UK Column News — 7th January 2026

Good afternoon. It's Wednesday the 7th of January, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me today by videolink are Charles Mallett and Vanessa Bailey. Later in the program, Charles will be covering the state of Britain's armed forces in a time of piracy in the from the United States. Vanessa, we'll have more on Venezuela and also substax response to online safety

requirements. And we'll have a farming update and the UK's government's shiny new cybersecurity plan to talk about. But we're going to begin today with the situation with vaccinations in the UK.

And back in August, the government announced that a free chicken pox vaccine will be offered for the first time to children across England on the NHS from January this year. And they said that thousands of children will be protected against chicken pox for the first time. So this is so the question is, is this to be a new vaccine

added to the schedule? Well, no. In fact, GP practices are offering eligible children a combination vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and now varicella, the clinical term for small. Sorry for chicken pox. Apologies for that. So MMR has become MMRV as we can see in this Health Security

Agency report here. So the roll out has been confirmed by the UK Health Security Agency from the 1st of January this year and MMRV vaccine will be introduced into the routine childhood immunisation schedule in the UK. They say that it's going to protect against the the four diseases that we've mentioned and they say that's been safely

used for a decade over a decade. It's already part of the routine childhood vaccination schedule in several countries including Canada, Australia and Germany. And in addition, they're reporting that the Hib men C vaccine is no longer to be offered at the routine one year vaccine appointment.

Instead, children are going to get an extra dose of the six in one vaccine covering diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, Hib and hepatitis B. And they also announced that children born after the 1st of July 2024, for those children a new 18 month appointment is going to be introduced and at that, at that appointment, 1/4 dose of the six and one vaccine is going to be offered at 18 months rather than 12 months.

And then finally, some moving things backwards and forwards because the second dose of the meningococcal B vaccination, which was previously offered at 16 weeks, is now moved to 12 weeks. In fact, that's from July last year. And in order to enable that, the first dose of the pneumococcal vaccine previously offered at 12 weeks is now going to be offered at 16 weeks.

On top of this, then the mobile vaccine vans are seeing MMRV added to the list of vaccines they can deliver and pop up clinics are being rolled out in various parts of the country to make it more convenient, convenient for people to get their jobs. Now joining me to discuss this, I'm really pleased to say, is Doctor Andrew, Doctor Andrew Wakefield. Welcome to the programme, Andrew. And I suppose I want to begin by asking, why do you think the government has decided to add

chicken pox to MMR? Good morning And it's great to talk to you from Texas. Why they've done it is a mystery to me. There is a convenience clearly to combining these shots all in one.

Let me let me take you back to when I was in the UK and my experience in talking to David Salisbury who was the principal Medical Officer for vaccines at the time of the Department of Health. And I done an extensive search of all the pre licensing safety studies for the single measles vaccine and the combination MMR vaccine. And I couldn't find any valid comparisons of the safety profile of these these these these these two approaches.

And I said to him, what evidence do you have that giving the triple vaccine, the MMR is as safe as giving the single vaccines? And he said we had no reason to assume that the safety profile would be any different. Now what you're doing is you are giving a human being a combination of live viruses in a way in which they've never seen them before. You're giving them together and

you're giving them by injection. You have absolutely no right to assume anything in terms of it that the impact of that on safety, none whatsoever. That requires extensive study. And years ago when I, we didn't have the chicken pox vaccine in the UK at the time, but years ago when I first spoke to the media about the possible MMR autism link, I asked for further studies. That's what I asked for further studies. It was not don't vaccinate. It was, we need further research.

Well, that research has now been done. We're many years on. And I just want to read you this because this is absolutely essential to to where we're going with the chicken pox vaccine is this is a review of all of the papers, 136 papers that purport to examine the link

between vaccines and autism. And it's done by and the important thing is it's done by a group of people, some of whom were profound sceptics about the possible link between vaccines and autism, including Peter McCullough, who's the world's most published cardiologist who's really come to the fore in his criticism of the approach to dealing with COVID. But this is the conclusion of the study, and let me just read

this to you. Combination and early time routine childhood vaccination constitutes the most significant modifiable risk factor for autism spectrum disorder. Combination and early time vaccine. So here you have a profound concern that the combination vaccines, including MMR are indeed linked to the increased risk of autism. Now they're suggesting putting

another vaccine in chicken pox. Well, let's how does this confound Dr. Solopers opinion all those years ago that it was reasonable to assume that something you were going to give essentially to every child in the country and potentially every child in the world was safe when you had no right to assume that at all? That the adverse reaction rate in terms of febrile seizures is double for the MMRV compared with the MMR it is double. This is published.

These are published data from the manufacturers themselves. And so it is not innocuous to combine these in a way in which nature has never seen them before. It is not innocuous. The other unanticipated effect of this was that repeated exposure in the environment, the chicken pox was essential in protecting adults. What it did is to periodically boost the immune response, the antibody response to chicken pox and allow people to be protected

into old age. When epidemics of chicken pox were removed in this country by the routine use of the vaccine, then children no longer called epidemics. They were no longer chicken pox, they were no longer epidemics and that boosting of elderly people did not occur. And So what we saw in the face of chicken pox vaccination was an epidemic of shingles in older people because they're immune response to chicken pox was now diminished.

