Military Matters: Episode Three

0:00Good morning, Charles. You made it. I did. I made it. Yeah, I'm thinking. I think we're allowed to say to the viewers it's been pretty interesting weather down here in the West country and you had a pretty wet drive down motorways. Yes, motorways flooded. It was pretty bad. On the upside, it gave more time to ruminate on the subject matter for today. So let's take the positives. But yeah, it was very hairy. It does. I think it relates to what we're going to talk about because there are instances like this. I was on the N5. There was a serious accident on the other carriageway and I couldn't tell what had happened. But it does.

1:01That requires a response. That requires a response of people who know what they're doing and who aren't able to deal with it. I think this goes to the heart of a lot of what we have already talked about on military matters, but probably what we will talk about today. This matching of people to situations and scenarios. Although, of course, that was, that was, Gannick's not quite the right word, but there was no intent there. It was an accident caused by presumably bad weather and bad driving. No one was trying to do it. I think what we have to walk our way around today and through this series is what is happening if anything organically and what is being created and therefore what are the responses to it? That might be a slightly uncomfortable analogy to make, but we'll give it a go. No, it's great. Well, I found my head deep into military matters. I was looking at doing

2:01a bit of research last night, getting back into the swing of it, having a reread of parts of strategic defence review. And then this morning, I found myself having a look at a little video that Dr Fiona Hill, who's one of the three authors of that defence review. So we've got Lord Roberts and General Barons and Dr Fiona Hill. And I hadn't thought about it before. Who is this lady? So she's Chancellor of Durham University. She's a Russian and European geopolitical expert. She's provided advice to three US presidents, George W. Bush, Obama and Trump himself. And I was just listening to her clip. She was talking about, so three years ago, she was talking about Russia. And I just found her statements very scripted for somebody who was supposed to be a deep analyst. She was talking in very simplistic sound bites. And one of the

3:08ones that I witnessed that was she said, well, of course, the Russians have been conducting, were conducting exercises in relation to Ukraine. And these are sort of offensive exercises. The implication was so we knew what was happening. But when we conduct exercises, they're always defensive exercises. And I just thought, is this really the level of the intellect that was putting together our strategic defence review? I don't know what you'd say about that. Well, I think that's a really interesting point. Again, having looked into her background and her particularly her position on Russia to a certain extent as well, I think as well as a reduction of the intellectual scrutiny of Russia in its current form and historically, there's also a great emotional thread running through what she says. And okay, of course,

4:14I concede that to be described as a Russia expert, if you speak Russian and you've spent time in Russia that adds weight to your credentials. But at the same time, if you decide through that period of time, if having learned Russian and spent time in Russia, which she has done, but actually you have become disenchanted or you decide that you don't like Russia and what Russia's doing and you feel that you're well justified in your position because you've been there and you know, then that creates, well, or rather, that reduces your objectivity. So it's sort of a double edge saw to be described as an expert, but also then to bring what looks like a motion into it. And I think that's exactly what's happened in the strategic defense review in particular. She's, I mean, I've, I think I've quoted this on the news program, you know, on the emotional side of it, she has directly compared Hitler with, sorry, Putin with Hitler in the past. So it's all very much about the individual and and that kind of thing. And again, exactly like you say, when she

5:17when you see that she has been set against a set alongside Robertson and Barons, both of whom in effect stand gain from the actions that are very obviously forecast by the defense review barons in so far as his defense consulting company is concerned and his particular interest in sort of cyber and AI and then Robertson being involved with the current group so that the the conflicts of interest as well as the points that you make are suggestive to me that these three people should never have been let anyone near the defense review. And I know, you know, I remember we did talk about this in the in the last episode of military matters. And I think that stands the test of time we recorded that back in late September 2025 and the situation has evolved now, but I think what's interesting is that it to us because we are keeping our eyes on it. I think you know, we can see absolutely or at least we believe we can see the direction that it's going in. I think for the general public, I would regard this as a

6:22as a very clever psychological shaping operation and slowly, slowly, incrementally, people are being moved into a position where they can see that there would be a justification for an engagement of sorts with Russia. And that links exactly back to what you're saying and Fiona Hill in particular inserting her prejudice and narrative into that defense review. Yeah. And one of the things that we could pull out the defense review to support that position is the fact that they're talking about the need for national engagement. We, we, they're not going quite as far as saying we need to get into a full law footing, but they, the document is clearly saying that we've got to fully engage industry. We've got to fully engage the UK public. We've got to recruit. So we'll say it's one level

7:23down, but it's not saying, well, we've got to have strong armed forces that exist from within and alongside the nation state. We're now pumping out documentation suggesting that the whole nation has to get on board because in the future, we might have to, we might have to fight Russia. Absolutely. And again, I think that's, that's, it's one of the building blocks. And I think, you know, again, I was, I was sort of considering to, well, I suppose two sides are the same coin. If we look at history and we've referred to this before, but we look at the, the build up to and the progression into the first and second world wars and how that worked great similarities. One of the things that, in fact, I'm going to be writing about, hopefully this week, is how the emergency, the state of emergency is, first of all, created and then exploited. And just as an example, I think I've got the figure right. I look this up. I think between the years 1939 and 1945,

