UK Column News - 28th January 2026

0:00Good afternoon. It's Wednesday, the 20th of January, just after 1 o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studios today is co-host Charles Mollett. Welcome to the program, Charles. Thank you, Mike. And by video link, we are joined by Vanessa Bailey. Now, later in the program, we'll be looking at the latest censorship efforts by off-com and their international colleagues. Charles Abuse in Israel and the reform of policing, but we're going to begin today with digital government. Now, people across the UK could benefit from faster, safer, and more reliable public services as leading British AI specialist joined government to modernize critical systems used every day from public safety to transport these are the words of Care Starmer's digital minister, Ian Murray. So I'm sure we were all impressed by that, but anyway, the effort is going to be underpinned by 1 million pounds

1:03from meta and will be run through the Alan Turing Institute and the group of AI experts who could have developed open source tools to what they describe as tackle some of the biggest challenges facing public services. Now, this all comes part of the new customer, sorry, I didn't show the Alan Turing Institute there, but there we go. And this all comes as part of the new customer first initiative and customer first, by the way, spelled as one word without any gaps between customer and first. And that's got to put modern technology to work to cut out long funcues, reduce paperwork, and make it easier and faster for people to access the services they rely on. These are all their words. It's fantastic propaganda, but anyway, right there with that quote, we get an idea of what this is actually about, because as we all know, the long weird times on phones, when people want to access the likes of HMRC or any other so-called customer facing service provided by the state are a deliberate ploy to force people to accept the digital penopticon that Shibana Mahmoud is so keen on. So let's just remind ourselves what she said when she

2:08speak into Tony Blair a short while ago, AI and technology can be transformative to the whole law and order space. And she was talking about the need to use AI and technology to transform the justice system. She cited Jeremy Bentham and his penopticon. Now we're going to come onto what that is in a second if anybody doesn't know. And she was absolutely talking about the idea of pre-crime and using AI to make judgments on what people were going to do in the future. But coming back to customer first, for a second, it describes itself as a new unit within the government digital service. And very much echoing Dominic Cummings a few years ago, they said that they'd set up to explore a fresh way of working in government and operating with the peace and security of a startup. This is Dominic Cummings' kind of language. And they said that their work aligns directly with the roadmap for modern digital government,

3:08which has just been published. And once again, we see statements from politicians delivered with not a hint of RNA because this is the comment from the Secretary of State for Science Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall saying when we came into government, the Prime Minister made a commitment to the British people that politics would tread lightly on people's lives. So I'm just going to ask, do you all feel lightly trodden on? Because I don't now she went on to describe all the benefits of the new panopticon for the sleep deprived parent trying to sort childcare, the homeowner getting planning permission, the worried patient looking for booking a doctor's appointment. She said that life is busy and our role as a government should be to carry the burden in these moments, not attitude. And so this plan sets out how we do this by embracing AI, removing our data, it and strengthening our cyber resilience in the face of new threats. So let's just have a look at what this brave new world has in store for you and for

4:12me. So they're talking about managing health records, appointments and descriptions in one place through the NHS app. They're talking about using the gulf.uk app to access personalized services and notifications, securely store and share digital versions of important documents. Like your driving license, using the gulf.uk wallet, quickly and securely proving your identity, using the new digital ID, accessing simpler, faster digital services for tax, driving, vehicle and immigration, using a new career service, bringing the support you need together to understand your skills and use them to find or change jobs. But also benefit from targeted support to improve digital skills and confidence and address data and device poverty. This is incredible stuff, access better care for children because data will be joined up across services. And if you're in business, it's good for you too, as anybody that's already in

5:14business knows you've had to identify yourself to companies. Highs for example, but this will mean that you can access government services with a single secure login for businesses. Now we've discussed one login before and how it's not in the least bit secure, but we can talk about that later. Manage and tax and customs obligations through a modern digital first system, sell technology and services to government through simplified procurement processes, find talent faster using smarter candidate matching tools quickly and securely verify your employees right to work through a secure process. So, you know, we at the UK column are warning about these kinds of things. We have also been warning as we did last week about Palantir and their complete access to NHS patient data. And when the Electronic Frontier Foundation are warning about ICE agents in the US using Palantir's health access to US health data to run their operations, then we might ask ourselves what the Starmer regime is building here,

