UK Column News - 18th August 2025

Good afternoon. Today's Monday the 18th of August 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your home spy. Garish. Delighted to have Ben Rubin with me here in the studio. Hello, Ben. Hi. Brian. And we'll also be joined by Diane Rasmussen, Mcaddy on Live Link from the North East of England. Now we're going to kick off on the subject of really remembering, remembering the war. This has been an important theme, particularly over the last few days and certainly over

the weekend. And I had the opportunity to attend a local event here in Devon. It was close to Yelverton on Dartmoor and this is effectively the site of the old RAF Base Harrow beer now. It was a fantastic two days. I've got a little bit of video clip here to give you an idea of what was taking place. But of course this little clip is bittersweet because people

having fun, very enjoyable time. The sun was shining, but at the end of the day it was memories of war and of course the hundreds of thousands of people that died from the UK side and the millions of people that died worldwide. Let's have a look at the clip and then we can just discuss it a little bit. My poor heart is jumping. You really start with something. I'm. Up in heaven when I'm in your. I'm up in heaven when I'm in your farm and break. As my dynamite just changed her

mind about. Me. Well, there we are. The weather was superb. There was actually a huge amount of people. Many people attended both days because they found the Saturday to be so tremendous. And as you can see from some of those images, many, many people put a huge amount of effort into bringing vehicles, appearing in military uniform of the day, talking about what was happening to the civilians. There was displays, there were stalls, there was all sorts of

things. So a huge amount of effort and overall people were having a wonderful time, which was absolutely great then. But as you walked around and you saw some of the relics of the Second World War, your mind of course was brought back on the utter bloodshed of that war and as with the First World War, we were told never again.

So I want to bring people's attention to the government because while the government was very keen that people were out with that kind of event to remember VJ Day or VE Day, the the government itself has got a very, very duplicitous message. Let's have a listen to Healy MP speaking.

Today, the 15th of August, marks the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, victory over Japan, victory over Japan and the end of the Second World War. It reminds us why, for many in the UK, the celebrations for VE Day in 1945 were not the end of the story, for the Second World War would. Continue for another three months in the Far East, British, Commonwealth and allied forces were still fighting a gruelling battle. A coalition of nations refusing

to bow in the face of tyranny. A coalition of nations forging alliances that. Still keep us safe today. But too many made the ultimate sacrifice. 30,000 British personnel, many more from Commonwealth and Allied forces would lose their lives in the Far East campaign. Many who returned could never bring themselves to speak about the conditions they endured or the horrors they witnessed.

We know the courage. We know the resilience they showed to bring about a brighter future and after years of conflict, a lasting peace. Their courage, their dedication, their sacrifice still inspires every member of the armed forces today. And today the British people remember and pay tribute. I apologise to our audience for showing all of that little clip, but I wanted to show it all because for me, I find the duplicity of what's going on

here Ben, just truly appalling. But also the presentation, the full sincerity, the music, the atmosphere that here is this wonderful, concerned man who is there in the world to make sure that we don't have any more bloodshed on that scale.

And yet, of course, in the background, of course, the British government absolutely stocking up war in Ukraine and of course, fully supporting Israel in the horrors that have been happening in Gaza. And I don't know whether you've got any comments on it, but these video clips, they're very polished and glossy, but I find them quite nauseating. Yes, well, they're, they're, they're, they're polishing over

barbarity like absolute horrors. My grandfather was a Japanese prisoner of war and like he just said, he never spoke of it. Couldn't. Couldn't, couldn't even talk about it. And one of the young men I spoke to at the events there, RAF Harrow Beer at the weekend, also told me of relations that he'd been able to speak to when he was very, very small, some of whom would talk about horrors and some wouldn't. But is the government in UK working for peace? I think not.

Is the King working for peace? Well, I think the jury's out, but I effectively think he's also on board, as we'll see. But let's have a listen to part of the King's message for. The millions of families gathered around their wirelessness and for their loved ones still serving far from home. It was the message of battle weary world had long prayed for. The war is over, declared my grandfather from George the 6th in his address to the nation

with Commonwealth on VJ Day 80 years ago today. 4 short words. After 6 long years of bloodshed, fear and suffering, seldom can a simple message that resonated with such a potent mix of relief, celebration and sorrow for those who never lived to see the glow of freedom's new dawn. On this day of profound memories, I speak to you in that same spirit of deliberation and celebration as we honour Renew. All. Those whose service and sacrifice so all the forces of

liberty quivered. Well, Ben, I'm certainly not frightened to say that I find the hypocrisy of the king truly breathtaking. Because of course, is he setting out to help achieve peace in the world? Clearly he's not. We'll see in a minute.

He's interfacing with Zelensky, but basically government and the royalty themselves talking one thing, but behind the public's back, fully engaged in making sure that the the wars taking place, immense bloodshed, particularly in Ukraine, horrors also in Gaza. No effort to actually install peace, but plenty of effort to ramp up the weapons. Let's have a little look at headlines for the papers.

And of course, there's only one thing to be shown on this, which is Zelensky. So the time Zelensky wants security guarantees before a deal, it's presented to the public as though Zelensky is the man that the British public should pay attention to. Who cares what Zelensky wants?