8:3041 pieces of general legislation, 41 general acts that came onto the statue book during that period were predicated on emergency. So they were, they were basically emergency powers. Now, how many of those were rescinded or repealed at the end of the war? I haven't yet got into, but I think it would be, it would be very few. And here we are beginning of 2026. We are yet to see emergency legislation, but the current armed forces bill, which is going to be changing the, at the moment, just the details around the call up or the ability of the armed forces to call up, reservists and to increase the age at which people may be called up. And all of the, you know, that there are, there are many, many things pointing very strongly towards a big echo with what was happening in the wars that I've just described. The other thing, which I think is an interesting if somewhat intellectual academic point is if there is to be conflict with Russia, then

9:36and indeed, this is how it's been described in Ukraine, what does winning look like? We're always told that, oh, well, if it weren't for what we did in the Second War, we'd all be speaking German. So that, that's the sort of, well, that's what the result of losing the Second World War would have been, what is the result of losing a war with Russia now? And I think it's difficult to point to there being much of a distinction between winning or losing in that if we use that, what I'm describing, the sort of the emergency situation. And we see how Ukraine being an excellent case study, how, how what's happened there is a massive push towards a digital infrastructure because there's an emergency, the utter destruction of democracy. Okay, arguable that it was a poor relation to any sort of democracy that we might describe, although that's another minefield,

10:39but, but, but the point is that, that you've got the, all these elements pointing very strongly towards actually, does it make any difference whether you supposedly win or you supposedly lose the outcome because of the combined interests of governments and corporations are all really pushing us in the same direction. And then I think on the other side of it, you've got the armed forces, you know, the view from the armed forces in the United Kingdom in a minute, I think is that the situation is so poor that a war is needed in order to improve the situation in order to make the armed forces do what they're supposed to be able to do. So there are so many reasons, I'm sorry, and then the other one, the other big one, obviously enormously, is that the the defense industry absolutely requires it. You know, there's been this, this enormous commitment in terms of the defense spend. Well, that's got to be justified. So there's so many reasons that

11:44suggest that we sort of, we should have a war, but as I say, the question is, well, what would happen? What would the result be? Lots, lots of points. There is, there is a lot for discussion over this. Just coming in a slightly different direction, I rereading the strategic defense review, I found myself one coming back on the use of language throughout. So you read the strategic defense review into my mind. It's full of phrases and jargon and statements about what is going to be done, but there's no clarity in what that actually means. It's lots of buzzwords, it's lots of okay terminology. We're going to be fighting fit to win. So these little sound bites that, of course, the politicians can stand up in front of the camera and talk about, but if you actually

12:44say, what does this mean? And I can't get a meaning out of it. What do I deduce from the document coming back in at it is huge confusion because we live in a country where the whole of our ability to produce and particularly produce and sustain military operations has all been hollowed out. And I deliberately used that terminology because that's appeared quite a lot in the national press that our military has been hollowed out. So we look at the country and the whole of the support bases has been stripped out. We can't manufacture steel, we can't until recently we were not producing munitions and ammunition in any quantity. We're producing ships, but we don't produce aircraft. And then we've ended up with the smallest army in 300 years. I think it is at around 70, 72,000. So while politics has been going on with the same politicians, Lord Robertson's been there

13:53in the background and he's now part of at the age of 79, he's now in this strategic defense review, but the country's ability to produce and particularly produce in house has been completely hollowed out. And then we have a strategic defense review that says, oh my goodness, we're in a real dangerous position here because those nasty Russians are going to invade and we've got to invest in the country in our own production. But if you take procurement, although the government is talking about something like 87% procurement from within UK, that doesn't mean what the government is buying in a military sense is a UK product because they're not tracking through the supply lines as to where the manufactured product actually comes from. So if they're choosing a missile system and they're going to say, well, it's produced in house or it's produced by British aerospace, the reality is that missile doesn't get produced unless components come in from

14:59overseas, that might be America or that might be Europe. So the government is now caught in its own trap. It's hollowed the country's ability to produce weapons, missile systems, it shut down the Royal Ordnance factories that were producing armour. And now it's suddenly saying, oh well, if it's going to work properly, we've got to be in house. So that's one conundrum. And then, of course, we've got another major one because in the document, it is largely saying, well, we're not going to fight on our own. We're going to fight within NATO, but oh dear, we've now got a bit of a problem with NATO because Trump has shown that he could, if he wanted to, pull America out of NATO, and where would that leave us because we're no longer strong enough on our own. And then the other thing in the background that doesn't really get dealt within the strategic

16:01defence review itself is the engagement with Europe, because much as we've said Brexit has brought us out from the European Union, the reality is, everywhere you look, we're locked into agreements with the European Union with respect to defence. And the situation is now so complex that the government's making this statement as to what it wants to achieve the position that you're suggesting we're on a semi-war footing with Russia, but actually it can't implement it because all of the other policies have destroyed our ability to operate alone. So I see this document as being not only a huge, sorry, the strategic defence review, has not only been a huge psychological operation on the British public, but it is also drowning in its own confusion because it now exists in a political, let's say, European

