Good afternoon. It's Friday the 18th of October 2024, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK Column NEWS. I'm your host Mike Robinson. Joining me today by video link, we have Mark Anderson from the United States and Debbie Evans from Cornwall. Of course, now we're going to get straight on with the situation globally with war and so on. So let's look at the Middle East 1st and of course the news yesterday of the the death of the Hamas leader Sinwar as a result of Israeli military
activity. As you can see there, U.S. Central Command very excited about that. But the narrative from people in the meantime has been, well, maybe this event will finally require or encourage Israel to call a ceasefire because they've achieved that goal. Netanyahu very clear that he is not going to be stopping anytime
soon. In the meantime, but as we head back to Europe and over to Brussels, the NATO defence ministers meeting is going on because of course they are trying to busy trying to work out how to keep the Ukraine war going as Ukraine is systematically losing.
So this has been taking place yesterday and today, and of course yesterday President Zelensky was there on the podium with Mark Ruto. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to President Zelensky. Dear Feloni, me here, it is great to welcome you here in Brussels. We last met in London after my visit two weeks ago to Kiev. And of course, we spoke about Ukraine's most urgent needs and how best NATO can continue to support you.
So as he mentioned, he was in Kiev a couple of weeks ago, then he and Zelensky were both in London a few days ago. We mentioned that last week and at that meeting, which the press did get the chance to ask a couple of questions at not very much though, Zelensky was giving a briefing to to Starmer and Ruta about his great new plan for how Ukraine's going to win the war. And these are the main points. This again is being discussed at the defence minister's meeting
today and yesterday. Ukraine to join NATO, permission to use long range weapons on Russian territory, containment of Russia using what they describe as non nuclear, strategic deterrence from within Ukraine's borders, Joint protection by the United States and the European Union of Ukraine's natural resources. I do wonder whether that they would extend that to maybe electricity supply and so on.
And then finally and most interesting this, this last point is when the war is finished, they are saying that they want to replace some of the US, the United States troops stationed across Europe with Ukrainian soldiers. And I think that should give people pause and really ask why would people want Ukrainian soldiers to be stationed in their countries in Europe? We can talk about that maybe a bit an extra. Mark Ruta had more to say.
It was the first meeting when we had Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand participating in this format, a clear sign of our deepening cooperation in the face of our shared challenges. The war in Ukraine has shown that instability in Europe can have far reaching consequences across the world and that countries thousands of miles away, as far away as Iran, China and even North Korea, can become security spoilers in our own backyard. Our world is closely linked, and
so is our security. So there we go. We get to see who the enemy is as far as NATO is concerned anyway. Iran, China, North Korea, we so they have brought Japan, Australia and so on into this defense ministers meeting in order to continue building a sort of dialogue with them in order to keep try to increase the pressure on China in particular. But clearly the war drums, the rhetoric is not dying in any
way, shape or form. And that again is echoed by our Defence Minister, John Haley, who, if we just put him on screen there, is over there speaking to his his Estonian counterpart. Because Britain has signed a new defence road map, as they describe it, with Estonia. This involves cooperation on missile defence, but on other
things as well. So they're going to station the British Army's 4th Brigade, held at high readiness, ready to defend NATO's eastern flank, as they say, in addition to those deployed in Estonia. And so they are going to lead what they're describing as the new Diamond initiative to integrate Natos missile defenses, while also pledging to develop new long range cutting edge missiles, improving the alliances collective air defence and offering opportunities to
the UK defence industry. So we keep building the war narrative and this is starting to have an impact on the minds of the young in Europe. And so this from Germany, this is a survey run by Shell, I believe, asking for particularly young Germans attitudes to various things. And what they've discovered is that the fear of of a wide-ranging war is at the top of the priority list. 81% consider that to be the most serious threat that they see at
the moment. That's followed by economic concerns with 67% describing a fear of poverty. And, and way down the list actually are things like climate and migration. So the war agenda on people's minds, but the leadership absolutely determined to press ahead with it. Debbie, let's move on then to energy in the UK. And in some ways this is related to to war, or at least to to the various excuses for war, climate being one of them. Well, yes, good afternoon, everyone. Lovely to be here.
And we're we're facing perhaps a winter of uncertainty and we've got, what is it, 12 days to the budget? Rachel Reeves, We've got energy costs soaring. So not a good mix. But for you youngsters, this wasn't this long ago. And for many of you, how many of you remember this? Have a look. How much is a? How much is a sack of coal now, then? How much is a sack of coal now, then? 15 Not bad. No, that's all right. Good that.
Coleman always on the streets, remember, but not anymore because as we know and as Charles Mallett has been talking about recently, we've seen the early phase out of unabated coal generation in Great Britain. This was the response to the consultation back in 2021, the industrial strategy, and it goes on to say that basically they were bringing forward from the 1st of October 2024, linking out or phasing out coal.
