UK Column News Podcast 31st March 2025

Good afternoon. Today is Monday, the 31st of March 2025, just after 1:00. Welcome to UK column News. I'm your host, Brian Garish, delighted to have Ben Rubin with me here in the studio. And we have Diane Rasmussen Mcaddy joining us by Livelink from Scotland.

Well, today we're going to get started with really the March to war very serious times for UK. And let's just have a look at some of the propaganda that's been unleashed on the nation in order to get us into war. Or better place to start than with Keir Starmer addressing the troops? I'm really clear in my mind that if there is a deal, and I hope there is, everybody wants a peaceful outcome, a lasting peace, not least the Ukrainians. But that will only be lasting,

that will only be peaceful. It will only leave Ukraine secure and sovereign if there is security arrangements in place to ensure that if there's a deal, it is a defended deal. And that's why the work that we're doing here is so important. We know one thing that for certain, which is a deal without anything behind it, is something that Putin will breach. We know that because it's happened before and I'm absolutely clear in my mind it will happen again. Well, Ben, I don't know about

you. I find that sort of thing very difficult to watch because he's using the military personnel behind him as a prop for him, his image. But of course his real objective is to continue the war with the Russians. He doesn't want the peace. This is very clear. And of course, most of those military personnel will simply have a head full of the briefings that they've had from within the Ministry of Defence and of course by Defence Intelligence.

We're going to be coming on to DI in a moment. But so I've got a second clip of Keir Starmer, and in this one, well, he's quite wobbly over something which is very simple, and I think there's a reason why. Let's have a look. Now it's not the time for pulling back or weakening on sanctions.

On the contrary, now is the time for increasing sanctions on Russia to get them to the table, to these negotiations, to the hope of a ceasefire and a long and a lasting and secure a ceasefire that preserves the security and sovereignty of Ukraine. I found that very interesting, Ben. He stumbles over what should have been an easy statement to do with the root for peace. And I think this is because he hasn't got it in his mind.

So it's a scam upfront that Keir Starmer is working to for cessation of the hostilities, the brutal deaths on the front line in Ukraine. He mixes up his words because his real objective is to keep that war going so that he can try and strengthen the UK's position in in Ukraine and the position of the Western forces. Now the next image will pop up on slide, but I have to qualify it because this is not the

genuine BBC News headline. They had a very soft headline here saying that Germany had decided to forget its history, when the reality is that Germany's apparently decided to forget 2 million World War 2 dead. That's that's basically German soldiers dead on the Eastern Front and 3.4 million wounded. And Germany is now preparing for Round 2. And I'm just going to bring in the journalists from this article is Sarah Rainsford.

This is the lady who was actually kicked out of Russia as a result of the Russians pushing back against what they regarded as subversion by British authorities in the in Russia itself. And she felt very aggrieved by this. But the reality was that the Russians had had enough of soft propaganda.

But basically in the article, there's no mention of BBC Media Action. That's the BBC charity's work within Ukrainian society to reframe Ukrainian society in the woke model of UK in the West. And of course that is also soft subversion by BBC Media Action. Now what the BBC article did go on to say is that we should, well we should really take account of what Charlotte and Ludwick had to say because in the article these two 18 year olds, and I'm going to say

innocence in the game, they apparently see the need to boost defence spending in Germany. So the BBC would have us in UK believe what these two very, very young people have to say in Germany in order that we're going to help the Germans push through defence spending, presumably to kick off the next round on the Eastern Front. But of course, what do this young, what do the this young man and lady know? Nothing due to their age and certainly only what they've been

told. So the BBC soft propaganda being thrown down the throats of people in UK in order to get the war. And this was the the number of the article. It was the head of the Bundeswehr, General Karsten Brewer, and he's saying quite simply to the German people, Are you ready for war? And the BBC article even mentions the fact there's been some criticism of this man because he's been travelling around in local areas telling people that they need to prepare

for war. Some people have pushed back and said he's scaring them. So I'm just going to bring that up on screen. But this German senior military officer is calling for subscription in Germany in order to have a massive boost in numbers for the German army because he says prepare for war. But here in UK, of course, we've got our own politicians clamouring for war and no better place to go than Mr Elwood's. Let's remind ourselves of what he was saying just a little while ago.

Do you feel that the time for debate is actually passed? Is that what you're saying, that it's not really a question of opinion now, it's simply a matter of we have to get boots on the ground and therefore we have to have conscription? Yes, I mean, that's the backdrop to this is that we've entered a new era of insecurity. Our world is getting more dangerous, not less. Russia's aggression is rising. It's increasingly backed by China.

The United States is actually dialling back from its interests in Europe and we are increasingly vulnerable and we must prepare. There's been a big debate about increasing defence spending to 2.5%. We can't afford to keep a large standing army, so this is all about increasing our national readiness, this latent capability that we can tap into at any time.

Latent capability, Ben. What he's talking about is sending young men and women to the slaughter on the Eastern Front. But Tobias is considerably younger than I am. He's a big man. He's done his military training, including with reserve special forces positions, as I understand it. So my question is, Mr Elwood, why don't you go to the front and help the Ukrainians fight the Russians on the front lines? Is that an unreasonable request, do you think, Ben?

I think that sounds about right, Brian. Latent capability, that's an astonishing term. It's a new one to me. Have you have you heard that before? I I haven't, but it is so unbelievably callous because as I say, that capability is to send young British men and women to the slaughter on on the Ukrainian front as part of UK's proxy war. Now, if you want to know how this scene has been set up, let's just have a look at some of the things that the Ministry

of Defence is putting out. This is utter propaganda, but just think of this post. It's what the defence spending increase means. And defence spending increase is all based on the need to continue the proxy war against Russia. But look at what they're saying. More sorry homes fit for heroes, more innovative equipment driving jobs and growth in the economy. So if we prepare for war, we're going to get better homes and better jobs and a better economy.