17:09geopolitical world for Dr Fiona Hill, that prevents us as a nation's state from performing in a military sense, a little bit long-winded, but I don't know whether you know where I'm coming from. Yeah, I do. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that ties in with this question of, sorry, what would look like and whether there is some sort of metric that determines whether or not we're winning or losing, which is why we sort of ask question, are we, well, and I think we agree that we are in many ways at war, but what is we, because in actual fact, exactly like you say, the control and the profit is very obviously held by multinational corporations, and therefore there is, I would say, a marked difference from certain any large-scale conflict that we've had

18:14within what might be described as living memory, in that the advance of the technical digital side of things means that you no longer buy a piece of hardware and in doing so take complete control and ownership of it, you might physically have the thing, whether it be a weapon system or an armored platform or whatever it is, but in actual fact, the proprietary technology that makes that thing work is owned and can be controlled from somewhere else. Now, that's a very, very dangerous position to be in if you're just looking through a military lens, but I think we can't really look just through a military lens, and this is where we're having to re-evaluate the idea of warfare and exactly what it might involve. Now, I think and I think we talked about this last time, the idea of boots on the ground and what will always be a factor. I think that has to happen because it's impossible to run the PR campaign

19:21without it. You can't not have the photographs of troop ships or people getting on aircraft. Whatever it is, you've got to have that bit to sell to the public, the idea, but there is a national emergency threat to our security, but that we are providing a sort of plucky response. But in actual fact, that obscures, first of all, the fact that an awful lot of the activity is being conducted behind the scenes because it's either the preserve of the intelligence agencies or it's being given over to people who are running things remotely. We've talked about the two obvious ones, being sort of cyber AI, warfare, one of the better word, and indeed drone operation. So, yes, I think the way in which we look at all of it has to be completely different.

20:23I think also the other thing that's come out from very obviously directly from the strategic defense review is exactly what you say, particularly from Fiona Hill, is the idea that Russia is with beyond question bad and intends us harm and is a threat and all this sort of thing. Obviously, every single protestation and communication from Russia indicates not exactly the opposite, but I mean there's sort of, you know, well, fine talk it up if you want, but we have absolutely no intent of presenting any kind of threat to your country and that kind of thing. But also, the accusation, and this came out just before Christmas, a very interesting sort of twin attack from Blaze Metrawelli, the new head of secret intelligence service, and of course, the granddaughter of Constantin Dobrovolsky, the Nazi collaborator. So, her family history is interesting to say the

21:28least for somebody who's heading up our secret intelligence service and Richard Knight and the head of the armed forces, the chief of defense staff. And they spoke, forget whether it was either on the same day or day apart, and the messages were exactly the same, which is that, you know, we've looked at everything now and Russia is absolutely presenting an existential threat to us. And I think that is completely an extension of the of the defense review and it's pointing in a direction that I think is much more subtle than the idea of right where we just need accuser people at recruiting offices. I think there are many more ways in which this is going to work because, as I say, going back to your point about equipment, the commitment on that spend is going to deliver something that is ultimately owned by corporations. This is going to be more than ever before, I think, a war that's conducted by people in offices. And the other side to that, it's just an irony, but I thought I'd mention it, is that last year, you know, at the end of 2025,

22:30we had the Ministry of Defense bragging that 2025 is a record year for what's being described as defense exports from this country. So we can't, we can make kit and frog its two goodness names were because when I asked where it's all gone, they said it's too sensitive to tell you even though they're going to say we've done it. And at that same time, we don't have the kits that we apparently need. So to say, there's, you know, a huge element of just mud to the whole thing as well. Yeah. And is it just muddle an incompetence or is it created muddle? And I think to a large extent, the hollowing out has been deliberate by these agencies who've got plans through a rock in the pond above national government. So there's definitely muddle and there's definitely the strong intent to create fear in the nation state because if we say what would Russia actually need to invade the whole of Western Europe, we would be back talking about

23:36armies of millions of men, millions, not not not 200,400,000. We'd be talking about millions of men. And the conflict in Ukraine has already demonstrated to my mind at least, I'm not an army man, I'm an AV man, but to me, it's clearly demonstrated that the age of the rapid advance with armored vehicles is over because if you look at what's happened in Ukraine, the moment armored vehicles are effectively in the open and even when they're not in the open, they are being destroyed by drones, kamikaze drones. So large scale, full frontal armored assaults seem to me to be out. And the Russians are clearly winning in Ukraine, but they're doing it by very small incremental troop movements. And this then further demonstrates that the opportunity to invade

24:45hundreds of miles west into Western Europe is simply not credible. I mean, Putin is saying to the world anyway, as you've just said, we've no intention of attacking all countries or invading the European Union, but in reality, the evidence is all there that you simply can't do this. And they would need to do that in order to have the troops on the ground to control Western Europe. So the fear factor, which is coming out of the intelligence services and the likes of Dr. Fiona Hill and presumably colleagues, is just astonishing. It's astonishing. It is. I absolutely agree. And I think that's really why I mentioned the corporate element because it seems, if you look at it through that lens, then the idea that Russia is an enemy makes sense, because let's say we have, you know, across our three armed forces, we have an amazing array of,