And also they mentioned they're an enforcement authority which will be designated to verify compliance. And all of this of course has been confirmed by the BBC as they confirmed that the country's last coal power station, Ratcliffe on Saw has closed. And again, Charles's has reported on this. But what next? So the National Grid, well, the national grid's gone green. And this is a little video to show you who the National Grid. None.
So there we've got the National Grid and I think my question is, is will renewable energy sustain US in winter? So how sustainable are renewable energies? And blink if you miss it, but in September this was announced that the new publicly owned national energy system operator is going to pave the way to a clean new energy future. And this in essence, I mean, we'll be talking about it a bit later in the news, but this in essence is going to bring all,
well everybody together. The electricity and gas network are going to be under one roof. This is launched just on the 1st of October and I wanted to look more into this. But as I say, we'll come onto it more in the news. But for now I wanted to see how sustainable we are. So I went back to 2019 to look at the electricity supply emergency codes. So what if we don't have enough electricity? What powers do the government
have? Well, what they say is that they can deal with an emergency or they can call an emergency code in the case of a civil emergency, any natural disaster or actually any emergency. And they say that they could go on to look at unpredictability in the fact that the public may be required to take measures. But what electricity codes can be used? And if we go on to look at in the documents a bit more, it says that they will make a public appeal to to the members of the public.
Please, you know, can you restrain on your electricity supply if there is an emergency or if we can't supply you for whatever reason? So I'm going to just highlight the fact that these emergency codes are in place. And if you just jump to the next slide, I want to just highlight this because if anybody is looking for the future and prepping, and I'm, I must admit I am a bit of a prepper, you can go to this website, whichispowercut105.com.
You can put your post code in. You can see what availability you have in your area and it tells you to prepare. So please prepare to care for other people around you and to share any information you've got. But we'll come on to a bit more about at it later in the news. You'll see why. Yes, thanks, Debbie and Mark, sticking with climate in a sense, but particularly the media's continuing propagandizing, I suppose.
Oh, absolutely, Mike. In terms of getting rid of coal in the UK, the question, of course, is why? Well, our passive emissions, we're told time and time again, are to blame for heating the planet. So this segment I call mass media cartel alarmism. One O 1, The Guardian, everybody's favorite paper 14 October. Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2, we're told last year. Is nature's carbon sink failing? Oh, no. Oh no. Interesting. I'm not sure how you can even
measure that. Continuing with that, just touching out a bit of this. It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, then returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy, Earth's largest migration of creatures, they say, sinks to the ocean floor. The waste does, removing millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year.
Who knew in 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed. The final result was that forest plants and soil, as in that category, absorbed almost no carbon, which seems to me, at least at first blush, to be impossible. But we can comment more on extra if we want to get into that.
Anyway, the 2023 breakdown, the Guardian continues, of the land carbon sink could be temporary without the pressures of drought or wildfires. That's very important to keep in mind. Without those pressures, land would return, they say, to absorbing carbon again. But it demonstrates the fragility of these ecosystems with massive implications for the climate crisis. Reaching net zero is impossible without nature, etcetera, etcetera. We'll keep going from there.
And Andrew Watson at the University of Execter or Exeter in the UK, however you say it, he had this to say. None of these models, of course models, computer models are used in a lot of this to measure these things. None of these models have factored in losses, such as the wildfires in Canada last year that amounted to six months of US fossil emissions. What's missing in all these arguments? Well, let's move on and explore
it a little more. Reuters is hopping on board with the Guardian. World's forest failed to curb 2023 climate emissions study fines. And again, I they're not really very generous on describing how they know how they can measure such things. But the other angle, another kind of fresh line of inquiry and all of this, here's the Arab News, a rather obscure publication. Saudi Arabia, one of the driest places on earth, takes major strides in cloud seeding to
combat water scarcity. And there's a link there that people can utilize to read more about these things. Now, this is out of Global News in Canada. Could cloud seeding help Canada fight wildfires? Well, we just heard from the Guardian and so on that wildfires are a problem and that reduces carbon absorption even more. But now we see that there's a technology that could fight such wildfires, but you never hear a peep about that from the Guardian.
You never hear a peep about that from Reuters, and this is also from Global News. Cloud seeding, which can cause precipitation by human intervention, is an old method, but one that continues to be developed and explored. Some experts say it has the potential to mitigate these wildfires that are reducing carbon absorption, by the way. But more research is needed which is fair to evaluate how viable and effective it can be in the future. Interesting. As we move along, this becomes
more clear. The Guardians reporting Mike is being done under the banner of a long term reporting project called the Age of Extinction. How's that for subtlety, right? It's not like the climate challenges before us or or environmental challenges or something more where we can all get involved. No, it's the Age of Extinction to cause fear, to cause uncertainty. Another thing for the youth to worry about in Germany, another thing for the our our youth to worry about around the world.
