Good afternoon. It's Friday the 15th of November 2024, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me today, we have Debbie Evans and Mark Anderson. Welcome to the program both. We're going to get started today with Rachel Reeves and her Mansion House speech in the City of London. Let's just have a look very quickly at a couple of things
that she said. So first of all, she said that we can't take the UK status as a global financial Center for granted because it's a highly competitive world and we need to earn the status and we need to work to keep it. She said that while it's right that successive governments made regulatory changes after the global financial crisis, that those changes have really gone too far and they had unintended
consequences. And so the Labour government is going to, the Labour regime is going to address those problems and remove a lot of the regulation that the City of London has been under since 2008. So she's saying the changes that she's setting out today when she made this speech drive will drive growth and competitiveness through investment and through reform. So how is she going to reform this?
A long term strategy to harness the strengths of the financial services sector, making the UKA global leader in sustainable finance. And of course we all understand what that means. This is related to climate change, the net zero policy and so on. So sustainable finance is the way that she wants the City of London to go. And but then she said by reinvigorating our capital markets by unlocking private investment through our pension funds.
So she is wanting, as everybody will know by now, to merge 90, sorry, 86 council pension funds together to make these so-called mega funds and that that that money will then be made available. She assumes, although she says that she's not going to mandate this to made be made available
for infrastructure projects. Now, people may have noticed by now that if you're looking closely at the screen that I have spelt Rachel Reeve's name incorrectly there, it should be Reeves. I've spelt it REAVES because of course what she's doing is reeving. She is stealing effectively people's pensions for infrastructure culture. But just so that we get a feeling for how she was presenting at, I'm going to apologise in advance for doing this.
Let's just listen to her closing few words from her Mansion House speech. We cannot rest on our laurels. Where we have strengths, we must build it. Where we have weaknesses, we must address them. And in everything we do, we will work together with you in partnership, because that is what our country needs to prosper and to grow. Thank you very much. So that must have been an inspiring speech. They politely clapped at the end. Hope nobody felt too I'll after listening to that.
But the question is, you know, what is the situation with infrastructure and why is she wanting to effectively gather up all this cash? I think in total it's going to be something like 800 billion at the end. Well, perhaps this gives a clue what's ailing UK listed
infrastructure projects. This is from infrastructure investor and they're making the point that basically there's no money to be made in infrastructure, therefore there's not much interest in it. The funds that are gathered that are there for investment in infrastructure projects aren't getting the kind of investment that they need. And so they are valued significantly less than the alleged value of the assets, the infrastructure assets that are being built. So this is part of it.
Of course. If we look at this then from EY, UK faces infrastructure spending shortfall of at least £800 billion by 2040, says EY report. They're saying with inflation pushing project costs higher, EY report identifies 1.6 trillion lbs of UK infrastructure and capital projects that are currently unfunded. Now, there's nothing new or unique about this. This has been going on for a
very, very long time. Every year the government publishes its infrastructure pipeline, which is effectively an Excel spreadsheet which shows all the major infrastructure projects that are going on in the country and where the funding for those is coming from. And while all of those have amounts of government funding allocated to them, the remainder is supposed to be provided by
the private sector. And most of these infrastructure projects remain unfunded because the private sector generally isn't that interested. So the aim here is to build these massive pension funds with that are relatively large compared to the the pension, the, the the size of them as as they stand at the moment, with a view to the them being therefore managed by a smaller number of people who may be more inclined
to head in this direction. But if anybody thinks for one second that what Rachel Reeves is doing here is in any way different, if there's been any change with the Labour regime's policy compared to the Tory party, let's just look at this tweet from Jeremy Hunt, who's the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of course, much to welcome in Chancellor's Mansion House speech today.
Broadly, same strategy and approach as I announced in the Mansion House reforms last year and vitally important for UK tech, life sciences and infrastructure sectors. So, Debbie, I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but really it's quite incredible that again we have policy which just seems to trundle on from the previous administration and the UNI party in action as far as I can see there.
Yes, it completely is. And of course, so we're mentioning life sciences, then we're mentioning data and infrastructure again. And I'm going, I want to come on to that. Actually, Mike, are we ready to go on to data and infrastructure? Because you've been talking about it for a very long time. And I have to say that data is valuable. And Rachel Reeves, I love the way you spelt the name, by the way, it does mean thief. Data is valuable and data is the
new currency. It's our new economy, if you like, and data and life sciences go hand in hand. So digitisation, the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes, Mike's been showing you for ages. And in the UK currently we have got 67 million sources of data. That's how many of us there are in this country. And I'm going to ask you whether you are going to sacrifice control for convenience because if we go back to UK Gov. A plan for digital health and social care.
This was the forward by Sajid Javid in June 2022, where he says I am determined to make this app the front door to NHS services. Referring to the NHS app, new functionality and more value for patients every single month. My vision is one in which the app is an assistant in your
pocket. Well, I would argue that it's a spy in your pocket and it's a spy that's going to be very helpful to Rachel Reeves. And as we see on the BBC, we know that patients are going to Get full access to their medical records and their patient records.
This is a digital revolution on a single patient record of the NHS app and of course, bringing it right up to date where Streeting is announcing that diabetics are going to get smartwatches and also actually smart rings, which I will feature on another news, the aura ring. Just don't even start me on the ring, but you're going to have apps to monitor you. So the NHS app is far more important than you can possibly imagine. Here's the website and if you don't know about it, you do now.