He's helped to keep this vile war in Ukraine going for the length of time it has we've got the Daily Telegraph Europe tells Trump don't give in to Putin. So this is part of the message Putin bad regime change got to happen in Russia and of course Ukraine with a proxy war and the proxy troops are going to be the force to do it. The Daily Mail D Day so now we've quite equated Ukraine to the Second World War. This is all part of propaganda aimed at the British public mind

in my appearance. And finally from the myriad as I suppose we might expect Ukraine war showdown Europe takes a stand. So the papers only putting one message across and that is basically that the the war has got to be ended on the lines that Zelensky thinks Russia is bad. And if there's no peace agreement, then of course UK and the EU in particular prepared to pump in the weapons. But it's quite clear, Ben, that UK and Europe very nervous about where where Trump may take these

negotiations. OK. So if you have a look at the Guardian today, as well as the Zelensky headline here, excuse me, UK and EU Zelensky side for talks with Trump down at the bottom was an interesting little headline. Almost lost. IDF prepares to force 1,000,000 people out of Gaza City. So here's another horror going on in the world today. Are we seeing British politicians? Indeed. Are we seeing the King put on the pressure to stop the violence in either place?

Absolutely not. Rather, we've got the king, of course, meeting up with Zelensky. And if we just play a little bit of video here, we can see Zelensky arriving to meet the king. Notice he's not allowed to step forward until he was actually invited to do so. So it's very clear who the who's got the power in this particular incident. But of course, this is the king greeting this man like a long

lost friend. But Zelensky ultimately responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not million plus deaths of his own countrymen fighting a proxy war for the UK and the West. Diane, just very quickly, I'll bring you in here. I find this truly appalling as this comes out of the woodwork. But essentially we've had the same thing going on in America with this massive support for a war clearly designed to try and achieve regime change in Russia.

Oh, absolutely. And I, and I think that's something that people miss because we're seeing so much on the American side of the pond where people are, are still very pro Trump, but they don't realise what's actually happening because he's doing so many things to distract from the sexual agenda that's playing out in the background. And I, and I think that the media is, is obviously contributing to that by saying, oh, he's wonderful. He's doing all these great things.

But in the background, what he's actually doing is not something that the public is aware of. And maybe they wouldn't be so much on his side if they were being a little bit more honest about these deals that he's doing in the background. That's a very, very good point, Diane, because of course the public being told very little in UK. And as we we'll mention in a in a few moments time, we'll be pointing out that of course no real figures of the number of UK

Ukrainian casualties. So this is a war only fought with apparently Russian casualties. Meanwhile the Ukrainian troops simply don't matter. They all can and fodder. I find it quite obscene, but I wanted to play once again the clip of Starmer and Zelensky which I've called a love affair, might cover this with the UK column News on Friday. But I think it's worth showing this appalling clip again to getting a feel for just how deep into into the bed Keir Starmer is with Zelensky.

So presumably Zelensky had to point out where Ukraine actually was on that huge globe so that Kier Starmer was fully up to speed. But as I saw them walking around the garden with the flowers, it really should have taken one of them to put on the dress and they would have been the loving couple. Now, this is what Kier Starmer had to say at the weekend about what was happening with regard

to the talks. He said that Trump's efforts have brought us closer than ever before to ending Russia's illegal war in Ukraine. No mention, of course, of the provocations of the West. His leadership in pursuit of an end to the killing should be commended. Well, that's apart from the weapons which America's bumped in of course. Whilst progress has been made, the next step must be further talks involving President Zelensky. The path to peace in Ukraine

cannot be decided without him. So that's effectively saying that there is no pass, pass straight path to peace without Zelensky himself. And he said it. Kier Stommer went on say, I spoke to President Zelensky this morning, President Trump and other European partners, and we all stand ready to support this next phase. And the missive went on. I welcome the openness of the United States alongside Europe to provide robust security guarantees to Ukraine as part of any deal.

This is important progress and will be crucial in deterring Putin for coming back for more. And they seem to regard this as some sort of game in the language that's being used here. In the meantime, until Putin stops his barbaric assault, we will keep tightening the screws on his war machine with even more sanctions, which already had a punishing impact on the Russian economy and its people are waving unwavering support for Ukraine will continue as long as it takes.

I I just find this crass. I can't think of. I I'd imagine that Putin is quaking in his boots right now. Ustam is going to ramp up the the sanctions. Or indeed so sanctions and sanctions. But of course, the reality is that the Russians at the moment are overcoming not only Ukraine, but the full might of the West, including the United States. We just have a look at these little film clips here, which just show some of the activity

on the front. And the point I'm making here is that the Ukrainians are being destroyed on the battlefield because the Russians were able to bring weapons to the front, which the Ukrainians can't, despite Western missile defence systems such as Patriot. The the truth of the matter is that Ukrainian forces hammered on the front lines.

And so whenever we look at casualty figures, we can be very sure that Ukrainian casualty figures much higher than for the Russians. This is actually a video clip of the aftermath of an explosion of an ammunition dump, a very large Ukrainian ammunition dump. And this once again shows that the power of the Russian weapons is having a huge effect. Now most of the propaganda coming out of UK is coming from Defence HQ. Defence Intelligence.

This is one of their latest reports which is says that President Putin has reiterated long standing maximalist demands regarding Russia's illegal invasion invasion of Ukraine. So no mention of what was happening in 2014 and the vicious attacks by Ukraine on the Donbass areas and the Russian speaking people. Most of this is pure propaganda coming out of Defence HQ. This is where it gets interesting, because essentially they're crowing.

They're mocking the Russians and saying it's going to take them 4 1/2 more years of war and approximately 1.9 million further Russian casualties killed and wounded if they're going to take the remaining ground in Ukraine. Now, of course what what there isn't in this report is any mention of the I've put a million because this is the number being mentioned increasingly by analysts into the Ukrainian war a million Ukrainian war dead that is not

being mentioned. Ukrainian casualties don't count because they are simply the proxy soldiers of the of the West. So we'll just ends this segment by having a look at Keir Starmer, another video, but this is where he's saying, trust me, because I only have the best interests of the UK population at heart. Across Britain, people get up every morning to go to work, to get their kids to school. They pay their bills, try to

save a bit. They graft the factory workers, small business owners, teachers, terrorists, those who serve our country, whether that's in scrubs or the uniform of their. Regiment. The ordinary people, the men and women who make this country what it is, people like you and your family. And that's who I think of every time I face a decision. I know, like all of us, you are

proud of our country. We all love our country, but I also know that at times he doesn't feel like Britain is fair enough for those people, the people who are getting on with it. And that's what drives me forward at home or representing our interests abroad. I'm putting you. 1st. Well, the claim there, Ben, is very clear. He puts us first. But of course, in that BBC interview he put the World Economic Forum 1st. He certainly did, yes.