There seems to me to be a few weaknesses in this mad and very dangerous philosophy. But if we get deeper into who's supposed to monitor and control not only effectively the intelligence services, but the Ministry of Defence and their relationship with intelligence, we come to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. Now their reports are well behind and there's a reason for

that. In fact, this is one of the issues that I'm going to be touching on at the On Location conference in Cheltenham this weekend. So if you haven't got a ticket, you might like to purchase a ticket from us. But if we get deeper into what they're talking about here is Defence Intelligence itself. Look at this incredible budget, £371 million and amongst other things, what's this organisation doing? Well, I've labelled this from analysis to propaganda.

So it says that Defence Intelligence has apparently provided substantial analysis and assessment on Russians invasion of Ukraine, providing forewarning of Russians intent to customers across government customers. It's being provided to customers across government, to international partners, to parliamentarians and the general

public. General public of course come last and then DIS work has informed decisions made by ministers and armed forces chief chiefs on the U KS posture towards Russia and the provision of lethal and non lethal aid to Ukraine. Nothing about British soft power undermining Ukrainian society and antagonising the Russians to help ferment the war. But this is the killer information here. It says some of D is reporting has been produced for public release.

The impact of D is daily. Daily Ukraine Twitter campaign with an unprecedented level of activity and presence on Twitter was substantial in terms of penetration. This has become the best performing social media campaign of the Ministry of Defence. Well, I've been talking about that Twitter campaign for a very long time. It's sheer propaganda. Let's remind ourselves by having a look at a few of their clips. We believe in you.

You are our hope. We are fighting to survive, just we don't have any, any other choice. If we won't fight, we won't live like as a nation, as a country, we will disappear. So this is all emotion. This is playing on the heartstrings of the nation in UK, with no detail about how the war in Ukraine was created and fermented. Let's have a look at another clip here where we're praising ourselves for training people to go and be slaughtered on the Eastern Front.

Thank you. And I'm going to play two more just to really emphasise what has been thrown at the UK population in the so called penetration of this defence intelligence campaign. And this was complete nonsense about Russian casualties. Let's have a look at this Ministry of Defence cartoon. So None. for those of you just listening in, what was being shown was a cartoon conveyor belt of Russian troops simply being slaughtered and dropping off the end of the conveyor belt.

When in fact, the way that the Russians have plagued the Ukrainian war has been very careful husbandry of manpower on the battlefield because the overall casualties on both sides have been so high. And the last one is a pathetic clip claiming a while ago that the Russians were going to lose because they were going to run out of water. So that one talking about the Russians having to drink out of puddles in order to prosecute the war because they're so incompetent. Sheer nonsense, utter

propaganda. But the truth is coming to the surface. And thank you very much to the viewer pointed me to this Telegraph article when we've got facts now coming to the surface. British commandos help bring the CIA into the heart of the Ukraine war and was talking about Ben Wallace being accused of ordering the sacking of a Ukrainian general. So no doubt who's been running the battle and who's been following the orders.

But if we get into the text here and the investigation by the paper is saying that they've they've conducted 300 interviews with government, military and intelligence sources. And the key point here is that they say that according to the investigation, Britain placed small teams of officers in Ukraine, unlike the Americans. And so basically we put small groups of officers who were fighting the war with and for the Ukrainians. They were spread across the

country. And this gave British military planners relatively more clout over the Americans. But an earlier report I had of this article, you can see part of the headline, the CIA and the heart of the Ukraine war, the investigation into UKUS operation to aid Kiev, raises concerns that the West is fighting a, quote, proxy war with Russia. And this is the absolute truth. And if we bring in this one here, this is going back to 2022 again, we can see the British military being used and to

prosecute the war. And if I come in to to end on this one, basically, I, I was stunned at this image where we see the defence secretary and Radikkin and politicians laughing and joking at the sight of a drone, which of course is ultimately going to be killing and maiming people on the front. So they want to go to war, but it's a joke. They're like children with a new toy.

I think we'll leave it there. But I think it's clear that the country at the moment is in the hands of some very dangerous people and they're objected. Objective, if the public allows it, is war. Diane, welcome to the news. Take us into a new subject. But I think I'm right in saying that fear is still part of what you're seeing here.

Thanks Brian and hello, Ben. Happy to be here today. So yeah, I have a report on an exhibition that's that was called Injecting Hope, but I'm going to call it Injecting Fear. And the reason for this is the topic of the exhibition is called The Race Free COVID-19 Vaccine, originally curated by the Science and Industry Museum in London. And it's travelling around the UK. Currently it's up here in Edinburgh and it's at the National Museum of Scotland until the 27th of April, in case

you really want to see this. But trust me, I wouldn't, so you don't have to. It's part of a project with museum museums in India and the Guangdong Science Centre in China, and this has been going around since 2022 and it's free to enter. So I decided to visit the exhibition. I wouldn't have paid for this. It was my birthday on Friday, so I guess I was hoping I would inject some hope into myself. But really I just had anger and fear injected by the time I left, honestly.

Let's go through my visit to the exhibition first with some footage that I took there, and then I will give my report on it. So I've got a picture here of the entrance of it as well, the entrance going into the museum, all of this propaganda, the yellow slide and everything. So once you go into the zip exhibition itself, once you pass into the front doors, you see this injecting hope and big

scary red letters. There's a photo of me standing next to it, as well as the the start of a lot of the propaganda that I've went through all the way through the whole thing. Another photo here showing me standing next to another piece of propaganda that's to the right of that propaganda saying stay home, essential travel only and save lives. And I don't know if you can see it, but I was wearing my UK column hoodie. It was very nice to be able to wear that inside this exhibition.