25:53I suppose we don't, but you know what I mean, we have an incredible array of equipment and capabilities that are made by all sorts of corporations all over the world. You know, we don't, we do not have a line in so far as ethics are concerned as to where we get kid from really. The government will talk about not dealing with say North Korea or Iran or whatever, but really actually what they mean is Russia and to a certain extent China, I would say. And so the fact that Russia is able to run, again, what's described, I would say erroneously or or euphemistically as a defense industry. Okay, it's a war industry. It's purely designed to kill people, but the idea that the United Kingdom is procuring equipment solely for the benefit of

26:59the national security or sovereignty of the United Kingdom is a farce. Well, we've just had last month the announcement of a missile system to be created with the Ukrainians. Exactly. Yes. Is that going to be the British Ministry of Defence involved in that project? I'd suggest not. It's going to be talers or British aerospace, all that club of the military industrial complex that's going to be working on that missile system. Exactly. So, but to your point about about how, for example, how ground is taken or how armored vehicles in particular are used? Of course, and I know this sounds cynical, but I think realistic if those vehicles are not destroyed in the way that they may be no, or if they are not destroying something significant in return, then the wheels, the corporate wheels don't turn in the way that they're

28:01supposed to. I think that's the way we have to consider it. This stuff is being made. A lot of it is being made, yes, a lot of projectiles, ballistics, and what not are being made in order to be able to be fired elsewhere. But otherwise, you have to take the view, exactly like the planned obsolescence with light bulbs. Military hardware is being made to be destroyed, because otherwise, those companies cannot continue to make it. If we made tanks, it is. This is why I go back to this idea that war is necessary. We spoke in our last episode, we spoke a little bit around this, because we just had that NATO summit where we were talking about about 5%, and they were hammering out, there's 5%, there's that in the other. Of course, that was absolute smoke and mirrors, because they were not at all upfront about how they were going to achieve 5%, and in fact, when you look at the way the pie was sliced, there was an awful lot of chicaneery going on there. But nonetheless, the point is that that is totally arbitrary, and I made this point in our

29:05side. What the heck does that actually deliver? If we spent 10%, we spent 10% now on so-called defense, and we had every little bit of shiny kit that we needed, what does that mean? That then Russia ceases to be a threat, or that Ukraine is somehow saved? There's no one can articulate what that means. But then all you have to do is just look over the side of the fence, say, oh, right, you're okay. So now the defence corporations all over the world have made their billions. They now need to keep that turning. And this is why this is sort of hand-in-gloving with governments being able to seize upon this opportunity in order to be able to further subjugate populations via legislation and sweeping policy changes. And if this sounds if this sounds fanciful, then all you need to do is go to legislation.gov.uk and look at what

30:07changed during, in particular, the first and second world wars. I'm not making this stuff up. It's exactly what happens. And in the same way that we all say, you can't comply your way out of authoritarianism. None of this stuff ever gets scaled back down. So this is why I do go to the point of sort of they're needing to be a war. And the only obstacle really is the public's response to this. And again, this is something that the media are very, very well practiced in, being able to create the conditions under which people think, okay, yeah, now I'm on site, now I can see why I would go and join up or whatever it is. That's a really interesting point to get to because another of my observations on the strategic defence review was about recruiting because there's one small paragraph in there which

31:13it doesn't say this, but it's implementing this, intimating this is the sense is there that unless we can recruit people, because everything depends on having the personnel to operate the systems, to sail the ships to fly the aircraft, unless we get the person, the people in, we've got a problem. Now, I did a quick check to see what had happened with recruiting figures from sort of autumn last year and we're still in a slowed decline. And this is where I think these people have got themselves in a trap again because in Russia, something which I think has surprised the likes of Dr. Hill and her colleagues, and I'm focusing in on her because half an hour ago, I was listening to her speak about Russia, is the fact that is that not only is President

32:14Putin still extremely popular, even though we've now got war into the third year, 30th, 40th, 40th. He is recruiting in order to fight that war with significant casualties, nobody's saying the Russians aren't taking significant casualties because they absolutely are, but within Russia, across the whole span of Russia, with all the different people types that Russia comprises, there is still the willingness to fight for the motherland. In contrast, in UK, recruiting is demonstrating that people don't feel motivated to fight for UK for the motherland, because they are now completely unmotivated by what their own country has to offer. They don't believe

33:17in the monarchy, they don't believe in the government, they certainly don't believe in politicians, they're not even convinced happily yet that we need to go to war with anybody. So, you read the strategic defence review with all of its rhetoric about and focus on Russia, and we're going to do this with equipment, and we're going to have we're going to have this resurgence in building equipment in house, et cetera, et cetera, but oh, we haven't got the people, and we haven't got the people in a huge way because as the military gets smaller, so the experience base withers away, and therefore you have not got the quality to teach people out the art of warfare, and I'll just add to that that something else that I picked up in the strategic defence review was the fact that it was saying, well,

34:19as far as education is concerned and teaching, and they're talking about education and teaching recruits within the military, that's going to be outsourced. So, another key thing, because in my time in the Navy, when you looked at young recruits coming in into the Navy, you could see the huge change that the Navy made in taking them from being a schoolboy, to bringing them through basic training, a lot of them needed education in that their mathematics skills weren't very good, or they're writing, reading and writing even, and it was the military instructors that worked with them to bring those skills up, and what that was actually doing was giving those young recruits a sense of values not only in themselves, but in the military because they were interfacing with military people. Now we're going to outsource

