UK Column News — 18th February 2026

0:00Good afternoon. It's Wednesday, the 18th of February, 2026, just after one o'clock. Welcome to the UK Column News. I'm your host Mike Robinson, joining me by video link today are Charles Mallett and Vanessa Bealey. Now, later in the program, Charles is going to be reporting on the risks caused by the lithium battery industry and will have an update on the sensing of Jimmy Lai and Hong Kong. Vanessa is going to be covering the Iran focus at the Munich Security Conference and Russia's involvement in Gaza Reconstruction and I'll have an update on the fallout from discord's decision to roll out age verification globally and also taking a look at paramilitary protection rockets in Northern Ireland, but we're going to begin today with vaccine injuries because according to the BBC and they're really calling this as a bit of an exclusive, the NHS has paid almost 40 million pounds of taxpayers' money to a company called Crawford and Company Adjusters. Now, this is a US owned outsourcing firm which has been contracted by

1:05the UK Government to assess claims of harm caused by COVID vaccines and that number of 50 millions, I think it's 48 million in total, is eight times the original estimate for the work, so it was originally supposed to be six million pounds. Now, Crawford was brought, brought on in March 2022 to carry out medical assessments for the UK-wide vaccine damage payment scheme, which offers a one-off tax-free payment of 120,000 pounds to those who can prove vaccine caused them severe disability, but if we bring that back on screen here then it goes on to say that the firm's five-year contract, as I say, initially valued at six million, but cost spiraled dramatically as the volume of claims far exceeded expectations, and so this is what they said, has a claim, volume of claims has exceeded the anticipated levels. At its peak, the NHS was paying Crawford 5.9 million pounds in a single month, and of course that was almost the entire contract

2:1122,000 claims related to COVID vaccine damage had been submitted, the vast majority apparently linked to the AstraZeneca job, only around 1% of those have resulted in compensation payouts, and as of November last year, 249 people had received payments and that was totaling 29.8 million pounds, so in other words, 20 million pounds less than have been paid to Crawford for running the assessments. Now the BBC article is clearly an effort to whitewash the situation, they quote legal experts who've raised serious questions as they describe it about how the contract was structured, and they quote someone called Albert Sanchez-Grills, a professor at University of Bristol Law School, who said that the contract was peculiar and given the uncertainty at the time, and I'm going to ask what uncertainty, because everybody was fairly certain that there was going to be problems with these jobs as they were rolled out, but anyway, he also argued that a

3:14shorter agreement with a cap on the number of claims processed would have been more appropriate, so let's not worry about how many people are actually affected by this, put a cap on it, anyway, and he said that using firm contracts in uncertain situations carry significant commercial risks, so this is all about commerce and all about the profitability of various things, but not really about the impact on individual people's lives. Now the NHS has now got rid of this company and is looking for a new provider, now apparently that new provider has been chosen, and that's this lot, Maximus, and so this contract is taken over by Maximus UK Services Limited, now this is another US Headquartered Company, and their new five-year contract is estimated at 27 million pounds, that of course is considerably more than the six million in the original

4:14assessment, and then the vaccine injury scheme, of course, as everybody knows, is under review by West Streeting the Health Secretary at the moment, and there's going to be more propaganda on this coming out from the COVID inquiry in the not-to-distant future, as they attempt to whitewash the damage that was done. Charles, I'll be interested in your thoughts on this, because clearly they were expecting there to be many fewer people coming forward to highlight problems that they've experienced than there have been, and of course it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone no matter what academics might be saying, or what the BBC might be saying, because it was pretty clear very early on that people were being injured by these things. Yeah, good afternoon Mike, and good afternoon all. Yeah, so I mean, I think the cynicism, the level of cynicism here is absolutely outrageous, and of course this is not a new issue, as was highlighted right at the start of there being a vaccine damage scheme. It was

5:18like waiting through treacle, but also the sort of adding insult to serious injury, this idea that you had to be able to qualify to what degree you had been affected in order to be able to qualify for the payment, so that the reluctance with which government is actually progressing, this is absolutely unbelievable. Of course, no great surprise to see that the amounts of money being given to corporations absolutely dwarf that, which would go to those who've been affected, and I think the only other point to make, I mean, it's hardly a positive, but the fact that this does actually bring the issue of what went wrong and why back into the public's consciousness, so it can only be hoped that in reporting on it, like we do here at UK Column, that people are made aware in a way that they perhaps have been inclined to forget about over the last few years. Yes, thank you for that Charles. Now, on Monday's programme Ben is talking about and Ben Prime, we're talking about Rivered Low. This is related in a certain sense.

