period of a year and it may be just a few months. And then we can ensure that the directors acting lawfully, the employees are acting lawfully, the clients are acting lawfully, but not handing VATPAYE and taxes to the government.
And this is helped and coordinated by the company and the company directors and managers in the organization with a separate set of trustees, independent trustees managing that trust. OK. Now so far everything absolutely making sense. Now you've talked about your own personal history with regard to specifically council tax and the number of times you've been to court and indeed to prison. So, so none of this is is undertaken without a certain amount of risk.
One of the things that's changed and at least may add complexity into the mix, which I'd be interested to hear your take on, is the role of Companies House in any of this. Because for many a year, Companies House is effectively sort of laying dormans and just let people get on with them, really done anything. And all of a sudden with the great push for digital identity, Companies House just this autumn has pushed and pushed and pushed for company directors to to
verify their identity. Now that that might be regarded as a separate issue. But what is not a separate issue is that for those who do not comply, they are threatening companies with being taken off the register. You know, do do you see that that threat there with regard to identity verification would pertain at all to action if taken by company directors with regard to withholding money in the form of a trust? Yeah, we're already seeing it.
And you know, just in the last month or so, less than a month now, the difficulty is that the, the government is squeezing us in every damn direction whatsoever. And this whole idea of ID and the digital ID and so on is actually much more bad, much worse for us than most people understand. So yes, we've got to do
something. Now. I would recommend we have to start prosecuting the first of all the chiefs of the company's house as well as the chief of the Revenue and Customs, as well as company directors who are knowingly handing money over. And I think we must get some criminal proceedings started against some of these people rapidly because it's the only way in a sense is when one person is convicted of a crime of conduct ancillary to genocide, it will change the whole situation in this country
and overseas. So I do think that's our next move is we've got to find police constables and crime prosecutors and judges who are prepared to start criminal proceedings in front of a jury of course. And that's the most important issue is we must have jury trials of the criminal offence of handing money to the government knowing it will be used for mass murder and genocide.
Absolutely no. I think pertinent to to all of this and indeed finding those sorts of people who are first of all willing to take upon themselves the tasks of finding and chasing down those sorts of people. You now have set up a new website. Will you just explain a bit about the website, the background to it and what you're hoping to achieve with that? Yes, our previous website was called probity and which the word probity means an integrity in public life really.
Basically, steadfastness, uprightness, honesty and so on. Now, most people don't understand the word, and So what they do understand is No Tax for War, which is the name of the new website which has been set up. And we're really saying that this will help people withhold taxes. We have copies of the declaration and deed of Trust for individuals and copies for corporations which can be downloaded from the website and people can just get on with withholding taxes.
So that's the purpose of the main of this new website is to say, look, it is a criminal offence to hand over tax if you know it's going to be used for terrorism or war and therefore stop handing it over, put it in trust and get it back and use it for the sensible useful purposes, support to your local community rather than for mass murder and genocide overseas.
OK, excellent. Now the UK column audience has among its number people from a very wide range of disciplines, but there are a number of people with a legal background, significant legal know how people who do fall into that category are, are there various things that they could be doing either within their sort of local communities or indeed with relation to your website and and what it is that you're talking
about? Oh yes, I mean, we need people with some sort of legal understanding and lawyers and others to uphold and enforce the law. Unfortunately, we've had no lawyers in this country upholding the laws of war in the last 100 years.
I find that unbelievable, but they need therefore the reason for that, by the way, is that there has been no war law education in the legal system at all, and so that neither the judges, barristers, solicitors or anybody else can quote the laws in the UN Charter or the I've even heard of the United Nations Declaration of Principles of International Law.
Very few of them understand the workings of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the law of the International Criminal Court Act and the elements of crimes regulations that is in place in this country. If we can get just a few people upholding those laws and working with us to to ensure that we get criminal proceedings started,
that would be extremely helpful. Unfortunately, we have a small voluntary organization and we just do not have the resources to be able to start to do this effectively. And so we need to work with other organizations or funders or others who can put in funding to make sure that all of these actions start to happen as a regular paid for activity by experts, moving the whole issue forward into criminal proceedings and effective corporate trusts withholding
money from the government. We've got to stop the government doing what it's doing. And the best way of doing that is withholding the money. So yes, basically that all of those things could be helpful all. Right, terrific. Just to pick you up on a point you made. I mean, ultimately here what we're talking about is corruption in many different forms, but corruption nonetheless.