It's quite entertaining hearing Starmer use the word graft. He's a real man of the people, isn't he? You're in scrubs or uniform. A focus group the hell out of that speech, I think. Yes.

And as we know, Starmer doesn't think about the British people. Certainly not in in any endearing sense anyway. He thinks about his friends in Davos and as you've kind of alluded to there, Brian, he did say under questioning from Emily Maitlis, I think it was if he preferred Davos or Westminster and he said Davos straight out again.

So we know who's pulling his strings and actually we know who's pulling Zelensky's strings as well, amongst other people, because Ukraine, in the destruction of that country, he's going to be rebuilt through the World Economic Forum and a huge amount of investment from BlackRock as well, amongst others. That's actually the game that's being played here. The deliberate destruction of

nation states. They can be replaced with a new order, and the World Economic Forum is right at the heart of it. There's been a bit of a personnel change there over the past couple of months. You may have heard we probably mentioned it on the news at some point that Klaus Schwab left his position as chairman.

He'd been there since 197243 years, in the top seat at the World Economic Forum. But then the very next day, a whistleblower submitted some allegations to the Wet board, basically saying that Schwab had blurred the lines between his personal and corporate interests. As if that was the worst thing the World Economic Forum had ever done or Klaus Schwab had ever done.

Which is not really surprising to be honest with you, given that he actually was the unelected ruler of this global corporate empire and also actually ran something called the Schwab Foundation under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, which which was run by his wife and I believe his children work in the forum as well. Exactly. This is exactly what it is. But obviously the WEF have run an internal investigation and I'm very happy to say for Hesh Schwab that he was cleared all

wrongdoing. It's a bit like when they get a new chairman in at the BBC and they run an internal review and they come back and say no, no, everything's fine. The BBC is fantastic. Exactly the same thing here, wouldn't you say? Without any doubt. Marking his own. You don't need to speak because it's obvious what's going on. It's obvious. Marking his own homework. But they have appointed, and this is the real big news, two interim chairs. One of them was announced earlier in the year.

I'm going to forget his name off the top of my head, but he's the former Nestle chief executive. And then over the weekend, we found out that this guy, Larry Fink, the founder of BlackRock, who sits on top of $12 trillion of accumulated wealth, is now going to be running the World Economic Forum. And, and essentially this is, you know, more of the same. Schwab was always boasting about the fact that he had penetrated the cabinets of all of the major nations.

Well, think has already done exactly the same thing. He was hanging around with Starmer last year while the Standard was boasting about him going on an asset buying spree in the undervalued UK. Yeah, so starting the thinking about the British people, but actually in reality. Selling off their assets it's. Exactly. It's exactly what he's doing. Yeah. And really, this is what they mean by economic growth, by the way. It means BlackRock buying

everything at a discount. That's what economic growth is. And also, let's not forget he was also hanging around with, with Rachel Reeves and, and Angela Rayner, current Deputy Prime Minister, actually slated by some to be a future leader of the country, remarkably so. We can see that even with Schwab gone, the relationship between the World Economic Forum and the current Labour government and the rest of our political apparatus is, is as strong as it ever was.

And, and what are they particularly focused on? They're focused on delivering the Sustainable development goals as we're going to get into. Indeed, yeah. And of course, that man heavily like Rock, heavily involved in Ukraine and supposedly the rebuilding of Ukraine when the war is over. So all of those deals already signed and in place for people to make billions of the suffering of the Ukrainian

people. I think this is an important point if anybody out there thinks that by defending the Russian position at the moment, we are in somehow against the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians, of course, taken to the cleaners by the West Country, destroyed a million men. The figures are pointing towards killed in this horrific war and then the country is simply going to be hoovered up by the West for more profit. It's quite obscene. Diane, let's bring you in here

because of course, one of the key things to understand is how the world's political system or power base is working, and sustainable goals are clearly a major part of that agenda. Yes, absolutely. And what I would like to show today is very clear and concrete and overwhelming evidence of how the Sustainable Development Goals have infiltrated into research and universities. And I can say this as a former professor of the UK universities who knows the system very well.

I want to start out by pointing out this article that we published late last week that I really helped with as commissioning editor for UK column called Demise of Livestock Farming, Fraudulent Science and BlackRock by Neil Harrison. He was specifically talking about farming. Obviously this is part of a

three part series. We talked about Part 2 of this series last week when we discussed his evidence around the wildfires and Agenda 2030 and Sustainable Development Goals. But this made me look a little bit further into something that he pointed out in the article, which has to do with how against sustainable development goals

and research are tied together. So it back in 2020 when all of us were obviously distracted by something else and we all know what that is. There was something that was signed by several of the the largest scientific publishers in the world called the Sustainable Development Goals Publishers Compact from the United Nations. And I would like to start here with a video clip from when they announced excited they were that they were signing this compact. So let's watch this clip.

Welcome. I'm Phil Coleman. I'm the presidential envoy for diversity and inclusion for the International Publishers Association. I am delighted to see publishers and colleagues from.