6:21It is absolutely. I mean, I think really by coincidence, Ben's point in terms of his reporting of Rupert Low's announcement that Restore Britain will now become a political party was really he now and indeed his organisation deserves a level of scrutiny that he'd not been hitherto subjected to and is he and is Restore Britain what it purports to be? Now, interestingly, we continue on the theme of vaccine damage because here he is tweeting back in November 2024. If we can just pop that on screen now, the Department of Health has revealed that there have been nearly 500,000 adverse reaction reports highlighted or underlined there. He then goes on to say forcing the vaccine on millions who had no need for it was entirely wrong. I mean, one might adjust that to forcing the vaccine on anyone was entirely wrong. Now, he's put out a series of tweets about this in recent weeks going back to 13th January, Britain needs a full inquiry into both COVID

7:24vaccine harms and also the wider health impact inflicted on the British people through lockdown measures and so forth. So he's very much setting out a case there for being against the authoritarian tyrannical corrupt measures that were put in place from 2020 onwards. How, what we must consider now is how do his own dealings stack up with that point of view? So we go to the register of interests in the on the parliament website and learn behold, we see that here's a director of something called PE487, limited, concerned with free-strying, farmer-related business. Now, what is this? It is an entity called biopharma process systems limited and here he is shown as a director of this organisation, which he has been since 2009 and one of the standard industrial classifications for this organisation is research and experimental development

8:24on biotechnology. Well, what exactly does that mean? And we go to their website, biopharma group and we find an article or at least a web page entitled The Importance and Challenges of mRNA vaccines and how the correct Philan finish equipment can support your mRNA ambitions. We'll look at a little bit of a text from this page which says mRNA vaccineology is advantageous because it offers adaptability in both the number and type of antigenic determinants and its versatility means that mRNA can be described as an attractive source of antigen and the nature of mRNA leads to different advantageous benefits and I'm not suggesting Rupert Lowe wrote this but nonetheless he has been a director of this organisation for more than 15 years and indeed he is in receipt of money from it quite clearly a facilitator in mRNA vaccine technology which was at the heart of the problems with the COVID so-called

9:25vaccine. Now one might consider that this is a one-off but if we look further down the register of interest we see that's not actually the case and indeed he also has a shareholding in what's called blue bird holdings limited. Now this is an Ethiopian investment company that oversees 54 capital and in our history we see that they have invested into Addis pharmaceutical factory Ethiopia's largest pharmaceutical drug provider and I'm not suggesting they've had anything to do with the COVID vaccines but nonetheless there is a pattern here as identified or at least explained by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization very much using the same MO as the likes of Bill Gates here listed as it is 54 capital in the investment opportunities in vaccine and essential medicines manufacturing in parts of the world that are in effect susceptible to the influence of Western organisations suggesting that they need to have certain medical

10:25products in order to treat conditions that they may or may not have. Now I got in touch with restore Britain to ask for a clarification on Rupert Lowe's position on this because there does appear to be a significant conflict between what he says and what he does and interestingly the automatic response said if appropriate a member of our team will be in touch well so far it has not been appropriate to respond on the specific issue of mRNA vaccines so I just close out by saying that it might also be of interest to note that when he was calling for the death penalty back in November of 2025 this coincided exactly with the Israeli Parliament doing the same thing about which I wrote in the previous edition of the Blindfold briefing a capital coincidence which I would invite you to have a read of. Thank you very much for that Charles thanks for that we'll talk more about this in extra I have no doubt Vanessa let me welcome you to the programme now and as we discussed we mentioned on Friday Munich Security Conference going on

11:28over the weekend and a lot of the focus seems to have been on Iran. Yeah very much so building the narrative for regime change war now first of all I just want to look at the four points that Netanyahu said he discussed with President Trump in Washington this is Netanyahu speaking at the Jerusalem conference after his visit to Washington but it gives a very good insight as to what the US negotiations will base their requirements upon so let's just play this. Several components that we believe are important not only for the security of Israel but for the security of the world the United States the region the world the first is that all in rich material has to leave Iran the second is that there shall be no enrichment capability not stopping the enrichment process but dismantle the equipment and the infrastructure that allows

12:34you to enrich in the first place and the third is to deal also with the questions of ballistic missiles there's an empty CR limitation of 300 kilometers and Iran is supposed to adhere to it of course it doesn't as the rising line operation by itself manifested everybody knows that and the fourth is stop the dismantle the axis of the terror that Iran has built it's been smashed but it's still there it's trying to recover as Iran itself is trying to do. So I mean basically of course Netanyahu is bringing forward terms that Iran is under no circumstances going to accept so we see the usual negotiations trap being set then Netanyahu mentions that Iran lies or makes stuff up is a deceitful enemy etc but let's listen to what he says

13:34about the disarmament of Hamas in Gaza. And then Gaza must be demilitarized disarmed means that it must give up its main weapons not main weapons and what other people said heavy weapons the practically no heavy weapons in Gaza there's no artillery there are no tanks there's nothing the heavy weapon the one that does the most damage is called an AK-47 okay that's it that's how they execute people. So wait the Netanyahu just admit that the Palestinians had absolutely nothing to do with the massacres on October the 7th which released scenes like this where cars had been torched by Apache helicopters tanks and so on under the control of the Israelis and of course this is kind of a foregone conclusion even Hebrew media sources like Hurots have very clearly