35:21all that to Capitaire or whoever it's going to be, and so what you're doing is even the serving people are not rank and file serving people are not getting any sense of national identity or pride in the armed forces, all the things that mean that they want to serve, and they stay in the armed forces. And of course, I always found it bizarre when the military started talking about people having a sort of gap here, you would serve for so long in the military and then you'd go and work for boots, and then you would come back in. I remember thinking this was utterly bizarre when it was floated around the military. Now that report is saying, well, no, this is what we're going to do. We want to encourage people to be gap year military people, and I'm thinking no, no, no, because it's the fact that people are in a career for life. They want to serve. They want to,

36:25this is what makes excellent professionals. So the people compiling that document to my mind don't even understand what you need to make a military work. No, I mean, I would quite agree. If you sort of take it at face value, but I think we, you know, we go back to a question I was sort of examining at the start, which is, which is, well, I'm supposed to partly, do we need the papers? Well, yeah, that's part of it, but but it's sort of what does, what does winning or losing actually look like? And do we, are we supposed to be winning or are we supposed to be losing? Because if we, I think if we, we look at the end state, you know, as one should in military planning, you know, what is the end state? What is the desired end state? And therefore one step before that, what is your central gravity? What do you, what's the one mission critical activity you need to achieve in order to fulfill that end state? And I have a hard time picking between sort of winning or losing. Because the point is to be able to create the conditions under which people are going to accept

37:29a change to their circumstances. And the introduction of, I mean, I know I keep saying it, but, but, right. So we're going to fight the war. We're not actually going to fight the war without our, our, our, what you see, I think, I think there was the, there are different sides. So I think there's a really interesting point you make about the, about the people. Because again, we talked about this before. They're quite right. There are, I think amongst the, those of, sort of eligible age, I mean, in particular, say that people are coming into it, you know, 16 to 18 year olds now, by and large, you know, not, not interested for a variety of reasons. I think not interested probably because the, just the idea of doing something, which requires a certain degree of discomfort and, sort of, physical endurance and more. Yeah, exactly. I mean, all of that. So on the, on the one hand, that might sound a bit damning and a bit unkind to say, but I think it is true. And I think we can point back to a lot of reasons why that would be. And then I think on the other side is the, well, go and, go and, you know, get, get slaughtered for a Keir Starmer. No thanks. And that again, I think is a very

38:31interesting one because when we look at what's happening now with reform, UK, and again, talked about in the last episode, but the, the sort of creation and then riding a wave of, nationalistic further, whatever you want to call it. And for us now, off to Davos to sort of wave as flag and say, you know, right up yours, I'm going to stick up for Britain and whatnot. In actual fact, I think were there a change. And this is, this, this might have a few people sort of bulking slightly, but, but, you know, there are great parallels here with what was happening in 1930s Germany. The rise of Hitler in the early stages was based on a brilliant oratory and a very clever selection of a, a way of unifying the country, both economically and philosophically. And, and this is what Farage is doing, but you have to have your baddie. And internally,

39:37whilst for Hitler, it was Jews, not as far as I believe. And I, and I'm, I'm setting quite a lot of store in the writings of David Irving. But, and then this is from, from Diaries, not just a bit of those surrounding him. It wasn't that he was, has sort of pathological disposition against people of Jewish faith, but, but rather more that he realized the political expediency in identifying a group of people that could be pointed to as the problem in the same way that reform and Farage have done with the in particular Muslim population of the United Kingdom. So the reason I am talking about this is because I think that does potentially open two doors. One is the, the idea that sort of migration and what not needs to be tackled and digital identity, hey presto is the answer for that, but also because of the, the idea that right, well, we are, we are all Brits and those dastardly Russians are going to do something. So you now are going to join up and you would fight for say, Farage. So I think you're absolutely right. You do need

40:39people, but probably not that many. And I go back to this idea of corporate and exactly what you're talking about with the, the idea that the packages of training or whatever can be delivered from outside the armed forces, which to you and I sent utterly insane. But then actually if you're thinking of where that goes and the idea that the control really is held outside of the armed forces for all the reasons that we've heard to you before, I think it sort of starts to make more sense. Yeah. Yesterday I had, I had a chat with Mike Robinson and, and I think I said to him, so what do you think's happening? And there were, there were some things discussed, but part of that discussion was an emergence of fascism. And we're talking about UK and the West. And that, that was Mike's feeling on what we're saying. And you're intimating the, the same thing here. That we are the main danger is actually coming from within the country and the attack on our

41:42constitution and our laws and our freedoms and our protections. But while you were talking about the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany into my head came a chat that Mike and I had many, many years ago, I think in, in Bournemouth with a very elderly German lady who'd married an English soldier at the end of the Second World War and then come to live in UK. And of course at that, because I'm talking at least 10, maybe 12 years ago, it was the EU which was seen as the big evil beast eating away at our constitution and freedoms. This elderly lady was very agitated. And she said to us over a cup of tea, all this is happening. The freedoms are going. The state is taking control and people can't see it. Why can't they see it? Why can't they see it?