So where have you passed through that? There's a gauntlet of dystopian propaganda to get to the exhibition, and that's a photo of it. I made a video of what it actually sounds like he feels like, so if we can play that video now please. None. Every single day. Monday's Friday. Diane, if I can, Diane, if I can just come in there. I'm looking at that. Am I seeing images on a ceiling as well?

There's a lot of images being thrown at young people, children, whoever's goes into that exhibition. Yes, absolutely. On the there's the photographs or the the different monitors, I guess they are with playing all those videos on both sides of you walking through that hallway and up on the ceiling, which that's why I tried to get that into the video. So you're basically surrounded everywhere except the floor through all of this, this, this

horrible propaganda. And I can guarantee you there's no UK column anywhere in any of the screens. So by the time you pass through that you have to get through all of those, those entry stages to get into the exhibition itself. And this, you know, you can, I've got some links in the show notes if you want to read more about it. But it's basically got objects that were collected during the

so called peak of the pandemic. So called highlights include the vial of the first COVID-19 vaccine to be administered worldwide. So you can see the needle, different, different items and artwork and so on. So what I did is I have a whole bunch of photos that I took and I've put together this into a just under 2 minute video.

And in the background I recorded at the end of the exhibition there's a recording of a book called I Remember by Alec Finley, which is a book long, a very long communal memory of the pandemic and composed for Scotland Cove Memorial, which is in Pollock Country Park in Glasgow. And it's an entire book. But basically they're playing Robert Carlyle, who was the one of the actors in Trainspotting reading from the book. So I've put together this video.

It goes very quickly, but you'll get a feel for what it was like to be done. I remember the phone with Steve anger that they were forced to take their daughter home to die rather than believe it was this not. I remember the tears that flowed when my car showed me the compassion that couldn't show myself. I remember the support of my colleagues so kindly made me

cry. I remember the clap of honour given to the many volunteers they filed through the Lincoln corner of the Glasgow London firm ME. I remember the exhaustion of sleep deprivation in my hospital bed from endless salon within the fly. I remember the sound of my daughter's voice through the door. Found a help, me say. I remember the triage knows family to die at home instead of

hospital. I remember talking on the phone to my brother in law and him describing how at the height of his battle with COVID he didn't know what century he was running out. I remember the texture of the paint in the blood. I remember scarcely son pickup is down from the doorstep. The thin weeded body and gaunt face of my brother form after him during the 10 days in HDU. Diane, the comments are a surreal hell.

Yeah, that seems accurate. One of the things I want to say as well about the Scottish version, and I've got an article about this that the Times reported, I believe this one's from the 8th of 8th of March, where there's a Scottish Tory MSP who's Stephen Kerr, who's really upset about the propaganda that's being displayed.

And it's it's created a bit of a political issue up here in Scotland because basically it's saying that Scotland was showing the SNP as being sort of the saviours and it neglected the U KS role in the pandemic. Never mind the fact that, you know, with all of the, the propaganda itself.

And a quote from this article from this Tory MSP, you know, he sort of said, well, this is an obscene piece of nationalist agitprop deliberately distorting history to fit a fake news agenda and called for its contents to be reviewed

urgently. And Professor Richard Enos, the chair of Common Algendra, which of course is my committee, as I've said previously, and he's been on the news previously, he has written a review of the exhibition which is on our Common Algendra Substack. You can read the whole thing. It will be in the show notes. He agrees with Steven Kerr's

view. Richard said in his review that he encourages the keeper of the Museum to question whether a National Museum should be showcasing an exhibition that has been created and funded by charities allied to powerful pharmaceutical business interests to spread their desired message. The National Museum of Scotland should not be presenting propaganda as science.

And not to go too far into the the details of the funding, but it is important to note that it basically was Co funded by Welcome and the whole the Whole Family Foundation. So Welcome is owned by Glaxo pharmaceutical company with a huge investment portfolio and the whole Family Foundation has promoted this as well. They belong to the trustee, the

whole family. Yong Ho, one of the trustees is a Co founder of an investment company called Capula Investment Management LLP, which is a global investment company and

they have offices worldwide. And prior to founding Capula, he worked at JP Morgan. So when I went into this exhibition and I was expecting to be angry because using public money to promote propaganda, but I left even angrier because I found out that basically it's another public private partnership meant to increase, you know, the, the, the, the corporate corruption that we see within the, the vaccine industry and everything else, all the money that was made surrounding

the pandemic, Brian. Diane, thank you very much. Many people in our chat box absolutely picked up on this for what it is. What you describe it as is propaganda. Really, really disturbing and disgusting stuff. We're seeing this across the board. But Ben, you're going to take us into here how we've got another big effort by effectively Ofcom ultimately to shut down free speech.

Take us into it. Yes, thank you, Diane, and thank you, Brian. Two really interesting segments to lead into this because it's all about the story, right?