A little bit more about the Guardians Age of extinction projects. Here's some other headline samples. Collapsing wildlife population near the point of no return report warns. Again, you wonder very much about the accuracy and you see very little about how they measure these things. Another headline under the Age of Extinction project, Europe was a leader on saving nature, but now Europe's backsliding and that could threaten global progress and will continue.
This is from the Desert Research Institute in Nevada and it, it has some interesting things to say. Making it snow a brief I, I, I want to keep on that, that slide there, sorry. Making It Snow, a brief history and review of the science behind cloud seeding. Clouds, those enigmatic formations of condensed water vapor which drift above our heads and form rivers in the sky. They can take many forms. We tend to think of them as beyond human reach.
But now scientists regularly harness their moisture and pull it to earth, bringing water to parched communities and landscapes around the world. And I've also learned in recent times, Mike, that you can even harvest fog, such as in northern Africa. I believe that's where it's been done. And fog can be brought to condensation and put in pipes, and the water can be transferred to communities. It's actually called fog
harvesting. But anyway, the main point is these mitigation efforts to cut down on drought, to cut down on wildfires are not being reported under the rubric of this extinction project by the Guardian that other papers are kind of aping and echoing. Anyway, all of this reporting, this ongoing project about the age of extinction is happening as the UN Climate Change conference is going to happen in Azerbaijan next month. And I plan on tuning in, Mike,
to cover that virtually. I'm going to sign up. Hopefully they won't kick me off. And there's also two Brookings Institution events coming up, 1 today, later today, and another next week. And I plan on covering those as well as best I can. But there's a little more we can talk about, an extra that goes beyond cloud seeding coming from a former CIA chief in the United States. Hopefully, we can get to that today. But back to you, Mike. At this point, that'll do it. OK, thank you, Mark.
OK, let's move on. If you like what the UK column does and you would like to support us, we do need your support. The place to go is support.ukcolumn.org. There are options to help us there. You can make a donation.
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And you can also look at the comments that are left by other UK column members if you would wish. Now we're very glad to say that we will be live streaming the Bristol event tomorrow. The details are on the front page of the UK column website. At the moment the cost is around £20. Unfortunately because we're using AUS based provider that it's a dollar price but it it works out at about £19.70 or so. Do join us for that if you're
not going to be there in person. I'd like to mention that a couple of people have pulled out because they aren't able to get to Bristol tomorrow. So there are actually a couple of tickets. Available on the shop if anybody would like to get a last minute ticket there, there are a couple there on a first come, first served basis. So if you haven't managed to pick up a ticket for the events to come in person, then there is the opportunity and we hope to
see you tomorrow. Now, Mark, very, very briefly, because we mentioned this on Wednesday, your interview with Daniel New. Yeah, it's a really interesting interview. It really zeroes in on what globalism means and how the way your military is structured can tell you a lot about what direction your country is going in. And it also established very clearly that the UN is a government, not just a debating society or intergovernmental exchange.
So a very interesting, it explores many dimensions and it kind of ties in indirectly with The Who report a guy coming in today in a very general sense. OK, brilliant. Thank you Mark. And also the interview that was that that went out at 1:00 PM yesterday and the excellence What's wrong with Scottish Education with Kate E Deeming
that's up on the website now. So Diane was speaking to Kate about the Scotland's new Curriculum for Excellence, which she says neither a curriculum nor is an excellent. Now she runs a parents group for the Scottish Union for Education. So if if that's of interest, go and have a look on the UK column website.
Now let's move on to censorship and online safety because Ofcom has published their progress update on implementing the Online Safety Act. This is their countdown to online safety as they describe it. And they say two months out from online safety laws coming into force, cause although the ACT was passed a year ago, it's just coming into force now because Ofcom has been going through a range of consultations and and recommendations and so on.
So they say Ofcom has warned tech firms they could face enforcement action if they don't comply with new duties when the time comes. So what are they talking about? They're saying in the space of six months, we consulted on our codes and guidance for illegal harms, pornography, age verification and children's safety and submitted our advice to government on the thresholds would determine which services would be categorized and subject to additional duties.
And I've highlighted age verification there because this is a key part of what they're doing. They are, along with the United States as we will see in a minute, using children's safety as the the main sort of Clarion call for this whole thing. They went on to say Ofcom has already secured better protections from UK based video sharing platforms, including only fans and other adult sites
introducing age verification. So I thought we should have a look at what Only Fans has done, just to to give you an idea of what is expected in terms of age verification and where this is likely to go. So Only Fan says that they use a combination of technology and human moderation teams to verify age and identity of creators and fans. The tools, policies and procedures we use to verify age and identity are always evolving to reflect best practices.