14:40stated that the IDF ordered the Hannibal director of on October the 7th to prevent Hamas taking soldiers captive so just on the side from the Iran issue but demonstrating the hypocrisy of Israel when they claim that Iran is the one that is lying. And then let's come to the Munich security conference as you mentioned Mike and if you just scroll down a search on YouTube for the Munich conference and Iran you get a whole raft of such interviews and talks of course all targeting Iran for regime change and the dreadful Lindsey Graham was there who's been given a increased relevance under the Trump administration and here he is talking to Christian Omanpur at the Munich conference. Ever problems associated with the day after if the people went against the IOTOla are fraction of the problems associated with the IOTOla killing his way out yet again standing to murder another day

15:48if you don't realize we're on the verge of history you're missing a lot we're talking weeks not months and when we do this if we do we're starting and we're not stopping what I find interesting is what he basically says is will secure a regime change after that we really don't care what happens in Iran um so but again they're they're working on behalf of the Iranian people then shortly after the Munich security conference Lindsey Graham went to Tel Aviv where he again pushed the regime change message to an Israeli audience let's hear this the best answer to all the problems created by Iran is regime change the best answer is for the people to take the place of the IOTOla I do not believe they're in the streets to build more nuclear weapons I think they're in the streets to have a better life so I mean there's absolutely no sort of subterfuge over this particular

16:52regime change operation then of course last night or yesterday we had the talks in Geneva the second round of talks they're heading for a third round of talks apparently the Iranian foreign minister actually said that there was some agreement on guiding principles generally the response has been positive of course generally speaking Iranians believe that negotiation is always a trap and that there is absolutely no chance of concessions from Iran towards what Israel is demanding at the same time Trump is building up a military presence in the region um they're sending the US as Abraham Lincoln to join the other aircraft carriers and there have been reports of dozens of planes F-22-35 and 16 heading towards US bases um in the region and finally I think and I think Mike and and everyone listening today will agree with me that the clearest sign of the US heading

17:59for a regime change war or destabilization project is when they hitlarize the enemy and this is exactly what Lindsey Graham does at the end of his conversation with Christian on poor at the Munich security conference so let's just play this all we need is the courage of our convictions I cannot promise you exactly what the day after will be but if somebody had killed Hitler in 1935 it would have probably been better if this regime falls the day after has promised if it stays in place the day after is going to generationally destroy the mid east and we'll be haunted by this for generations to come and they will be talking about us in a very bad way so I think the endgame is inevitable it's just how long it takes for the US to get to that point

19:00yes indeed thanks Vanessa thank you for that now let's move on to online safety issues then and well sorry before we do that we'll just have a quick ad break just to say to everybody if you like what the UK column does and you would like to support us please head over to the website the options for helping a site are there and your support absolutely needed on an ongoing basis so thank you very much everybody that is contributing financially if you can't help us financially please do share this program any other program that we're producing that you like because that helps us beat the censorship regime that we're going to talk a little bit more about in a second tonight at seven then Michael Rektinwald is speaking to Jarm on free speech and the death of academia that's seven o'clock tonight no silicon steel tonight it's Chinese New Year so join us probably hopefully on Friday there'll be the next one now let's come on to the censorship issue and the

20:04issue of online safety because discord the global what is it's a chat platform and so on I have to say they've decided to roll out globally their age verification system and it is absolutely sparked a massive backlash because of privacy data security and also the concerns about the involvement of certain investors that will come on to in a second now for those that don't know discord is a messaging community platform it's got about 200 million users per month many of whom are now leaving for alternatives and I discourse announced earlier this month that would rule out its age assurance program globally from March and this of course is building on what they're already doing in the UK and in Australia and the move is described as being a child safety measure of course we've been talking about this for quite some time now under the new system all users will default to a teen appropriate experience with access to age restricted servers

21:05channels and other settings locked unless the user can prove that they're an adult they say that they will implement an age inference model so this is a machine learning system an AI system that draws on account usage device type activity platforms and they're going to classify users in age groups without needing them to submit any documents or take a selfie except when additional confirmation is required they say that they will offer multiple privacy forward options through trusted partners they say that facial scans will never leave your device and they say that they or their partners will never receive your data they say that IDs are used to get your age only and then deleted so actually you do have to provide IDs under certain circumstances and they say that they only receive their age and that's all your identity is never associated with your account now the problem for discord is that last year attackers accessed

22:1070,000 users government IDs selfies and other sensitive information and that was after compromising discord's third party customer support system and the electronic frontier foundation we see this on screen at the moment has awarded discord discord it's we still told you so breaches award now they these are a bunch of awards that they give out every year for any breaches of data privacy and so on and they're saying here last year authentic one our first we told you so award because we protected in 2023 age verification mandates would inevitably lead to more data breaches potentially exposing government IDs as well as information about the sites of the user visits like clockwork they did it was our it was our first we told you so breaches award but we knew it wouldn't be the last so discord won the 2025 award but it things got worse for discord when they when it emerged that they were not relying solely on a kid which was