Whoever tells the story rules, Whoever controls the narrative gets to dictate terms to the country and then introduce you to a new term, which is epistemic security comes from this organisation Demos, the think tank. We talk about them all the time. They are champions of people, ideas and democracy underlined, very important. And they are really cool in the shots in terms of government

policy right now. They actually brag in their own materials about being behind policies that have been adopted by successive governments over the past 30 years, whether that's Conservative or Labour governments, and they're really leading this change agenda that we're seeing run out across the

country right now. They put out a huge amount of material since the the New Labour government came in relating to public private partnerships, changes to inheritance tax, the transformation of public services through devolution and digitisation, all of which ultimately is about putting more money into the coffers of multinational corporations and more power into the hands of the state. We've spoken about these reports previously, and Demos itself is figured very heavily in column

coverage over the years. It was founded by this guy, Sir Jeff Morgan, former editor of Marxism Today, currently affiliated with UC in London, the Rockefeller Foundation, also a very close friend of Julian Middleton from Common Purpose and still actively involved in the Demos ecosystem. And Demos itself is run by this lady, Polly Curtis, who is a former journalist who most recently was at Tortoise Media.

And I will just reference this again because I think this is important in the context of what we're talking about. When she was at Tortoise, she oversaw the release of this podcast Hoaxed in 2022, about the Satanic Richard abuse case in Hampstead in North London. And as you can guess by the title, this was presented as a hoax, but it missed out key details from medical reports showing that the children had actually been sexually abused in the case.

And I find that rather inexplicable, definitely negligent, maybe even a little bit suspicious, Polly, to be honest with you. And of course, she's now issuing reports about what they call epistemic securities is a new term. It's been introduced into the lexicon. Epistemic Security 2029. This came out at the end of February from demos fortifying the UK's information supply chain to tackle the democratic emergency. Let's just open that up a little

bit, right? So epistemic, not a word that gets used on a daily basis, but what does it mean? It relates to knowledge or cognition. So this is our ability to think and to understand reality. That's what they're going after here. Security is ultimately about reinforcing the established narrative and 2029, I think that's a direct reference to the next UK general election. So that's what demos are pushing

for with this report. And if we could just get that back up on screen quickly fortifying. So that's a defensive action, the information supply chain, which is a very odd way to talk about information in the creation of knowledge. It sounds like a a manufactured industrial process, right? And then I'll get into that again in a minute. And this is how they sort of think about this stuff. It's very strange. And then they're talking about a democratic emergency.

And to me that suggests that they're scared, they're actually losing control of the narrative as we run into not just the next general election in four years time, but actually, you know, today, tomorrow, this year. And they need that narrative in place in order to get their agenda rolling out as they as they would like to. So let's just have a quick look

at the information supply chain. So this talks about the production, distribution, acquisition, evaluation of information, which is then used to inform decision making and to coordinate action across society, right. And this process, this supply chain map has been basically made up by 1 of the academics who wrote the report.

But then that's now being used to formulate policy because this stuff gets shared absolutely everywhere, across the political networks, across the major parties, across the civil service, into academia. And apparently this process, this supply chain desperately needs to be managed and controlled more closely by the state. Ultimately, that's what all this ladders up to, right?

And that includes through mechanisms like the Online Safety Act. And we can show you how that manifests actually, because we've received at the column a rather extensive set of questions. How many pages is it? About. 50 so no 70 we're into. The 80s and 90s, but this shows you what the average media organisation is faced with under the incoming censorship rules from Ofcom and be under no doubt this is censorship or free

speech. So many small organisations will drown under this in the first instance, but ultimately there's going to be more legislation to come. And Ben, you're absolutely on the trail of this. Yeah. Exactly. And I've heard stories of numerous small media outlets, small online communities basically say we can't deal with this, we're going to close, right? And this is all about driving the populace ultimately into the arms of establishment media, establishment controlled

technology platforms, right? But apparently that's not enough, right? So we've already got this that comes from the Online Safety Act. But according to this report, epistemic Security UK regulation falls short. One of the conclusions from page 19 is the UK has attempted to regulate online harms, but each legislation falls short in addressing information threats. The UK's Online Safety Act also lacks comprehensive measures. This report was actually issued before the Online Safety Act was

even enacted. Yeah, that happened in March. This was issued in February. So they're kind of getting ahead of themselves a little bit here, I think it would be fair to say. And obviously all of this stuff's being done in the name of protecting democracy, right? You know, So you've got unelected think tanks funded by philanthropic wealth connected to organisations like the World Economic Forum as we'll get into putting forward a policy agenda supposedly to protect people and

to protect democracy. And it's really doing the absolute opposite. Where's it coming from? Crucially so, there are a few acknowledgments in the report we can see there in the first paragraph, it references Polly Curtis, who we talked about, William Perrin, who I'm going to come back to in a moment, but then Professor Lorna Woods, Maeve Walsh and Judith Townend. So those 3 ladies at the end there, very difficult to find out much information about who

they are. You can't even find images of Maeve Walsh and Lorna Woods online. There's something from this website which is the Online Safety Act network that they've established, right? What it tells us is that they're both connected to an organisation called Carnegie UK, which is a non profit. This is a philanthropic fund which is focused on, amongst other things, producing legislation around what they

call online safety. And interestingly, if you look at Lorna Woods's profile in the bottom right, we can see there that she actually received an OBE for her influential work at Carnegie UK that underpins the UK government's Online Safety Act. So this woman, this individual academic, her work paid for by that charity was used to formulate the legislation. That's where it's come from.

It's come from that individual when they've established this network in order to help organisations that are looking at the implementation of the act. And let's have a little look at some of these organisations here that are part of that. So again, it's a lot of nonprofits, anti Semitism charities, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate there on the left, ending violence

against women. So they don't actually actually sort of redefine the meaning of the word violence, which basically means you can't disagree with women on the Internet. Now, apparently, and obviously we're seeing lots more women going into public policy roles. You know, it's all of these things are interconnected with each other and they're all ultimately about shutting down debate. And then this guy who I mentioned again before, this is William Perry and OBE, he paid

for this report to be written. So he's actually acknowledged as the man who paid for the report personally, not from one of his organisations that he's part of. He actually paid for himself. He's a former policy adviser and private secretary to Tony Blair between 2001 and 2004. He's a trustee of something called the Indigo Trust, which is his own foundation I'm going to talk about next week. And they're actively involved elsewhere in the media ecosystem.