Your remark about people in the legal profession having not done such and such for for 100 years, are you, are you going back to a specific point in time? And indeed, what do you what, what is it that you ascribe to being the reason for nobody knowing about all the things that you're talking about? Is that a deliberate corruption of the system or or or something? Else, yeah, no, I mean, it's a deliberate corruption of the system. There's two different systems working, really.
There's the general nations of the world and people of the world trying to make sure that we don't go to war. And there are small groups in the City of London and New York and other places who are trying to ensure we always go to war. And it's a conflict between the two.
And so, for instance, after the First World War, which again was a manufactured war by a small group of committed Zionists and others, we set up in 1928 the Treaty for the Renunciation of War. That was a great success at the time. People were so horrified by the killing in the in the trenches and other things with no advantage to any nation at all except advantage to the people who were supplying the weapons and equipment. They made lots of money out of it, whereas everybody else
suffered. Now that was agreed in 1928, but it has never been upheld by Britain. And that is my problem is that people don't know the main laws of war. So that for instance, in 1936 we had Winston Churchill promoting hard the need to destroy Germany and to go to war with Germany. Now most people think of him as a hero, but in fact he was working hard for a small group of financiers to ensure that the Second World War took place and didn't stop until Germany was destroyed.
Now that you know, so there's no justice in that at all. Our justice system completely overlooked that and have completely overlooked the 84 wars we've fought since the end of the Second World War. We made a clear agreement in the United Nations Charter never to threaten or use force and to settle all disputes peacefully. And we have broken it every year as a nation ever since. And that, that is appalling.
And yet we have these judges and barristers and solicitors and so on who will tell us that they are upholding and enforcing the law and they never do. I'm horrified that not a single judge has taken a stand against mass murder in the, you know, well, I've been conscious of it, say since 2001. None of them have stood up and said this is wrong, Mass murder is a criminal offence, we will not support it. They all toe the line with the government and support it.
That's appalling, utterly appalling. So we've got to find a way around this somehow. There must be people in the system somewhere who are prepared to uphold and enforce the law, and we have to find them and start working with them to ensure we get criminal prosecutions of members of the House of Laws, members of the House of Commons and all the people who are actually steering us into warfare and armed conflict. Absolutely. And and to, to armed conflict.
We might just change tack because similarly, I think there's a, there's an astonishing lack of knowledge, lack of information amongst those at the business end, those
in the armed forces. You sent me a document before this interview which referred to the Military Manual of sorry, the, the Manual of Military Law of 1955 and how the idea of effectively refusing to obey unlawful orders is totally ignored really, or there's just sort of total ignorance about it. Will you just talk a bit about
that? Because I think, well, this is this has come up in recent times in an oblique sense perhaps, but concerning Northern Ireland with all the the sort of legacy legislation being overturned and the way that that's made to look for armed forces veterans when it's been, you know, given a very one sided treatment, But it it does sort of pertain to the same thing. So, so please just just describe
a bit about that. Yes, it's, it's very important to understand where it came from in the 1st place. It came, the original issue really came out of the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal at the end of the Second World War, when Germany's leaders were accused of various crimes in breach of the Kellogg Brand Pact and other things. And in their defence, they claimed that they were just following orders and the judges said, well, no, that's that's
not good enough. There are situations where it is a criminal offence to follow order and to follow orders of your government if that government is breaching agreements in the international arena. So basically you have a duty to uphold and enforce the law and to disobey your government's orders when those orders are illegal. And that really was one of the main issues that came out of the Second World War. And you're about war crimes tribunal.
Now that has been brought into court in the Manual of Military Law. And it was updated in a document which is probably one of the most deceptive documents we've got. I'll show a picture of it here. It's the Joint Services Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict produced by the UK Ministry of Defence and right at the very beginning of it, it says quite clearly this, this manual is concerned with the law. Sorry, two types of law.
Let me start that one again. It regulates the circumstances in which states may use the armed force traditionally termed yus and bellum, that's going to war, and the way in which armed force is actually used, traditionally termed yus in bellow. That's the Latin terms in law and the law of war. Now this manual, it says, is concerned with the latter today more frequently known as the law of armed conflict or international humanitarian law.
I'll leave that for one second. Then further on, it says regardless of the justification for or the legitimacy of any resort of force, individual members of the armed forces must act in accordance with the law of armed conflict. If they fail to do so, they will be acting illegally. So they're saying that you've got to obey orders. If you are ordered, in fact, this document to attack a village or whatever it is, and to shoot somebody and to fire a cruise missile and so on, you must do so.