What did the industry do? The industry had discovered had created a new disorder vaccine associated shingles. What did they do? They took the chicken pox vaccine, they increased its potency times 10 and they called it a chicken pox vaccine. They had created for themselves a new market and with it a very painful and debilitating condition. So there these, these interventions, these breaches of the sort of natural balance between man and infection and not without severe consequences.

So is chicken pox a severe disease? No, absolutely it is not. So does it merit the addition of a chicken pox vaccine in an untested way to a population? I don't believe it does. So those are my immediate

thoughts. And as we speak, what has happened at the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in this country is that they have now delayed the first MMRV vaccine from infancy until four years of age precisely because of concerns about the safety profile, particularly in younger children. So while one thing is happening in the UK, the years of experience in the US with this vaccine have led to a different policy being enacted. Indeed, Thank you very much for

that. And I just want to come back to the the news here because the MHRA has decided that they are going to authorize a new mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. This is called jab. This is called Zipporah man. And this is the comment that they made. Patient safety is the is our top priority.

They claimed the approval of Zaparaman provides an alternative vaccine for use in adults to prevent COVID-19 caused by SARS COV 2. As with all licensed medicines, we will continue to monitor its safety closely as it becomes more widely used. And of course, they cite a yellow card. Once again, I mean just very briefly because we've only got a few seconds left, but what are your, what are your thoughts on the continued roll out of this

technology? Well, as John Leake, co-author with Peter McCullough, said, repeated vaccination, continued use of the COVID vaccine is for the for the insane. The safety profile is disastrous and I, I'm extraordinary. I mean, I'm astonished that it's actually still on the market. There is a big move in this country, in the US to actually have it removed from the market. The uptake of booster vaccines

for COVID is, is minimal. People have no longer any faith in public health and are fully aware of the dangers of, or certainly there is a growing awareness of the dangers of these mRNA based product, so I'm astonished that they should adopt that policy. Indeed. Well, Doctor Andrew Wakefield, I'm going to say thank you very much for joining us today. That's been fascinating. We will hopefully see you back at some point in the future, but that has been brilliant. Thank you for that.

Let's move on then to the so-called Coalition of the

willing. If we just bring this on screen, here they are. They're all meeting in Paris yesterday to discuss security of Ukraine and also what's going to happen post ceasefire and post peace. Allegedly. Now the graphic on screen says coalition of the killing. I would say thank you to Dennis for for drawing my attention to this variation of the of the theme. But I think it's quite appropriate 31 countries were represented at this thing in

person or online. White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, of course, were there representing, or at least they were representing the United States. Yesterday evening, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron announced at a joint press conference that they'd made an agreement to post forces in Ukraine as part of their guarantee to protect its security. Let's just have a look at what Starmer had to say here, he said on the deployment of forces to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.

This is a vital part of our iron cast commitment to stand with Ukraine for the long term. It paves the way for the legal framework under which British, French and partner forces could operate on Ukrainian soil. And so I can say that following a ceasefire, the UK and France will establish military hubs across Ukraine and build protection protected facilities for weapons and military equipment.

So Charles, let me welcome you to the program now and I'd just be interested in your thoughts on this and where this takes us. Good afternoon all and happy New Year. I think it takes us into entirely the wrong place and it's a it's a, an escalation tactic sort of beyond compare really. I think also that, you know, his statement is very confused and it's not at all clear really what he does mean. I mean, he even gets cast iron

back to front. So there's, there's a lot more to to come out, but I would say one thing that's that's been missed is the way in which this clearly raises the possibility of triggering of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And I just want to articulate what I mean by that, which is by taking a look at Article 6. We just pop that on screen, please.

So we've got the the treaty itself from 1949 and Article 6 clarifies the position of Article 5, which is for the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the parties is to include an armed attack on the forces, vessels or aircraft of any of the parties when in or over these

territories. Now, bearing in mind that Ukraine is bordered to the West by 4 NATO countries, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and one other the the IT entirely raises the possibility that that the movement of troops in and around Ukraine and the area to the West has a significant potential to to trigger this simply in a way, possibly by accident. But I think it's commonly assumed that Article 5 relates to a territorial incursion, when actually it doesn't need to.

It could, for the sake of argument, be British troops operating in Romania or Poland, as opposed to an attack on Poland or the Polish people. I think that point's worth making. Absolutely. Now let's continue with Starmer then, because he went on to say this and we'll keep up the pressure on Russia, including further measures on the oil traders and shadow fleet operating operators funding Putin's war chest.

Which is pretty hilarious because Trump has plans to seize what's being described by mainstream press as a tanker involved in Venezuela and Venezuelan oil trade, the Bella one. Except that the Bella one is no longer the Bella one. It's now the marinara and it's been reflagged as Russian. Now Forces News is carrying the headline. Ghost riders arrive in the UK and online chatter suggests something big is going down.