And they're looking for things like a full name, a verified e-mail address, postal address, date of birth, valid government photo ID, standalone selfie, selfie while holding their photo ID, Social media account handles, bank account information and in the United States, W 9 and Social Security number. Now those that's what's required if you want to be a so-called creator on only fans. But if you want to be a fan on only fans, you still have to provide much of that information.
But then the question, if we just put that back on screen for a second, then the question of how easy is it to do this? Well, aside from whether you would be willing to hand over that all that information to this organization, this is just one typical comment from from Reddit. It's so difficult getting it verified. I rarely use XT or Insta. I'm not the kind of person to post selfies every 5 minutes on Facebook.
Unless I find a way to levitate my passport in front of me, they'll have to put up with my fingertips covering the edges. Seventh attempt failed. And so where does that take us? If people are why people are putting this amount of effort on to getting onto that website in the 1st place, I leave up to you. But nonetheless, if people are having to to try 710 times to try to get verified for this,
where do we end up? Well, of course we end up with a convenient digital government issued digital ID, which is really what the end goal for this is. And then coming back onto the issue of of common the report and categorized services. They say that categorized services will have extra obligations under the ACT, such as giving users more tools to control what they see.
Because we've got to educate people on misinformation and disinformation and make sure that they can then implement that at a so they don't see inappropriate content. And then they go on to say that categorised services will need to be ensuring protections for news publishers and journalistic content. We'll be talking more about that
at the Bristol event tomorrow. And the other thing that they mention is that they, these categorised companies will have to produce transparency reports and consistently apply their terms of service. And of course, there could be a a problem between ensuring protections for news publishers and consistently applying terms of of service. So we have to see how that will work out in the end.
But in the meantime, as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the pressure's starting to build on the idea of these categorised services only being the bigger services. Ofcom's recommendation so far is that category one services for example, are really the only the biggest with with more than 4 million users on a daily basis. But a bunch of charities, sorry if we put this on our have written to Keir Starmer really begging for this limit or this size to be reduced to much, much
smaller providers of services. They're they're saying we've got to protect children by, by making sure we capture smaller forums where children might be coming into contact with content that is not appropriate. And as I say, children being used as, as we've mentioned for many years now, children being used as the excuse for that. The UK and the United States have just signed a new online safety agreement, new joint government working group to protect children online.
So this is bringing the British model into the United States. Now, how this is going to go, how this is going to work with the constitutional protections on freedom of speech, we have to wait and see. But in the meantime, in the US, they are continuing to push this idea that children need to be protected from bad material online.
And in order to do that, we've got to pursue things like age verification and all the other protections that are provided under the online safety legislation in the UK and in the EU. Debbie, let's come back onto the issue of electricity and whether blackouts are likely. Well, yes, you know, we've got rising energy prices, like soaring across across the board. And we've also got they're saying that, you know, rising energy prices, people are self rationing. They're turning their heating
off. Maybe they're not even putting their heating on. They're not having hot meals. This is going to have an impact on the NHS. And I happen to pick up this story in The Telegraph this this week, which says blackout prevention system mobilized as Britain battles low winds. This was a surprise notice. And it was issued by Niso, which we'll come on again to in a minute. And it was aimed at the capacity
market. Now, they say that it was triggered automatically, but it was warning that actually people may need to switch things off early and there may not be enough supply because basically we've got not enough wind. Can you believe it? But we'll come on to not enough wind. So Niso, who are these people that issued this cautionary notice that got a little bit misinterpreted? So they're the National Energy
System operator. They used to be the electricity supply operator, ESO, and they call themselves a planner and operator. And if we look more at Nisa, we can see that they're apparently say that they're independent to government. They're a whole system. They take on a whole system approach. They give impartial decisions and advice to government and regulator. Sounds to me like a private public park partnership, right? So, yeah, let's we'll have a
look at the shareholders. So this is the Department for Energy Security and net zero with together with Ofgem. And what are their primary duties. So their primary duties are effectively threefold net 0, efficiency and economy and security of supply. But they also have secondary duties which are facilitating competition, consumer impact, which is a little bit of word
soup to be honest. But are we going to have to turn things off, whole system impacts, Are we going to have enough to supply us and facilitating innovation, which they're very keen to do. So here's the leadership team, we've got the board, we've got the independent NISO board, but we've also got a nice screenshot of the leadership team. And there's a lot of people and I'm not going to go through them all. Please do go and have a look at
the NISO website. But we've got Finton Sly who's at at the helm and we've got Katya O'Neal who's the chief operating officer. So Finton Sly, he's been in the business, so he's been in the trade in the industry for a very long time. He was the director of the National Grid ESO. Prior to that, he was CEO of Air Grid Group. So he is industry and he's an engineer. But here's a little bit of video
to introduce you to NISO. We're undertaking the biggest change in energy for about 100 years to ensure that Britain can thrive and that it's economy can go from strength to strength. We need to make sure that we transform our energy system to deliver clean power. What we need is a single collaborative plan across the industry and to stop thinking in siloed ways across different industry groups or different
types of factors. The heart of Nisa's mission is ensuring that we are delivering for people, for communities, for the economy and for society. Right across the business, there's a team of really capable, innovative people are hugely excited about the opportunity that NISO presents at this inflection point in tackling climate change, which truly is the challenge of a generation.
