UK Column News - 14th July 2025

Good afternoon. Today is Monday, the 14th of July 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your host, Brian Garish. I'm delighted to be joined today both by Ben Rubin and Diane Rasmussen Mccaddy. They'll both be joining me by live link, so a little bit lonely. Excuse me, a little bit lonely here in the studio. But perhaps most importantly, we should comment on the fantastic weather here in Plymouth.

As you can see from my backdrop, the rain and grey sky of earlier is cleared and we're left with this beautiful day. And we can sigh with relief that most of the population of UK has survived the terrible heat wave that we've been hearing so much about. So we certainly hope you enjoyed your weekend. Now, one of the consistent themes that UK Column has pushed with our audience is the fact that we are being attacked as a society by our own government.

And we make no apologies in continuing that theme today because the moment we start to think in this way, many of the government's policies become crystal clear. So let's just remind ourself of the areas of society that the government and its agents are busy attacking. And probably the first one to bring in here is the Constitution. And today we've got a full section on the attack on society. The Constitution is part of that.

Ben is going to be looking at lawfare and English devolution. Diane is going to be looking at net zero and libraries and really censorship. And we'll end by having a look at policing. So a busy news today, but let's think of it in in line with these attack vectors of the Constitution. We've got an attack on free speech. We've certainly got an attack on policing. We've got an attack on the law.

This is becoming ever clearer. And of course they want the children because the children represent the future. Now we can come in at slightly different angle and one of the main headlines from today, the front page is the Daily Telegraph and you can see the the the headlines very clearly. Tax rate looms for middle classes.

Well, let's put something alongside that and that is the UK Support to Ukraine fact sheet, which proudly declares that we have committed £18.3 billion to support Ukraine. So there's going to be a tax raid on the middle classes. Why? Because we've got a government that is only keen to support war overseas, whether it's in Gaza or Ukraine, and billions of taxpayers money is going to be squandered on helping to promote death.

But the front page of the Telegraph actually tells us a little bit more because, well, it actually talks about migration. And of course the story of the rubber boats is the big story which most of the media loves to push. But can you see here the real truth in the small print? And of course you can't. Well let's help you out because in the Telegraph article it's talking about net migration being close to 1,000,000 people fairly recently in the Tory administration years.

Now of course no country can survive a million people coming into the country each and every year, but that is the reality of what's happening. And so I'm going to suggest we're looking at deliberate and calculated madness as the as we witness the breakdown of our society and mass migration is a weapon for that. Now, I just want to say before I move on that we are always encouraging our audience to dig in and have a look at the detail themselves.

So I'm just going to put up this UK, sorry, UK support for Ukraine fact sheet. Do go and have a look at it because there's a lot of detail about the vast amounts of money that are being pumped into Ukraine in order to keep the war going because ultimately that war was about regime change in Russia. Now, where do we go next? Well, let's come back to those rubber boats. And of course Nigel Farage from Reform has been making this one

of his key statements. So let's just remind ourselves of the sorts of things that he was saying about a year ago. What? We can see is a white dinghy. You think the white ones. Lately we're trying to get some Intel as to how many are in it. That is the boat that takes us through. 50. Thousand that have come since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister.

I've just spent the last three or four hours on the Channel with Nigel Farage where we've essentially looked for migrants that may be crossing, given that the seas, particularly today, are very calm and the wind is very low. What we saw was essentially a number of migrant dinghies, but particularly one in particular which had about 45 migrants on it. This was the number that took it

past the 50,000 mark. They were being shepherded by a French vessel known as the Mink. So there's a typical little video clip. People who are regular viewers of UK column news will know that I'm not personally a fan of Nigel Farage. He was getting very excited

about those rubber boats. The figures gone up to 50,000, but of course, against the backdrop of a million people coming into the country, or even 240,000 Ukrainians, this is a very small number, but of course it distracts the population. Now, one of the reform MPs, Lee Anderson, has absolutely been talking about what's going on. So let's just have a look at his quote here. He says our soft touch immigration policies have allowed widespread exploitation

of the system. Well, he's nearly on the button because of course it's the policies themselves that have allowed these vast numbers of people into the country. Not so much a soft touch as a planned attack on the established population of UK. He went on to say this one that benefits the policies talking about 1 is one that benefits everyone except hard working Britons. It costs the taxpayers billions and exacerbates the housing crisis and the strain on public services.

And of course here Lee Anderson is absolutely correct. This is a policy which is destroying the country and he is picking up on the real thing which is the policy. The rubber boats are the froth and the distraction for the wider public to make them think that immigration is about unlawful migration when in fact the bulk of it is lawful policy,

permitted migration. Now are we going to be able to talk out about mass migration where the government in this country's already hinted that if you do, you're going to quickly be labelled a right wing extremist or indeed a terrorist? But we should also watch the UN, because the United Nations has been getting very uptight about what it calls misinformation and disinformation. And the UN is now encouraging all nations to work together in order to control what is being

said in their countries. Let's just have a little listen to what the Secretary General of the UN had to say. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the life changing power of the Internet. Digital technology has saved lives by enabling millions of people to work, study and socialise safely online. But the pandemic has also magnified the digital divide and the dark side of technology, the lightning fast spread of misinformation, the manipulation

of people's behaviour and more. We can only address these challenges united through strengthened cooperation, by establishing real rules to safeguard human rights and fundamental freedoms, by regaining control over our data, by countering disinformation and hate speech, and by connecting everyone to the Internet. By 2030, Internet Governance Forum was a crucial role in shaping the conversation, the vision of an open, free and secure digital future.

And there pins my road map for digital cooperation. And my recent report on our Common Agenda proposes a global digital compact aimed at bringing governments, the private sector and civil society together. In support of this vision. I hope this forum will create momentum and spur progress. I urge you to be bold and I wish you successful deliberations. Thank you. So he's encouraging A compact to get countries to work together in order to increase the censorship.