Across the publishing industry. Joining us today for this landmark events, the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals Publishers Compact, in short, the SDG Publishers Compact. The Compact is a pledge of 10 concrete steps that publishers and publishing organisations can commit to in order to accelerate progress in achieving these Sustainable Development Goals by 20-30. Only 10 more years to go. I am here joined by a

illustrious panel. There's Sherry Aldis, Chief of the United Nations Publications, Hugo Zetzer, President of the International Publishers Association, Jurgen Boss, President and CEO of the. Frankfurt Book Fair. Najaq Neisler, chair of the publishers committee of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. The. Bursenferheim. Welcome. Everybody.

Let me immediately start with explaining what exactly are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and what does the SDG Publishers Compact mean, Sherry. Offer to you. Thank you very much, Mihaela.

I'm delighted to be here. It's a momentous occasion for us to be launching the SDG Publishers Compact and happy to be working with the IPA again on this project to, to promote the Sustainable Development Goals. So as you say, we call them the SDGS and they really are our road map for the next 10 years. And when I say our road map, I mean all of us, each and every one of us, and publishers as well. So the St GS are 17 goals that were conceived to transform the

world over a period of 15 years. It's a universal call to action to end poverty, to protect the planet and to improve the lives and prospects of absolutely everybody, everywhere. So there we go. It affects all of us. If we go to the next slide here, I've just got us an example here from the UN website from showing as we see the the wheel with all those colours, which you will have seen that those presenters were wearing their pins. They always wear the Sustainable

Development gold pins. That's how we know that they're part of it. So what does it mean to sign the compact? Well, there's 10 points that I'd like to go through quickly, which is committing to the Sustainable Development Goals themselves or the SDGS, actively promoting and acquiring content that advocates for the SDGS, annually reporting on progress towards achieving the SDGS, nominating a person who will promote SDG progress, raising awareness and promoting the SDGS among staff.

So that's for the publishers and five more raising awareness and promoting this DGS among suppliers, becoming an advocate to customers and stakeholders by promoting the SDG agenda, collaborating across cities, countries and continents on projects that will advance the SDGS, dedicating budget towards SDG progress, and taking action on at least one SDG goal. So that's what it means for publishers to sign up to this

agreement. Now I'm going to go into some specific examples of publishers and then eventually university projects that show how this is actually getting put into place. Springer Nature is one of the biggest academic publishers in the world, so they have an entire section on their website about how they are promoting Sustainable Development Goals programme and we have a video from Springer Nature as well

explaining this. The people who built Springer Nature have been opening doors to discovery since the beginnings of modern science. The research we publish has provided a trusted. Source of knowledge to make progress towards a better tomorrow. We build on this legacy with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a blueprint to achieve a better and more

sustainable future for all. We work to support researchers across the globe as they tackle urgent societal needs, connecting them with practitioners in policy and business who desperately need those insights to improve the world. We work to amplify the discoveries in our multidisciplinary books, journals and cutting edge science journalism, opening up and disseminating data and insights for those who need it

most. We work to innovate by investing in new services and technologies such as machine learning to identify SDG relevant content, providing insights and tools to empower our customers and stakeholders to deliver. We take responsibility for the environmental and societal impacts of our own business operations, cutting our carbon footprint, working towards greater inclusion and the diversity, and forging strong links with the communities we

serve. With 2030 fast approaching, we work to deliver real progress in addressing the most urgent societal needs because we are a company of researchers, engineers, writers, communicators, and leaders committed to advancing discovery for the benefit of future generations. So that is what the publishers

are doing. So I want to go into specifically a situation of just one UK university, and this is all universities all throughout the country and as you'll see throughout the world if you look at the publishers. So of course, if you are an academic or a researcher, you have to publish papers and you have to get funding and you have to make your university happy to show by showing that you are

continuing to do these things. So if we look at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, which is where I worked for several years as an academic, because I know the system well, I'm just choosing this as one example, but you can see this in any university in our country. They talk about the Sustainable Development Goals under REF 2021. So REF is the research excellence framework that every university in the UK has to participate in every few years.

It's the government system for what they call assessing the quality of research and UK higher education institutions. So as we can see on the next slide here, what the University of Strathclyde did as part of their participation and the Research Excellence Framework 2021, they broke down the research of all of the academics that had published or the past years leading up to 2021 and the percentage of each sustainable development goal that the research was meeting.

So that basically you're required to meet sustainable development goals to make the university happy, or else you're basically not even allowed to do the research. Every university, as a result of being compliant with the research excellence framework, has to have a research repository. In the case of the University of Strathclyde, it's called the Knowledge Based Research Information Portal, where you can search all of the published research done by the academics at the university.

And you can see right there on the home page for the portal, there's a list of the 17 sustainable development goals. And I just want to go into one example of just one research project from the University of Strathclyde. You can find anything that any of these universities are giving now that they have to align with these goals or throws. They can't do it. This is one example called Design Hopes or Healthy organisations in a place based ecosystem. In Scotland this was funded for

almost £4,000,000. It is the funding period is about to end and it's funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council which is again part of the UK Research Council's funding scheme. And what they are doing here is making NHS Scotland more sustainable. So let's look at their video explaining what they have been

doing in this project. The health and care sector is a part of the green transition like all other parts of society, and in response to the pressing climate emergency we all face, it needs to work more sustainably and move beyond net zero. If the global healthcare sector were a country, it would be the 5th largest contributor to climate change in the world and NHS Scotland has set out its own plans to become a net 0 organisation by 2040.

Design Hopes is a design LED research project which responds to health and social care needs. In order to address these pressing challenges, we work collaboratively across 5 of Scotland's universities, in collaboration with NHS Scotland and other project partners, creating a range of design interventions to help meet and move beyond these urgent net

zero goals. Working with frontline healthcare practitioners, I see everyday how much energy our systems consume and how much clinical and domestic waste is generated in a single ward, a single hospital. If you can imagine this multiplied across the whole healthcare system, you can start to understand some of the changes required in our day to day work to meet our.