Fundamental to NISO is the ability to bring an impartial, independent voice into the mix that can really take a whole system's view on the transition, the challenges, the trade-offs that need to be made and ultimately how do we get an optimal outcome for consumers. So looking at the whole system together, we'll create the opportunity for us to have an efficient transition and a speedy transition. That's why NISO is so important. The local environment will be
cleaner with less air. Pollution. It'll mean jobs. And the opportunity for people to see the benefits of a decarbonized energy system in their locality. Now, what's going to be important is that industry and government and other stakeholders collaborate really closely as we move down these paths. Because the answer today won't necessarily be the answer tomorrow. It's about ensuring that whole ecosystem comes together to deliver for the country. Hope we get a lot of wind and
sun. But also on the board at NISO is Doctor Paul Golby. Now Doctor Paul Golby was the chair of Nats. That's air traffic control. He was the CEO of EON non executive director of National Grid. He was the chair of Costain Group. That's a builders, quite a history there, a part of the Channel Tunnel I believe. And he's also a member of the Prime Minister's Science and Technology Committee and the stakeholders of NISO as well.
They go on forever too, Ofgem, government, Crown Estate, offshore wind developers, nature conservation bodies, political representatives, technology providers, trade organisations, and they've also got a lot of publications on their website. So please do go and look. But what are they dealing in?
Well, they're dealing in a change energy landscape and how they describe this is how are we, the United Kingdom going to store, source and protect our energy and our, our environment to make it all affordable because we're paying so many prices. So yesterday we were relying on fossil fuels, power stations, coal, oil, uh, oil, natural gas,
the Coleman basically. And today we are continuing apparently to rely on fossil fuels, which is giving us higher prices, which is why we have to look to tomorrow where we're going to pay lower prices if we have renewable energy. So we'll be looking at wind, solar, bio gas, hydrogen, hydropower. This is all going to be intentionally smarter and flexible.
Perhaps maybe you're not as cynical as as perhaps I am, but but they also Niso have got a lot of roles because they're also looking beyond 2030. So they've got a national blueprint for a decarbonized electricity system in Great Britain. And looking further into the blueprint, you can see that the world is, according to them, going to look very different. Now, the graph on the right, although there isn't a very big distinction between the bold and
the slightly lighter colours. You're the bold colours are basically 2023 and the light colours are 2035. So you can see that the reliance on fossil fuels is shrinking, storage is going to expand, onshore wind expansion, solar expansion. So with all of this in mind, NISO also forecasts for the winter ahead, which is what
we're looking at right now. So they published the outlook for the winter ahead and their key messages that they look at Katya O'Neill very, very generously gave a welcome and said that she was was fairly sure that they could cope this winter. However, if we look at the key messages that they put out, they say they're confident they can meet demand, They expect sufficient operational surplus, although they do note that there's going to be low wind and
that there will be tight days. If we look at the preparations that they're making for winter 2024 to 2025, they'll say that they're continuing to work with government, with the regulator of GM, national gas stakeholders to make sure that we've actually got enough to go around. But have we?
And when we look at the generator availability on the Nisa website, then they're hinting there that late October to mid-december, there's going to be the lowest available generator capacity and we're going to get low winds and they're expecting high breakdowns. So that's really filling us with a lot of confidence, right? But also NISO control what comes through what's called the interconnectors. So there's a whole big website.
Please do go and look at it. Here's the map on the right, just to tell you where we're working with our neighbours and where the pipelines are. But if we're looking at low winds, how are we going to be relying on renewable energy? So if anybody, he does believe the Met Office, I'm just putting
it up for reference. They are actually forecasting that we get a cold winter, frost and fog, which obviously a cold winter is going to mean you increase your energy supplies because you're going to want to put the heating on, otherwise you're going to get sick or get hypothermia. But they're not forecasting winds. And just to tie up this segment, also NISO are very interested in the up and coming hydrogen strategy, which is a whole news
of its own. And if you want to go and look at more of that, please do. Here's the road map. It'll take you right through to the mid twenty 30s onwards. So a big agenda. And should we be prepared for a cold winter and perhaps a dark winter? Possibly. Yes, I think there's quite a few things to unpack in that for extra. So I'm looking forward to that a little bit later, Debbie. Now let's move on to health issues.