The article reports that flight tracking data and local eyewitness reports have shown that at least 10 C 17 flights have landed at 2 RAF bases, RAF Mildenhall and RAF Fairford and they have unloaded Special Forces helicopters, U.S. special Forces helicopters which have subsequently been seen on low altitude flights. At least two AC130J gunships have been seen. Flight tracking data is showing

the presence of U.S. Navy P8A aircraft flying patrols over Irish waters because the, uh, Marinero is in waters near Ireland's so-called exclusive economic zone. And according to the BBC, then Russia has deployed Navy vessels to export, uh, to, sorry to escort, uh, the oil tanker, umm, And, uh, so, I mean, this is looking very Cold War like in it's sort of standoff between US and potentially US and Russia

here. But in the meantime, on Monday night, uh, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller was speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper and he said this. We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world in a real world. In a real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since

the beginning of time. And not to be outdone, P Texas now, of course, Secretary of State for war is heading around the world saying things like we're re establishing deterrence that's so absolute and so unquestioned that our enemies will not dare to test us. Now He was he said that speaking to workers at Newport, Newport News VA's shipyard on Monday, on Monday, this was he said that he's calling, sorry, he's calling his tour the Arsenal of freedom tour just so as you

know, and of course, he's hyping up the military industrial complex. Let's just give you a sort of sense of of what he's talking about. Have a listen to this. Now here we are in 2026, and President Trump is reestablishing dominance and deterrence in our own hemisphere. You will be a part of that lineage. That's pretty cool. I get chills saying it and thinking about it. There's something really weird about that. But anyway, we'll talk about

that an extra, I have no doubt. He went on to say that the world is taking notice. They're noticing American power, they're noticing American strength, they're noticing American clarity and leadership. We recognize we're the new era of great power competition, a generational struggle to mean peace, intend peace through strength, and we'll rise to meet that challenge. That's why we proudly call call ourselves the Department of War, not the Department of Defence.

Not because we seek war, but because we truly understand that in order to ensure peace, you need to be prepared to deter war and if necessary, decisively win it. Our purpose is not to be reactive, but dominant so that no enemy enemy, any enemy can ever challenge the United States of America. It's quite incredible the rhetoric coming out of him. But of course, just to finish this off, then let's just quickly talk about the Greenland

issue. And before we do that, let's just remind ourselves ourselves of Trump's position. In action against Greenland. Well, I don't want to talk about Greenland. Let's talk about Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine. Don't worry about Greenland in about two months. Let's talk about Greenland in 20 days on Venezuela, by the way. I have to, I will say this about Greenland. We need Greenland from a

national security situation. It's so strategic right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not going to be able to do it, I can tell you. So that's his position. The question is, what's the British position? So here's Yvette Cooper speaking in the House of Commons. The House will have seen recent comments from the United States and from Denmark regarding Greenland.

Let me be very clear on the UK position. Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Our close European partners, our long standing NATO allies and all our countries work closely together on security issues and will always do so. The future of Greenland is a matter for the Greenlanders and Danes and no one else. And Starmer was echoing those in comments, those comments and comments that he had made. And so, Charles, question is, are we are? Where do we draw the line?

Are we going to war with the United States over Greenland? Do you think Europe? I mean not, that's just not necessarily just the UK. Well, those that are pulling some of the levers are determined that we go to war with somebody exactly who it turns out to be sort of yet to be decided. But I, I concluded last year's news on Friday the 19th with what the Secret Intelligence

Service and the Ministry of Defence were saying. So we'll just have a look at the these two on screen now, Blaise Metro Welly, head of MI 6 and Richard Knighton, head of the armed forces. And they were absolutely saying that whilst there's been plenty of chatter throughout the course of 2025, we're now clear there is a single focus and it is war with Russia by some means or other.

Now, of course, this reinforced the narrative of the twin, well, sort of combinations really of the state of emergency leading through to the very real prospect of conscription. And of course this is to sell us the whole of society approach to

war. Now, as far as the media were concerned, obviously there were many people all over this, John Simpson being a notable one, writing here with BBC in depth saying that he's reported on 40 wars, but he's never seen a year like 2025. And lo and behold, of course, he too is pointing towards Russia, saying it's becoming clear that one of them, one of the wars he's talking about, one of the one of the sort of areas of conflict, has geopolitical implications of unparalleled importance.

He means Ukraine. However, he does then go on to think about it somewhat by saying that if you thought World War Three would be a shooting match with nuclear weapons, think again. It's much more likely to be a collection of diplomatic and military manoeuvres which will see autocracy flourish. It could even threaten to break

up the Western alliance. Well, quite where he's been to provoke a statement about autocracy flourishing as though it's as it's not yet happened remains to be answered. But I think I would agree with him about the mixture of diplomatic and military manoeuvres, but also the ceding of power and control to the civilian entities that are providing the means by which any sort of war might be prosecuted.

Whether that is cyber or via space, or indeed via much of the hardware that of course is not yet owned or controlled by armed forces. And on that very question we consider that again. Just before Christmas, the United Kingdom sent yet another package of air defence support to Ukraine, £600 million worth of British made kit. Begging the question. Of course it was.

Sorry. First of all, just specifically, it was Raven and Grave Hawk counter Shyred turrets set to bolster Ukraine's defences this winter. OK, fair enough. But the but the question is to be operated by whom? And when we think back to the death of Lance Corporal George Wholey of the Special Forces Support Group again just before Christmas, the question has not satisfactorily been answered of what was he doing there?