6:18just what exactly is it. So, let's just finish this by reminding ourselves what the Panopticon is. It's the idea proposed by the so-called philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1791 of a theoretical circular prison design, allowing a single central observer to watch all emits without being seen, based on the central inspection principle and it aims to reform behavior through constant surveillance and the psychological and the psychological internalized feeling of being watched. He described it as part of mind over mind. So, we're talking about a cylindrical building with a central inspector's lodge and other cells with light passing through so that there's backlighting so that the entire prison population as a sake would be watched by a single guard. He Bentham designed this for prisons, but he also intended it for schools, for factories, for asylum, so he talked about it and he was talking about maximizing utility, productivity and

7:19order. And this is clearly now what is being built, what Mahmoud is talking about being absolutely desirous of and so this goes way beyond just simple digital ID. It absolutely does and for a road map it really is attempting to join everything together and I think really the way that this should be looked at is through the lens of considering why it is that they only suggest that there will be positive outcomes. There is absolutely no suggestion that this is a balance or a trade-off that there could be any downsides and I think that that should really raise a red flag to anybody hearing about this. The idea that changing something wholesale is not going to have any undesirable consequence is an absolutely extraordinary and therefore completely unlikely outcome. I think that that's a big part of it. There's no concession at all to the inherent vulnerability of putting everything in the same place. I think the idea that

8:26setting this out and using the sorts of language as you say that dominant Cummings might have been proud to have put together is just disingenuous beyond compare because there are example upon example of systems like this failing and I think the greater the centralisation, the greater the danger if there is a failure and I think that's one of the things among many that absolutely are not being talked about and presumably will not get talked about unless this is raised as an issue at the local levels and has effectively pushed back uphill because there is no real debate or discussion about this I think. I mean we're going to be talking about China towards the end of the programme and of course what we're constantly saying is people looking at China and making claims about social credit systems and so on and worrying about what's going on over there. No concern generally because they can't believe that this would be the type of infrastructure is being built here but it absolutely is. So we've got to be aware of what's going on in

9:31our own country and many people are but limiting it is just to digital ID is not going far enough. Vanessa, I'd be interested to get an idea of what kind of experience people in the Middle East are having of this type of policy. Are there attempts in Southwest Asia to bring this type of thing in? Well obviously apart from inside Israeli prisons where of course there is a huge degree of surveillance and dehumanisation. I'm not sure I mean here definitely not we might have just got biometric in some of the passport offices or so generally it doesn't work very well. UAE of course has just joined PAX silica which is the complex of all of the countries involved in basically introducing AI digital control in the future which has very much Israel at its centre.

10:38So I would say in the Zionist block in the countries that were created by Britain to support Israel for example like Saudi Arabia but particularly UAE you might be finding it yeah but not to this level no. Okay thank you for that but of course related to this then Charles is policing because obviously my mode was very clear that that one of the major applications of this would be the idea of pre-crime and getting the police 100% on board. What are what is the Starmer's vision for policing in the UK then? Well this is exactly it and I should say if you didn't watch Mondays UK column news then you should of course because Ben Rubin was articulating initial thoughts on the idea of police reform because of course at that stage no documentation that had actually been produced it has now been produced and Shabbana Mahmoud the home secretary has had quite a lot to say about it here she is tweeting that today's reforms marked the

11:39biggest shake up to policing in 200 years so what she's doing there in terms of setting the scene is trying to invoke the spirit of Peel who is credited of course with starting the idea of a sort of formalised police force in the first place now I would put it that she has not really read around the subject and to qualify that I would just make the point first of all than in her introduction to the document she talks about the suggestion that the police is broken but then counters that by saying that arrests are up by 5% and I think this articulates the the very centre of the problem and we'll just look at the first of the peolean principles in order to get an idea of what I mean by that now the first one is the basic mission for which the police exists is to prevent crime and disorder now arrests are not by nature preventative