So they only talk about what the UN and the big global players talk about. But inside UK we've got something else going on. We've got an attack on law and the constitution. And this is best summarised by this Telegraph article here with the headline Lord Hermer gives himself a veto over government policy. Now I know that Ben is going to get deeper into this in in just

a moment. But before we hand over, I'll just remind the people that back in 2015 UK column was warning about the rise of what we were calling Star Chambers courts with a single judge and no jury. And if you just search for Star Chambers on the UK column website you'll find a number of articles but including reference to a male article which was talking about 3000 trials already being held in secret under new Fast Track Money saving scheme which ends

centuries of open justice. Well it's nothing to do with saving money. What is actually happening is to remove the system of law in this country and that is presumed innocent until proven guilty in front of a jury of your peers.

Ben, welcome to today's news and you're hot on the money today. You're hot on the money today with a look at Lawfare, which is the system that's being used against us. Absolutely. Hello, Brian. Hi, Diane. Hi everyone at home. Great to be here. And as Ryan said, the best way to understand what's happening around us is to think about the fact that you're being attacked by your government. And one of the major vectors of attack is the legal system.

There's a word for it. It's lawfare, and we define that as the use of legal systems and principles to achieve strategic military or political objectives. The strategic objective in this case is the destruction of the nation and the imposition of global systems of governance. That's what Brian's been talking about. It's what we talk about on a regular basis on the UK column. Where does that manifest? Well, let's go right to the top

of the legal system. So the Attorney General, Richard Lord Hermer, as I like to call him and I'm sure he likes to call himself, he's been in position since last summer, July 5th. He was appointed directly by Keir Starmer, who we used to work with actually, as I'll get on to in a minute. Before that he was head of chambers at Matrix Chambers, which was originally established by Cherie Blair. So this guy is completely ensconced at the top level of the New Labour establishment.

Before that, he was a barrister at Doughty St Chambers, working directly for Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer was essentially his mentor and he basically spent his career making lots of money on the taxpayer through the legal aid system, defending the interests of terror suspects and various enemies of the British people, Al Qaeda operatives, members of ISIS, that kind of thing. Lovely guy. And he's also a die hard communist essentially.

So he was the editor of the On Guard magazine, which is the youth anti fascist movement. Anti fascist of course, not fascist, although these things do become rather similar at the extremes. He is heavily involved with Searchlight magazine, importantly the potentially communist magazine. They covered him here from his time at university running for the executive of the National Union of Students on an anti fascist platform.

But he was also maintaining those links while he was practising as a barrister, so there are minuted examples of him attending Searchlights meetings. We'll provide some links, You can go and have a look at that

yourself. He's also very close to Nick Lau, the former editor of Searchlight and then the founder and still current head of Hope Not Hate, who miraculously managed to avoid being charged for incitement last year when he falsely reported acid being thrown at Muslim women during the riots in the wake of the Southport killings. Despite the fact that many others were sent to prison by the regime are doing much less. They just happen to be on the

other side of the argument. I wonder if Hermer had anything to do with that. I don't know. So how is this lawfare being waged beyond the examples that I've already provided? So Brian mentioned the Telegraph article. This was also reported in similar fashion in the Mail. It also said that the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, has been accused of handling himself effective veto over government policy. Well, how's he doing that? Well, through this document.

So this is the attorney general's legal risk guidance. You should go and read it. It's just one page of a four very short but very powerful and direct document. So how does it open up? So first point, a central element of the rule of law is that everyone, including the government, is subjected to the law. I'll come back to that because it's not actually true. I'll continue as such. The government is required to comply with legal obligations arising under domestic and

international law. This is affirmed in the Ministerial Code, which refers to the overarching duty of ministers to comply with the law, including international law, right. So they've they've added that because the quote doesn't mention international law. The quote from the ministerial code just talked about the law. So Herma has added international law and he's mentioned it twice in his opening statement. So it's quite clear what he's

getting out, I think. And let's remember this is being issued to government lawyers to guide them in their duties coming from the top lawyer in the government. So people know exactly what's being said here as this is distributed around the the various departments of state. The document continues. I'm skipping ahead a little bit. As I said, you should go and read the whole thing. But just to pull out a few more key points here.

Number six, the principal factor for legal risk is the likelihood of a legal challenge being successful. This is essentially what lawyers are being asked to advise on. Is there a risk here that we're doing something illegal? Ultimately, I'll continue again from the point some legal issues will not or are unlikely to be tested before a court.

For example, they may not be just issuable before domestic court, which is to say it's entirely possible that they would not be appropriate for adjudication by a domestic court. But nevertheless, for the purpose of assessing legal risk, you should assume that a challenge will be brought and consider what a court would be likely to decide, even if it wouldn't be brought for a

domestic court. Which would suggest that you need to think about what an international court might say about this if they were to look at that, even if that is incredibly unlikely to happen. Right. And these are the things that are injected into the decision making process inside government in order to slow things down, throw a spanner in the works. Yeah. Ultimately to get the government doing what Herma and the people that he represents, the global entities that he's promoting the

interests of, want to happen. Right. Final point 8, if you are concerned that there is no tenable legal argument, you should consult your line manager and legal director before you advise AGO the the Attorney General's office and LSAG, the Legal Support Advisory Group, which is an internal body to the the lawyers operating in the civil service should should be talked about. They may need to be alerted at this stage. What that means is they definitely need to be alerted at

this stage. Yeah, so he's, he's issuing a very clear directive to the people working in legal positions inside the British government. The international law needs to be considered, even if this isn't an issue in in domestic legislation. And you need to tell me exactly what you're doing at every point of the process. Right. I think that's that's abundantly clear. Yeah. He's exerting his power. That's just one example about how how lawfare is being carried

out. But this is happening all over the place. I'm going to come back to it in the segment a bit later on. We're just being inundated with

new legislation at the moment. But I also just wanted to flag this, which Charles mentioned last week, right, which is the, the, the right Honourable Sir Brian Leveson, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner Commissioner, who in that position actually has the ability to allow British state operatives to break the law in the interests of protecting the law, which is what I mentioned earlier, that some of the government officials don't have to, to actually follow

legislation. That's absolutely true. And that sits underneath Brian Leveson's jurisdiction. He issued this report last week, the independent review of the criminal courts, which essentially is about denying access to jury trial constitutional issue that Brian was mentioning earlier on. And interestingly, and I think crucially on the front page of that, the cover literally says when justice sleeps, justice is cancelled.