I'm going to start off with with this story from the United States. It's quite horrific. So this from this is from NPR. And the headline is horrifying mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say. So this is what they say They're they're quoting a, a nurse. He was moving around kind of thrashing, like moving, thrashing around on the bed. And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.
So this is somebody that had wheeled into the operating theatre in order to remove his organs for transplantation. So just keep in mind this. He was crying visibly because I'm gonna show you an article from the UK column website in a few minutes later, in a few minutes, which which we'll come back to this point. Anyway, this article goes on to say the procuring surgeon, he was like, I'm out of it. I don't want anything to do with it. It was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.
So the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time and she was saying that he was telling her that she needed to find another doctor to do it, that we were going to do this case. She needs to find somewhere else. And she's like, there's no one else. She's crying, talking about the coordinator because she's getting yelled at. So the article that we published on this topic was back in 2018 was by Doctor Mike Williams.
It was entitled No Time to Die. And I just wanted to pick a couple of bits out of this, because he's saying that fresh organs are good, the dead ones are bad. That, of course, is a problem for those in the medical profession that want to remove organs as fresh as possible. How can they justify that? The solution to that problem came partly from advanced procedures to artificially maintain a breathing body once pronounced dead.
The other part of the problem was solved by defining a new criterion for death, brain death. He mentions that a quite gruesome part that I hadn't understood was, well at least sorry, at least an anesthetic as administered to the organ donor prior to removal of their organs, right, just in case. And he says, well, he then shows a screenshot of a discussion on a nurses forum.
And he goes on to say, in case you missed, that no anesthetic is given, only drugs to maintain the body and one other a paralyzing drug called a non depolarizing blocking agent. Yes, a drug to paralyze you while you take the organs with
no anesthetic. And the point is that sometimes that paralyzing drug isn't fully effective and sometimes people are still flailing around as described in the article from the United States. I just want to highlight this paper, which Mike Williams sites in his article entitled Brain death. Should it be reconsidered? Because a large part of what Mike Williams is talking about
is this definition of death. And so just wanted to highlight one part of this because it says also during during the early stages of organ removal lachrymation effectively crying. It's it's tears basically. Obviously there's other things involved in crying, but nonetheless is a common phenomenon. So what this scientific paper saying it's common for tears to be coming from the body as the
organs are being removed. And so the point that Mike Williams was making in 2018 and the point which is again being reiterated by this article from the United States is, is our definition of death correct? And I think there are lots and lots of questions to be asked around that. Sticking with health, then, Mark bring us up to date with what's going on with the World Health Organization's pandemic treaty.
Well, that massive treaty is not done yet and they're they're meeting next month to continue on that. It's been kind of lingering amid their bureaucracy. Anyway, James Roguski, the noted researcher on WHO and the treaty and the international health regs, he got with me recently, he sent me this. I condensed it down a bit. It's an announcement WHO action item on the pandemic treaty. The Who seeks to reach an agreement regarding the proposed pandemic treaty by November 11th.
I encourage you that's anybody reading and hearing this to speak out against the treaty ASAP. He's even suggesting please record a video expressing your opposition to the Who's proposed pandemic treaty agreement. If you're so inclined. Feel free to record whatever you wish to say. Speak your mind. There's no time limit to your video. Post a video on the on the video hosting platform of your choice and send Roguski the link so he can include your video in an
upcoming article. Anybody either side of the pond that wants to do this can do that. There's the link there, a sub stack link to Raguski's website and his phone number. He doesn't mind me giving this out. And he asked, he asked that people text him first. 310-619-3055 is a Skype handle. Is there James raguski.substack.com? That's his column. So that's how people can get a hold of him. But what's he talking about? What's The Who actually up to? Well, this is it.
Back on 20 September 2024, The Who announced government's progress on negotiations for the pandemic agreement to boost global preparedness for future emergencies and they basically
laid it out here. Substantive progress on the draft agreement, increased involvement of civil society and non state actors, and a commitment by all parties to sustain momentum towards the pandemic agreement were the hallmarks of the 11th meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating body, which comprises the 194 member governments of The Who. And that 11th meeting ran in September in Geneva. But now the 12th round, which is what Rogoski's talking about, Mike, the negotiators will
resume discussions at that 12th round between the 4th and the 15th of November. Rogoski feels that'll be around the 11th of November, possibly that they'll finalize this treaty that we've been watching for such a long time. I won't get into all of these. There's a couple quick quotes from whose sources this is from Nina Jamal, head of pandemics at a global animal welfare organization.