Net 0 targets. It's. Clear there is the will to deliver world leading health and social care in a way that benefits patients, the planet and the broader ecosystems we are all part of. There is now an urgent need for us to ensure our health and care services are delivered sustainably. Design Hopes will help us to innovate and change in ways that are tangible and demonstrates the value of these new approaches to patients, NHS Scotland, staff, carers and the

wider public. The Design Hopes will advance society's understanding of designs value and impact, as well as some of the behaviour changes and tools needed to transition the health and social care sector to an ecologically and socially sustainable approach. So at the end there, that was Professor Paul Rogers of the University of Strathclyde who is the leader of the project and you can see he's talking about behaviour change.

If we look at one of the what they call research outputs, IE articles, academic papers produced as a result of this £4,000,000 funded project. There's one here in the research repository from the University of Strathclyde, which is called Design, Thinking, Acting, making a net 0 transformational change across NHS Scotland. Professor Rogers is listed as the first author of this paper and you can see right there clearly on the slide that it contributes to SDG 13 climate

action. So everything that is in this repository will have these links. That particular paper was published by a different huge academic publisher called MDP I. They also have a section on their website explaining how they are committed to the UN Compact on SDG's and how these will be transforming the world and how the supports what they do and choosing the research

that they publish. One thing that I want to mention as well about Professor Rogers is that his personal profile on the University of Strathclyde's website lists out that he has done research that aligns to all 17 SDGS, which is certainly in today's academic world a clear marker for promotion if that's what you're after. Here's some examples of what Design Hopes has done with the taxpayers for £1,000,000. There's a whole website up on this.

So Design Hopes as it says the supporting a green and just transition for NHS Scotland. But what does that actually mean? Well some of the projects they've done, because Professor Rogers is in design, they have designed, for example, a board game that engages communities in designing inclusive healthcare gardens to enhance health and well being and this interactive game is going to help them learn

how to do that. There is a project called Flow which is an interactive game once again designed to help NHS Scotland staff visualise patient movement through hospitals, particularly focusing on urgent or semi urgent care at NHS Teesside And reusable theatre caps hot off the press. This one was a big, big, huge outcome from this £4,000,000 was covered all over mainstream media.

And as we can see examples here, this is from that article that I mentioned by the academic publisher that there's one of the things that they've done is create these reusable operating theatre caps and, and that this is a a big deal for them. They're using the raw materials and they can reuse them and we can see them all happy. They're in their masks showing off what they've done. Professor Rogers as well.

And this is just not to pick on one particular person, but anyone in any university is doing things like this. But I thought this was a particularly interesting thing to end the segment on. Not related to the Design Hopes project, but he has contributed to a book called Chronicles of Care, a design history of the COVID-19 virus. And the whole point of it was that it says that in the

abstract. It says the COVID-19 crisis and the design interventions that the authors have catalogued in this book proved definitively that design does care. The authors documented this as it evolved every day from the 1st of January 2020 to 31st of May 2020 inclusive. So we're looking at an interesting time frame there and we can see that that research. This book contributed to four different UNSD GS. So I'm sure he got a lot of great credit for that and his annual review, Brian and Ben.

Diane, thank you very much. The caps, reusable caps got me because basically as far as I remember in the NHS, uniforms used to be meticulously boil washed, as was bed linen. And so reusable cap would have been given a boil wash and brought back into use. But apparently we now need a £4,000,000 design research study in order to come up with a new cap. Quite, quite astonishing. Thank you for that. Now once again, a huge thank you

to the audience, wherever you are in the world, for everybody supporting UK column, we can only do what we do with your financial support. So a huge thank you. If you're not on board as a member, we're not making pardon, let's come back here or you're not donating to the UK column. Then go to the website and click the blue button and bring that on screen once more and follow it through.

Now tonight at 7:00, germ warfare will be interviewing former Angus. So forming food health always very important to us here at UK column. If you haven't joined any of Germs interviews, TuneIn tonight at 7:00 PM and the next one, Diane, is yours, an interview with Rosemarie Jenkinson. Yes, Brian, I, I interviewed Rosemary Jenkinson, who's an author that I met at the E Academy conference that I attended earlier in the summer. She's an author who was cancelled by her publisher for

something that she wrote. And so she's written this dystopian novel called The Memorizers. And it's a very interesting novel. And we'll be talking about the context around this writing. I would just do give you a bit of a preview on the back cover. It says your truth is the wrong kind of truth. Yes, and that that becomes ever more true.

OK, thank you for that. Now I just wanted to give a quick mention to some of the people that helped that fantastic local event over the weekend at RAF Harrow Beer near Yelverton. And so I wanted to give a a mention to both the Military Vehicle Trust, Devon Military Vehicle Trust and the World War 2RE enactment Southwest Group

who really did a fantastic job. So anybody who's interested in things to do with the Second World War, history thereof or re enactment, you may choose to give them some support. Now, we've got other people who've been working hard and we've mentioned them before. We the people of the Northeast,

what have you got here, Diane? Well, yes, but thanks to our friends that we, the people Northeast who provided the coverage that we all showed two weeks ago today and the migrant protests that happened in Newcastle, They have taken some of our content that we used on the news that day, as well as our extra time content and some of their own coverage that didn't quite manage to make it into the news just because of

time. And they've created a full video, which is over an hour called Whose Streets. Because one of the chants happening during the protest, of course, was Whose Streets are Streets. And this is from again, the 2nd of August migrant protests at the Newbridge Hotel in Newcastle. So they've provided me with the trailer. You can see the full thing on their Rumble channel, which we will put a link to in the show notes. But let's watch the trailer for now.

Ben just for me to see people in masks when clearly the police have said many, many times they're not going to tolerate people being masked up, this appears to me at least to be part of what I'm going to call 22 tier policing. It's certainly 2 tier policing. I think a lot of those people are just cowards to be honest with you.