12:40although as much has been alluding to we will watch this space so the fundamental issue appears to be that Shabbana Mahmoud and others are confusing the solving of crime with stopping crime and they are two very very different things now to move on from what it was set out by Peel all those years ago we'll look at the document itself and just put a few things out from the executive summary and indeed her opening remarks and straight back to what Mike's been talking about really serious and organised crime is growing and nine in every ten crimes now has a digital component now that's a very significant point to make when one is suggesting but the answer to that is further and further digitisation they go on to say and I've pulled out just sort of selective parts that I think are all merit some consideration we will modernise legislation such as the public order at 1986 to ensure that the police are clearer about where the line stands between freedom

13:46of speech and criminality now we've seen that that line absolutely blurred and let's say very much not likely trodden over the last few years what is it exactly they mean by this of course public order at 1986 has the the more obvious offenses or at least perhaps clearer offenses a right violence disorder and a fray but the controversial ones being fear or provocation of violence and the harassment offenses but effectively turning the offense itself into a subjective affair because of course it's for the victim to report how they felt about the particular incident in question now with further digitisation it's hard to see how this is going to turn out any better for either apparent victims or suspects in those situations now the document goes on to talk about rolling out artificial intelligence AI powered tools and software to automate manual processes saving the police valuable time so that it could be redirected towards serving the

14:49public again to suggest that that is simply a fatal complete because you can say that it will save time and therefore there will be an outright benefit is a claim that requires again much further investigation this is absolutely the theme of the document and very much follows Mike's report about putting out these totally unqualified positives that seem to have veered so far away from the status quo is to be very very questionable also in terms of the control structures and this is what Ben was surmising on on Monday but the police and crime commissioners will be abolished and they'll be replaced directly with directly elected mayors and where mayors do not yet exist with policing and crime boards made up of local council leaders and this is said that the new system of police governance will reintegrate policing back into the system of local government in England and Wales enabling greater collaboration across local services now again if one assumes

15:57good faith that could in some ways be the case however just to qualify to be to reintegrate back into local politics it cannot really be what it sounds like because of course as Ben was intramating on Monday partly this is because the nature of local politics has changed such an enormous amount in the intervening period but also because of the capabilities in data collection and sharing between all the various agencies that will be involved in this and of course the many many digital compromises and vulnerabilities that are inherent in doing any of that and we return to the pillion principles because we look at this one which says police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to the public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law now involving police hierarchy with local politicians given the state of affairs in local politics local democracy if we can still call it that nowadays I would say again is another significant compromise now of course this document has

17:00come out it's making great claims to turn the police over in a productive sense for more than they have been in 200 years therefore there's been inevitable sort of commentary and response to this as far as police bodies are concerned there's been almost universal applause for the reforms as they're set out with the exception of the association of police and crime commission it's now given that I've just read out text saying they're going to be abolished it would be easy to say that that's sour grapes but in fact I think we should look at the point they make which is there is also risk that national police service could stifle local innovation and restrict the ability of local communities to shape how policing affects their lives and large regional forces risk weakening local responsiveness and accountability while introducing unnecessary complexity and cost I should have said that the which I'll come on to in a bit but that one of the solutions to the problem is the idea of a national police service which again Ben was talking about on Monday referring to it as a sort of a rehashed diversion of the FBI now we're going to look at or rather listen to

18:09what it was that Shabana Mahmoud said in the House of Commons about one of the points that is bound to provoke well should certainly provoke a fair degree more debate while some forces surge ahead with the results to show for it others are fighting crime in a digital age with analog methods we will ensure that every force is adopting the latest technology led out of the new national police service and this will include the largest ever rollout of live facial recognition technologies across England and Wales we know this approach works in London in just two years the metropolitan police have made 1700 arrests taking robbers domestic abusers and rapists off our streets when the future arrives there are always doubters 100 years ago fingerprinting was decried as curtailing our civil liberties but today we could not imagine