That is completely incorrect. We have signed up and promised never to do any of this. And so it is the law provided by military lawyers to every unit in the armed forces and the Department of Defence, Ministry of Defence that says quite clearly this is wrong. And for them to publish this and to keep on promoting it is utter disgrace. And we've got to try and put something, you know, put in
place. I'd like to see the promoters of this and including the chiefs of defense staff and the people who have put it together, prosecuted for conduct and accelerated genocide, because that's what they are doing. They're saying you have to follow orders and it sends all of our military to war. That is illegal.
They know perfectly well that's why we so many service men and women come back from overseas activities and have mental breakdowns and can't post traumatic stress disorder and other things because they have realized that what they've been doing overseas is just wrong and evil. It's a very difficult one. It's hard to be totally objective about this for me because I have served in the army. But I just be interested in your
view of this. I mean, we did talk about it a little bit last time because of the 83 conflicts that you said the UK had either instigated or taken part in since the end of Second World War, the Falklands was really the only one that could be regarded as in any way legitimate because of the attack on sovereign territory by Argentina, notwithstanding the sinking of the Belle Grano, which obviously fell well
outside of of that. But but what's your view on having an armed force in the 1st place? Is there a case to be made for the defence of the realm or not? Well, only if we are threatened with attack or being attacked. Now there was that one occasion in the Falklands. The other one I, I should have said was the the first Gulf War where Kuwait, sorry, Iraq had invaded Kuwait and Kuwait asked for our help in defending it. Now that was lawful. So there are two occasions in law.
But the the real issue comes back to how we, how we train our people to understand how, what the law is, how it applies, and the very, very few occasions where we may need to use armed force. I personally think now that the the whole concept of using armed force of a rifle, using a rifle to kill an enemy soldier is wrong and shouldn't be allowed under any circumstances whatsoever.
Modern developments have shown us that we can develop weapons, if you like to call them that, but we can disable large animals by firing a dart into them and making them unconscious for a certain amount of time. Now we should be doing that within the armed forces. You know, if if you get people attacking us and coming into this country, then we can find ways of disabling them for long enough to make sure they are not a threat to us and but keeping them alive in a way.
So I think there are all sorts of totally different ways of approaching the the issue that are not to do with explosives and bullets and other forms of killing and, you know, harming people. Yeah, indeed. I mean, and, and yet tragic to, to consider that we now are in an age where autonomous drones are manufactured, autonomous suicide drones are not just being manufactured, but are, but are actually in use in theaters that we are technically or you know, overtly or covertly supporting.
So we are very much off course with regard to that. Chris, let's just come back on to the actions that can be taken. We've considered the, the idea of, of either employees within an organization and being able to appeal to directors or indeed the directors of the corporate structure. Now you also referred in an e-mail to me about what you were describing as multi stakeholder limited liability community platform cooperatives. Would you just talk a bit about that, please?
Yes, I think what we're trying to do in a, in a way is to move away from the tyranny into a true democracy. And unfortunately all the systems in this country are supporting tyranny. Just taking the the taxation system as an example, you have 50 million adult taxpayers in this country putting all the money into the government and then 2-3 people deciding how it's going to be spent. There are absolutely nothing to do with the needs of the 50 million people who have contributed the money.
So if we change the system and move the responsibility for tax payments down to the individual, then every individual in the country can decide, well, this is how I want my money spent. I refuse to have it spent on mass murder and genocide and I want it spent on natural health or home education or whatever it
is now. In order to assist this process, we need to have some structures that are owned and controlled by the people and not by wealthy shareholders or the City of London. And that's why I've been promoting the concept of multi stakeholder limited liability community platform cooperatives. It's a bit of a mouthful, but it's it's important. Let me just go through the main parts of it to explain what sort of structures we need to put in place locally to serve the local community.