23:13their primary global ID supplier but was also experimenting with a second supplier and that second supplier was this lot persona they started carrying a disclaimer for UK users that information would be processed by an age assurance vendor called persona and that unlike the other situation which would be on the vice information submitted to persona would temporarily be stored from the seven days on personas servers before deletion personas major investors we just put persona back on screen there for second William please personas major investors include this man Peter Thiel looking out from the side there so all of this is yet another example of why age assurance being rolled out as a result of the online safety act of course it's nothing what efforts to do with child safety or online safety it is about day anonymizing the internet

24:17and providing people like Peter Thiel with huge quantities of valuable data in other words humans are being farmed and because as I've been saying for a very long time my age assurance does nothing to prevent adults posing as children on websites geared towards children like roblox this is where most child grieving happens online and these types of platforms are problematic now this is recognized in other countries and we're citing Egypt as an example here and in fact other Arab countries as well but here in other words so Egypt basically has banned roblox in that country and other Arab countries have done so as well but here it's just data collection and data breaches and of course substock is the latest so earlier this month they had to admit that October last year an unauthorized third party accessed user data including email addresses phone numbers and other unspecified internal metadata and they said in an email that they sent the customers

25:20I'm reaching out to let you know about the security incident that resulted in the email address and phone number from your substock account being shared without your permission I'm incredibly sorry that this happened we take a responsibility to protect your data and privacy seriously and we came up short here so you know Charles it has got to be said it is time to push back extremely strongly against the online safety act and well actually the time was when it was still a build but saying it released should be or sorry saying it's repealed should be at the top of our priority list because this is a major part of the panopticon which is being built right out in the open it absolutely is and I think it's astonishing given that we have these sorts of instances happening absolutely all the time I mean that the the preposterous claim that any of these platforms are in some way protected against such breaches is just ludicrous but yeah it should again it should

26:24keep the the online safety act in the public eye people should be applying exactly that sort of pressure to to contest the sort of thing and again you know the suggestion that the answer to all of this is further digitization of everything and that and that you should further submit your identity all the critical data into these platforms is is an absolute nonsense and one can just hope but more and more people are beginning to see the direction that this is going in before it's too late indeed okay well let's move international now and first of all the Hong Kong and the Jimmy Lai sentencing Charles yeah although different location I mean this very much follows what Vanessa's just been saying about Iran and of course the pressure from elsewhere for regime change and I hear we have the foreign secretary Ivec Cooper responding to the Jimmy Lai sentencing he's been sent down for 20 years supposedly strengthening the pro-democracy stance

27:26in Hong Kong it was taken in 2019 or at least so the story goes now what Ivec Cooper actually said in her statement among other things was British national Jimmy Lai was today sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong for exercising his right to freedom of expression following a politically motivated prosecution well that's not very accurate from Ivec Cooper that is not why he was sentenced to 20 years in prison and of course British national he may be but it's worth noting that he's spent the first 12 years of his life in mainland China before his family moved to Hong Kong she went on to say that Beijing's national security law was imposed on Hong Kong to silence China's critics and again she might want to take a look at the very similar national security act 2023 in the United Kingdom and examine exactly what the purpose of that is and then she concludes by saying that we stand with the people of Hong Kong and we'll always honour the historical commitments made under the legally binding side no British joint declaration and China must do

28:30the same now we'll come back to that but no great surprise to see that across the Atlantic Marco Rubio has chucked out a sort of abbreviated version of exactly the same thing saying it shows the world that Beijing will go to extraordinary lengths to silence those who advocate fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong casting aside the international commitments Beijing made in the 1984 sign-out British joint declaration so he's referring back to that again now what I'd like to do is take a look at what Dr Warwick Powell said to Karls R on a recent episode of the Silicon Steel podcast because he deals with exactly this issue and shatters the myths that the lights of effect Cooper and Marco Rubio are putting out Jimmy Lai was part of an American destabilization slash regime change frontline operation and he was charged ultimately with sedition and for collusion with foreign powers now I don't know whether it was collusion

29:33or not because collusion kind of implies that it was done in secret but when you're actually on a global stage calling for America to launch nuclear weapons on China it I'm not sure that that's collusion right it's certainly not the secret type of type of collusion but he was charged under national security laws now those national security laws were of course the subject of much controversy and you know the Western press will talk about them as being panicious and this and that but of course they're fine large mirrored on national security laws that you find in just about every other country in the world and the other point to remember is that the national security laws passed by Hong Kong was actually part and parcel of the original agreement right with the British that there would be national security laws and so the implication these days is that somehow what mainland China is doing runs contrary to the the agreements in the original handover