This is how you can get the NHS app if you want to. We've talked about at it loads of times before, tons of articles on the column about it. This is just one, the news on the 30th of August 2024 when we were talking about the app. But as I said, the app is way more important than you can ever believe. And I just want to remind you of how important it is to the NHS board and note they're almost salivating at the thought of the roll out of the NHS app.
Have a listen. And the apps focus on people that need the NHS to support their illness. We've got a full program coming up over the next 12 months to move the vaccination screening programs onto the app because we know that patients who book their own appointments are more likely to turn up for them. And the more patients we can get screened, vaccinated, the better. We're putting the digital health check onto the NHS app. I have to, to say to start with, it's not going to be amazing.
But and the I shouldn't say, but I should say hand and we have to start somewhere which is allow the patient to order their home testing kit and send it back. Because we know over the next year, 2 years, five years, that home testing kit will be available on their phone. It will be available electronically. And if you don't believe me, I looked yesterday at the camera that sits by the bedside that takes all of the vital signs of the patient in front of them
without touching the patient. And when you then think about what that might do to the new hospital program and how that tech can evolve. And when we talked about virtual wards earlier on, how do we connect the virtual ward technology into the NHS app so that citizens can use that and monitor their health data. Most of us wear have wearables on us. The future of how we use our NHS app and giving our citizens their their digital account to manage their own health care is stunning.
And for those that don't believe, and there are some, we are saying, I think very conservatively that we want to move a third of all of our health interactions to being digital first over the next five years. There was a remark at the very beginning of that that I hadn't noticed before, where he says that he wants to support their illness. He doesn't want to support their health or support their cure or support their Wellness, their illness. Oh no, absolutely.
This is all about being I'll, this is not about, well, I mean, let's face it, the pharmaceutical companies don't make any money off well people, do they? So this is all about illness, supporting illness, diagnosing bad illnesses. We'll come on to look at that. But where is your data going Mike? Because as we've known, we've spoken many times about it and so is Ben. We all have Palantir.
So Peter Thiel a private company, CIA Connections £330 million contract, originally you know he only bid 1 LB for this contract but looking further on into Palantir, proud to serve the NHS they say. I bet they are using the Foundry key tool. This is the NHS's biggest ever exercise in operational data integration. And of course we come back to the vaccine roll out. But you know what apps are being added all the time and I have to say I haven't included it in this news, but Ping and book is
the latest one. If you go to the search bar of your browser and put ping and book NHS, you can ping and book a breast scan or a cervical smear. Well, my message to the NHS, thank you, is ping off. However, I am going to show you another app that they're adding and this is going to be added to the NHS app. This is the NHS West Yorkshire. They launched this, the support
app for unpaid carers. Please note that unpaid carers, they're going to be in collaboration with Fitbit, Alexa, it's going to be remote, it's going to hold medical records. But let's look a little bit more at what is Care Networks, because this is what they're called, where they say supporting a loved one has never been made easier, but what does it actually mean?
So when we look at core functionality, what it actually says is that they're going to use a secure collaboration, a shared calendar, real time messaging and document sharing and management or of your loved one. And they've even coined the phrase very nicely share to care, which means integration. They're going to integrate this in 2025. So it's not long. They're going to use this for your, for your loved ones at
home. And if you can't care for them, if you're at work, if you're busy, they're going to jump in using home devices such as Google Home, Alexa, AI, personalisation to look after your loved 1. So what does it look like on the actual app? Well, when you go and look at the pictures that they show there, you can see right in the middle it says you can't get it more plainly than that trackers, because that is what it's all about. And what is the integration
framework that they talk about? Well, they talk about this integration. You've got this Yorkshire and Humber care record integrated with the NHS, also integrated again with Fitbit. And what did concern me was a comment that they had on their pre launch feedback, which actually says, I love the way that it takes all of of your information. It makes it easy, but it also makes it easy for employers because many, many carers have to have time off work, have to look after their loved ones.
So there's employers benefits too, enhancing the workplace because now employers who are carers, they don't ever need to get depressed anymore. Isn't this fantastic? This little app is going to make everyone feel much, much better. And there's solutions. So you know, this is going to make a huge difference to the workplace. To point 6 million people apparently quit their jobs to
care for a loved one. Well, you won't have to anymore now because you can have the app and there's more benefits. I mean, please do go and look at this app because really it's huge. But the benefits are that you'll get reduced stress, improved health and your own company can have a branded app. How exciting is that? Looking at the stats, we can see that women are are more often
than not the unpaid carers. So we've got 5 to 10 million carers, 162 billion of unpaid care going on, with over 1.5 million providing care for exceeding 50 hours. Now here's a very short excerpt from Careworks little video. Have a look. And there you go, the music drives you mad, doesn't it? But this is the app that's kind of look after your loved one when you can't. So please, those of you that are watching, if you have the NHS app, would you consider deleting it?
If you know somebody that has the NHS app, would you consider suggesting to them that they delete this? Because this is the digital front door. This is the front door to a digital health, a digital hell in my opinion. And we are giving you the information. This is informed choice. This is what informed choice is all about. So here's the choice. You decide we're going to start an army, we're going to do something.