42:47And then the next minute when she was talking about what she witnessed as the change of politics in Germany, she said, but the thing about it was, it emerged like the drip, drip, drip of an anesthetic. And then she said, and one of the things I remembered and I always hated was that more and more officials were given the right to enter your home. And more and more people doing ordinary jobs were put in a uniform. And I'm recounting that now after all these years, but it was immensely powerful because there was that elderly lady. She was later. I think she was bombed out into German cities. Hamburg was one. I can't remember where the other one was. She was in Berlin or not, but but very poignant stories. But I thought I goodness, you know, so you think about the change always being a start change that you could see, but she described the evolution of

43:53the Nazi project as a drip, drip, drip of an anesthetic. Yeah. That's what we are seeing on. We are sensing this through some of these documents. I think absolutely. And I think I think what sets this in some perspective is the, in some ways, what was a, you might say, as a dress rehearsal, but but actually was conducted in such a way as to alert people, perhaps beyond a level, they should have been alerted. And that was the COVID emergency. And I think there are, there are great parallels, which we absolutely shouldn't ignore. Anyone who's done any research into it will know that so many things coincidentally were in place by the time the balloon went up in March 2020. And that suggests that there was a significant amount of planning into something that was subsequently characterized as being a novel illness and novel emergency. And there is every indication that that was not the case. But also if you look at who, you know, who benefited

44:58from that who continues to benefit very obviously, of course, the pharmaceutical industry, but also the digital industry as well, the, the way in which the push to having everything online and indeed digital signature and biometrics. And all of that sort of stuff said that so the delivery of profit and control and success into those corporations has been absolutely immeasurable as has government control. And that's exactly what you will describe. I mean, you think of during that period, everyone was suddenly in high vies wondering, I mean, marshalling this that and the other. And by and large, people accepted it. But of course, as I say, that that it was so stark and it was so draconian that I think that's done two things. First of all, it did have the I suppose probably calculated effect at least calculators into far as it was probably wasn't going to trigger that many people, but a significant number of people became aware of this reacted against it and now are live to what is going on in the world. But I think actually what it did was it pushed the boundaries

45:58so far. And Mike was talking about this the other day on a news program, the sort of shut the door in the face approach, which is that you, you want to achieve one thing, which is sort of right of arc. So you, you make a statement about something that is way beyond what it is that you need to achieve in order that people react against that and you then appear to row back from there and say, right, well, they are so it sort of looks like companies. And I think that is in a way what the COVID project is going to deliver in terms of war because this is a drip drip, it's not right, you've all got to stay at home, you know, right, we're all at war. No, so I think I think there is absolutely a drip drip element to that. I think also the other thing, you know, thinking about that exchange with that with that German lady is how we always talk, you know, I'm always talking about we should, you know, we've got to learn from history, never again, this, that, the other, okay, fine. But what one forgets is that a large part of the reason that history has forgotten lessons aren't learned is because it's a different group of people who are in the chair at that

47:01particular time. So if you, if you were able to go back and say to the people who, who did survive for the first world war, right, let's go and do this again. I can't see that any of them would say, yes, we'll do it again. But by the time you've pushed on a generation and in effect, that is what we've done now, people have forgotten. And I think this is the other part of it is people have lost touch with the human cost and the impact on humanity and just to, yes, exactly. And so it's, it's glamourized. The, the internet does that. You see, you see, Twitter is absolutely a wash with either the idea for the Ukraine armed forces, supposedly sort of, you know, yeah, we blow up so and so, yeah, but so you're, you're talking about killing people. If that was in any other context and you were putting live videos of people being killed, that would not be pointed, but because it's sort of it's glorious war, it's somehow fine. Well, I think I did mention

48:04this in our previous talk, but the other thing I'm old enough to remember will be as a, as a youngster was the fighting in Vietnam being reported on the BBC. And regularly those reports were body bags. They were talking about dead Americans coming back in body bags. And it was clear that the reports of those deaths, 200, 300, whatever it was in any particular period were having a huge impact on UK society. And they were certainly having a huge impact on American society. Because when the body bags got numerous enough and, and the flow was strong enough, there was the backlash in the American public against against the war itself. But the war in Ukraine, utterly brutal, brutal fighting in a conventional sense in the beginning, but now within a matter of a few years into drone operators hunting individual soldiers. And some of the

49:11footage is truly horrific. None of this appears on the BBC. So the BBC reports the war in Ukraine with, as you say, all the glamour of war, if that's possible, with no absolutely no footage of the reality. And that's that's why for UK column news. And I've tried not to overdo it. I have from time to time put up clips to show how brutal the fighting is in Ukraine. But you are right. The West portrays the war as a glamorous war in Ukraine. It does. And this is this is truly sickening. And, and I think with the like you described the drip drip approach and the many other societal factors that have played upon or interfered with people's minds in so far as people have become desensitized from it. They're the number of people who've been around death. And I don't like to talk about this much. But the number of people who've experienced it up close is very

50:14small now, very, very small, which means that people have largely experienced it through computer games or these online videos. So either it's just virtual or it's being done in the name of something that you're told you should believe in. And even, in fact, going to BBC, I mean, amazingly, they are, I think it's an audio series that actually running a series at the moment called Putin's foreign fighters. And the premise as far as I've heard the, the sort of teaser clip, it's to examine these supposedly sort of complete nut cases who want to go and who are not Russian, want to go and fight for Putin, knowing that they face certain death. But the BBC is not reporting those same exactly people fighting for the Ukraine. No, well, or at least if ever it has done, it's taken the Liz Truss line, which is, yeah, this is the right, this is the right thing to do. Absolutely. You should go for it. And I think, you know, this is a, it is a really serious point