It's really important to understand the scope of this absolutely huge what's happening in media at the moment. He's also a trustee at Carnegie UK. He also received an OBE for his work around the Online Safety Act and he was personally instrumental in setting up Ofcom in the 1st place. So again, this one individual unelected, no one really understands what his background

is, where he's come from. He's writing the legislation, he's establishing the institutions which are being used to attack organisations like the UK column and ultimately the British people. And we have to understand it like that. And that's being done through

official channels. So this all is being overseen by Ofcom. So the first thing you see when you land on their website is enforcing the Online Safety Act, obviously with a picture of a of a teenager, a young white man who can't hear things that Auntie doesn't approve of. Basically, I think this is the general gist of of what we're hearing here. Who's Auntie? So Well, Melanie Doors, she's the chief exec.

She's been there since 2020, was a civil servant before that at various different departments, including work around devolution and local government. She was in the Cabinet Office for a number of years. And also she's a patron of something called the Patchwork Foundation, which is another one of these non partisan, IE uniparty organisations focused on the radical transformation of the of the country.

Basically. I mean, you're looking at the the total transformation of the nation demographically, politically, economically, and actually she's part of that organisation. And I think we have to understand that that's probably the agenda that's being pushed here. It's not an agenda that is good for the British people. And interestingly, they've just announced 3 new board members who I'll just draw your attention to because I think in particular their connections are

very important. First one is this Natalie Black. She's group director of Networks and Communications, joined in December last year from Cabinet Office. She's also visiting professor at the LSC. And importantly, she is a young global leader of the World Economic Forum, right? So you've got a young global leader of the World Economic Forum in a top executive position working at Ofcom, implementing this narrative control agenda. Who else?

More World Economic Forum links by Tamara Ingram, deputy chair now of Ofcom, again pointed in December. So she's a non exec of Marsh and McLennan, which is a global professional services firm, which is also a World Economic Forum partner. There's a direct link here, again, through Tamara Ingram. She background in advertising. Interestingly, we used to share the same boss. So she reported to a guy for a short period of time who was there, then went on to be my boss a few years later.

And he has some quite funny stories about her, which I can't share on air. But yeah, I thought that was an interesting connection. And then finally Lord Allen of Hallam, who's the new non executive Ofcom, who was before that the vice president of public policy at Facebook.

So he spent 10 years at Facebook, again, another World Economic Forum partner, big tech company, heavy sensors, absolutely all over the censorship agenda, working with organisations like Full Fact through the pandemic, that kind of thing. And these are the people that have been put in place at Ofcom in order to control our speech and to deliver an agenda that is basically being controlled by

philanthropy and think tanks. And it's got absolutely nothing to do with protecting the best interests of the country, as far as I can tell. Thank you very much, Ben. And the key to stopping it is for people to understand what's being done, how it's being done, and to expose it, spread the word. And of course, if you believe in free speech, then Ofcom has got to be dealt with because Ofcom's objective has been as set out and there's a lot more information to come. Ofcom's objective is.

To clamp down on free speech so that the only information the public get is effectively government approved propaganda.

Well, let's move on. If you like what the UK column is doing as a free media channel then please support us. Of course you can make a donation or you can take out a monthly membership, or an annual membership or a lifetime membership. You can also purchase from our shop and of course we always like to say that we make a small percentage from products, health products, from Clive to Carl. Now the key bit about what we do is information to be shared.

So please share the information we put out. Do give us a mention as you do that, please. We are still on other platforms. We have a presence on YouTube at the moment, so that's good. Now the conference at the weekend, this is going to be a really fantastic conference. The first thing to say is that we have a handful of tickets left. Those tickets will only be available till 5:00 this evening and then they're gone.

So if you've been thinking do I or don't I, we would say to you, please come and join us because it's going to be a really fun and very special event and there is enough time for you to be mixing and chatting with all the speakers and the UK Column team. And of course it's in Cheltenham, really in the belly of the beast. So 5:00 and those tickets are gone. If you've been thinking I should go, now's the time to buy the ticket.

Get onto the UK Column website and we are going to be live streaming, which is going to be good for many people who can't get there. But at the end of the day, if you're there, you're there to really experience the event. So both options available, but those tickets still available. Now where does that take us? Well, it takes us to other people who are active. And Diane, this conference is coming up. Tell us a little bit about it.

Yeah, Brian, this conference is called What's Wrong with Sex Education? All children, all ages, all schools. It will be in Lisburn in Northern Ireland in just a few days in the 7th of April. So that's just right after the conference. Actually, the interesting thing about this to note, which I heard Mike say on Friday, is that Lisburn is Mike Robinson's hometown. So if you've ever wanted to see where Mike Robinson is from, then you should also go to the

conference. We don't know everything about the conference, but what I do know is that it's been promoted by Hugh McCarthy, who I've been working with recently. We had an interview with him last week on sexualization, then indoctrination schools in Northern Ireland and he's really informed on this topic and he's also writing a three part series of articles for us. So parts 1 and 2 are already out in writing and Part 3 will be published next week.

There's a number of things that that are important about this conference, including the fact that they will be talking about the specific rights that parents have in Northern Ireland about their their children can experience through the curriculum or not, which is unique to Northern Ireland. We don't have it in the rest of the devolved nations. So definitely other people getting out there and doing things, and it's good to see that happening. OK, Diane, thank you very much for that.