Every little helps. Can you help us scrap the app and send hashtag scrap the app viral? Please do help because it really will make a huge difference and it will kick the government right in the guts. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you for that Mark. Let's come over to you now. And of course, this week Trump has been announcing his appointment for his cabinet and his non cabinet positions. What's your view? Well, it's a, it's a mixed bag for sure.
The general statements to make upfront is that so far I'm seeing much less of a outright globalist pedigree Mike in his choices, no obvious or detected Council on Foreign Relations members for example, or or any of the other major think tanks from Washington and that greater area, which is somewhat encouraging. We can start with this slide and I'll give some more overview as we go along.
For National Security Advisor, we're looking at an actual Florida Congressman, Mike Waltz. WALTZ spelled like the dance. He's a Colonel, retired in the National Guard, a combat decorated Green Beret, former White House and Pentagon policy advisor, small business owner, author and proud father. The first Green Beret to be elected to Congress. Born in Florida, raised by a hard working single mom, etcetera. He's he has served his country his entire life. This is from his own bio.
He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute with honors, served 27 years in the Army and National Guard, retiring during his second term in Congress. After being commissioned as an Army Lieutenant, he graduated Ranger School, was selected for the elite Green Berets, etcetera etcetera. For his actions in combat, he's gotten 4 Bronze Stars, including
two for valor. So we've got somebody that's got it, gotten his hands dirty, you might say, someone who's been on the ground, who's going to be national security advisor. That's a bit different than predecessors in recent times. His service continued at the White House as well as at the Pentagon. And this isn't a little bit interesting. However, as a defense policy director for Secretaries of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, now, they were very globalist oriented.
Of course, Rumsfeld has been cited for corruption his entire life. This this doesn't necessarily indict Waltz, but it's worth mentioning. Waltz also advised the Bush administration on policy he then carried out in the military, kind of playing both sides of
the fence there. His experiences as a soldier and policy advisor inspired him to write the book Warrior Diplomatic. Green Berets battles from Washington to Afghanistan, and those proceeds went to charity, including benefiting a Green Beret fund. He also wrote a children's book, Dawn of the Brave, a Christian book that teaches children the importance of service, which is notable. We'll move on and start covering
some of the others. Other Trump nominees who, like Florida US Representative Mike Waltz, must leave Congress to serve in these top executive posts. They include Representative Matt Gaetz, nominated for attorney general. He's also from Florida. He's undergoing an ethics probe right now.
However, New York, US Representative Elise Stefanik, she's going to have to leave Congress to be ambassador to the UN for Trump, of course, JD Vance, US senator out of Ohio, leaving that Senate post to be vice president and another Florida Congress member, US Senator Marco Rubio, to be Secretary of State. And he's being tapped for that partially, Mike, because he's been involved with intelligence community intelligence committees and other key
committees in Congress. So he might seem like a strange fit for Secretary of State, but Trump insists otherwise. Now, going on here, this is from the House of Representatives press gallery. And it shows the party breakdown 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats in the House and it has 2 vacancies. For Representative Bill Pascrell out of New Jersey, a Democrat that passed away in August, and that Gates, a Republican who resigned his Congress post to be
attorney general. But I'll note that one of the consequences of the way that Trump is going about this, Mike, is that those that you might call good people, good conservatives, many of them constitutionalists, are being pulled out of Congress, pulled out of the Senate and House positions and even out of governorships at the state level to serve in the Trump administration.
So there is a trade off there. A dependable MAGA America First conservative Republicans are no longer going to be in the legislative bodies to a degree. And that might present some challenges if those seats are filled by rhino Republicans, Republicans in name only, who are more old school GOP and tend
to be more globalist. So that's a dynamic we have to look at. Now, looking at this slide to explain a little bit about how the system works in Florida and Ohio, the governor appoints a replacement US senator who will serve until the next statewide election. Ohio Governor Mike Dewine and Florida Governor Ron De Santis each will appoint someone to fill their state's respective Senate seats until a special 2026 election can be held. The 2026 elections winners will serve the remainder of JD
Vance's and Marco Rubio's terms. That's how it works. Thus, those winners would have to seek re election in 2028. You serve full six year terms if you serve a full term in the US Senate. Both De Wine and De Santis have long histories with Trump, though the Ohio governor, Mr. De Wine is one of the few prominent Republicans who declined to
endorse Trump's 2024 bid. And DeSantis relationship with Trump also has been a bit cold after the two men faced off in the GOP presidential primaries earlier this year. However, these two Republican governors are expected to work in their party's best interests given Trump's decisive victory. So that's how it's shaping up in in terms of those matters. Now, who will replace JD Vance as Ohio senator? This is according to the pro-life lifenews.com.
So this is a a socially conservative news outlet that's looking at social issues. I won't get into all of this. Some replacements for JD Vance in the US Senate since he's going to be vice president include Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan. He served in the State House for more than a decade and became a state senator.
However, he upset conservatives by sponsoring Ohio's version of the Equality Act, an extreme LGBT bill that would strip away protections for free speech, religious liberty, privacy, girls, sports and conscience rights for anyone with moral objections to same sex marriage or transgenderism. See, so there's risk involved that people like JD Vance leaving the Senate might be replaced by those that are particularly liberal Republicans.