So a multi stakeholder cooperative is owned and controlled by the members in the cooperative. Now up till 2014, this was people working in a Co-op together in an engineering firm or a a retail establishment like the Co-op and other things. And it's a very simple process where people all join together as members of that Co-op and get better prices and they work together to make sure that it
benefits themselves. What the change came in multi stakeholder change in 2014 when businesses were allowed to join individuals in co-ops. Now this is actually very
important. If an individual, if a business joins a Co-op, it only has the same power as the individual members of the Co-op. So if you have 100 members of a Co-op and 10 businesses, then you have 110 votes at an annual general meeting or extraordinary general meeting, rather than a wealthy shareholder deciding an annual general meeting, what they're the whole organization's going to do and so on. So it it removes the power of the money away from the
operation of the cooperative. That is very important because it gives it back to the individual members of the cooperative. So multi stakeholder is a very useful thing. It also has one or two other financial benefits in this in the current situation, particularly VAT, for instance, big companies like Shell, BP or Big Pharma and so on. If they have one company working for another company within the group and there's no VAT chargeable between for their activities.
Whereas in normal life individuals we have to pay VAT on virtually everything we buy, even in restaurants or pubs. So if you have a member, a business member of a Co-op and an individual member and the individual member wants to go out, take his friends out for a meal and then the business member is a restaurant and you can have a good meal, but you will not pay VAT on it. So that's a quite an advantage, financial advantage both to the to the clients and the business.
So there are beneficial things for being multi stakeholder financially as well as working together locally in community to make a success of the local community. The other issue is a multi stakeholder limited liability. And the important bit is to make sure that all members, both individuals and corporations of the corporation are protected by limited liability so that if something goes wrong, the most you can lose is your shares or in the case of the cooperative
limited by guarantee. You'll guarantee if that's 100 lbs then you could lose your £100 if the business goes bust, but that's all you can lose. If you do not have limited liability and you are a local association or whether and you get sued for a very large amount of money, every member of the association can lose everything and I want to make sure that
that doesn't happen. It happened to the members of Lloyds in the insurance business in the 1980s and 90s and many of them lost everything because they were not limited liability, they were associations or clubs. OK. Well, there's a key distinction to make. I mean, I, I would imagine that what you've just described would appeal to a lot of people regardless of their of their
background. There are very obvious benefits that are you able to point to any examples that you know of that are that have established such a thing and that and that are sort of benefiting from it? Well, no, it's rather too early for that. I've been trying to set them up. We're facing big difficulties. This is really why we need one or two organizations who currently are set up to say right, we are going to convert ourselves or set up a separate linked multi stakeholder community Co-op.
And if we can do that then we you know, we can start the ball rolling. It's very recent, this new legislation comparatively in this area and very few people.
Understand who are experts in this area, but UK cooperatives, which is the sort of coordinating body for cooperatives in Britain. They have it on their website and they have one or two experts and I don't know, I haven't spoken to them recently as to whether or not there are many of these things starting up. I've certainly tried to start up a couple and I would recommend that you know, groups like UK column or members of UK column who want to start withholding
their taxis and want to start building the community and contributing to the community. Could set up a multi stakeholder Co-op quite quickly and would find it I'm sure really beneficial. OK, Well, we'll we'll absolutely see what the response to that is. It certainly sounds from what you've described as they like I said before, that would be terrific benefits. Now Chris, I think we are we are nearing the end of our session.
I, I should make it clear and I apologize that I didn't already, that very much of what Chris has referred to will be captured, I think in your new website because just just remind us of the, the website address and anything else that people should be finding or looking for there. Yes. Just before I do, can I pick up on one thing that you said earlier that scares people. And the initial, when I started to do this initially and withheld tax, I was sent to prisons for three years in a row.
But that is now finished because of these new declaration and deeds of trust. And so I have not been sent to prison. And anybody who fears they could be sent to prison needs to be aware of the fact that that is not the case unless they have a totally corrupt local court and police operation. But you know, in law you cannot be sent to prison because you have paid your money into trust and you have paid your taxes. So that's an important thing to
mention, right? The website is no tax for war.com and people can download the various documents and deeds from the website. There is more and more information on there and it's also linked to the original website probityco.com, which has masses of background information and law and other things on it as well. So the two websites together hope, will be providing enough information for people to get on with it as soon as they can.
Perfect, Chris, That's great. And and all of that will be captured in the notes below this interview. So, so don't worry about scribing them all down. Also, just to clarify on you said about going to prison three years in a row, just to clarify that as far as off the top of my head, I think that was for a day, 8 days and 40 something days. It's not actually a year each time. It wasn't a year and it was 51 days in total. OK, all right.
Still, but but a very important point to make, one of very many important points that you've made during the course of this interview. Chris, it's been a pleasure to talk to you again. Thank you very much indeed for joining me on UK column. Delighted, Charles.