30:37is actually nonsense there was always a requirement for national security laws to be passed there was an attempt to do so in the early 2000s and it failed in the face of orchestrated public protest eventually they've succeeded said Jimmy Lai gets charged he's found guilty pretty hard to not find him guilty frankly given all of the publicly available evidence on top of the evidence that was presented in the court and he was sentenced to 20 years the West has gone absolutely apoplectic about this right but it's got nothing to do with free speech as indeed he says it has nothing to do with free speech and I think the important point that he makes there is about what was coming from the declaration signed in 1984 by the various administrations by the United Kingdom and China's we just have a look at some of the text here which is explicit in stating that except for foreign and defense affairs which are the responsibilities of the central people's government

31:40the Hong Kong special administrative region shall be vested with executive legislative and independent judicial power so the point is that Cooper saying that this is Beijing in effect overstepping this was absolutely set down in 1984 for handover in 1997 which makes her point disingenuous to say the least now on the subject of foreign influence we can't really ignore the significant part that Mark Simon has played in all of this looking at his Twitter profile here he described himself as a former executive at Apple Daily which of course was the media organization that Jimmy Lai was ostensibly in charge of admittedly something that was losing money at an extraordinary rate giving the amounts of money that were changing hands and Simon might be regarded perhaps as lies handler now this is well articulated by an article in the global times from China entitled the verdict reveals Jimmy Lai's true nature as foreign agent now what

32:41this article does very well is explains the various steps of what might be described as a color revolution it also points out that Simon was in receipt of payments 86 payments that added up to 118 million Hong Kong dollars from Jimmy Lai and the money here has come from a variety of sources but most notably perhaps the CIA and the National Endowment for democracy which is something I've spoken about on this very program in the past now the other thing to note that I would like to point out is having just come back from Hong Kong I have spoken directly to people who have felt the effect of what is absolutely disinformation promulgated by Apple Daily and indeed people who have had who have in effect been on the receiving end of this so there was going back to Warwick Powell's point there is absolutely no doubt about the guilt and involvement of Lai in the first place now how has the Western media responded to this perhaps best encapsulated

33:43by BBC Media Action which is taken to LinkedIn to describe Jimmy Lai as now being added to the list of more than 300 journalists in prison around the world well how consistent are they was BBC Media Action reporting on the very many arrests surrounding the prescription and very confused situation surrounding Palestine action at the moment or indeed all the many detentions under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and all I would do is just close by saying if you feel like you do need more background on this then please go back to the UK column news of the 20th of November 2024 to have a look at the background to the Jimmy Lai case going back to 2019 and indeed particularly the heavy hand that the National Endowment for Democracy among others has played in this now Mike I'm sure you've got some comment to make on exactly this and the sort of specific intent that the the Western powers have to try to destabilize China through this sort of psychological

34:44operation yeah but not just China it's so many countries and BBC Media Action Thompson Reuters Foundation as well both in receipt of foreign Commonwealth and development office money in order to pursue regime change operations in other countries so what do they do they they carry out media training they carry out so-called counter disinformation programs they identify opposition voices and they amplify those opposition voices and they use those opposition voices should it get to the actual regime change point to to be representatives of so-called grassroots thought and feeling in those countries back to the British media and the Western media in return and you know it's we will we can talk much more about this in extra but it is I understand that there are opposition voices in these countries but they've got to be very very careful about getting involved with these types of players because there's big money

35:46involved in it and big efforts and influence campaigns and it's it's much bigger than perhaps some some people think it is yeah it's absolutely yeah and I think that's a critical point to make you know when we go back to 2019 exactly who was involved and playing what part and how many of these people genuinely had any idea of where the influences were coming from and why it was they were involved in the first place and of course then the behavior the conduct of the security and intelligence forces in Hong Kong and how that was being orchestrated but as you say lots more to talk about in extra yes Vanessa let's come back to you then and well obviously over the last number of weeks you've been talking about the the Gaza Reconstruction ideas from Trump and so on but what has Russia's role been involved have been in all this well it's it's kind of interesting it's quite a conundrum in fact because since Trump created his so-called peace board or board of peace which has its inaugural convention tomorrow in

36:49Washington there has been some confusion over whether Russia were actually to accept a place on the board initially President Putin was talking about allocating one billion from the frozen five billion in assets in the U.S. to be able to buy them a place on the board now there seems to be a slight different direction for the one billion Dmitry Paskov went on record yesterday saying Russia remains the only country in the world that has decided to allocate one billion and eight to the Palestinians now this isn't entirely true that they are the only country and will come on to this but let's remember let's just have a look at Gaza before and Gaza as it is now this is just one section of Gaza City that at least a minimum of 70 billion dollars is needed to even get it back to the condition that it was in previously and of course Israel is continuing the genocide in Gaza itself it's it's not providing humanitarian aid starving children are dying