Others include other replacements for JD Vance include Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose, Lieutenant Governor John Husted, Attorney General Dave Yost and James Timken, who was Ohio's Republican Party chair for about four years. And so these are some others to keep an eye on. That top one, of course, is a concern given his very liberal views for a Republican. Now, one of the big announcements, Mike, and this just came out last night, mainly in terms of making it official.
RFK Junior, yes, it's true, has been named to be the Department of Health and Human Services secretary. This happens to be from NBC News. president-elect Donald Trump on 14 November picked RFK Junior, an anti vaccine activist, NBC declares who dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump to lead the DHHS. Trump made the announcement on his social media platform, Truth Social. I am thrilled to announce RFK Junior as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Trump
wrote. For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation and disinformation when it comes to public health. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Kennedy himself said We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic.
NBC went on to say that during his presidential campaign, Kennedy developed a national profile for his criticism of the COVID vaccines and childhood immunizations. He's claimed that vaccines are tied to autism. Despite evidence to the contrary, NBC insists the appointment of Kennedy, 70, the lead. HHS ends the ends the days of speculation about what health role, if any, that the former independent presidential candidate turned Trump advisor would play in the upcoming
administration. And Kennedy has promised, or excuse me, Kennedy has claimed Trump promised him control of these public health agencies. And allegedly, Kennedy will come down to take a closer look at the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies that have been pro, so pro vaccine in the past. There's some other slides here that a lot of a lot of this can be looked at after the fact or, or people can do freeze frames or look this up later.
But I have some New York Times listings for the Senate confirmations or Senate confirmation is required for these nominees. That includes Attorney General Matt Gaetz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the not soon to be former South Dakota governor, Homeland Security Christy Gnome, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who who formerly was director of national intelligence and the director of national intelligence nominee is Tulsi Gabbard. Some media outlets are calling her isolationist.
We got EPA, Lee Zeldin, UN, Elise Stefanik, also currently in the House, and of course, Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Junior. And the next slide shows where there's no Senate confirmation required. 11.
That's not listed here, though. Mike is Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who's going to be the US ambassador to Israel. And he's noted for being very pro settlement and very stridently pro Zionist and pro Israel. So it's a little difficult to see how we'll get a lot of impartiality out of Mr. Huckabee. And given the time left, we we can do some of this in in the extra.
I also have some slides on how the 17th Amendment works and how the states appoint replacements for senators that resign and things like that. So we'll take a harder look at that, Mike, if we can and extra and explain a little bit more about how the system works. So back to you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you very much for that. Now, in the meantime, then a news article came out in The New York Times headlined Elon Musk met with Iran's UN ambassador.
Sorry. Iranian officials say the tech billionaire, a top adviser to president-elect Donald J Trump, was reported to have discussed ways to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States. Many people are asking what this is all about. Did it even happen? Now, the United States hasn't offered any kind of confirmation that this has happened. This came from 2 unnamed Iranian sources apparently, but it's being described as positive and good news by some. But the question is, what is
this about? And well, the the suggestion that I have been told is that perhaps Musk, if he did meet with the Iranian ambassador for to the UN, was there to basically suggest that perhaps, you know, sanctions could be lifted under certain circumstances. Perhaps, you know, there there is an economic or a business opportunity there if sanctions were lifted. But the question is what would be the return on that?
And it seems that the suggestion is that Iran would be perhaps taking a back seat as Israel completes the work that it needs to do as it precedes itself to need to do. And that certainly there are other hints that this is what might be going on, because, for example, just today Iran has come out in support of UN Resolution 1701, which is all about creating effectively a Demilitarized Zone along the southern edge of, of, of Lebanon.
Sorry. And so this effectively would be perceived as being a withdrawal of support for Hezbollah, for example. So there's many, many questions to be asked. I'm sure Vanessa will have more on this next week, but many, many questions to be asked if this meeting did happen as to what exactly was going on there. Now, if you like what the UK column does, you would like to support us, the please, the place to go for that is support.ukcolumn.org. There are options to help us
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But we do of course, need you to continue to share our material, share links on the videos and the articles that are on the UK column website. And if you're a member and you want to read the comments, you can get a a link there for that as well. Now, yesterday at 1:00 PM, we pushed out a discussion that I had with Matt Eret entitled The New Age of Sorcerers, UFOSMK, Ultra and the Cold War.
And this is all about the third episode in his documentary series about the people, mostly if not all globalists, who have been pushing a very pro global governance agenda for many, many decades, who seem to be the same people that are pushing extremely hard on the idea of aliens visiting from outside and so on. So watch that if you haven't seen it. And by coincidence, this week there is a second congressional inquiry into UFOs. And we have published an article from Matt on that.
To follow up on that to read that if you can as well briefly, we have published an article by you here. As think tanks create news outlets, old school journalism is dying amid huge conflicts of interest. Yeah. I know I look short compared to that Chatham House door. I am not Frodo out of Lord of the Rings. That's a huge door. Anyway, it's an interesting article in that, yes, over time, think tanks are operating more like news organizations and a
little bit of vice versa. And I think what readers will find that most likely this is indicative of the news industry, the legacy news industry trying to reinvent itself amid falling subscribers, amid falling viewers, sometimes precipitously. So, yeah, give it a read. There's a lot of implications and I think it's largely good news for the dissident media as well. Thank you, Mark. And Debbie, your latest blog is up. It is indeed a bit.