And also interview going out at 1:00 tomorrow is with Catherine Austin Fitts. Of course, Catherine done a huge amount of work on all sorts of subject around the Deep State and essentially what is coming into place around the rules based international order. So very, very knowledgeable lady and I'm sure that's going to be a really great interview.

Diane, I think it comes back to you and the terrible subject of smart metres, or maybe not so smart metres. No, unfortunately it looks like they're pretty stupid actually. Brian, a viewer, wrote in a few days ago to ask by We haven't covered smart metres on UK column and we have if you search ukcolumn.org. There's been a variety of written and video reports related to smart metres.

But I think because there's so much going on, it's worth some updates and I did some deeper research as well. So the first thing to note is that the energy price cap is going up tomorrow, the 1st of April. According to the BBC, the annual bill for a household using a typical amount of gas and electricity will go up to £1849 per year, which is an increase of £111.00. The energy price cap sets the next amount customers can be charged for each unit of energy. But actual bills depend on how

much you actually use. So that's just for people who might not be in the UK so that you understand what's happening. So Ofgem, which is the electricity and gas regulator in the UK and the BBC, they're all telling us in the UK that the the way to save money on your energy bills is to make sure that we are complying with their demands to have a smart metre installed in our homes and then everything will be better. However, there are a lot of problems going on with smart

metres. They are meant to of course, send gas, electricity consumption data to the suppliers and display it to the consumers. So there's a back and forth which is supposed to promote the consumers, to help them track their energy usage and and cut their use. However, smart metres were first of all mandated by Ed Miliband back in 2008 when he first held

the post of Energy secretary. So they've been rolling gives out for 17 years, but the whole time has been full of technical failures, reluctance to adopt them by people in their houses. Just very recent reports in the last few days, for example, the East Anglian Daily Times said that certain electricity smart metres have been recalled out there. There's information about the recall on the uk.gov website. They've been recalled because they present a risk or fire,

fire or electric shocks. And so there is information there. Please take a look at our website on the show notes to make sure that you do not have one of these in your house and if you do, get it out right away. The Telegraph said on Friday that millions of households could be lined up for payouts from the energy supplier for faulty smart metres under rules set under by the energy regulator. Which is off, which I will come back to in just a minute if

they're broken. If you have a broken smart metre in your house and it's not fixed within 90 days, you will soon be able to claim 40 lbs compensation for the supplier.

According to Ofgem, the change means that millions may soon be able to claim because there's a lot of people having these problems and official figures are saying that up to this might be up to 3.5 million smart metres have so called Gondom and that's the because they have lost their ability to send the usage information back, back and forth between the suppliers and the consumers. So with that many, there might be a long weight for your 40 lbs if you have a faulty smart

metre. So back in January the BBC sent out a warning to people who have an older type of metre and saying that they will need to replace it with the smart metre. So let's watch this clip from January. What? Do we need to do then? Yes. This is a warning from the regulator Ofgem, telling people with a certain type of old metre. I should stress it's not all old metres, but certain types of old metres.

If they have one of those in particular, they need to get in touch with their supplier and switch before June. Let me explain the details for you. Yes, this is all about older metres that look like these. In particular if you're on a tariff like Economy 7, Economy 10 or others that have different rates at various times of the day, they run using something called the radio teleswitch

service. It's basically a signal that's broadcast to energy firms and it allows these metres to switch between peak and off peak rates or turn your heating or hot water on and off. But the equipment is old and it's hard to maintain, so the signal is being switched off. This was originally meant to happen last March, but that deadline has now been extended to this June.

The thing is there are still 600,000 households and businesses using these old metres and the message is you need to switch before June or you risk losing your heating and hot water. So if you don't switch your metre, you're not going to live very long. It doesn't sound that way. So it's really interesting and important to look at how these actually are working in the background. So Ofgem has explained on their website that the Data Communications Company, or DCC,

is a monopoly company. They admit that it's a monopoly. It operates under the Smart Metre Communications licence, which is regulated by Ofgem. DCC is part of Capita, which is an international business process outsourcing company based in London. So private public private partnership Again, the DCC is responsible for linking smart metres and homes and small businesses with energy suppliers, network operators and energy service companies.

According to Optim, DCC is needed to ensure that the smart metres system as a whole works smoothly and that the enduring and full benefits of smart metres are realised. So how exactly does this work? Here's a clip from the GCCS website explaining it for us. Since a year, the network operates to the highest security standards in Europe.

It's endorsed by the National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, and operates entirely separately from the potential pitfalls of the public Internet. So how does it work? Every time energy is used or generated in homes with smart metres, they turn it into a packet of data. The data's securely wrapped using two layers of encryption. A communications hub creates a home area network to receive the

data from the smart metres. The hub transmits the data to an in home display which shows how much energy is being used or sold back to the grid. The data is then transmitted from the home to a wide area network of mobile phone or radio masts. From these to the DCC servers. The DCC never sees or keeps the data, it transports it securely straight to energy suppliers to access. They decrypt it so they can build consumers accurately.

The detailed consumption data also helps the whole system make the best use of energy, keeping the lights on and supporting Britain's net zero goals. Sorry, driving bed I saw you holding your head. Your Diane. I got to say all I wanted was a cup of tea, but apparently, apparently I got to send my metre back and I've got to contact GCHQ in order to understand the digital transfer, in order to boil the kettle. This is utter madness on the nation. Absolutely it is.

And so I guess we can, I don't know if you want to stage a protest over the weekend, we can do that. That will be convenient, but I have some more details from the government to show you exactly what's going on in the background. They just recently updated its policy report, which is called Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, a

new era of clean electricity. It said that something called market wide half hourly settlements is a key enabler for the retail market, making its timely delivery critical for the 2030 target. This is led by Ofgem. It will change the landscape because consumers will be able to take advantage of the system to get lower bills.