If you've got an opinion, get out on the street and and front it up yourself, you know, and also you a lot of these people have just busted in. So you have local communities out protesting and then these people turn up a lot of the time ushered in by the police, and they're from out of the area. Well, I'm not going to answer any questions you need to go through our press office unless it's something about what you

want to do now. OK, will the police be taxing in the far left like they did in Essex? I'm not going to be answering any kind of questions. I'm not here for an interview, clearly. I'm here for to help police's protest. Go ahead. It's a fuse. They've had a fuse that's slowly. Burning. It's slowly burning and eventually it's just going to be an explosion. OK. Well, thank you very much.

We the people NE for that and I hope that they'll be providing more clips in the future because they're doing some really good work getting out and about and recording what's happening now. Also a reminder for the coming weekend events and that's the Freedom Music Festival. The Hope Group and UK Column

will be there. We'll be setting up this coming Friday, but we're there for the weekend and we're really looking forward to it. And of course UK column team will be giving a a full day to not only a news but also talks to the audience on the Saturday. So do come along and join in. It will be really excellent and I have just been told that if you use the Freedom 50 code when you apply for a ticket for this event, you'll get 50% off. So there you are. You can't do better than that. Now.

Just a reminder that the UK column on location event in York tickets selling very, very well. So thank you very much to everybody who's bought them. We've been starting to announce speakers. So Andrew Wakefield, of course, we've talked about. We've also said that people will be able to see the Protocol 7 video, but we'd also like to announce that Tess Laurie from the World Council for Health will also be one of the speakers.

There are more to come. And of course, she's been working very hard to give ordinary people power in making decisions about their health and saying that there's a better way of doing things than we're told via the World Economic Forum, Sustainable Development Goals or indeed the NHS on health. So I'm sure that's going to be really fascinating. Now, Ben, let's bring you in because we've had some

coincidences when we've been researching over the last few months and some of that has come back to Plymouth in the work that I was looking at probably 1516 years ago was suddenly become relevant again. But you've discovered also that Plymouth is absolutely heading towards the Super City status. It, it absolutely is. And you brought this to my attention actually, Brian, because of the event you went to, the community consultation event that you went to, when was

that? About a month ago, wasn't. It conversation where of course Plymouth wants to expand and take over local parishes. It wants to increase the population of Plymouth. This is all to do with centralised power under the Governments Local under the Central Governments Local Government Reorganisation Plan. Yes. And and that a lot of that is to do with the this report from Babcock which I believe that

they introduced to you during that meeting. 1 Devonport A blueprint for the future which essentially amounts to the militarisation of the UK economic system, as we've been talking about earlier on in the show. So what what does this actually involve? They set out a vision just come from the Royal Navy. Well, this isn't the cover from the Royal Navy.

We'll get into who it's actually from as we go along, but what they're doing is developing a world class, secure, safe, integrated operating and support base for the Royal Navy and NATO. Crucially, this is AUK base and a NATO base. And that term integrated operating really puts the hairs on the back of my neck up,

right? Because there's a document that Mike's talked about a lot previously, integrated operating concepts, which says, she says that we are never not at war and our own citizens should be considered enemies, even within our own barracks, actually. And that's embedded right into this Royal Navy document talking about the redevelopment of Plymouth, right? So what is this all about but militarisation? Force generation across every

component of the system. Building a new operating base, Establishing capabilities for nuclear fuel handling for submarines and and for warships. Building barracks, community engagement, Hiring and training the workforce, Running support for operations for forward deployed ships, doing maintenance, the the full suite of capabilities like this is actually a really impressive site that they've got and they

already exist right. You know, Plymouth has been since naval centre for for centuries, but this is the the next generation of that building, what they're calling a new Navy essentially and. I'm just adding to that, Ben, that the dockyard in Plymouth is vast. It's over 340 hectares, so overwhelmingly the biggest naval base in Europe. And so this is the strategic importance of it. Yeah, absolutely.

And this is a huge development programme, loads of money coming in, a lot of it, as you can see on the bottom there, maybe just a little bit small for some people, but we got EU money there alongside HM government. So there's a real kind of mixture happening here. This is a total redevelopment of a huge piece of legacy infrastructure.

So you can see on the right hand side in the centre there some beautiful, frankly, you know, astonishingly beautiful Victorian buildings that we have over there in Devonport and in the southwest of the city. And this is all being completely transformed. You can pause this and have a look at it. And this is going to run out for

for for decades, you know. So they've got long term planning running out past 2040. And this is essentially the economic engine that is going to be used to drive population growth across, across Plymouth, right? You know, they're, they're, they're really going after this. And importantly, this is a public private partnership. Talk about this all the time. So you can see at the bottom there, this is from the Backpage of the document.

You've got the Royal Navy, the defence equipment and support, the MOD submarine delivery agency alongside Mighty Serco and Babcock, right? So those are three listed corporations? Vast. Yeah, absolutely. And that is the corporatist system that we talk about, right? That's the definition of fascism. That's what Mussolini, how Mussolini described fascism. It's corporatist. And importantly, corporations are incentivized to maximise returns to shareholders.

So there's never any incentive for them to end the wars. That's actually part of the way that they're constituted, right? And this is what is sitting right at the heart of the UK economic strategy. And in fact, this is something Starmer himself has talked about extensively. And this is really sitting right at the heart of the of the future of Plymouth. And Babcock are right in the middle of it. Essentially, this is a Babcock

site. The other corporations we've talked about are partners in this and this is a listed corporation. As I've just said, there's 0 incentive for them to ever de escalate or to end wars because that's how they make their money. They are hugely significant in the UK economy.