Of a bumper one, a little bit salty as well actually. NHS app, of course. Should we move away from the term care and also transgender. Look at trans species. That's in my blog this week, Tim. Okay. Thank you for that, Debbie. Okay, let's, let's move on then to Brexit without the exit.
And we're going to start off here with the wonderful governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, who speaking yesterday as a public, officially said, I take no position on Brexit per se, but I do have to point out consequences. He said the impact on trade seems to be more in goods than services. But it underlies why, underlines why we must be alert and welcome to and welcome opportunities to rebuild relations while respecting that very important
decision of the British people. The question is, are, is anybody respecting that very important decision of the British people? I'm pretty certain Andrew Bailey isn't. I'm pretty certain this lady isn't that either because Rachel Reeves again at her Mansion House speech said our biggest trading partner is the European Union. We will not be reversing Brexit or re entering the single market or customs union, but we must reset our relationship.
Now of course they have already begun doing that. And so, OK, they're not going to re enter the single market or customs union. But the question is, are they going to build infrastructure, diplomatic infrastructure, which is effectively the same sort of thing? And I would suggest that they are. But really the the point of this raising this issue again is to follow on from the report on Wednesday where we're talking
about defence and security. And so as we made the point RUSI back in July, we're talking about asking what can the new government's proposed UKEU security pact achieve. And the keyword key acronym there is EU, because what we're talking about is defence infrastructure in the European Union being controlled at an EU Commission level. So it's perhaps unsurprising then that this was being tweeted out by David Lammy this morning. Sorry, actually on Wednesday,
apologies. My a pleasure to meet my friend Joseph Burrell. Now Joseph Burrell, of course, is the E US or the European Commission's effectively foreign minister, special representative as they like to call it. And David Lammy here saying together we're laying the foundations for enhanced British, EU cooperation, including through a new security partnership to tackle shared challenges. Both of us are focused on putting Ukraine in the strongest possible position this winter.
And as we mentioned on Wednesday, of course this is largely being driven released. The momentum is largely being driven by the Trump win. But that wasn't the only thing going on over the last couple of days. We have signed a new defence agreement with Romania, deepening, deepening our cooperation as NATO allies. Our nations stand united in support of Ukraine as it continues to to resist Russian aggression. So we continue to build our way back into the EU.
And my question, or the question in my lips is where is Nigel Farage? And of course, he has been in the United States, but he said nothing about the meetings a couple of months ago between Starmer and the EU leaders to effectively bring us back into some form of arrangement with the European Union again. But Nigel Farage is speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday at Prime Minister's Questions. Let's just have a listen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm sure the Prime Minister and the whole House would wish to congratulate Donald Trump on his landslide victory last week. Is that the hold on? I will hear the question, Nigel, thank you. But within a couple of days. We've. Learnt of 1/3 assassination attempt charges have been laid and behind it are Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Has the time not come, Prime Minister, to prescribe what is so obviously a terrorist organization?
And in doing so, not just do the right thing, but maybe men some fences between this government and the incoming presidency of of Donald Trump's, given that the whole of his cabinet have been so rude about him over the last few years. Well, I'm glad to see the honourable Member. Making a rare appearance back here in Britain. He's spent so much time. In America recently I. Was half expecting to see him on the immigration statistics when we see the match. But he may have.
He may have. I did congratulate the incoming president last week and we will work with him. The point he makes about Iran is a very serious point. And we will work across the House and with our allies on it. Obviously on question of prescription, we keep them under review. Thank you. So seems to have forgotten about Europe all together. Now he's pushing a pro jump Trump agenda and focusing on Iran here in this case. And the question is why?
I appreciate he probably wants to form some kind of back channel between Trump and the current regime in this country. But nonetheless, Farage would never engage on this issue of European defence in any kind of really effective way. And he seems to have abandoned anybody that was that is pro Brexit in more recent times. So we'll talk about this much more in extra and in future reports. But my question then is what is driving him at the moment?
But anyway, Debbie, let's move on back to you and testing in the NHS. But you know, but before. That I just have to say that Keir Starmer has spent 60% of his time out of the country since he took office as Prime Minister. Just saying. But anyway, I'm fed up and I think a lot of our viewers and our audience are fed up too because I am being bombarded by texts, emails, I'm being infiltrated by the NHS. They seem to be infiltrating every single part of our lives.
And I would like to once again tell them if it's not through the the app or a text or an e-mail to ping off. So let's look at bowel cancer screening for a start. So according to the NHS, anyone over the age of 54 or between the age of 54 to 74 automatically gets a bowel screening kit. Again, as you said, Mike earlier, this is supporting illness. If somebody was wanting to do a bowel test for me to see if I'd got bifidobacteria, enough bifidobacteria in, in, in my
body, that would be fantastic. But like you said before, we're screwing screening for illness. This is again for illness. But it goes on to say that it's your choice. But actually it isn't because you're going to get this kit sent through to you anyway and uninvited yet again. For me, dropping through my letterbox this week was another letter. And I just want you to take note of the red arrow where it says Southern Programme Hub, Guildford, because that is quite important.