51:15because we are talking, you know, I think Mike and I were talking about this in a germ warfare banter session the other day. But the idea that, well, I mean, you know, this sort of word blazing it, the defence industry, you know, you work with the defence industry, you are making kit that is specifically designed in most cases to kill other people. That's what you're doing. You're there to reduce the number of lives on the planet. I mean, that's how it works. And yet the sort of personal accounts of this, because as I say, there are so few serving or former military now full stop, but also very few who will have accounted, it will have taken part in kinetic operations that have resulted in the loss of life. And I just mean that in terms of the overall population, people have basically lost touch with it. And I think, you know, I mean, I find this, I brought back into stark reality. Very recently, I've read an account, a first-hand account from the trenches in the first war, an amazing book called Tommy at Gomko, a geo-double-m-e-c-o-u-r-t,

52:25Thomas Higgins, who was a private soldier, then Lance Corporal in the North Staff at Regiment, at the early stages of the First World War, and it describes his experiences in the trenches, and then subsequently as a prisoner of war. And I defy anybody to read that book and think, yes, we should go to war. And that should be in Keir Starmer's entry. And I'm not suggesting that he holds all the power. He is being pushed into this by the the the known and unknown entities to which we refer, yet he does have the authority to to go or no go where the reaction is concerned. But I think the reason I mentioned that book is that specifically, what's so interesting, we have this, we have this sort of roasted-ended idea that, you know, the pals, battalions, and this and the other, that there was an organic response to a situation where we had to meet, you know, we had to meet that threat and we had to send men out and this and the other.

53:26But actually, what comes out of that book, some of the more poignant parts, are he he recounts singing the national anthem on Christmas Day, where sort of hostilities ceased for the day. They sang the national anthem, and it just caused him to ruminate. He kept these are from diaries, he kept at the time of sort of, well, really, is that why we're here? We're here to keep some some bloke sitting in a nice house back in the United Kingdom safe, you know, to read that that's that's quite a pretty emotional thing to read off the absolute horrors that he's been through. And also, he talks about the utter loss of humanity in some of the urban skirmishes that they had where he describes. And it was it was the same both sides. What else could they do? But they just it was just a slaughter. It was a frenzy. They were just killing people as quickly as they possibly could. There was no regard for trying to take prisoners or anything like that because they knew that if they faltered for a minute, it was them next. And that is just horrific

54:32to read. And then the third point, which again is it comes right back to I think sort of what we're talking about in terms of this being in prospect initially. And then in review is the idea that they went out. They did it. Some of them like he survived. And they came back. And they were just straight back down to the bottom of the heap. And for what? And crikey, that is poignant. And so, I mean, if anyone considers getting a whole copy of that, Thomas Higgins, interestingly, his great grandson was one of my instructors when I was at Sandhurst, which is how I came by a copy of it. So I'll get Higgins gave me a copy of the other day. But I mean, there'll be other accounts, but it is absolutely remarkable. And it just, it brings those things. So even if you think, even if you're prepared to endure the idea that humans can kill each other and all the rest of it, the fact that he was able to point to this idea that you go there and you either do sacrifice your life or you're prepared to and you come back and you just get nothing and nothing changes. That hits very hard.

55:35Yeah, these sorts of wild diaries and recollections of people who've actually been through the fighting of very powerful things. YouTube, for all its faults, has got a very large number of really excellent audio, I'll say, videos usually. There's images presented with the audio, but they are audio, audio delivery of the diaries written by German soldiers on the some officers, but mainly soldiers on the eastern front when they were fighting the Russians. And my goodness, those diaries tell you so much because for many, they go from the initial euphoria that they're moving across the border and Operation Barbarossa has begun and they're attacking the Russians and they're advancing hundreds of kilometers a day and then it moves on

56:37to when things started to bog down around Moscow and starting ground happens and then and then they are on the retreat and they're in appalling temperatures minus 30 or whatever it is, they've no food and they are starting to consider why they're there. The only reason they continue to fight is to protect their fellow soldiers, but in those diaries, yes, they absolutely reflect back on why they're there and what was happening. These are not diaries that the BBC is ever going to present to the nation and I doubt if they've even presented to the nation in Germany because they really tell it as it is. We're on a very interesting path here as I was driving into the column this morning. One of the things that was in my head is that although I have been retired now for 30 plus years from from the military, I'm thinking to myself, it's amazing how powerful the sense of loyalty is and so I thought we're going to have this discussion today and I didn't quite know where

57:43it was going to go, but I was thinking we are absolutely challenging stuff that's happening around the military. We're also in a way looking at the military in UK and saying you really need to think through what you're doing and why, but I also feel a sense that there are many very good young men and women who are out there in UK's armed forces because they believe they are doing a good job that they're a vital part. This is a difficult one, but what do you think we should be saying to them? Because on one hand we're here and we're clearly putting a message across wars and nasty things. You have more experience of it than I certainly do. But so we're saying, watch out for what this really is and who's fermenting the environment that says you need to go prepare to go to war for the Russians. Yes. What else can we say to those?