So 4.3 billion total contribution to the economy, 1.1 billion in taxes, 67,000 jobs either directly or indirectly related to to Babcock and they are in the southwest of England, but also up in Scotland. Obviously we've got a big nuclear capability up there. And this is all about delivering

the defence dividend, right? So when Star was there talking about good jobs for working people, putting money into your pocket, thinking about the working class, it's because they want to invest in the military industrial complex and and an ever escalating and cascading series of of international conflicts, right. This is ultimately what it's all about and who's pulling the strings here? Let's go and have a look at the board.

Just three people who immediately jumped out at me, Dame Ruth Cairney DBE, who is also the patron of Women in Defence, which made me feel really warm and fuzzy. Actually, knowing that there's a lady in charge of our nuclear capabilities, that was fantastic. Well, there's a lot of questions to be asked about about that and these people and how they get their power base. I agree. Yeah, certainly. So these these are yeah, the top corporate people.

David Lockwood in the centre there, OBE importantly DBEOBE. So these are courtiers. Just think of him like like that. Favoured individuals. Absolutely. And and the gentleman on the right hand side there, the Right Honourable the Lord Parker of Minsmere GV OK CB bit of a mouthful. He actually was the Director General of MI 5, appointed by David Cameron, did that job until 2020, from 2013.

And he was then appointed as Lord Chamberlain, so essentially head of the Royal Household. So again, like we've seen video earlier of of King Charles, you know, talking about how awful war is. And yet he's got one of his top people who actually runs the royal household also sitting on top of a weapons company. So this doesn't really add up, does it? Doesn't make any sense. It does for a duplicitous world, yes, is what I will say.

Yes, right. And that's what's happening in Plymouth, total transformation of the city driven by the military industrial complex. But it's not just happening in Plymouth, it's happening across the whole of the UK. And actually, I might just skip the next slide, Mike, and we will just go straight to the video where we'll find out a bit more about the Thames Freeport. We're bringing you new possibilities right here. By the Thames. Your home, your school, your future, All connected.

Welcome to our driverless service. Need something? It's always within reach. New jobs are on the way. A sustainable. Future built for you. A smarter, greener place, always there. When you need it. Future tech making life easier every day. Your future right here by the temps. Cartoon We've had jigsaws for young children in order to get the SDG message across and here we've got a cartoon. It's quite childish really, wasn't it? But that's that's the smart city agenda, right?

So it's it's everything's connected, driverless vehicles, virtual reality concerts, drone delivery of fast food, so you don't have to actually talk to anyone at any point charging points so that you'll never run out of battery or on your phone. You can imagine it's Geo fencing on actually allowed to leave,

right? This is what they're pushing towards ultimately, and it's the same agenda that we've just talked about in Plymouth. Ultimately that will be a smart city, no doubt, but it's the same agenda that we can see happening up in London and to the east of London. Importantly, that was Thames Freeport. Sandy's spoken about the Freeport entities like this, this kind of new free trade structure, these zones that don't exist within the normal bounds of the country, they're

actually separate entities. Talked about that earlier on in the year and essentially this is being positioned as the biggest opportunity in a generation for London ultimately, which is a remarkable statement to be honest with you. Apparently it's unique and transformative. It's going to stimulate trade, foster innovation, support the energy transition. So these new cities, they're all about bringing through new technological infrastructure and

this is absolutely vast. It's right in the east of the city in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, London Borough of Havering and then out into Essex into into Thurrock. And it is going to transform that kind of post industrial landscape. Ultimately, that's what a lot of that is, not exclusively, but that has been a hub of global trade for 1000 years. And they're now going to turn it into this completely transformed smart city.

This was announced by Ruth Kelly, former Secretary of State for communities and local government under Tony Blair. Obviously we've got Blair people in the mix and it's going to be delivered by a consortium led by EY, where I used to work, who are a World Economic Forum strategic partner, alongside a couple of other people, including the Young Foundation.

Yes, you've got these kind of social engineering type organisations like the Young Foundation working hand in hand with EY who are kind of hardcore Uber capitalists, right? So this is that sort of money and power dynamic that I talk about a lot. And Young Foundation worked alongside Common Purpose and Demos. So, so a tangled web of these very powerful think tanks and facilitators. Exactly.

And to deliver what exactly? Because they're going to tear up the country in order to implement what you caught that that little ridiculous little video that we just watched, Like how is that going to translate into reality? It won't translate into reality like this is. It's just ludicrous. The idea that we would want to progress with something like this and where's it coming from? So I actually found out about this via this chap.

This is Max Beverton Palmer, who's currently head of public policy at NVIDIA UK, and I spoke about NVIDIA last week. They're one of the people who are leading the Project Stargate initiative up in Norway, and he's formerly of the Blair Institute. And their mantra, you can see here writ large, technology is disruptive. The pace of technological change is accelerating. According to them. Technology changes power structures, it centralises power structures, it globalises power

structures. That's what these people are doing. And it's going right into Downing Street, right? So this guy Everton Park, it's been at Downing St in the past couple of weeks talking about the Thames Freeport initiative, this idea of a new smart city for the for the east of London with a delegation made up of money, infrastructure, weapons and technology companies money. You've got Barclays and Standard Chartered are in there.

Infrastructure, you've got BT Group in the National Grid, weapons manufacturers, you've got Babcock again and BAE Systems. They're in the mix for this. And then start UPS including this organisation Humanoid. I'll just run a tiny little bit of this, but there is literally a company that is building humanoid robots to create a new workforce to exist in this smart city going to Downing St with people from the Blair Foundation and the weapons manufacturers,

right? This is this is the technological road map that they're progressing with. And they're going to flatten but a load of East London, a load of Essex. And actually they're not the only people who are going to be flattening a bunch of Essex, because also we've seen in the past few days TfL have just announced a new partnership with EDF, a French. Multinational energy companies to supply solar energy, enough solar energy to run the the entire tube network.