And that comes from the Babylonian Talmud, one of the the key theological documents of of of Judaism, which might give some further insight into how and why the law was being weaponized against the British people in this fashion. Thank you very much for that. Yes, it is quite incredible when we see that on the front cover of his report.

So are we still here in England? Are we operating under English common law? Is the nature of the country Christianity? Clearly not when it comes to Leveson, but let's remind ourselves that this was the man who several years ago was driving what was essentially, let's just come back, sorry, an assault on on the press and this ultimately left. Sorry.

This ultimately resulted of course in press freedoms being absolutely curtailed as he pushed through what was supposedly reforms and protective measures for the public. Over the weekend I was sent a reminder about this Telegraph report, which is back in 2011, how Labour's favourite lobbyist is pushing the hacking campaign. And this is when the Telegraph and indeed the Daily Mail were warning about the organisation Hacked Off and the lobbying groups that were clustered around Leveson.

Not least of which was the political charity common Purpose with the then Chief Executive, Julia Middleton who's featured on the right hand column of that image on screen. Well, I just wanted to remind people that as we see further attacks on our common law and the jury system continuing with Leveson, of course, one of the people at the helm of that attack, Common Purpose, or at least Julia Middleton, is still

at work. And I found it interesting that she's now got an organisation called the Women Economic Forum, the WEF. And what is she doing? Well, she's working amongst other things, with women emerging from isolation, but she's also back focusing on young people to make them into future leaders. And although it's small print, highlighted in the centre of this article is Europe 101, which she's also involved in.

And if we have a little look at that, we discovered that essentially this is to engage and increase accessibility for young people, young participants, and they're going to equip those young people with the networks and skills so that they can become agents for change. Now, remember these young people highly susceptible to this type of reframing, but they are going to become Julia Middleton's

agents for change. And if we can just put that one back on screen for a second, look on the right, because there's a very interesting quote here. It says liquids fill any shape and turn to vapour or ice. Well, OK, they seep into every corner. They collect, converge, combine. They go fast or they go slow. They keep moving. They flow, adapt, evolve. Ours is a liquid leadership. Spelling is from the original website, flowing between us as a generation.

So this is what Julia is still up to, which is recruiting young people and training and reframing them to become agents for change. The change is never declared. But here is the Europe 101 initiative as advertised by Ambassador Schools, which is closely linked into the European Union. And if we just have a look at a bit more detail about this organisation, she founded it with a gentleman called Gordon Bajanai in 2021.

And if you go and check that name, you will find that you're straight into enormous wealth and hedge funds. So we've got hedge funds and young leaders and we simply ask the question what could possibly go wrong. So we are definitely sealing all the same people in the background doing their works to force through a change agenda. But of course, the population in UK or other Western democracies are never told what the final destination of that change is.

Before we discuss that in a bit more detail, Diane, welcome to

the news today. And of course, you're going to take us into Net 0, which is one of their key weapons for inducing fear and anxiety in the population in in order to help smooth through that very change agenda. Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely. Thanks Brian, and hello Ben.

It's good to be here today. I found out this morning it was just reported on the Guardian and the Telegraph and other mainstream sources that our net zero secretary Ed Miliband is going to tell MPs who reject net 0 policies that they are betraying future generations. If we can just put this quote up here from here on the screen, he said. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to tell them the truth about what we know about the climate and nature crisis.

I want this to become an annual statement where where it's an exercise in radical truth telling. I thought that's what we did on UK column. But apparently Ed Miliband does it instead about the state of

the climate in nature. And what he's talking about with this annual statement is he is now going to come up with what he calls a state of the climate address to the Commons, setting out the findings of in this case, what is now of the 1st, I believe, Met Office LED report that says the UK is already

facing extreme and its effect. So this is going to be an annual event coming from the energy that net zero secretary, there's more reporting about this, about the net office release saying that there's profound concern from from the scientists saying that this extreme heat, you know, because we had a little bit of nice weather over the weekend. So now we're all experiencing global boiling.

Of course, that this is now the norm in the UK, which has not been my experience for the past 10 years. But anyway, the increasing frequency of heat waves and flooding raises fears over health, infrastructure and how society functions, as reported by The Northern Echo, which is a local media outlet up here where I am in the north of England.

The Reform U KS stance on net 0 targets and carbon emissions in County Durham in particular, which is what I'd like to focus on as an example of just a certain area that is enacting these global policies, has been questioned.

So if we can put Karen Allison up here on screen, she is the cabinet member for Neighbourhoods and Environment, Durham County Council. And she said, and I have to say, of course, that in Durham County Council, the Reform UK is kind of the ones in charge right now since the most recent election.

And she said Reform were elected with a mandate to review net zero and to identify efficiencies and savings for the people of County Durham. And it seems as though they may be trying to actually, actually follow up on that.