And additionally, the smart metre rollout is critical for unlocking the innovative approaches to managing demand and will enable this successful delivery, whatever this means. It also said that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, so that's mid Ed Miliband began is working with Ofgem to guarantee new standards of performance relating to smart metres this year. This may include standards relating to installation and maintenance compensation.

So going back to some of what I addressed earlier, actions to remove barriers to smart metre adoption, they admit in the report that this will require a lot of infrastructure in the next few years and almost all of it will be provided by private companies. They also said, however, they were optimistic it will work out because direct quotes.

The work of the Vaccines Task Force during the pandemic demonstrated what can be achieved when tight focus, strong direction and full collaboration come together. So last week there were messages coming out on off gym through X. On Friday for example, they said we are proposing faster smart metre installations and better compensation for an activity issues. New rules could mean quicker appointments and swift fixes for reported problems.

These proposed new rules include shorter wait time for installation, compensation for failed installation, quicker fixes if a customer has a problem. So, you know, these are things that they're saying will be a

part of the proposal. Now going back to 2019, looking at the cost benefit analysis smart metre rollout, which is coming from the Department for Business, Energy Industrial Strategy, we can see here on this figure that was taken from the report that the smart metre programme is literally costing us, the British taxpayers, millions of billions of pounds

actually. This report said, however, that the smart leaders will unlock a smarter and more flexible energy system for homes and businesses across Britain and provide a key contribution to the aims of the government to reduce carbon emissions to net 0 by 2050. They will also play an increasingly important role beyond the end of the appraisal

period. For example, the comedian Climate Change estimates that without this flexibility, where smart views are a key part of delivering the flexible energy system in net zero, the cost of reaching net 0 by 2050 would be up to 16 billion per annum higher. They need to make sure that we're going to buy in this. So not to worry, there's a way that they're handling this. There is an organisation for that called Smart Energy GB.

Smart Energy GB is a nonprofit that is there to help us, the apparently stupid British public who won't buy the smart metres, according to those who want us to have them, to understand why smart metres are such a benefit to us and to the country. Now going back to 2016, they had a report called A Smart Route to change the application of behavioural science in supporting Great Britain's smart metre rollout and changing the way we use energy for the better.

I had to go back to the Wayback Machine to find this and I had originally found it linked by an article that Martin Edwards wrote in 2020 in AUK column article called Behavioural Insights, the second team leading the UK Government's COVID-19 response. The report says that Smart Energy DB was established in 2013 and this plan established the central place that behavioural science holds at the heart of Smart Energy GB's approach and the campaign that we have developed and are executing.

As the voice of the Smart leader roll out, it's said that they are tackling the task of changing human behaviour, especially in these situations where there's a careful balance to be struck between individual autonomy and public good, and even controversy as to what is or is not in the interest of community and society as a whole. Cited research that found that 80% of people who already have a smart metre have taken at least one step to change something

about their energy use. So that's good news for them. Apparently they reviewed a few different approaches to behavioural change, including one that was actually originally written by Professor Susan Mitchy. Where do we know that name from before which she was involved in developing? But then they decided on a different one called Mindspace, which Brian you've been covering since 2020, which they said was finally the best approach to changing behaviour related to smart metres.

So this slide from the approach that talks about applying Mindspace, it's called a smart approach where you know, taking the different steps through how people might potentially work to adapt these smart metres, what to do. There's a different ways to use Mindspace that they suggested. One was called Messenger, which involves children.

Once a term there is dedicated school time where children learn about the importance of smart metres and conserving energy through specially designed resources. They will be given a take home pack with practical hints and tips to encourage them to put what they've learned into practise at home and get the rest of the family involved. Another one is called Incentive, which is basically every home that has a smart metre you get put into a prize draw.

So that's really exciting. So you get a smart metre, your house might blow up in the smart metre but you might win a prize, maybe you'll get a bottle of wine. It'd be great, so very exciting. Their 2025 Consumer Engagement Plan and Budget says that their budget is £38.3 million to spend on applied behaviour, real psychology, and it's to make sure that we comply with these demands to these smart metres.

So we talked about rewards, energy, flexibility, reassurance campaigns to, to, you know, basically say that they don't, they don't believe anything that consumers might believe. And they've got 13 reasons why we should get smart metres, which include all of these things about tackling climate change, reducing your impact on the environment, reducing Britain's dependency on energy from overseas and so on.

But of course, ultimately this really does go back to Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals, Clean Energy Plan. We have an article here that was, well, this was actually a presentation that was given at the UN and by an academic a few years ago in 2018. And she basically said SDG 7, that's the one about energy, is an enabling factor for sustainable development. She said that in particular, this can enable several different SDGS 689-1112 and 13, if that means anything to anybody.

And we can see she believes that implementing Agenda 2030 will will be will be helped by and encouraging people to be more energy independent because of course, the smart feeders will make a success over energy use. And we also see from the World Economic Forum from January 2020, there's a report called the impact of 5G creating new value across industries and

society. It discussed the fourth industrial Revolution, said that 5G will be critical to enable unprecedented levels of connectivity. Upgrading 4G networks with functional drivers and the solemn codes includes smart metres, the smart grid, smart energy management, smart street lighting, electric vehicles and finally drone monitoring capabilities. So I guess the drones will make sure that we've got our smart metres and then what happens from there?

We don't know, but that's what's going on, Brian. I'll just pause for 20 seconds because of course you're describing more madness. 600,000 Duff metres in place, but apparently they're going to change them all by June. I don't think so. And what, what is all this about? Well, of course it's those sustainable development goals which are clearly, clearly evident that they're unsustainable.