37:55of cold and starvation etc etc while in the West Bank and I'll come on to that things are ramping up to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians even from the West Bank enclave now four months ago even the Saudi foreign minister was making the point that while they're ready to contribute to the reconstruction in Gaza they did actually say it is unacceptable to seek international funding to rebuild Gaza while the underlying conditions that enabled its destruction remain unchanged now this is the first that I agree with Saudi Arabia but in contrast to the Russians that are simply putting out a statement saying yeah we'll give one billion for reconstruction without any conditions as to how that money will be used and what conditions the Palestinians are going to to be living in post reconstruction and then of course back on the 22nd of January President Putin again that this is where some of the confusion comes in he met with Mahmoud Abbas

39:00of the Palestinian authority in Moscow at the Kremlin if we can just have this on screen please that would be great where he was actually saying that the one billion would be a contribution to Trump's ball of peace now while having conversations with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian authority of course there must be recognition that the Palestinian authority is considered effectively to be a stooge of Israel and is largely responsible for much of the repression of the resistance in the West Bank in particular and then in the last two days the deputy foreign minister put out a statement saying that basically Russia is still trying to nail down the board of peace mission apparently Minsk suggested to Moscow that they could represent Russia on the board of peace that was knocked aside by Sergei Rybakov who as I said is the deputy

40:00foreign minister and in fact what he said was in Moscow is in no hurry to decide we will see who takes part in Washington on February the 19th at which level and scope we continue to study to analyse the set of proposal and proposals and elements concerning the structures function and scope so again we're left in a rather a state of limbo as to whether Russia is officially going to be involved in the board of peace many European countries are backing off from it saying that Trump is trying to effectively replace the UN and take control not only of the peace process in Palestine but in other areas of the world and at the same time as I mentioned the ramping up of pressure on the West Bank itself so Israel's new West Bank registration process is basically declaring Palestinian land in the West Bank as state property which of course effectively is annexation of that land now just for people to understand the extent of

41:06loss of territory for the Palestinians here's a map just showing Gaza there on the left and what's left of the West Bank which of course if we look at the next slide we can see to what degree that has also been broken down and divided if we could have yeah thank you so basically you have area A which is run by the Palestinian Authority area B which is 22% of the territory PA and Israel and then area C which is being targeted for this annexation of land and making of this land to be state property effectively will lose through that process 83% of that area so when you look at the orange area 83% of that will then be annexed to Israel to the state and of course it will not be resold to Palestinians and at the same time Israel is bringing in tanks it's bringing

42:08in aerial bombing helicopters into the West Bank in an attempt to further ethnically displace or ethnically cleanse the people from the West Bank in a very similar fashion that was used in Gaza and in fact these are figures relating to May 2025 so now of course they obviously increased I think around 7,000 Palestinians have been driven out of their homes in the West Bank and something like probably more than 3,000 Palestinian own structures in the West Bank have effectively been destroyed and and all of this while Russia of course traditionally and China talk about or uphold a two-state solution will one has to ask what kind of two-state solution is going to exist if all Palestinian territory is effectively annexed and the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed from their homes in both Gaza and in the West Bank and of course there's

43:11no statement from Russia on this basis and then I just want to raise the question who is going to receive this one billion of reconstruction aid for Gaza is it going to go to the Palestinian authority which is effectively Israel is it going to go directly to Israel whom we know has no intention of allowing Palestinians to remain in Gaza except as cheap labor contained within even smaller labor camps to effectively secure Gaza as part of a free trade zone running in the India Middle East economic corridor from India through the Gulf States into Gaza and then into Egypt to Hamas almost definitely not of course although Hamas is the recognized government of Gaza to Washington and Israel through the Trump Board of Peace to Jared Kushner who's been involved in the talks on Iran but also the talks on Ukraine it appears that this one

44:16billion whatever way you look at it is effectively going to be used to bail out Israel after it has effectively decimated and destroyed Gaza it's a bailout for Israel in my opinion and I would ask the question if Russia had economically boycotted Israel from the very beginning would it then be necessary for Russia to now contribute one billion to the reconstruction of Gaza and indeed for us and if Russia had economically boycotted Israel from the beginning how many other countries may have joined is that clear yeah yeah okay thank you for that Charles let's come back to Britain then and the question of lithium batteries thanks Mike yes I mean lithium of course absolutely integral to the whole push towards all things supposedly progressive technological digital but also in terms of energy or at least

45:18what's being described as renewable energy now especially in the United Kingdom so much contingent upon the supposed requirement or at least capability to store energy in lithium-ion batteries we just take a look at the international energy agency who've put a graph out indicative of the way in which batteries are used so this charts the last 10 years if you can't see the graph you'll see that the exponential rise is in large part due to a massive increase in EV car but of course that's not all of it as I say battery energy storage systems form a large part of it now in terms of the sort of economic and geopolitical ramifications the graph sorry the map shown on screen now indicates that outside of Australia which of course is the leading producer of lithium it's really China that has a grip on the lithium market and indeed the control which is exactly what the IEA is pointing to when it talks about supply side risks in the United Kingdom just this week the