Back in June of this year, Mark Wilkes, who was a Lib Dem former cabinet member for neighbourhoods and climate change, asked the new Reform administration whether it would continue the previously agreed council ambition to reduce its carbon footprint and achieve net zero. And that's because during the campaign that they're that they were doing, Reform UK told voters that it would scrap net zero and energy levies to save households hundreds of pounds

per year. Councillor Wilkes, however, said that pushing back on this thing that our low carbon teams are trying to decarbonize us has achieved some amazing positive benefits for our council, our communities, our county and our businesses. And also, quote, this has generated huge savings for the council and helped to secure millions of pounds of grant funding. Now what I would like to know, and I'm still investigating this, is what what this grant funding was meant to do and

where the funding came from. Back in 2019, Durham County Council declared a climate emergency and I have a video here from a few years ago when this was all starting, setting out the agenda from during Durham County Council at that time. Durham County Council has declared a climate emergency. We've set a target of reducing our emissions by 60% based in the 2008 baseline by 20-30, and we've also set a wider target of reducing the entire. County's emissions to neutral by 2050.

If you live, work, travel or shop in Durham, we need your views on how we should approach this problem. In October 2018, the International Panel on Climate Change boost a special report which stated that we have 12 years remaining to take drastic action to mitigate climate change. In response, the Council has produced a report which outlined potential pathways to being

carbon neutral. The report explores what the Council needs to do to reduce our emissions, what the county as a whole needs to do working in partnership, and what central government needs to do to enable us to meet our targets. At the moment we use natural gas to heat our homes and other buildings. Most of our electricity is produced by burning natural gas. And coal.

And are buses, trains and cars run on fossil fuels, which, as well as CO2 pollution, could also lead to worsening health effects in city centres, such as poorer air quality. As the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, it will lead to more extreme weather events like storms, flooding, droughts and heat waves. We need to act now to mitigate this as well as prepare ourselves for these weather

events when they do happen. We believe we need to increase investment in renewables such as the new solar farm at Tanfield, the council building. We need to invest more in efficiency measures like LE DS and insulation. We need to change our transport to low carbon solutions such as ultra low emission vehicles. And we need to strive to protect and enhance our peatland and woodland which are important carbon sinks. Now it's time for you to tell us

what you think. So that was five years ago when they first declared the local emergency. So Darren Grimes, who is the deputy leader of reform here in County Durham, and I will come back to him later in the news, he's requested that the authority instead to declare what he's calling a County Durham care emergency rather than a climate emergency to recognise the, quote, critical and escalating crisis in children's social care.

And this includes provisions for children with special needs and disabilities. This will be voted on this Wednesday at a full council meeting on the motion. And so that should be an interesting meeting to attend if you can do so. The current climate emergency response plan, which I mentioned, has gone through several items. It has several objectives for meeting these net zero agenda items. The current one will run until 2027 if it's left in place.

It warns that the ongoing crisis is, quote, the most urgent threat to the well being of our children and the financial stability of our county. But of course, it seems that Counsellor Grimes disagrees. We can look at this Climate County Durham website and this is just a screenshot of the home page where they say they are turning climate talk into

climate action. This was funded originally by the Northeast Local Enterprise Partnership, which has now become, as of last year, the Northeast Combined Authority. And according to the website, with a population just under 2 million, the area covered by the combined authority, We can see how how huge this authority now is, is the seven local authority areas of County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, N Tyneside, Northumberland, S Tyneside and Sunderland.

Kim Guinness is the first northeast mayor. So again, coming into this last year, she says that she is committed to getting a northeast that goes beyond net 0. So I don't know how you go beyond net zero. I guess we go negative from there With climate change policies that change lives and delivering on the green jobs revolution are her priorities. And according to the website for this new combined authority, it is the home of the green energy

revolution. And it says that we will grasp the opportunity that net zero presents to the Northeast. And it is important that the transition to a more climate friendly 1 is a just one. And of course, that goes into the globalist language if you look at Doctor Paul Raskin's work and the Club of Rome. So Speaking of the Club of Rome, just to kind of end this on a globalist point here.

According to Alexander King, who was one of the founders of the Club of Rome, he wrote in a report by the Club of Rome, which was published in 1991, the common enemy of humanity is man and searching for a new enemy to unite us. We came up with the idea. We came up with the idea. I want to stress that the threat of global warming that the bill.

So this was an idea come up. And you know, if you look at this coming up from globalist policies and we see it acting all the way down into local authorities around the world, including the funding, including the fear, including creating enemies for people other than ourselves or maybe in addition to you are worse than ourselves. So I just wanted to give an example of how this actually plays out on a local level. So Brian, I don't know or Ben, I don't know if you have anything

to add to that. Well Diane, I'll come straight back in and say thank you for that report. It is really encouraging that we are now starting to see at least at sort of councillor level, local council level, people are challenging this nonsense. And by the young man who was speaking in that video clip, the reframing is incredibly powerful because I'm sure he believed in the nonsense that he was spouting to the camera just then.

But it's absolutely great to know that people are challenging this and that even within Reform, we are now starting to see that there is a focus on the policies and not just accepting the hit that those policies make on our daily life. So I hope that amongst other smaller parties that Reform councillors are really going to be staying on target this one

Now, as we always do, we want to say a huge thank you to our audience for the support that you give us. If you donate to the UK column or you're paid up member of UK column, you are the people that keep us going and we could not do what we do without your financial support. So thank you very much to everybody who's out there, not

only in UK but worldwide. And I have to say to you that although in some countries it's a very small number of people viewing, we are astonished at the number of countries that UK column actually reaches in order to get out some very different news from the nonsense espoused by the BBC.