But we'll do more on this in due course because understanding what's being done is the key to stopping it, along with saying, no, we don't want this junk in our homes. Let's move at the end of the news, Ben, to, well, a local

area where there's good things taking place and we can also see people standing up to be counted. Yes, I did what Diane does. I went on a little trip on an outing. I went to Totnes on Saturday, jumped on the train over to East Devon at a lovely time and I went to meet a man who lives in a food forest and he actually feeds himself with food that he picks from the garden that he's created around his dwelling and that's what he eats and that's how he exists. It's amazing.

Like people are actually doing this stuff at a micro level and there's some big stuff going on too, because also happening in Totnes is this thing running. So this is a similar setup. This is another food forest in the Dartington estate at Dartington House, and basically it's been running for about 30 years, and everything from the tree canopy to the undergrowth is edible. All right, that's the guy I founded it, Martin Crawford. This is not the guy I met, by

the way. This is the sort of slightly more upscale establishment version of what I was talking about. The game that we want to play is to live in a state of perpetual symbiosis with the land and to get away from this kind of mono crop, industrialised mono crop model that we've currently got for agriculture. Right? And it's probably fair to say that the where we're going to end up or where we should end up

as a balance between the two. But this organisation at Dartington has been doing some fantastic work to experiment in this area for about 30 years. So obviously what Dartington are going to do in the face of that is to cancel that programme. Because, you know, why invest 30 years of time and energy in building something like that when you could just cancel it, you know. And this was in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago from the 19th of March.

So the pioneer nearing Devon Food Forest Garden has been at risk after the land owed owner inexplicably serves notice on it. Right. So who is the landowner who's running Dartington? Well, this is interesting. So let's look at the trustees. We've got Lord Treesman, who's the chair of trustees.

He's been there since 2022. He's a Maoist and was a member of the Communist Party in the 70s and then he ran number #10 for Tony Blair. So he's a big time Labour guy, Communist, Maoist, cancelling programmes that yeah, food production. You know, there's a trend emerging here, I think, you know, oh, look, isn't that surprising. And he actually said Dartington. This is a quote from him at the bottom. Dartington's contribution to a just and sustainable future is

legendary. What's Dartington known for is something to do with the. It's got a. Very, as far as I know, Ben, it's got a very dark history. It's been involved in all sorts of strange political things and was home of spies many years ago. Kim Philby and team visited and there's some very, very strange politics around and. Kim Philby And that was they're colluding with the Russians, with the Communists, right? That was the whole thing. Absolutely right.

But that's interesting. I. Believe I may be incorrect in this. I believe the Young Foundation or, or people involved with the Young Foundation have also been involved with it. So a lot of very interesting and strange history around Dartington, but clearly they believe in sustainability as long as it's the correct sustainability. Well. Quite, quite.

And then a few more trustees. You've got this chap here, Chris Moore, who's a PwC partner, World Economic Forum partner and then Peter Goldsborough on the right hand side. He was the top, top guy at BCG in London for about 40 years and again, World Economic Forum partner. So you've got this really old mix of hardline communists and multinational corporates coming together to suppress our ability to be self reliant and to live off the land. It's really quite remarkable, isn't it?

Now luckily there has been a huge backlash against this, not least from the local community in Totnes. And there was some good news yesterday. It came out that it's been confirmed that the lease has been secured at least until it ends in 3 1/2 years, right? So that's good news for now, but it's still up for debate and with the trustees as to what's going to happen next. So we'll keep our eye on this. And there's also some great work going on at grassroots level on the street.

And I met this amazing crew of people on the Main St in Totnes who are there every Saturday giving out copies of the light paper, sharing good information. They've been in a running battle with the council for the past few years who've been coming up and trying to unlawfully shut them down and basically serving them with illegal notices that, you know, haven't been signed and aren't addressed to anyone and basically just trying to stop them from operating. And they're doing a fantastic

job. So kudos to you. And also I had the pleasure of meeting Jason Leah Sartos as well, who's been doing some great work and hopefully we'll be able to speak to him in a few weeks and maybe can record an interview or something. But thank you everyone in Totnes for having it was a great a great day on Saturday. More to come and. Thank you very much. And yeah, what this shows is that if you get out there and start to do something, you can have an effect.

Now, we're going to end on a couple of quick little images here. This one was sent to me. I don't know whether the quote is true, but I couldn't resist it. Apparently, Harry S Truman, you can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook. And Diane, I think you've got the the last image for today's news. Let's pop it up on the screen.

Tell us about it. Yeah, a lot of people on the left in America are really worrying about the fact that Donald Trump and his administration is looking at the Department of Education. And the question is, what on earth will we do without the Department of Education and all of these trans flags and rainbow flags and mask wearing teachers? I don't know what's going to happen to the schools in America if this goes away, Brian. I don't know. I'm a bit worried. How about you?

I'm certainly very let's end there on a bit of black humour. We must finish the news today. We've overrun slightly, but a huge thank you to the audience wherever you are in the world. Thank you for tuning in to UK column. Do recommend us to other people. Do come and join us and take out a membership because that financial support keeps us going. And if you haven't bought a ticket for Saturday's UK column on location event, buy that ticket and come and meet us in person.

It makes such a difference to be able to talk to people on a one to one basis. It is much better than an online conference, but we do understand some people can only see us online. We'll leave it there. Ben, Diane, thank you very much for joining me. We will be back for UK Column news at the same time on Wednesday. If you're a member, stay with us because we'll have UK Column EXTRA in a few moments. Thank you. Bye. Bye.