So, so the question now is how is this situation is going to be handled by the Ministry of Defence posturing on the one hand almost Hegseth style, saying that peace through strength and indeed regarding Russia as as an adversary means that we must meet that threat with an appropriate response.

Now one part of this has been what might be described as the somewhat laughable idea that recruits will go through a sort of gap year process that be an Armed Forces Foundation scheme to the BBC here reporting on what the government's describing as a gap year scheme for long young people to bolster skills and leadership. Now when you read the detail, actually it's projecting that 150 people might come out of this by the year 2026. It's not going to make a huge

amount of difference. However, what I would say is that I think it will normalise that relationship with the armed forces for young people. And also I think one shouldn't forget the comments made by Rishi Sunak when he was in office as Prime Minister talking about a a form of compulsory service and when pushed, he said that people could have their bank accounts frozen if they didn't comply with the request for such a service. This could be the sort of the

thin end of the wedge. Not forgetting of course that Serco, who take over the recruitment contract from Capita in 2027 has been an unmitigated disaster with Capita. But of course, Serco themselves are still in the position of recruiting for the recruiting positions. You couldn't really make it up Now.

The next thing is that the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which the Labour government are effectively dismantling in order that there can be prosecutions of British servicemen where there will not be prosecutions for members or former members of the IRA. And the Telegraph here reporting released having published a letter from special forces, former special forces personnel and I'll just take a a brief excerpt from this, which is that commanders now hesitate fearing

years of litigation. Troops feel abandoned. The public smells cover up allies question our secrecy and reliability. This self sabotage needs no foreign hand in this troubles bill. The government is complicit in this war on our on our on our armed forces. So it's really not looking good.

And of course the prevailing sense of the drop in morale from the inside is articulated very well and very sadly by Sean Raymond in the Daily Mail, who's just written an article on the 29th suicide that's taken place within the Rifles. Admittedly the Rifles does now comprise 5 battalions so that is quite a number of personnel but nonetheless a very sad statistic

and and indeed a telling one. Now on the procurement front, the latest disaster is of course with the Ajax armoured vehicles and we've just got a a clip from Luke Pollard, the Armed Forces Minister, telling us what the score is. That means in the event of any concerns during an exercise on use of Ajax that they should be reported.

And as soon as concerns were reported, within 30 minutes of that every, a single Ajax vehicle had stopped being used and questions were asked to everyone involved as to how they were feeling. That was the right approach, that safety measure was the right thing. Now we've just had Andy Wakefield on the programme talking about vaccines and whether or not something should be used on the basis of an assumption.

And it's interesting to see Luke Pollard there using the precautionary principle in the way that it was intended, which is if there is a risk or the suggestion of a risk, then you stop the activity in order to work out what's going on.

That has been done in this instance, but bearing in mind the sheer cost of the Ajax programme and the length of time it's taken to have taken the entire fleet off the off the road is spelling significant disaster for the Ministry of Defence. Or as one might consider labelling them, the Ministry of Pretence because they're putting out the idea that we are ready to mobilise and to fight a war with Russia, whilst demonstrating absolutely no evidence of that being their position.

I mean, Mike, I don't know if you've got any, any particular comment on the way this is looking not just from within the United Kingdom, but what Russia, for example, might be thinking. Well, no, I mean, I would the first question is what, why? Maybe you can answer this. Why is the UK so bad at armoured vehicles? First of all, because we seem to have problems with successive versions of that.

But the, yes, I take your point about the, the precautionary principle being used, that's only ever used when it suits. It's not used with respect to electromagnetic radiation. It's not used with respect to medical products. It's only used in certain circumstances. But I mean, what's your experience with this, Charles? I mean the, the, the the armour that is provided for the armed forces just seems to be subpar the whole time. I think actually it's a factor that that spreads far further

than just armoured vehicles. I mean procurement as a whole. And actually this pertains very, very much to the relationship with the recruiters that you're forcing people who have no commercial experience to try to make deals with civilian organisations. And of course the military personnel change, the civilian ones don't necessarily. So you have an awful lot of people driving a project who don't really know what it is they're doing. By the time the project is delivered, it's, it's by and

large obsolete. You've also got the issue of many, many organisations being involved in the same organization. And in fact, it's worth pointing out that L bit Systems designed the early warning system E laws for Ajax. So you've got Israeli parts in the Ajax fleet, which is, you know, first of all a compromise, but also yet another complication to to the process. Well, we'll be talking about Israeli involvement in another

process later on in the program. But before we get to that, well, actually there will probably be some discussion about Israel in this segment as well. Let me welcome, welcome, Vanessa

to the program. And well, obviously since the last time you were on, we've had big changes, particularly in Venezuela. So bring us up to date with with your take on what's happened over the past week or so. Yeah. Thank you, Mike, and welcome to the new year everyone. Another year of turbulence of course started very quickly on the 3rd of January with the removal of President Maduro and effectively a major aggression by Trump and the US against Venezuela.

Mike and I have had recently various conversations covering a lot of the aspects of what is happening in Venezuela, but I'm going to focus on particularly the aspect of Zionist or Israeli influence on what happened in Venezuela. So what has been the chatter in US think tanks for actually years now? Reference Venezuela is effectively the influence of Iran and of course the

resistance movements. If we can just put the the the article up on the screen, Maduro, Hezbollah, Nexus, how Iran backed networks prop up the Venezuelan regime. This is in Atlantic Council. And this is definitely something that not only Netanyahu has been pushing Trump with regards to the threat from Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, but also the previously Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado, who was considered to be a viable opposition to Maduro.