In the coming days and weeks, we'll talk more about the people who are supporting us and indeed which overseas countries we've got support in. But suffice to say, thank you to everybody who's actually making that financial contribution because we wouldn't be here without you. Now, Diane, one of the things that we've been trying to do over recent months at least, is to encourage people to view UK

column written material. And I believe you've got a couple of articles here which are going to be up, sorry, which are up on the website at the moment. I don't know whether you'd like to just make a quick comment. I'd be happy to Ryan as the Commission to get into for written content this was. I would like to say first that Vanessa B Lee is, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago now doing a weekly blog related to Syria issues.

Last week's was called a terrorist suicide bombing in a Damascus church triggers A wider purge of Syrian minorities. Apologies for the picture there of David Lammy and Jelani shaking hands, but Vanessa and I decided it was necessary to get across how terrible this all is. Another article that we published last week was was called the Virus Prices Playbook, which is by Sarah Newlin.

What she did here was she compared the foot and mouth disease outbreak from around 25 years ago to the so called COVID, so called pandemic and there's some very interesting parallels between the two situations. Sarah Newlin also published the most recent front page story and the new issue of the Light Paper, so take a look at that as well. That's some great work. OK, excellent. And the interview going out tomorrow at 1:00 is Doctor Judith Brown.

I think that one's yours as well, Diane, is that? Correct. Yes, it is. So it is correct yeah, we we entered Brown a couple of years ago I'm UK Colin, but this is a new interview talking about some recent work that she's done. I have called this interview Fact Checking the Fact Sensors because I think especially after you watch our discussion, you'll see exactly why the fact checkers are actually censoring the actual facts. So please tune in for that tomorrow at 1:00 PM.

Yeah, brilliant. And tonight we've got germ warfare and that will be lessons from the COVID and AIDS scam. So that should be very interesting. And with guest Ken McCarthy, watch out for that one. And of course, a big update to say October the 18th, we've got our UK card on location in in York. We will be announcing those tickets. We're keeping you at tent tenterhooks at the moment. But essentially this is going to be a fantastic event and it's in

a fantastic location. So stay posted with that and we'll give you more details in due course. Now we also give a reminder for the Sunday the 20th of July, regional sovereignty versus devolution. Absolutely on the button with what Ben Rubin's been talking about in today's news. And that's a meet up in the Field of Dreams Exeter EX40 9JL. Bring your own lunch, a mug and a folding chair it says, and that's from 9:30 to 4:30. We've also got the theft for truth and Freedom Festival.

That's eight this eight, sorry, this Friday, 18th through to Saturday, the 19th of the Angel in in Larling NR162 Qu and Diane, I believe you will be at that one. We will do more on that in extra UK column extra. And lastly, we've got here the Freedom Music Festival, 22nd of the 21st of 25th of August this year. And of course, that's Bank Holiday weekend. UK column team will be attending.

Now where does that take us? I think, Ben, that brings you back in with us. And the subject is that Eve

English devolution. Not quite what it seems. I'll suggest. Is anything ever quite what it seems, Brian? Yes, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill came out last week. I was talking about Lawfare earlier. And actually this sort of constant onslaught of legislation, bills, acts, running to quite literally thousands of pages per week is, is the kind of sharp end of

that. Essentially, it's designed to overwhelm us. It makes it almost impossible to keep up with what the government's trying to do. This is one of the things that landed last week. So this is the English Devolution Community Empowerment Bill. It's not been enacted yet, but it is on its way to becoming law. And this sits in a long process of evolution that nobody asked for. We actually voted against it, but they decided to go ahead with it anyway.

And this latest iteration comes from Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who I like to call affectionately Big Ange. She took to LBC to talk about the bill. Try and sell it to us, saying Labour was elected to deliver change and our English Devolution Community Empowerment Bill will do just that, change, transformation of the country,

she continues. That means handing power back to where it belongs, to local leaders with skin in the game, so they can make decisions on what really matters to their communities. Skin in the game, it's one of those words terms that's been heavily focus grouped. All of the politicians are using it. I actually think it's, it's probably quite misleading.

Skin in the game normally means that you've got some money or a proper interest in something and I don't think that any of these leaders do to be honest with you. They're just, they're on a grift. She then continues to say we will drive the biggest transfer of power out of Whitehall to our regions in a generation and make evolution the default setting. And again, this is this is where I think things start to get really misleading.

We've talked about this a lot. This idea that we're going to drive transfer of power out of Whitehorn in into the regions is very, very misleading. Essentially what's happening is that the regions are becoming departments of Whitehall, right? And actually the best evidence to support that came just under a week of the Starmer was voted into Downing St on July the 4th last year when you had all of the metro mayors go up for their big meet and greet on the 9th of July, I believe it was.

So about five days after the general election, they were some of the first people invited into Downing St to talk about the implementation of this new system of governance rights, but nothing about the evolution of power. Angela Rayner continues to say that we'll give local people a new community right to buy to save much love, community assets like pubs and shops, and to have a bigger say in shaping their local area through effective neighbourhood governance.

This right to buy thing is really important. This is a shift towards a communitarian system, right? That's absolutely what this is. Pubs should not be bought owned by the community, they're owned by a landlord, right? Shops should not be owned by the community, they should be owned by people who use them as shops. That's what they're for.

All of this ignores is the fact that our economic system has been destroyed over the past 50 years by the people who are actually behind this policy agenda. Ultimately, shops should be used as shops. Pubs should be used as shops, as pubs even. We shouldn't be changing the fundamental structure of the system in order to align it with this new new communitarian vision that no one actually really understands, Right. Let let, let's be completely honest about this.

I'm sure sources there that this is all about effective neighbourhood governance. And so again, this is about control at a neighbourhood level. And she then goes on finally in this article to say we should provide a link to she's going to have a look at it.