46:24energy storage news has been talking about planning barriers threatening to stall momentum in the UK battery storage market and as I say this is this is supposedly the way in which renewable energy or at least so-called renewable energy is made more efficient more effective but there are absolutely consequences to this approach interesting to see how the government so abruptly dodges exactly those this is sort of an exhibition in pointing out something in a less than straightforward manner but we have the battery energy storage systems briefing paper in which they say that the Faraday institution explains that lithium ion batteries fires are very rare and it notes that even with billions in circulation there are very few safety incidents involving them and it estimates that only one in 40 million battery cells experience failure the results in fire well that statistic may or may not be true what they're studiously ignoring is indeed the consequences of such a fire and what can be done about it now I

47:24reported in the past about the concerns that fire brigade fire services have had about this and it should be absolutely newsworthy that the National Fire Chiefs Council have updated their position statement on this technology and they recognize that the pace of change has been very substantial and say that this transition is outpacing safety standards and regulation leading to potential increased fire safety risks as a result and it's a real concern for the NFCC and fire and rescue services now they use very moderate language but it's very obvious that they are suggesting this is being carried out in a completely irresponsible manner and then they go on to address the environmental concerns which they say include risk of fire and explosions impacts on air quality because of the build-up of gases during a best fire ground water contamination from chemical leaks and contaminated fire water runoff and noise so of course I should remind you this is the prospect of environmental catastrophe at the same time as apparently saving the environment and they go on

48:26to say that the range of tactical approaches but there is no one size fits all approach to most effectively extinguish or control of fire caused by lithium-ion batteries now the short version of that is they don't know how to put them out and mostly because they can't put them out and as reported previously but here reinforced by auto evolution an increasing number of maritime shipping companies are refusing to ship EVs citing this fire risk it was mats and the Hawaii based company that I'd reported on previously but they're a growing number who have taken a similar line because it's just too risky because of this problem in not being able to put them out then we go into the air we look at the civil aviation authority in the United Kingdom with its guidance on portable electronic devices and having anecdotally but having just taken a number of long haul and short haul flights the increased push for attention on particularly lithium-ion battery banks and whether or not they may be carried but they may not be carried in hold baggage that even in the

49:30cabin they may not be used suggest that it really is a serious concern here and then the BBC through Gritted Teeth as usual talking about China having imposed a ban on what are described as hidden car door handles now these were effectively pioneered by Tesla and obviously all about appearance rather than practicality but should there be a problem with an EV that has door handles like this once the power supply shut down if it catches fire of course there's no way of getting getting the occupant of the vehicle out and the Chinese authorities have imposed a year long period on that to be corrected so absolutely this may not be dismissed and if you're thinking this is just a problem exclusive to China and the Chinese manufacturers absolutely it is not a multiple instances of such a thing having happened in the United Kingdom now referring back to the very many best applications what I'd like to do is to point you towards an absolutely excellent and well-referenced letter written by Heather Godfrey a UK column supporter who wrote to me to get in touch

50:34about an 80 megawatt plan for a best installation near crew Kern and she has submitted an appeal to this and if you have something similar going on in your area and you need specific references and a very well articulated argument then I would like to point you towards her substack for an idea of how to how to put this together and the main document so this is now live on her substack and there'll be a link in the show notes thank you Charles thank you for that now let's come on to right to repair and quite an interesting story coming this week because earlier this week the Dutch defense secretary made the claim that F-35 fighter jet software could be jailbroken this was an assentment or a discussion he was having with the Dutch radio station BNR news radio now this is reported in this tweet by clash report and then he said

51:36if asked whether you can modify F-35 software without approval that's not the point we'll see whether the Americans will show their true colors he said and then they then they went on to quote it as saying I'm not going to say something I should never say but I'll do it anyway just like your iPhone you can jail jailbreak an F-35 I won't say anymore about it now this raises a host of questions about nations buying war fighting equipment from other nations and the conversation came about because of the ongoing tensions between the EU and Trump and whether or not the US of some kind of kill switch available in the event that relations break down totally in other words they spend billions on F-35s and a kill switch is switched in the United States and suddenly these aircraft turn into bricks now I need to point out that there's no publicly available evidence of any such kill switch but since nations have no access to the source code of the aircraft

52:37there's no way to demonstrate that either way other than to take the United States word for it Britain is the only country with any access at all and then only to the parts of the code which BA system systems wrote now that may not be entirely true though because there's still the question of one country whether they have special access because questions are being asked about how Israel has apparently modded the F-35 to increase its range so that they can fly their F-35s to Iran without refueling and this highlights once again the absolute reliance that European nations have on the United States for just about everything but it also highlights an issue that we all face right down to the individual level because this is basically the same issue that for example farmers have been facing with modern tractors and the ongoing fight between farmers and John Deere tractors about whether they can repair or do anything to these vehicles