There's a growing urgency, she says, for an effective pandemic agreement that does not only prepare us for the next pandemic but helps prevent it, including the One Health approach that we've learned so much about, not all of it positive. And there's one other thing. I believe this is precious.
Matt Soso, an African lady, the intergovernmental negotiating body Co chair from South Africa. She said there was progress on the fundamental areas of the draft agreement between these 11th and 12th rounds or or yeah, these rounds that they're going through, including research and development, regulatory system strengthening, One Health, pandemic prevention technology, supply chain networks and a new system for increased access to
pathogens of pandemic potential and sharing of benefits such as vaccines, diagnostics and treatments. Following nearly three years of negotiations, countries are now focused on the remaining and most critical elements of the draft treaty agreement to protect the world from future pandemics. And she even goes on to say that every country will maintain its sovereignty and will will maintain their control over National Health decision making
under the UN system. That is something that we have to watch very carefully. It's very easy to say, but according to the UN philosophy and the the overall way that the US system works, that's something that they can slip out of pretty easily. So there's a lot of lip service toward national sovereignty. It's not necessarily real, but that's the latest Mike. People can get involved through Ragusi's suggestions and that treaty that many of us haven't
heard about in a while. This is what they're trying to do by the 15th of November, no later. Yeah. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for that. Debbie. You've got some health news as well. Yeah, there's so many health stories to cover. I thought I'd just cover a few today on the news. So let's look at the government pledging further, say, action to strengthen patient safety because we do definitely need
that. Apparently, patient safety is at the heart of the government's plans for healthcare reform. And Doctor Penny Dash has done a report, has written a report into CQC and how she's identified that they had significant failings which hampered its ability to identify poor performance in hospitals, care homes and GP practices. What they're wanting to do is to restore public confidence.
However, the report was so bad that Doctor Dash has been asked to conduct two more reviews to look at patient safety. And she's going to be looking at also the Care Quality Commission maternity program. She's going to be speaking and looking into the National Guardians Office, Healthwatch England, our very own Henrietta Hughes, patient safety commissioner, health services safety investigation body. I didn't know there was one of those watch this space and NHS
resolution. So not good news, but we knew that all along, right? And then another news, another news from Sky who have conducted their own investigation and are reporting sexual misconduct now. This article is really quite troubling. It goes on to say that they're
in with the paramedics. There seems to be a culture of groping, misappropriate jokes, some have been threatened with rape, pressured into sexual acts, 1 even attempted to take their own life after being locked in an ambulance and sexually sexually assaulted by a colleague. And shockingly, 1/3 of female surgeons are saying they've been sexually assaulted by a colleague and 2/3 sexually harassed. So this is not good when it comes to whatever we're seeing in the NHS.
It's bad enough with patients, but we see what's going on with staff too. Moving on to COVID very quickly because there's a new XEC variant that seems to be causing great concern. It's a hybrid of two existing variants. I say that in inverted commas, but of course it gives the authorities a really good excuse to tell you to grab a jab. And let's stay on jabs for a
minute. Thank you to ack Kieran Russ on X who sent me this asking if Bedford Hospital has violated the Nuremberg Code 1 by financially incentivizing people via methods of coercion. Please go and have a look at his ex. But let's blow that image up because it says it's true. Do you know you can win £250? Because if you've had your flu jab, you'll get put into a draw
where you could win your £250. But don't worry because if you've you've already had the jab, if you can prove that you've had it and show your evidence, you can still enter it into an e-mail. I'll leave that for our audience to decide what they think of that. And then anybody would think that Eli Lilly are doing the United Kingdom a favour because they're launching a real world study, which basically means an experiment on the on the British public to see how to this turns this.
I was dreading saying this. I've been practicing it, but it's obviously not worked. Turns a pad tied. I'm terribly sorry. I have honestly been practising it, which is a medication that was designed for diabetics, diabetes two. It's an injection again, it's been proved by the MH. It's been approved by the MHRA and now they want to use it on benefit claimants because they say that because Britain has become a lazy place and people
have got fat. It's it's it's the sickness bill, the PIP, the disability rates have gone shooting up and here you can see economic activity and we're streeting getting his getting his two penneth in saying that basically it's a significant burden obesity. Nobody is giving any credence to the fact that there are a huge number and increasing of vaccine injured. And if you're interested, please do go and look at the Ed Dowd interview that we had on the column.
Who says that you know, when he's he analysed the PIP and disability claimants and we've looked at it before soaring because of vaccine injuries, but now we're going to give an injection for obesity. When we talk about that on extra too. So and quickly on to the World Health Summit because the World Health Summit has taken place. It's just finished. They're very proud of it. 3500 participants, 140 countries, 380 speakers.