58:45Yeah. Very professional and dedicated people out there. This is it. It's a very good question and I think perhaps at the outset of this discussion, we should have made reference to that. I mean, the fact is we are both ex-servicement and we both intentionally join the armed forces and serve for periods of time. So we obviously we wanted to do that and there are so many elements of military life and okay, I am out of touch and I think to go back to your point about the hollowing item or not, I know that morale is not what it was when you or I was serving. I mean, there's always something to complain about. Yes, it wouldn't be what it is if there wasn't that might be indeed. That might be hard for not the literally people to understand. Exactly. If there isn't a certain amount of manking that you used to be called in the 90's, life is not okay. Yes, exactly. But notwithstanding that, but yes, I mean, the sense and this might sound sort of

59:47tried from like a sales pitch, it's absolutely not. It is completely an objective fact that the the camaraderie and the professionalism and the ability to get stuff done is exists in the armed forces in an unparalleled sense. I mean, I do not believe you can replicate or experience that anywhere else. And for me, that was the main driver for not just joining, but being part of that system. Now, the problem is that you are therefore manipulated as an individual. Your good nature is taken and maybe co-opted in any particular direction, but that is a political direction. So I think what I would hope that people do is discuss much more about the factors that are pointing towards a particular military intervention and

1:00:51really consider what it is that that either is driving this or that the results of it would be and to therefore exercise your discretion and your influence over that process because that, you know, let's not forget the chain of command works both ways. And I think there needs to be a greater element of discussion that feeds up to the, let's face it, the political, no, very much political hierarchy of the armed forces. That's a really good point, Charles. What immediately comes into my mind is, I've said this on a number of occasions, I'm happy to say again now, is the immense weakness of the senior officers in the military. And this was one of the things that I started to see towards the end of my career, which made me ultimately make the decision to leave. I saw things happening in the military, which were clearly not right. They did not make sense. They were causing

1:01:56problems. And yet there was no senior officer that would speak out. Because their minds were full of, am I going to be made a sir? That was the key one. Am I going to get that most high-ranking pension to make the rest of my life comfortable? And when I started to see what I thought were really, really good senior officers, the sort of people who you just knew if the chips were down, you would actually be following them in the battle. And then suddenly some scruffy politician appeared on board the ship or on the base. And they just turned to mush. And I found this appalling. And of course, there are so many, I mean, if we take Baron, who's been part of the strategic defence review, you can correct me here because I may have missed it. But what is he actually, what did he actually do to stop the hollowing out to the military?

1:03:00Because he's reached senior rank in a military that was being hollowed out. So what did he do to actually stand up against that or protest or whatever? Though senior officers, some of them have spoken out a little bit. But most of them, in my view, are complete political cowards. They will not talk about things. Absolutely. I would agree with that. And I think that's that's very well evidenced by the number of officers above sort of one star commander and above who go public at the moment they've left, rather than actually making a fuss whilst they're still in and being able to deliver some sort of protest. Yes, exactly, yes. And so, yes, I mean, to go back to the point, again, sorry, just to refer back to the book at Tommy O'Connor, the other point he makes, of course, and this strikes right at the heart of it, and it's terribly difficult. It's an ethical question, but he reflects at one point. And he just says, you know, we all came to think, or he came to think that he's really there just killing Germans because

1:04:05they're German, you know, just because they had the misfire. I can't remember. He phrases it really well. And that's quite a thought. Now, that takes us into a much bigger thing, which we can't possibly touch upon now, but the idea, you know, what is an armed force for in the first place, you know, because to me, sort of rather sentimentally, the idea of sort of queen and country seemed to mean something, or certainly made a hell of a lot more than, right, going to go off there and just bash those people around just because they're in a different part of the world. And that, to me, has never made any sense at all. But to not have any armed forces, and well, you know, anyway, not for now, but it just does, you know, how many people really, when you are getting operational briefings about this and the other, how many people are really thinking, okay, so we are going to be in, let's say Iran or Russia, aiming to kill Iranians or Russians simply because they are Iranian or Russian. I mean, that's quite a thought. Now, where people take that, I don't know, but I think that people that at least having those

1:05:08thoughts, having those discussions has got to be for the good because otherwise, this has been sort of a thread through this conversation, the balance absolutely does shift away from the military, holding any power over their own destiny. And we look at the massive, massive corporate influence, and that is a terrific danger. And I think what I'm pleased to be doing is this, you know, this series, which we are going to make a more regular commitment to, because I think it's really important that UK column does chart accurately this drip drip, bald frog progression, because I think we see it, and it is very important that other people are brought to see it as well. Absolutely, Charles, we're probably at the top of the hour, I think, so we should probably finish for today, but let's end by reinforcing the point that we absolutely understand the quality of the people are out there in UK's military. I think my final message would be,

1:06:11it may be, I'm saying to those people out there in the armed forces, you may have to fight, it will be fighting for this country rather than fighting the Russians. Yeah, that's exactly it, but exactly what is defined by this country these days is a big one, and we'll get to that in another episode. In due course, brilliant. Thanks very much, Charles. Thanks, Brian.