53:38themselves despite the fact that they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on them or that people have faced with manufacturers selling them a product and then charging a subscription to use what it is they bought like BMW and they're heated seats scandal but BMW doubling on this saying that in-car subscriptions make sense and Charles what we have here is you know I think the modern expression of you will own nothing and frankly that policy doesn't work at any level but it because it puts us at risk as individuals but it also puts nations at risk at the defense or war fighting level yeah well I think that's the that's the central point of several and and what this indicates beyond any doubt which is absolutely the direction in which we've been warning things are going but this is absolute proof if it is to be demonstrated that corporations now hold more power than states where war is concerned so it's not going to be up to

54:41a nation as to whether they switch something on or off it's it's whoever holds the proprietary technology which of course again as you as you quite rightly point out you know when you look at the British Armed Forces capabilities the number of component parts that come from Israel in particular I mean are we to imagine that they're then going to be the possibility of sort of wrestling for control of particular platform because of the the number of competing entities that have some sort of control over it and I I think then you know the other aspect of course is this idea that well if they can control it then exactly like everything else that we talk about which has this sort of degree of connectivity it can be hacked so frankly anyone could be taking these things so I think there are there are a lot of things that do fall out this I think the other thing to go back to that period of time when we were desperately getting rid of all sorts of perhaps outdated or heavy platforms that we wanted to get rid of back at the beginning of the Russia Ukraine conflict how would people have responded then if we if we had

55:45actually been able to say that the United Kingdom right we're going to give X number of challenger tanks to Ukraine but we will retain control over them what would the response of being by the Western media to such a suggestion so I think this does open up a number of very interesting questions but I think essentially it points out the vulnerability of nation states and indeed the vulnerability of technology absolutely now back in the UK you were reporting on the situation with the police and Freemasonry recently what's the update yes I was I mean the situation was that the Metropolitan Police with no consultation with the United Grand Lodge of England the sort of headshed of the Masonic setup in the United Kingdom they went and said that a declaration must be made of membership of a free Masonry hall the sonic lodge now that went down very badly

56:46with the with the Grand Lodge and indeed they've contested it of course one of the things they objected to was having not been consulted in the first place what it does appear though is that they do not understand irony because in part of their statement they say that the United Grand Lodge of England and others are disappointed that they do not have leave to proceed to a judicial review based on the legal arguments concerning discrimination of course they seem to have misunderstood the entire point of the Metropolitan Police's edict is to prevent there being the suggestion of any positive discrimination based on membership of a Masonic lodge they then go and say and an assessment of intelligence that has never been fully disclosed again if there's one thing Freemasonry is known for above all all other things it is the element of secrecy with which they operate but again the irony seems to have been lost on them and then they finish off by saying which if communicated could have been amicably resolved without the need for legal action so this is basically Lord Justice Chamberlain interesting that it is he who has decided that this should not go to

57:50judicial review because of course it was he that set up to deal with the Palestine action prescription and then at the last minute was removed having said that it would go to judicial review and then was replaced with with three other judges i'm not suggesting there's any connection between two things but it is nonetheless interesting that that it was he so that's it apparently for now with the Freemasons how exactly this will play out with the Metropolitan Police will remain to be seen thank you Charles I just want to end then with this story from the BBC headline shop owner's fear of violence after paramilitaries demand protection money so this is a story from Belfast well from Northern Ireland in general because shop owners construction firms being held ransom by basically the same groups were running the the insurgency for 30 years from 1969 they're still there and they're still trying to get money out of anybody that's in business

58:52over there this has been going on from the beginning I'll just give a quick anecdote because in 1980 my father was working had had set up a business had set it up in an industrial estate inside Belfast that industrial estate was blown up after it had been in business for about a year because the owner of the industrial estate wasn't paying the protection money the various groupings it didn't matter which side of the argument that we're on would get together on a regular basis with a map of Belfast and draw lines on it to decide which was their protection money area now the BBC and their article is talking about the fact that the shop owners are complaining that the police won't do anything about this and what I know from that incident in 1980 was that the police had watched that bomb being put in the car and driven down the road and left and the police had been told to leave it alone so there was no question that at that time despite the fact that the IRA and the British police or the Northern Irish police and the British military were supposed to be on opposite

59:55sides that there was there were brine envelopes being passed and some of that protection money was going to make sure that the police did not interfere with the gathering of that protection money it appears that that situation has not changed since and it's surprising that the BBC is pretending in their article like this is something unusual or something that's new and so again a little bit off the mark there with their reporting and maybe there needs to be some kind of inquiry into why it is that this kind of activity is still going on despite the fact that it began in effectively 1970s we'll talk more about that I'm sure an extra as well but we got to leave it there for today so I'm going to say thank you very much to Vanessa and Charles for your contributions and for everybody who's been watching today and stick around if you can call a member for extra otherwise we'll see you on Friday for another UK column news 1pm as usual see you then bye bye