She's now been dropped by Trump. And then so she was basically allowing herself very much with Israel. Then This was another recent article. There is various there are various articles including in Fox News, Maduros Terror Island, Hezbollah in Venezuela, the IRGC fake passports proxy hub. Let's have a look at the island that they're claiming to be infested by Hezbollah. You can barely see it on the map.

It's Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean there, which apparently now has become a training ground for Hezbollah, which is I've struggled to find any actual substantiation for that claim.

But then, of course, we have to remember that just prior to the removal of Maduro and the attack on Venezuela, after a massive military buildup by the United States under Trump, there was a visit by Netanyahu, who had this press conference with President Trump. And let's see what they basically covered in part of that press conference. You needed a very special man to to really carry through and really help Israel through this horrible jam. You know, these are major factions.

And it started with our negotiation with Iran. I think it probably started with Solomani. That was really where you mentioned that today, which started with Solomani. Bad guy doing bad things, hurting a lot of people, killing the American soldiers and other soldiers. But it started right there would probably be the starting point. And then from that point forward, but you would you have a wartime Prime Minister at the

highest level. There could be other wartime prime ministers, but they'd lose. He won. And I think the people of Israel appreciate it. I think a lot of the people in the world appreciate it, actually. And because of that victory, we were able to get peace in the Middle East. So of course, he's referring to the assassination of Haj Qasem Soleimani, who was instrumental in fighting both ISIS and al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria.

And then let's have a look at what they say about the Abraham Accords, which of course is designed to bring various Arab states under the control or into the sphere of influence of Israel. So let's roll this. Tell us. Something about your plan to expand Abraham Accords? Well, the Abraham Accords are a great, there's a great achievement of Jared and everybody that I mean, it was one of the great achievements.

They'll be expanded. So when he's talking about expansion, of course, what he's also referring to are the Isaac Accords, which now are seeking to capture or a secure a greatest fear of influence for the Zionist movement in Latin America started with President Mile of Argentina. Interestingly enough, Danny Danon, this was the former UN ambassador for Israel, if we can just put that quote up on the screen. Israel has long been a beacon of

innovation and resilience. I am pleased to see that Isaac Accord's initiative get off the ground and thank President Milay, Sorry for setting an example for his neighbors in the region. Now, I find this particularly interesting because, as the following short video will demonstrate, Argentina was actually among the list of countries that Theodore Herzl, one of the founders of the Zionist movement, was considering full settlement alongside Palestine. So let's just have a look at

this short video. Those described Argentina as one of the most fertile countries in the world and said that the authorities would derive considerable profits from the station of a portion of its territory. In the following years, the Zionist movement also considered other territories such as Sinai in Egypt, Cyprus Island and today's Kenya to establish a state. But in the meantime, settlers continue to enter Argentina.

Hundreds arrived in 1889, with the help of the Jewish Colonization Association, they bought land and founded Moyesville, some 600 kilometers from the capital Buenos Aires. At its peak in the 1940's, the colony was composed of about 5000 Zionist settlers. In fact, Moise Villa Ville is known as the Jerusalem of Argentina. So who's already signed on to the Isaac Accords in Latin

America? If we have a look at the map, you can see there of course Argentina, from which the entire project emanated, Uruguay, Panama and Costa Rica. So to the South and to the north of Venezuela, and then basically if we look again, just there's another section of the press conference between Trump and Netanyahu that of course, all of this is very much pushing towards a greater escalation of aggression against Iran. So let's just roll this.

So Iran has been greatly reduced in power, prestige. I don't want to use the word humiliation because, you know, they're trying to build up again. But we can't let them build up because if they build up, they can't be peace in the Middle East. It was a mistake, You know, when they wiped out Iraq. Iraq and Iran were about the same power and they fought each other with different names for 1000 years.

And then our country came out and blew up one of those two countries, namely Iraq. Then all of a sudden, Iran had the whole Middle East all to itself. But that's not true anymore. That's not true anymore. So clearly, Iran is definitely on the target list. And as we spoke about, Mike, there have been a series of other countries within the resistance axis that have been targeted since the fall of Syria.

And I just also want to point out that I spoke to Jose Bio Morghi, the Ambassador for Venezuela here in Lebanon yesterday. Mike, I know that you interviewed him a little while back. He actually is pretty buoyant about the situation. He said on the streets, the government is back in control. It didn't lose the control at all. Opposition didn't come out on the streets at all after the kidnap of President Maduro. There was no surrender.

The Cuba and special forces were fighting and of course, were killed in the attack. And he said that the attack was actually huge, not just the helicopters that were seen in the video, but also a huge number of drones and jets. So it was very difficult for the air defenses to respond effectively. But he is relatively buoyant. We can maybe talk more about that in EXTRA.

But then coming back to the Israeli influence in what's happening in Venezuela, I want to introduce Paul Singer, the billionaire Trump megadono set to make a killing on Venezuela oil. Who is Singer? This is from the article that Common Dreams In November 2025, less than two months before Trump's operation to take over Venezuela, Singer's investment firm, Elliot Investment Management and one of its subsidiaries, Amber Energy linked inked, sorry, a highly fortuitous deal.