19:10policing without it I have no doubt the same will prove true of facial recognition technology in the years to come at the same time we will launch police dot AI investing a record 115 million pounds in AI and automation to make policing more effective and efficient stripping admin away to ensure officer time can be devoted to the human factor that only a police officer so as far as she's concerned job done we've got computers they can do it we can all step back and and that's that now I think it's not quite that simple and and certainly in terms of the symmetry or indeed asymmetry she's suggesting that the answer to a digital threat is a digital solution whereas of course in actual fact to pervade an analog setup with a digital invasion is impossible and again that's that's absolutely being glossed over and again relates exactly

20:10back to what Mike's been reporting on now the other thing is that again exactly like Mike says she's talking about about thought crime and pre-crime this exactly where we're going with this with with live facial recognition because otherwise how would she be able to say that that has delivered the effect that it has and again concentrating on arrests rather than actually the prevention of the crime in the first place now as you just had us talk about the announcement of the AI capability she made the mistake of giving the the website address of police AI and you'd think that somebody might have just popped a holding page up there but not so and since AI is heralded as the future I did ask it to generate an image of the success that Mahmoud and the proposed National Police Service are pointing towards now as a sign of things to come this is what was produced now at first glance you may not see much wrong with that and if you can't see it I should point out that it's it's sort of two and a bit police officers wearing an extraordinary array of kit including masks

21:14covering their face shabana Mahmoud has been turned into a journalist and and then when you look more closely you'll see the police council on the left of the frame is missing his head now I was confused by this at first but actually I see that it isn't accurate rendition and I've taken advantage of the UK columns graphics department to correct the image so if we can just go full screen again please Chris this is exactly what's being suggested we are replacing the human brain with a computer we are surrendering human mind to the to the bias of artificial intelligence now the answer proposed is in terms of the this reform is a national police service and you know one should concede at least that there are some sensible points made and they say that as one force it will be better equipped to share technology intelligence and resources to stop the growing threat from crime that has become increasingly complex digital online and with no respect for constabulary borders now I can talk a bit more about this in extra but there are absolutely

22:18great frictions associated with having 43 uh conservatories within England alone England and Wales I should say um and there are absolutely efficiencies to be gained there but that's taking it at face value and of course ignoring the very many pitfalls to centralisation which I think is what the APCC are trying to get at but they're pointing towards the advantages of procuring technology clothing and general sort of cost saving they're also saying that they can recruit another 13,000 more neighbourhood police and they are trying to separate those on the beat from the admin burden again would be an effective mood but only if done correctly now I'm on vetting and personnel disasters there's plan to introduce a license of practice to practice which is going to be managed by the college of policing um but again the issue with this is it's not really made clear how just having a license would actually enhance the situation um so there's there's more to come out on that uh and we look further

23:23uh again to have the pillion principle of maintaining the relationship with the public it gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police again something I think that's been glossed over very much in the reforms as they're put forward now and I don't know if we've got time to just share a quick uh go ahead really I'm really just to get to the point of um considering whether or not police are actually thinking about what they're doing Catherine Gunn who will be known to many of the UK column audience was stopped whilst coming into the UK recently and this is a short clip of her experiences at the top of the metal stairway with three police officers and as soon as we stepped our foot out of the plane we heard them say are you Catherine Gunn and my daughter's name and I was like yes and it was a shock to be asked by police officers as soon as we stepped off the

24:27plane and so we went down the steps and my daughter was taken by a female police officer to one side of the stairs and I was taken by two other police officers to mail officers to the other side of the stair so we were separated and then basically the male police officers asked me they said we have been contacted by members of the uh flight crew who were concerned about child uh safety safeguarding and I was like well what's the evidence there is no evidence what the hell are they talking about and um and they demanded that I give them my husband's name our address in turkey and I was like why should I give you that information what's it I'm not being are you charging me with anything but he basically threatened me with taking me to the border force and dragging out the whole