But before I go into my bowel cancer screening programme experience and we will go into it, I'm still shaking. Umm. So let's look at the difference first between opt in and opt out. So what is the difference? Opting in means that the power rests with you. You choose to give the green light. So if you say yes, that's far fine. If you, if you want to opt in, great, you do it. But if you don't, it's sorry,
you're not having my data. However, if you opt out, they say that silence speaks for itself. This is what's known as passive control. We've talked about it before. And I just want to highlight a, a couple of articles that we've looked at regarding nudge and sludge in a minute. But what is nudge and sludge? Because. We've talked about it. Sludge is a friction that makes it harder for you to do
something. So a sludge, for example, we'll come on to it in a minute, is actually you have to make sure that you physically opt out. If you're being nudged, it means that you're being nudged in a direction to take something up or to be persuaded to do something. So for example, the NHS organ donation, right? We've talked about that before and that is a sludge. So you have to deliberately and knowingly go and sign a form to
opt out. Otherwise you're considered opting in and you can register a decision not to donate as well. So I just wanted to know what is all of this about? What it's driving me mad. I really do want to say to everybody, please ping off because it's like the NHS are invading me and I'm sure you probably feel the same. So is this harassment? So I went to look at the Protection for harassment Act because I genuinely don't know. And this is where I'm asking the the question.
So a person to if it's harassment, it says that a person must not pursue a course of conduct which amounts to harassment of another and which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment. So is it part of is it partly harassment? I don't know. Or is this malicious Communications Act where electronic information of any description which is indecent or grossly offensive and you could argue that this could be deemed as grossly offensive causes distress or anxiety to the
recipient or any other person. Or is it spam? And should we be looking at the anti spam law which prohibits the sending of unsolicited marketing emails to individuals? And, and I don't know the answer to that question, so I'm throwing it out for our audience or for any lawyers or for any barristers. But I do want to highlight, as I said before, where we have mentioned this many times before. So just pop it, pop into the search bar, nudges and sludges and spam.
And I'm sure you're going to get a lot of articles including those two. And I've written about it on my blog. So let's get back to the bowel test because I'm only going to highlight the bowel test. It could be a breast, it could be a breast scan, it could be anything. I'm just going for bowl because that's what I got. And I was told, or at least I thought that I'd opted out and I got this letter and this glossy leaflet telling me that my kit was coming through the door.
So let's look at multiple opt outs and nudge theory. Let's look at this nudge theory. Have you got the next slide for nudge theory? I think so. I think we might have a conversation because I got. So yes, we do. I think we do have a conversation. I got so cross I phoned the department, the Southern Hub, to ask if I had opted out to have a listen. No. No, this is in line. With data protection, Mrs. Evans No, in order to remove you from the list it it does need to be
in writing. So let me at least send the letter to you. OK read through the covering letter and then if you do wish to sign and return then you're welcome to. Can I just check does this will this cover me for all requests for all tests? Because I want to be opted out for all of these tests, whether it a sputum test or a stool test or a blood test or a whatever test. No, this is just removing you from the National Bowel Cancer Screening program. So just from the fit kits that we send.
So have I got to call everybody else that's also sending me testing kits? Well, possibly. It really does depend on their protocol when removing someone from a recall list. I can't really comment on how to remove your name from sort of other places. I just thought the NHS was the NHS and if you did it with one then it covered you for the whole of the NHS. I didn't realise that it had been fragmented into so many different departments that you have to opt out of every single
department. Sorry to have to ask you so many questions but I'm confused. No, no, that's fine, but. It's, you know. People they might not want to take part in bowel screening, but they might want to do breast screening and vice versa. So it's it's a personal choice really on what you want to do. But I can't really comment on how to remove your name from other screening programs.
OK. It would just be helpful, I think if there was a generic one where you could opt out from all of them and not have to call, call multiple numbers and try to track down multiple people to try and opt out of. Because it does seem like a waste of money when these kits are just being sent out and they're literally going straight in the bin. You know, it just seems like I don't disagree with you. No, not at all.
So as you can see, I. Was a little cheesed off to say the least, because I thought genuinely I'd opted out. And when I phoned that number, and I have to say too that I did inform the call centre operator that I was recording the conversation and I would be publishing it. So I had made that clear. But I didn't realise that not only if I got to phone the Southern Hub number and depending on where you are in the country, whichever hub you
set, whichever hub you ring. And then I have to get a letter which was sent to me first class literally the next day, first class in the post with a response that I have to send in a pre paid envelope. Look, so that's two first class stamps that the NHS have used for me to send this back. This will be going back in the bin back in, not in the bin. It'll be going in the post box as soon as extras over. But you have to do this for every single test that you're
going to get. And my argument and my question is at what cost? Because I reckon that call and these letters and the postage is probably cost around about 10 lbs to opt out of every single of every single test. So this is a big deal and I'm fed up with being pinged. But I just want to highlight to nudge because the nudge theory
is just as important. Because if you look at something like future health and a lot of people are calling us about future health and they're saying we're getting these requests to fill in these questionnaires and also give blood tests. You can see that over 2 million people now are participating. And they say, they go on to say that they're bringing everybody together. This is the whole thing about
future health. And if you do participate in it, if you do choose to participate, you will be given a 10 lbs voucher to recognise your time and effort. And it's your decision. And this is what we're saying. We're trying to give you some information, an informed decision, informed choice. Do you want to carry on getting pinged? Do you want to get notifications from the NHS app? If you don't hashtag ping off, hashtag scrap the app, please join us. Debbie. Just very, very briefly, because
this is sort of important. I mean, many people would be asking at this point, why would why would they not want to take part in a screening programme if this is about catching an illness early or catching they, they are identifying maybe not catching the illness, but identifying the illness early. So in my opinion. This is about surveillance and I did not if, if I need the NHS, if I'm not very well or if I'm worried I will approach the NHS, right?