It purchased Citgo, the US based subsidiary of Venezuela's state owned oil company, for 5.9 billion. Now Venezuela has valued that company at around 18 billion. So this was a sale that was forced by a Delaware court after Venezuela defaulted on its bond payments, of course, down to the pressure of sanctions on them by the United States because they

dared to nationalize their oil. The court appointed special master who forced the sale, Robert Pincus, is a member of the board of directors for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC. Which is very interesting because David Miller went on to X to point out the fact that Singer is also the 6th largest donor to AIPAC. He's a major benefactor of groups like Friends of the IDF,

the Israeli military. That have been committed genocide in Palestine. He supported United Hatsala, an Israeli volunteer EMS organization has links to donations for programs that benefit Zionist settlement programs in Palestine. So again, we see here the Zionist hand, even behind the scenes, destabilizing and weakening Venezuela. Thank you for this. And just for those who don't know, what's an EMS organization? Oh, actually, I'm not sure. OK. OK, well, we'll find that out

for extra. I meant to check. Yeah, OK. Find that out for extra and we'll let everybody know. OK, Thank you Vanessa for that. Let's move on then. If you like what the UK column

does, please support us. We do need your ongoing support. If you would like to support us, there's a link on the front page of the website that'll take you to the page that explains how you can. Thank you so much to everybody that does support us financially. Do share any material you find on the UK column, website or any of the other platforms that's ours. Please do that. And that helps us deal with the

censorship regime. Now tonight, we're getting very controversial because Jeremy's going to be speaking to Bart Seybrol about moon landings. That's 7:00 PM tonight and well, tomorrow at 1:00 PM, Vanessa and I have recorded the next episode of the Syria Podcast. We're not looking at Syria specifically because obviously we're looking at the implications of what happened, what has happened in Syria globally. So let's let's just have a look

at a quick trailer for this. The UK has been less happy to welcome Middle Eastern Christians into British territory, which is kind of interesting. But we're too busy welcoming the attack theories. Yes, exactly. Syria was a linchpin really for the entire global resistance axis or the remaining independent countries that opposed imperialism and opposed the Zionist occupation of Palestine as being a core element of their foreign policy positions, right?

And, and so that goes from Iran, Yemen, through the whole of the Middle East or, or West Asia, but then also expands into regions of Africa, as we're now seeing coming under attack. And of course, Latin America. Venezuela was an integral part

of the resistance axis. So Machado is also pushing this rhetoric that Hezbollah is establishing itself in Venezuela, that Iran is embedding itself in Venezuela, Hamas is embedding itself in Venezuela, and so therefore Venezuela represents a direct threat to Israel. And of course, I'm sure that this was discussed between Netanyahu and Trump. So 1:00 PM tomorrow for that.

Please join us for that. And then another reminder that on Sunday at 7:00 PM, Jake is speaking to Abby Roberts and painting Abby Roberts as part of the next, This is the next edition of the 1000 Words podcast. So join us at 7:00 PM on Sunday for that. OK, Vanessa, let's come back to you then.

And staying with. Well, we're talking about censorship now. And well over the last little while we've been talking about the Online Safety Act of course, for years in fact, but particularly in recent times, the age verification requirements, this is starting to affect some platforms, particularly sub stack.

Yes, many of us have been remarking on the loss of subscriptions and the fact that sub stack is divided basically into posts, which are equivalent to articles and notes, which is a little bit like Facebook. You can just put out information and receive comments, but even the notes now are being age restricted. Not for everyone, only for specific accounts that are of course dissident accounts and countering establishment narratives.

So this is the sub stock official view on the Online Safety Act. We believe that a Free Press is essential for a free society and that in the modern world, that means a free Internet. That's why we work to preserve freedom of expression on the platform while putting publishers and their communities in control. Right? Well, this is not entirely true.

I mean, they go on to say with that context, the UK is now requiring online platforms to label certain types of content and ask people in the country to verify their age before viewing it with Australia. And Australia is now included, expected to introduce similar requirements in mid-december. Only specific categories fall under these rules and we've shared more details in our support page.

So what they're then saying is this connect your connection with your subscribers won't change and the way you publish content for your audience remains the same. Your e-mail list publishing process and relationship with your subscribers are not affected.

Totally untrue. And so basically we, we've reached a point where thinking coalition, one of the sub stack media outlets, and I highly recommend following them, has basically piled put together a letter to be sent to the CEO of Substack called Fighting back against Substack censorship. You can check it out. It'll be linked to in the show

notes. And basically in that he, he, he lays out the problems that we've all been experiencing, which are effectively loss of subscriptions, people unable to view our posts. Of course, they can still view many of the mainstream media outlets that, that are still contributing to sub stack. They aren't being affected by any kind of request for identification. And the fact is also that if you subscribe to sub stack or if you subscribe to my sub stack, you already have to provide your ID

through a credit card. So why on earth are you having to then repeat that process? According to Ofcom, there's nothing in the Online Safety Act requiring contact that's not harmful to children to be age gated, and there's also no requirement to restrict legal content for adult users. Providers required to use age checks should also seek to avoid unnecessary content restrictions, however, according to a website called Cyber Eagle. Graham Smiths blog on law, it,

the Internet and online media. He goes into some detail about the Online Safety Act, Guardian of Free Speech, and at one point he talks about the Age Verification Providers Association that calls out detractors, sorry detractors, labeling it as an instrument of censorship that stifles online expression. This narrative completely misrepresents the acts purpose and effect. However, as Cyber Eagle says, one purpose of the ACT is suddenly to tackle illegal content.