25:35process if I didn't give him our address he didn't ask for any evidence they didn't ask for our passport or anything so Catherine's experience is there which could have been over in seconds if they simply asked for passports but the steamference there was that she might have been involved in child trafficking and again I just you know put it forward that there is a reduced element of thought in policing in general and so just to finish off the last point from the pillion principles which is that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it and it looks very much like Mahmoud reforms are absolutely meant to provide uh the um evidence of dealing with it rather than the absence of crime and disorder thank you Charles uh Vanessa um over to you then and uh work I'd have a look at Israel and child abuse and I take your time yeah um of course child abuses we've

26:35been demonstrating for some time as um really systemic in Israel not only against the Palestinians who of course are dehumanized beyond belief and tortured in some of the most sadistic ways but even within their own society and coming back to the police issue it's fascinating that the people who are being arrested by the police in the UK are the people that are literally exposing the crimes from within um Israeli society so again we have to question what exactly the police are there to do in the UK and perhaps we can discuss that further in extra but actually this is a follow-up this is a recent case where a cyber CEO was found guilty of statutory rape, assaulted children as young as four years old and multiple minor underage rape cases from him

27:37this is itailevi we actually covered this story I think about a year ago but now he has been found guilty and convicted and of course he was connected he was the CEO of Canalias which is a major cyber security company and again of course this brings us back to the fact that of course much of the cyber security the data storage the the health and education ministry of defense information is going to be stored by individuals that are certainly have their roots in the Israeli spy agencies but seeing to what extent this sexual predator nature is prevalent in Israeli society we also have to start raising questions about this this was I think a few days ago an IDF so a military reservist convicted in large scale online child sexual abuse case content warning while I am going to show the content because there's a couple of things in there

28:41that I would really like to discuss further in extra so let's have a look at what the case actually involved so apparently he used technology he found online that allowed him to appear and sound like a woman during video calls during those conversations he instructed the men to carry out sexual acts against their minor children this is my first question how on earth can you persuade a father a parent to actually conduct or carry out sexual abuse against their own children this included infants and very young children and to document the abuse and send him the footage it detailed a series of impersonations that led to sexual abuse within families in one case he posed as a woman while speaking with the father of a one and a half year old girl and directed him to carry out sexual acts in the child's room during a video call in another case using the alias Maria he persuaded a father to sexually abuse his young son telling him the child would not

29:42remember because of his age prosecutors said I'll feel so communicated under female identities with dozens of other social media users including minors convincing them to perform sexual acts on themselves record the acts and send the material to him investigators found more than 150 files containing child sexual abuse material in his possession I wonder where online safety was in Israel and then I want to come on to the latest report from an Israeli human rights organization based on the occupied territories but slim living hell this is a follow-up from their previous report which was called welcome to hell published in august 2024 the Israeli prison system is a network of torture camps so let's have a look at what they actually say now they do give content warning sexual violence and I will show a screenshot from the actual report you can freeze

30:44frame and read it well or of course the link to the report will be in the show notes but let's have a look at the actual screenshot now what this is talking about is multiple cases of rape sorry it's very difficult to talk about this with objects human beings raping women and men within the Israeli forces by the way conducted these rapes and appalling torture basically attacking people's genitals bringing dogs into urinate on prisoners and so on absolutely appalling I mean I wonder what on earth I'm reading when you go through that report and this is just a very short section of one of the videos from the first report welcome to hell which as I was published in august let's just play this

32:13so again as I said you know with Britain getting closer and closer every single political party in the UK being friends of or having a section which is friends of Israel we need to really start wondering to what extent they are aware of and are involved in what is going on yes well well done Vanessa for covering that because this is not something that we're hearing from anybody else as far as I'm aware in the UK at least and so we need to have more insight into these types of problems in that part of the world now let's move on then UK column of course only