Apparently that's going to be out of a brand new solar facility in Essex, supposedly creating green jobs, boosting biodiversity somehow. I'm not sure how that's possible. Just putting loads of solar panels onto a field not going to boost biodiversity. And as you can see here, that is all prime farmland. There are a bunch of farms who are no longer going to be farms who are going to be replaced with the infrastructure for this new technological paradigm that we're being ushered into.

And this is absolutely happening right now today and being pushed out across the country. And of course, most people overwhelmingly, absolutely not aware of what's being planned or indeed how it's being planned through Westminster. But as we heard at the start of the news, Keir Starmer reassuring the British public that he's got us at the forefront of his mind everyday. U.S., jobs, families. Let's leave it there. Ben, Diane, let's bring you back

just for a final segment about, well, it's AI and what are we really saying? Should we trust it? I suppose. That's an interesting question, Brian. So I just wanted to give you an example of ChatGPT use, which we're hearing more and more people saying all the time, we'll just use ChatGPT. It's quick, it's easy, it will give you a good answer.

You don't have to do a lot of time it's spent to find whatever it is that you need to find because you just type in the question and have a conversation with you. Just recently, anecdotally, I've been playing with ChatGPT with which which should be very simple questions, and I'm getting a lot of incorrect answers back. I even know of someone that I was trying to have a Zoom call with a few weeks ago who used ChatGPT to figure out the time difference because she was in another country.

She got the time wrong because ChatGPT didn't account for the fact that we were on British summer Time. So she was an hour off. And the message lately that we've been seeing around is that ChatGPT and these other AI chat box and so on can sort your life out. So I just kind of did some very casual types of searching around. So I just typed into Google ChatGPT, sorting my life out. And what happened?

Well, AI told me, Google's AI told me that ChatGPT can indeed be a valuable tool for organising various aspects of life, including time management, goal setting and even decluttering, breaking down tasks, etcetera. So I thought, OK, so what's a task that we might do with ChatGPT? That's very simple. So I thought about all of the budgetary issues that people are facing in this country because of the state of the economy. And I thought, well, what about shopping and and buying basic

groceries? So looking at trying to figure out how much somebody might be able to budget for their groceries in a in a weekly shop, I asked it and, and I said, what is the street value of lure pack? So then it responded to me, which was really didn't see. Maybe my wording was a bit unusual, but I was trying to see what it would say to me. It said, it sounds like you're curious about the street value of Lurpak, perhaps wondering what it's actually selling for in shops rather than any black

market context. I wasn't asking about black market anything. Lurpak is a premium butter brand. I would beg to differ. So it's prices tend to reflect that. So it listed a few bullet points of some different prices of of Lurpak of sort of typically around £3.75, four pounds. And it's as you can see here, it's it's referring to different sources. It refers to Amazon UK for good to know. I don't know why it's listed prices for Tesco and Asda, but then they're sort of crossed

out. So I don't know what the strike through was for. It says around £2.15 and Amazon UK for 200 grammes. So I decided to actually go to some real shops instead of depending on AI to do to figure out how much it would cost to buy lure pack in my city. So the Tesco, which is local to me, said that the cost of 750 grammes of lure pack was £8.25, which I thought was quite ridiculously high for any any amount of lure pack at all

whatsoever. So I went to four different shops in my city just to compare prices. So this is actual on the ground reporting and I just made a little bar chart out of it. I went to BNM, ALDI, Morrison's and Tesco and what's interesting is that you can see that there is a range of prices, but there's also a range of sizes. So it's not so much about a big or a smaller pack.

It gets a bit confusing because there's 250 grammes, 400 grammes, 500 grammes, 600 grammes, 750 grammes that appeared in just these four different shops in one city, which could make you believe that maybe something costs more or less than it actually costs. So it makes it very difficult for someone to determine and obviously impossible at this point for AI to be able to discern between those different sizes and which is actually the best value for money.

So with all that, it's just a silly example, I guess to sort of show how information can be really, really incorrect on these chat bots. And we're going to be doing a lot of future reporting on ChatGPT to actually look at how it's getting its information. And we'll, this will be coming up in teacher editions of UK Column news. I would also like to announce to our longer time viewers, if those of you who remember UKC Verify in the past, we are

bringing that back. I'm happy to say UKC Verify is, of course, the anecdote to BBC Verify in Mariana Spring. I would like to say that personally, I believe that as the information correspondent for UK Column, I am also the antidote for Mariana Spring. We've tried to have her on the show several times and she just for whatever reason, will not respond to us to our our request our our request to interview her

or talk to her. But what I would like to say is that we have started UKC verify in the past saying that if you find any sort of mainstream source that you would like us to check to make sure whether or not it is accurate, we can do that for you. I would also like to invite viewers to consider trying this with ChatGPT or other AI chat

bots. And if you would like us to verify any information, whether it's about the price of lur pack or the street value of lur pack or anything else, we can do that. But there are actually some very serious implications to finding incorrect information information. And we're also unfortunately seeing that in some cases it's affecting people's mental health and their well being. So we really need to be careful

with this. So I invite any sort of discussion back and forth with our viewers, and we'll be doing some very serious reporting on this in the future. Thank you very much for that. And indeed, it is a very serious thing, AI, and we will be spending a lot more time looking into it and what it's possible impacts are. So we must end there. Ben, thank you very much for joining me. Diane, thank you for UK column

members. We'll be back in a few moments for UK column Extra huge thank you to our audience today, wherever you are in the world. And please, if you haven't got a ticket for that York event and you'd like to come and meet the team and hear some really great talks, get on board and get a ticket. We'd love to see you there. We'll end on that note. Thanks for joining us. Bye bye.