She says we'll get local leaders working together over larger areas to drive through big pro growth projects like integrated transport networks and housing by creating new strategic authorities, which actually runs completely counter to what she's

just said. She's saying she's going to devolve power down to local leaders, but then we're going to get those local leaders to collaborate with each other over larger areas to drive through big pro growth projects, which are these huge, huge investments in infrastructure and transformation of energy systems, transportation, housing, you name it, and that's all going to be driven through

these strategic authorities. These are the new entities that are being brought in. As ever, I like to read between the lines a little bit on this stuff, particularly in the context of the war that we're currently being subjected to. Authority is the power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge in a manner that is essential to the effective conduct of war. That's the way that I'm reading

that. I don't think that it's a it is a good thing for anyone other than the people who are pushing forward this agenda. What are the strategic authorities all about? Well, they list out in the bill a bunch of areas of competence. These are the things that the these authorities are going to have to be able to, to, to operate within. And, and as I said, this is a

huge scope here. Transport and local infrastructure, skills and employment, housing and strategic planning, economic development, regeneration, environment, climate change. Obviously we've got to get that in there. Health and well being, public service reform and public safety, right? This is an absolutely huge scope for these new strategic authorities covering basically every single part of our society across the piece. That final point about public safety that rang some alarm bells.

I always think about this quote from Albert Camus. The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants. I think that's absolutely the case here. So what else is in the bill? I'd say I normally suggest people to go and read these things. It's 330 pages long. It's incredibly technical and deeply, deeply boring, a lot of it. So maybe you don't want to.

But just to summarise a few things that I picked out, right, that really jumped out at me. The first one is that these new strategic authorities are able to create what they call subordinate legislation, which is to say they're able to create their own laws. They also talk a lot about how commissioners are appointed, not elected. So elected mayors are able to appoint up to seven people to support them in delivery of their duties, right?

So the idea that this is wholly democratic, I think is, is, is very misleading. They talk, again, as I've mentioned, a huge amount about collaboration with other authorities. This is crucial, right?

So they're saying that this is devolved, but then actually these mayors are going to collaborate with each other and they dedicate 10 entire pages of this bill to describing the exact process that the strategic authorities are going to have to go through in order to ask each other for support on issues in mind bending bureaucratic detail.

And essentially this is a matrix, this is a mesh network that's going to be used to knit together the country ever more tightly to this centralised power structure. Obviously, as you'd expect, there's a quite a pointed reference to the imposition of levies. So the idea that lower levels of the system are going to be tapped up to provide funding for the higher levels of the system. And then crucially, there's a, a, a, a very detailed section about how they can go about borrowing money.

Yeah. And this is crucial because all of this new infrastructure is going to be paid for by debt based lending from private investors. And actually this has got a lot less to do with Big Ange and the Labour government delivering for the country and a lot more to do with delivering the bottom line of people like Larry Fink, who we know Big and Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister, is a big fan of. Ben, thank you very much for

that excellent summary. Was it my imagination or was there actually touching of skin in that last photograph? I think maybe we should just pop it back on screen. I think the fingers are definitely touching there. So obviously there's a good relationship and no doubt the money streams will come online in due course.

I'd like to say to the audience that the summary that Ben has given there, interpreting what these people are doing and, and he's given it in very simple terms is very powerful. Because if our audience echoes back to the system itself that we can see exactly what they're doing and we know what they're doing as opposed to what they say they're doing, this has quite an effect on them. So for all the people that say

yes, what can we do? I think we can look you in the eye and say, take some of the material from today's news and post it far and wide on all of the social media platforms of the government and its agencies that are bringing in this deceptive new devolution strategy. Because once they know they can be seen, it has a, a deeply profound effect on them. Perhaps we'll discuss that a bit more. Also in extra Diane, let's bring

you back and you're looking at the at what's going on really with our ability to read books, to get hold of books and what's happening around the the libraries. But of course, libraries very often very important for young children. Doing a series of talks around the country related to what's been happening in libraries. And first of all, I would like to thank Cabin Algebra for hosting the talk that I did last week in Edinburgh. It was a really well attended event, a great Andy.

It's lots of engaging conversation and thanks in particular, of course to the chair of Common Knowledge, Edinburgh, Professor Richard Enos, who for hosting me and letting me have a place to sleep in his house for the night. The title of my talk was They're Burning Books Again, Stop the destruction of our Libraries. And I was looking at in particular hypocrisy that I have really been thinking about very deeply recently. If we can put this photo on the screen, please, of me at the top.

This was a photo that one of the other committee members took of me. And if you can't see the screen, it was me talking about a picture book that is available in children's library collections around the country. The book is called And this is just one many examples in My Daddy's Belly, the story of a transgender dad giving birth.

The author is Logan Brown. The official summary says that inspired by the author's real family, this heartwarming story about two dads eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child follows the excitement and joy of welcoming a new baby into a loving family. The person giving birth just happens to be one of the dads. Interesting. So last week Brian, if you remember, I covered what was happening in Kent Council libraries regarding children's access to agent appropriate books.

And just as a review of what I covered, here's the video I showed last week from Councillor Paul Webb and Kent. Good evening everybody. Paul Webb here, your Reform UK cabinet member for Communities and Regulatory Services at Kent County Council. I was recently contacted by a concerned. Member of the. Public who found trans ideological material and books in the children's section of one of our libraries. I've looked into this and this was the case.

I've today issued instruction for them all to be removed from the children's section of any of our libraries. They do not belong in the children's section of our libraries. Our children do not need to be told they were born in the wrong bodies. So from today, this will stop. Thank you very much. So that's just a reminder of what he did. There was a bit of controversy around that. But anyway, we can talk about that more in extra if we need to

talk about it some more. But I want to update some things that have happened in the past week in response to what happened. My former professional body, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, or Scillip, responded to this with a press release saying, quote, libraries are trusted for providing facts and freedom, which, you know, in my case, I did not experience either one by the time I was pushed out of the organisation.