The purpose, however, is only the label on the legislative tin Effect is what the tin contains. Inside this tin we find substantive obligations that will inevitably result in legal content being removed, not through over caution, but as a matter of what the ACT expressly requires.

And so just part of the latter. That thinking coalition has written to the CEO of Substantive Introducing such aid restrictions may represent a breach of Substack requirement to protect users rights to freedom of expression as set out under Part 1, Section 1 of the OSA. Substack acknowledges the possibility for potential errors and mislabelling of account content.

However, it appears very unlikely that these restrictions have been applied to a group of accounts who, broadly speaking, produce similar content that challenges the mainstream narrative. By chance. In our capacity as users, we have not faced any equivalent restrictions when accessing mainstream media content posted on Sub stack. And he gives some examples. It's also a point to make that none of our content should be labeled as a threat to children or or promoting self harm.

So why are we being targeted? Of course we know why that's a rhetorical question. Oh, by the way, EMS, emergency medical services. OK, thank you. Thank you for that. Well, of course, this was the, this was the the intent from the beginning. That's what the UK column was saying. Pretty much from 20/17/2018 when the original online harms white paper came out, we said this was going to be the inevitable

result. So there are no surprises and Ofcom can say, well, it's not supposed to be used in this way and the people that are supporting the regime can say similar. That doesn't change the reality and and the intent was clear from the beginning because if you remember the idea of what what was considered hot, legal but harmful had to be dealt with. And you know that it all comes down to who defined harmful. And so this was absolutely expected.

Charles, let's come back to you then and bring us up to date

with what's been going on with farming in the UK. Well, we go back to 2025 initially, which was a year of great turmoil and huge pressure for the farming and agriculture industry in the United Kingdom. But you may recall that the supposed publication of the Farm Profitability Review was meant to be in October last year. That was held up. But just before we do look at it, of course you will take note that no expense has been spared in producing that cover image.

The back in November it was suggested that the Treasury had buried the farming report because of the twin controversy with the proposed change to inheritance tax. And of course, the author of the profitability review is none other than Minette Batters, the former president of the NFU. And she was questioning the fag packet calculations that were conducted by the Treasury and Defra in order to come up with the proposed figures for those that would be affected by the

changes to inheritance tax. But now we've moved to the review itself, which was in fact published just before Christmas, but it wasn't time for UK column to deal with it then. It's a very wordy document and a lot of it is very personal to Minette Batters. But she does also have insights due to her position with NFU. And one thing just to sort of set the tone, that does appear to be an interesting point to

make. She says that in in her time with NFU she often got a recurring negative answer from Whitehall if she was asking if farming matters and the answer often was no because it's only nought .6% of GDP. Now of course that obscures the truth of the matter in so far as the rest of the effect on the economy from what's produced and then processed and then just exchange and all the rest of it going right through to the to the end user, she says.

And another point she makes at the outset is that all sectors have in common is a sharp rise in fixed costs. Energy costs have risen significantly since the start of the agricultural transition. And we'll come to exactly why that may be. She then makes the point which of course refers back to the earlier reports on this idea of national security. The government has made a commitment that food security is national security. Yes, indeed they have. And how they're going to live up

to that. And then finally, she says in an age of global insecurity and cyber attacks, building local food resilience is equally essential to support our national Just in Time food distribution network. So what she does in response to setting out these sort of series of problems is to put forward a series of solutions that I think one must be frank, are are not groundbreaking and are not likely to have a significant impact for the farmers.

And you see the image that's on screen in just a second is rather sort of dumbing down, making the whole thing seem rather very you simplistic and and childlike, as though if you follow these simple steps, your farm will be in profit and there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

Of course, while she does concede that farmers have been incentivised not to produce food with all the environmental Land Management scheme, she does very much bang the drum for not just there being a climate emergency and that land owners and farmers are responsible for the solution, but also that renewable energy should form part of the backbone of the

agricultural economy. And if we just look at the effect that for, for example, Great British Energy and Great British Energy nuclear, which has been sort of slowly brought in line with Great British Energy, just just just to remind you of these statistics, which is Great British Energy has had 8,000,000, sorry, £8 billion thrown at it to promise to deliver up to 5% of the requirement for electricity by the year 2035. That is it.

So it's no wonder that nuclear has been bought in sort of slightly under the radar in order to make the situation look better. But of course, things like that have absolutely driven the cost up. Now we've seen this before because it was only in January last year that the government announced very similar sort of

review and reforms. Talking about cast iron commitments, talk for productions, this was 9th of January last year in which they said that a cast iron commitment to food security while introducing reforms to help farmers diversify their income streams to support them during poor harvest. OK, what did they actually mean by that? They meant renewable energy.