And they're ever so proud of themselves because they've had loads of views on social media as well. They've had 65,000 views on the The Who website, 21,000 views on the WHS. But it was a donor event. This was a donor event. So let's actually use the correct language because as you'll see, this was a WHO investment round. In fact, it was a begging bowl. So here's a few of the speakers who said what? Naveen Rao from Rockefellers, he wants to transform global health. What a surprise.
We've got Jeremy Farrah, WHO chief scientist, formerly of Sage, author of spiked, and of course, Welcome. He's been in CEO of Welcome. He's talking of the importance of trust. I think that might be a bit difficult, Jeremy, if you're listening and Bill Gates, he wants to bring together everyone's expertise who can pool resources to beat global challenges. And you know what, I'm just going to flip through the next few slides, Mike, because I'm probably going to get breathless
telling you the amount of names. So do go through them quickly. So we're looking at all of the WH as partners. We've got strategic partners, we've got general partners, we've got premier partners, we've got supporting partners, We've got we've got SEPI, Siemens, Welcome, GSK, Roach. I mean, honestly, just flip through the slides because it goes on and on and on. Rockefellers, WHO we've got the Club of Rome, we've got civil society academia involved, we've
got Mckinsey's involved. There's their press, their media partners. This is just one huge big begging bowl for The Who. And just to prove my point, here's an article from Reuters saying that the World Health Organization are absolutely delighted because they've we've now received 1 billion in pledges for their next budget. And of course this is going to be membership for all the countries participating in The Who. So that's what we've got to look forward to.
And on a final note, I'm sure many people have seen this story. Blue Nose Day. So whilst The Who are raking in the money and telling us all that energy is going to cost a fortune and making us rely on renewables, this school was planning to turn off the heating to teach children about climate change. So they were saying to parents, ever so sorry, we're going to
turn off the heating. I'm very glad to say that they've now decided to do this in the summer term, not in the winter term because of parents backlash. Over to you. Thank you, Debbie.
Thank you. Now, very, very briefly, the government has decided that because the prisons are too full and because a lot of the pressure on the number of prison places that are available is being caused by people that are are on remand, then the best thing to do is to give magistrates the part of increased sentences.
So in the past, magistrates have only been allowed to give custodial sentences for up to six months and from now on they will be able to give custodial sentences for up to a year. And what that means is that the lesser cases that are where people are sitting in remanded prisons, they can be taken out of the prison, sent to the Magistrates Court in order to get their custodial sentence to be sent back to prison again. And that's apparently going to reduce the the pressure on the
prison. So if somebody could explain to me how that works, please do write in. Where does that take us then? Debbie, we've got a final video clip. We have indeed. And finally. So for those of you abroad in the United Kingdom in the late 60s and early 70s, we had a situation comedy called Till Death Ostu Park, which featured a family in the East End of London called The Garnet Family.
I'm going to show you a little clip of Dandy Nichols talking to Eunice Stubs. Those are the actresses that took play at took part talking back until death of Stubart. And I'll just remind you actually that Tony Booth, Lord Blair's father-in-law, also was an actor until death of Stubart. But for now, and finally, it's over to Dandy Nichols and Eunice Stubbs. Christmas ain't, but it used to be. Nothing is unless it's me getting older Things was cheaper though.
Not cheaper. You could get 5 cigarettes for Tuttons then. They didn't make them with fives anymore, did they? Well, you never see them. People smoke more I suppose. Yeah, people do seem to be smoking more since the cancer scare worry I suppose. There was none of that then either. What? Cancer was all TB then. They could cure that now could they? Yeah, I suppose as soon as they can cure cancer and think of
something else to worry us with. My Uncle Wilf used to say he reckoned it was the government used to give us all these diseases. They put them in our food. That's what he used to say. You can taste it in the water sometimes. That's chloride. Well, there you are. They put that in to improve the water. Well, don't improve the taste. My Uncle Wolf used to say the only time they've got any use for us, the only time the government's got any use for us is in a war. Rest of the time.
He used to say we're an embarrassment to him. Yeah, he used to say that they only need so many of us to do the things that need doing, and the rest they'd rather be without. So they spray out food, put things in the water to keep us down. Well, I do it to rabbits. He used to grow all his own food, everything well he could. He only had a window box. Over to you, Mike. Well, there's nothing I can say.
I mean, it's amazing how aware people were even then of what's going on and it yes, you bring it back and it's more appropriate than ever. But anyway, we'll leave it there for now. Stick around for extra. We're going to be a little bit short on extra today because we've got to get up to Bristol. So but stick around for extra. We'll be back in a couple of minutes. See you then. Bye bye.