That's my, that's my choice. I don't need the NHS to send me tests to tell me that I might have cancer or maybe they're going to send me a false positive. I don't know. But I feel fine. I'm looking in the white mirror and I'm talking and I'm, I'm laughing and I'm peeing and I'm pooping and I'm eating and I'm drinking and I'm breathing and I look good colour. And I don't believe I need this test. And I think it's a data harvest and I think it's a massive
invasion into your health. I'm not, I'll I'm well, I don't need to be tested. And I think it's all to do with tracking, tracing, surveying, genomic testing and DNA. That's just my opinion. OK, thank. You, Debbie, thank you for that. Mark, Let's come back to you then and what's going on in the United States, climate related, but biofuels in particular. Well, what you're looking at? Here is a news clip I wrote way back in 2006 for AFP.
Good news on the energy front. Biofuel Expo, which was in San San Antonio, helped showcase America's alternative fuels future. And I was digging through my files and found this. And I got a little bit curious about how this fits into the current climate change regime that we seem to be living under, no matter who the president is. And moving on. Just a little human interest note, I met the the now late country star Merle Haggard while
I was there. He ran his RV with biofuels and so did Willie Nelson. I attended a concert not long after that involving Willie Nelson and he had Bio Willie, which was the brand name of his own brand of bio diesel. And it was an interesting time. At that time, it was all the rage. So I got to wondering what's going on now. So this is a climate portal article. The link is it is provided there. This is from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. January 9th, 20. 24, So pretty recent, a little less than a year old. It says organic materials like corn, soybeans, or even wood can be turned into energy, either by refining them to produce liquid biofuels, or by burning heat. Excuse me? Or by burning them for heat, which can then be used to produce electricity. Is this a carbon neutral alternative to coal and gas power, it asks. One that doesn't add climate warming CO2 to the atmosphere.
Some scientists and policy makers think so because plants recycle carbon when burned. Plants release carbon, but they also take up carbon from the air when they regrow. And the the vegetation and the plants used for biodiesel are quick growing plant replant. Kind of plants moving on from there. This same MIT release says wood fired power plants also produce more CO2 than coal plants per
unit of electricity produced. So in the short term, CO2 in the atmosphere can rise if bioenergy replaces coal. And other climate emissions are also tied to processing biofuels and bioenergy emissions that don't come from the carbon implants themselves. For all these reasons, how how biofuels are made and what crops they're made of is crucial to their ability to provide truly low carbon energy.
Some studies have even concluded that in specific cases, biofuels may even lead to higher CO2 emissions than the fossil fuels they replace. So it's it's a mixed bag here. It goes on to say to measure the emissions associated with bioenergy, scientists must first calculate the emissions associated with their production, with their transport and their processing. That includes emissions from the farm machinery used to harvest them and the gasoline burn to move them to a processing facility.
In some cases, it can also include the fossil fuels used to run the processing plant. But I would add, Mike, that those same arguments can be made about electronic vehicles. Electric vehicles, there's a lot of conventional energy used to make them that is so-called threatening to the to the climate and and has a lot of CO2 emissions. So there's some kind of double thing going on there.
This I won't get into details. This is an Indian study from 2016 that also gives a nuanced view that biodiesel in some cases may be more, may emit more CO2. However, if if it's done right, it may, it might actually have less so-called a global, global greenhouse gas emissions. So there seems to be kind of a reconsideration of biodiesel and biofuels to a point here, but it's just interesting to see whether they'll actually make it back into the debate or not.
Right now at MIT, I'll just briefly note that they're having a program December 4th, debriefing COP 29, Thursday, November 14th. Just recently, yesterday, they had the EU ambassador to the US talking about a climate change. And then they also had the MIT great, great climate policy debate also yesterday. I didn't see anything there about biofuels yet, but we'll see if biofuels will become a
part of of our lexicon of fuels. One thing I would note in closing, Mike, is that biofuels are used to a limited degree at the gas pumps in the US for diesel fuel, and the ethanol is often added to gasoline in the US.
And if it's so important to have less carbon emissions, if that's so important, it would be a lot less of a transition to the American economy and probably around the world if biofuels were used, because that would require a far less dramatic change in our fuel infrastructure compared to electric vehicles, a much easier transition if these things have
to be done. So biofuels perhaps since they're used minimally will make something of a comeback and we'll see if that happens compared to electric vehicles, which would of course require a much more dramatic change in our infrastructure. So this is an evolving thing to keep an eye on, Mike. So we'll come back to you now.
Yeah, Mark are. You not, are you not concerned that if there was any kind of serious move towards biofuels, you're effectively having to grow the the product for that which is replacing food production? Well. I don't know how much it would impact food production. That would depend on other land use policies, rapid urbanization due to global cities that would eat up more farmland on the periphery of cities. There's a lot that would go into that.