That was it. That was their one plan was sticks and wind turbines or some solar panels on your farm guarantee yourself some income, never mind about producing food. We'll call it food security, but actually nothing will really change and this farm profitability review is not really moving too far away from that Now.

The other significant change just before Christmas was that to nobody's great surprise, the government have rode back a certain amount on the proposed changes to inheritance tax. But we'll just look at the way that they word it because they say inheritance tax relief threshold to rise to 2.5 million

for farmers and businesses. Well, in actual fact, it hasn't changed at all yet because the proposed change was first of April. And they say having carefully considered the feedback, the government is going further to protect more farms and businesses. And as that belty was overheard saying, sounds like doublespeak to me because the threshold at the moment is 0. So for the government to suggest that a change to their policy before it's actually been enacted is of course

disingenuous and extreme. But just to look at where that does leave things with the inheritance tax and the agricultural property relief, we see that what they've done is allowed 100% relate rate of relief to be set at two and a half million with a 50% relief thereafter, which means that a couple will be able to pass on £5,000,000. Now what I'd like to draw this to a close with is a reminder that the power lies with the people.

And we've got the grace here reporting that Christmas volumes for supermarket sales were under pressure despite highest ever sales. So whilst the amount of money spent was more than ever before, that's largely an artefact of the relationship with inflation. Rather than people buying more stuff, they they were simply paying more for the same amount or less. Which indicates exactly that.

Something that Minette Batters did not touch on at all, which is the relationship that the the consumer may have directly with the farmer and that that is the way that things would change. And this is something that I wrote about last year on the UK column Farmers protests the wrong target. Now of course the inheritance tax thing is going to change.

So there is now the ability for the public to to dramatically change things for farmers by dealing directly with them, which is exactly why it is not mentioned in the profitability review. Thank you, Charles. Now in this age of technocracy, as we're entering the digital

ID, all the other surveillance and so on that's going on, you'll be glad to know that since we're handing our DNA effectively over to the British government that they have just issued a new cyber action plan. Here it is on screen. Let's see what this says it says. Backed by over £210 million, the Government Cyber Action Plan published on Tuesday sets out how government will rise to meet the growing range of online threats it underpins. UK government plans to digitise public services.

This will make more services accessible online, reduce time spent on phone queues and paperwork, and enable citizens to access support without repeating information across multiple departments. These issues can be addressed by embedding basic software security practices across the

software market. Amongst others, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Sage Santander and NCC Group will come on board as the schemes ambassadors and Palo Alto Networks, as everyone who's been paying attention to the UK column for the last year or so we'll know, is a unit 1800 spawned company. Therefore where's our data going, set aside Cisco, U.S. company, Sage Santander, Spanish bank, NCC Group, well at least it's British apparently. But what?

What exactly will Palo Alto Networks be providing as part of the government cyber action plan? I think that's something that we need to invest, investigate some more. But Charles, let's finish them with electric vehicles. We will and they have been

pushed very, very hard. They've been subsidised, there have been all sorts of incentives and encouragements and the policy is foundering. The wheels are coming off now. The guidance put out by the government indicates that there are going to be changes to vehicle tax for electric zero and low emission vehicles. So they're not going to be subject in some cases to the same amounts of vehicle tax that all other vehicles are subject to.

Now. The other thing, the point to make is from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders who just published a report yesterday. They make the point that although there's been huge investment by manufacturers and there are now over 160 EVs on the market, with at least 60 more due sorry this year, they say that uptake on these vehicles has only risen by 24%, which means that only 1/4 of the models are currently eligible

for the incentive. And the critical part here is that it's the manufacturers that are shouldering the burden of driving up demand and in enforcing them to subsidise their sale by more than 5 billion in 2025. Now this is equivalent to £11,000 per battery electric vehicle registered. And their their conclusion here, which is hard to disagree with, is that such subsidies are clearly unsustainable. So bad news for the. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Of course, this is then intertwined slightly with the relationship between BYD and Tesla. BYD, the Chinese manufacturer now just overtaken Tesla in global sales. And interestingly the BYD, their second biggest market is in fact the United Kingdom. So it shows that wouldn't affect the subsidies and indeed the policy of pushing these types of vehicles has had on the

audience. And I just conclude by referring back to the trade sheets for our relationship with Azerbaijan, because it looked very likely last year and indeed the year before that, Azerbaijan was the route through which Russia was importing vehicles from the UK. But there's been a 55% decrease over the course of the last year. And of course, there is a massive relationship between China and Russia as far as vehicles are concerned.

So a sanctions fail, but also AUK fail by the idea that sanctions do actually do something, and indeed that electric vehicles can be sold without end. Indeed, Thank you for that, Charles. Thanks to Vanessa and huge thanks to Doctor Andrew Wickfield for joining us at the beginning of the programme. We got to finish there for today. We'll be back in a few minutes for some UK column news extra.

If you're AUK column member, please stay on the live stream and join us for that if you're not a member and maybe you'd consider joining and helping us out and also getting access to that content. So we'll see a few minutes. Otherwise, don't forget German warfare tonight, my discussion with Vanessa at 1:00 PM tomorrow, and then we'll be back for another news program at 1:00 PM on Friday. We'll see you then. Thanks for joining.