But here's a quote from the CEO of Scillip. He said the idea of politicians policing or banning books is profoundly troubling. It evokes images of authoritarian regimes, not a modern democratic and diverse society like UK. So as a result of this reporting that I did last weekend, I'm not working with some people locally here in the Northeast. I had a call with Darren Grimes, counsellor Darren Grimes in County Durham, who I mentioned earlier in the news. We had a really good call.

He wants to look at what these books are that are located in children's departments and to make a list of the books that are that are available in the children's departments of Durham County Council libraries. So just as one example that I found in the quick search, which I'm just starting to do this work, here's one book that is located in the children's section called She's My Dad, a story for children who have a

transgender parent or relative. This is an illustrated picture book that tells the story of Mimi MINI and her dad Haley. Her dad Haley, a transgender woman, as many explains to her cousin why misgendering is damaging and emphasises the need to treat trans people with respect. This title is for children aged and up, three years old, who have a family member who is. So that's just one example.

This is located in the Durham Clayport Library, which is in the city centre of Durham. So what we see here with this dichotomy and this hypocrisy that I've been talking about recently is, as I've mentioned before previously in UK column, the decolonization of library collections and universities.

And in my opinion, anyone old enough to be at university should have the right to read whatever they want, but what they're doing with the older generations of young people, So the people in universities are removing things from library collections or changing them. And so here's an example here from a university in England here, I believe this is the University of East Anglia talking about decolonizing the library from the perspective of their students.

Hi, I'm Virgilo pronouns he him, and I'm here with Ebony she her and Molly she her. We're going to chat to you about decolonizing the library. We really wanted to get involved with this initiative because we wanted to. See change in who is. Represented in library texts, the knowledge from authors of colour is invaluable. If you head to the new online subject guide for decolonisation, you can request more texts from a variety of

different backgrounds. This push, coming from students especially, will make such a difference to the library's resources. Go to the website below to get started. So the website that they're referring to was for people to indicate which books needed to be changed one way or the other and within the university library, And this can be seen in university libraries all around the country, Brian, that they have this agenda going on.

So what we're seeing on the one hand is destroying children's innocence by putting pornography in front of them, and on the other hand, on the university level where everything should be able to be explored, removing things that people should be exposed to, including the history of Britain and the amazing cultural history that this country has. Just dangerous times, but to fight it, we've got to understand what's actually happening.

So Diane, thank you very much for taking the lid off what you are seeing occur around the libraries and small children.

Now we're going to end on the subject of an LGBT article that appeared in the Telegraph. It's, it's about a pretty serious subject of a man, Stephen Ireland, who ended up in prison as a result of abusing a young child. This was the Telegraph's headline. If the council had listened to me, this paedophile would have been stopped. And it goes on to say in 2021, reports of a Surrey Pride founder's abuse of power were ignored. Four years on, he's been gaoled

for a string of sexual offences. Now there's all sorts of things in this report. I've I haven't got much time during the news, but I will go into it more with UK column extra. But let's just have a look at

the key facts. Now part of the sons report with a different set of pictures about this man is that the four week trial followed an extensive investigation by Surrey Polices Complex Abuse Unit. And if we have look at a bit of the report on that, it says Ireland enticed a boy to his flat, gave him the key code and then the boy, tired and hungry was given a quote bong to smoke, which was later found found to

be laced with methamphetamine. Pornography was played on a laptop and then he was raped by Ireland and the assault filmed for the sadistic enjoyment of their cohorts. It says that Ireland and his friend Sutton were both arrested on June the 11th, 2024 for distribution and possession of indecent images of children and on August the 14th charges were authorised for 44 offences, later increased to 45.

Now there was a bit more. It went on to say he was also convicted of three counts of causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, sexual assault, a conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child, facilitating a child's sexual offence, 6 counts of making child abuse imagery, distributing pornographic images of children and possession of one of the most serious child abuse images involving a

toddler. Sutton, who was a sorry Pride volunteer, was sentenced for offences including voyeurism and possession and distribution of prohibited images of children. Now the starting headline here now becomes very important because somebody was trying to say that if the council had reacted to their warnings, these abuses may have been stopped, at least stopped much earlier, so that less youngsters were

damaged. And if we get into the report and what is interesting is that members of the LGBT community themselves were trying to warn what was going on. One of the people commenting here said that they'd seen images of people in leather pop play fetish gear such as masks and dog collars, and this had worried them as children as young as two or three were being encouraged to pet the people

wearing this gear. This is during St parades and the person said I asked if this kind of fetish was going to be allowed at Woking Pride. The woman at Woking Borough Council sent a reply reassuring me that Pride in Surrey have been working closely with, quote, Surrey Police and youth organisations to make the first bride in Surrey a truly inclusive event that it is with UK law.

So concerns were fobbed off. But if we go into more, if we go into a bit more detail here, other members of the public had already picked up that this man was getting very close to young children. Well a youngster at least. So this is a young person celebrating their 18th birthday. But you can see dressed up in this sort of fetish gear and this was put out on Stephen Ireland's ex channel celebrating at Pop Astro 18th birthday radio woken.

So if we delve in a little bit more in the text, there is another quote here that somebody was making a formal safeguarding complaint to Surrey County Council and it was then suggested that the the individual and lady should contact Surrey Police. But she said she was reluctant to do that because it was well known how close Surrey Police were to pride in Surrey. And this is really the key part of this story, that what we're actually seeing here is that the

police are no longer separate. They're in partnership with organisations to such an extent that they don't want to investigate them. This could be embarrassing for the police. And so somebody in the public who was deeply concerned doesn't get the police to react because they said to themselves, if I contact the police, nothing is

going to happen. Now if we just delve in a little bit more to Surrey Police, the one of the previous long standing chief constables has gone on to head the police chief constables organisation. He's become chair of that. There is a new Chief Constable, Tim De Meyer in power. He's been in for I think it's three years.