It is a concern. I just don't know what all the policies would be and exactly what impact that would have. That remains to be seen. Okay, thank you. Mark Okay, let's move on then to the Don Sturgis inquiry. So here it is. This is the independent inquiry into the Don's, the circumstances of Don Sturgis death in Salisbury on the 8th of July 2018. Of course, the allegation is that Don Sturgis passed away as a result of Novichok poisoning. Now we've mentioned this a
couple of weeks ago. There have been hearings going on which had been streamed onto YouTube with a 10 minute delay and so on. But this week, this past week, we get into the secret Squirrel hearing. So there's no streaming of this whatsoever and very little mainstream media coverage or any media coverage there is. There has been some as we'll see in a second.
But if we look at who we've had speaking this week or giving evidence this week, we've had Sally Davies, we've had Commander Dominic Murphy who was investigating the response to the script ALS. We have someone from Porton Down merely known as MK26 and we have had a number of others and so on, as you can see on screen there at the moment.
But anyway, the point here is Sally Davies apparently according to mainstream press and the the little coverage about what she said, has said that she experienced nightmares following the Skripal poisoning, originally because she was really worried about someone picking up discarded nerve agent after Skripal. The Skripals were poisoned, she
said. And she, so she was worried about this and she was particularly worried because Russian agents had been involved and she said that she was concerned about the disposal by foreign agents of any residual nerve agent and whether they had disposed of the residual nerve agent. So that's very surprising because we've shown the video a couple of times.
We've seen the quotes multiple times of her explaining what to do in the event that you thought you had come into contact with Novichok, which was to take your clothes and put them in the washing machine or to wipe down your stuff with with baby wipes and so on. So she didn't seem to be expressing any concern at the time, but now it's all about nightmares. But then we had this individual MK26 who has apparently been where it was apparently working for DSTL at Porton Down for the 20 years.
And. He was saying that a sample the size of 1/3 to the 6th of a grain of salt could have been fatal. A fatal human dose. And so he was asked if the bottle of Nova chocolate that killed Dawn Sturgis was the same one that was used in the Skripal poisoning several months before. And he said, I think I've tried to express my uncertainty because it's unclear exactly what the circumstances were of finding that bottle and the
assembly of that bottle. And so without that information, it's not possible to exclude that there were two bottles. But there seems to be a strange confusion here because when we look back at the media coverage at the time, Charlie Rowley, Dawn Sturgis's boyfriend, was very, very clear that the bottle was in a sealed box. The bottle that Dawn Sturgis came into contact with was in a sealed box. So how could that have been the bottle that was used?
Is it even a question that that was the bottle that was used to poison and inverted commas the scribal's door. So this week has been very, very interesting with the little bit of information that we've got out of the the Don Sturgis inquiry so far as they hold these hearings in secret.
But the holes in the story continue to be exposed and well, again, if you aren't following this story or you'd like to see the background to get onto the UK column website, search for the day of the Skripal and we will just leave you with this question. Where are the Skripal? So still needs to be asked because they aren't appearing at the inquiry into the death of Don Sturgis. There was apparently a statement read out, but who wrote that?
We've no real idea. But anyway, we got to leave that there for now. There'll be much more on this as more information comes out, but Debbie, let's just end with a couple of finalies. Oh yes. Let's I just want to thank our wonderful viewers. You know, everybody's doing so much behind the scenes. If you don't think anything's happening, it really is behind the scenes. This is Hermein, one of our wonderful viewers. He's originally from the Netherlands, now lives in the UK.
And she gets this little white board look and she's clips it to the front of her shopping trolley and then she writes a message and she just changes it. You know it could. Be you are being lied to. It could be. Watch UK column news at Friday or on Wednesday or Monday at 1:00. Just such a great idea. Grab yourselves a whiteboard. Thank you, Hermene. Well done. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And you know what?
If you're in charge of the country and you're in charge of that, you know, that little button that everybody's talking about, what would you do? Let's have a look at Yes, Prime Minister. You don't need to worry. Why should the Russians annex the whole of Europe? They can't even control Afghanistan now. If they try anything it will be salami tactics. Salami tactics slice by slice, one small piece at a time. So will you press the button if they invade W Berlin?
It all depends on what scenario. 1 riots in West Berlin, buildings in flames. East German fire brigade crosses the border to help. Would you press the button? The East German police come with them. The button, then some troops, More troops just for riot control, they say. And then the East German troops are replaced by Russian troops button. Then the Russian troops don't go. They are invited to stay to support civilian administration.
The civilian administration closes roads and Tempelhof airport. Now you press the button. Scenario Two Russian army manoeuvres take them accidentally on purpose across the West German frontier. Is that the last resort? No, right. Scenario 3 Suppose the Russians have invaded and occupied West Germany, Belgium, Holland, France. Suppose our tags and troops have reached the English Channel. Suppose they are poised for an invasion. Is that the last resort? No. Why not? We'd only fight a.
Nuclear war to defend. Ourselves. How could we defend ourselves by committing suicide? I hope that's for everybody in a slightly lighter mood for the weekend. Thank you, Debbie. Thank. You let's we've got to leave it there for today. I'm going to say thank you to Debbie and Mark for joining us today. We'll have much more to talk about on extra in a couple of minutes if you're AUK call member. Otherwise, have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday as usual. Bye bye.