So what was Surrey Police doing? Well, you've only got to look at their website to see that they're prepared to corrupt their own police badge with the LGBT logo in order to show their support for the LGBT agenda. And if we come in a slightly different from a slightly different angle and we're going back to 2010, it was actually the UK column that revealed that the then. Chief Constable from Surrey Police Mark Rowley was part of the organisation Common Purpose.

He was part of the Common Purpose organisation to select candidates. Now when they were challenged on what was going on here, they said that Surrey status is one of the safest counties in the country and it's largely due to the commitment of Surrey Police in bringing out the best of our staff in developing, quote, top quality leaders.

They added to that that Surrey Police in the past has sent senior managers on training courses outside the police environment to broaden their skills to work more effectively with partners. So I'm suggesting to the audience that perhaps Surrey Police have got a track record not of being the best, but of actually doing their things outside their proper powers and duties, which has actually put

the public at rest. Now that particular gentleman went on to become commissioner of the Met Police, and let's hear what he had to say in a recent interview. This is still a problem. For the Met, isn't it relations? With minority communities, this is so difficult for us. We can't pretend otherwise. Then we've got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong. We get a lot more right today, but we do. Still make mistakes, that's not.

That's not in doubt. I'm being as relentless about standards as we can be, and the vast majority of our people are good people. But that that legacy combined with. The tragedy. That some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities. That creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern. Meanwhile, policing, we want to reach into the.

Communities. We have suffering most crime and make the biggest difference because everyone deserves equal chance to thrive in London. It's not right that black boys growing up in London are more likely to be dead by the. Time they're 18 far more likely than than white boys. That's, I think that's shameful for the city. So here's the boss of the Met admitting that he.

Can't do his job. And yet diversity training was rampant through the police back in that era of around 2010 to 2015. And the other thing I'd like to point out with you out to our audience is that essentially within the Common Purpose network was a gentleman called Rennie who was eventually put into prison for horrific abuse of children, including children at the age of three months.

The Sky News report at the time didn't reveal that Rennie was a Common Purpose graduate, but at the time that UK column was reporting on Common Purpose, we'd pointed out that Common Purpose trainers were going into schools with no background cheques at all. So a complete mess within the police, which is created by the police adhering to outside training by essentially we would say unqualified organisations, but also no separation of powers during these partnerships.

Now I know we're overrunning slightly for time here, but I think this is really important subject. And Ben, I'm just going to say to you that this is really one of the things that you've been warning about with your public private partnerships where we're getting a mix between outside bodies and formal constitutional structures like the police. And you are seeing that the PPP side of the devolution agenda is on the increase. I don't know whether you'd like

to just comment on that briefly. Yes, I mean every. Area of society is riddled with these networks. Common purpose is one that we've spoken about a lot, but there are many, many, many examples. Some of them linked into common purpose, some of them independent from it, all of them driving in the same direction ultimately. And they have created a marketplace out of this. So they're getting paid a lot of money to deliver this training

and to to transform society. And this is the the, the, the agenda, the the change maker agenda that is enabling the transformation of the system. And essentially it's, it's infected it at every level. Yeah, Ben, thank you very much for that. Now, Diane, just bring you in to close because we decided after a pretty heavy news from the column today, our viewers and listeners might need a little bit of a lift up. What have you got? Yeah, thanks, Brian. I just.

Wanted to maybe reflect a little bit on the actual summer weather that we had over the weekend here in this country. Unfortunately, mainstream media tried to fill us with fear about the fact that we were having summer. This is from the Mirror posted on Friday on Facebook saying Brits were warned not to consume fizzy drinks this weekend as

temperatures to hit 33°C. Now, I don't know if carbonation means that it heats us up, but anyway, I looked at the actual article and it basically was a warning from the UK Health Security Agency to issue heat health alerts across the nation. And it said that basically, while water and diluted squash are top picks for hydration, fruit juice and sugary dizzy drinks lead to further dehydration due to the high sugar levels as stated in the official heat wave guidance.

So this comes from UKHSA as well as gov.uk Sugar. It's not the carbonation. So it's interesting how they like to mislead the headlines for to make people click on them. This was just another meme that I saw over the weekend. This is the climate propaganda colouring book. And so as you know, we've seen all of these red colours. So now we have crayons and that the crayons that it comes with are sort of a bright orangey red, a regular orange, a dark purple and one is either a black

or a brown. So that must be for the really, really hot burning up areas of the country. You can colour those in. And you know, but I have to say I personally enjoyed the heat over the weekend, although it was a bit uncomfortable, but I loved it mostly.

I was in Durham on Saturday and I took this picture Saturday morning in Wharton Park, which is right in the city centre of Durham. And I just thought, you know, we need to find, find a bit of peace in nature anywhere we can find it right here in the middle of Durham where I took this picture. The sunshine, the green leaves, some good energy and some peace that we can find anywhere we

look. So I think despite all the brine, we have to make an effort to find something that does make us feel good in these in these difficult times. And then we're better equipped to face them once we come out of our walk. Absolutely true Diane and thank you very much for that lovely bit of scenery.

And the last boost will give our audience for we end today's news that if you were eagle eyed, you might have seen on the Telegraph front page that even Ofcom has now had to admit that the British public do not trust the BBC. So there we are, one of the BB CS buddies. Ofcom is now turning on them and saying no, people don't trust you. What better news could we have? We'll end there. Diane, Ben, thank you very much for joining me and a huge thank you to everybody watches.

Watch today's news wherever you are in the world. Thank you for your support. We've got UK column Extra coming up for our members. UK column News will be back on Wednesday at 1:00. See you then. Bye bye.