33:18continues to operate with your assistance so if you can possibly help us financially that would be really appreciated there is a section on the UK column website that you can find by getting to the front page and get all the details for how you can help help us out that way if you can't help us financially please do at least share this program any of the articles on the website and the other podcasts that you enjoy please share those and that helps us beat the censorship regime now tonight Jeremy's going to be speaking to David Vice about flat earth apparently so join him at seven o'clock for that we've got something to say about that just after the outbreak here and then the silken steel podcast with Carl's it's going to be talking about Mark Carney and his comments at Davos but I just want to briefly mention David Vice being on with with Jeremy tonight of course Jeremy covers a wide range of topics and he is not in any way a restrictive about who he speaks to

34:20and we wouldn't attempt to restrict who he speaks to but David Vice I do have a bit of a problem with because of course he aside from the topic itself he pushes forward an app which is how he apparently funds his activities and well this is consumer rights wiki which is run by Lewis Rossmann who is a fantastic advocate for consumer rights and for right to repair and so on and is really the man behind the the clippie campaign if anybody's aware of that but what this is pointing out this is that basically for the last number of years Vice has been pushing out this app which people can get access to through the their various phones and so on but that he is completely lacks with his security and therefore people's personal information their email address their password their location on the planet and so on is easily downloadable from the app now he's

35:22been warned about this four years and refuses to do anything about it so so I think it's just worth mentioning that because obviously if you do support him using this app you are putting any personal information that you give at risk so that's just what I wanted to say about that yeah good okay let's let's move on to reform Charles yes now it's the weekly update which which started and it has absolutely been worth continuing because there has been yes another defection and it just goes to show that there is a theme that has emerged and here we are seeing Suela Bravenman with Netanyahu proudly showing her face graph on Twitter admittedly that was back a couple of years ago she talks about strong relationships between Israel and the United Kingdom and if you've missed previous updates on reform you'll know that that is exactly the theme that I have been referring to and the question is is in whose interest we've had Nigel Farage now going to Davos protesting of

36:23course that he's going to be pursuing the idea of national sovereignty for the United Kingdom but in actual fact everything is pointing in the other direction here we have Bravenman back in 2015 on a sponsored visit to Israel by the conservative friends of Israel I'll just remind you what the conservative friends of Israel actually do they say that we aim to ensure Israel's case is fairly represented in parliament and that means in the parliament of the United Kingdom like what business Israel's case has been represented by parliamentarians who are supposed to represent their constituencies is not made quite clear now Bravenman you may recall is married to Rao Bravenman who is also involved with the reform party and early last year about a year ago was making overtures to the ball of deputies in effect to convince them that actually reform was a natural home for people of Jewish faith and again just for context on this it shouldn't be

37:24regarded as coincidence that Israel and Bravenman were same secretary back in 2023 when the current conflict took hold and I rate an article back then called home secretary pixicide for the police and I would encourage you to read it because what she did to police there first of all was an abuse of her position as home secretary in that she was trampling all over police operational independence but also she was absolutely skewing the narrative completely in favor of Israel and this is where reform is going thank you for that Charles nine let's talk about censorship for a second because it's six months since off come began enforcing age verification in the UK and the effect on freedom of speech of course has been chilling Vanessa and Alex Creel have both reported on the misuse of the requirements to censor on substach and more and more people are choosing not to look at content rather than to submit to the age verification regime will off come is now announced that the global online safety regulators network just put that back

38:24on screen Chris which is which brings together online safety regulators across the world has set out its views and expectations on what they describe as the important role age assurance pays in the global effort to protect children and let's be absolutely clear about this plays no role in protecting children this will come on to a second in a second now in the UK age checks or they describe it as a cornerstone of the online safety act and they say that their rules the rules sorry requiring sites and apps to have highly effective age assurance have been enforced since July and that they're currently monitoring services compliance and that they've opened 83 investigations into adult websites as part of their enforcement program and that they have recently find one service provider AVS one million pounds for failing to have highly effective age assurance checks in place and this is because the pornography industry is the poster child for all of this the justification which is you supposed to make it acceptable in the minds of

39:25the public and in an effort to build up positions of the policy then the biggest porn site porn hub has decided to restrict access to its site to UK users from next week but as we've been reporting despite claims of plummeting viewer numbers of porn hub here in the UK it's clear that people have been taking to VPN use to subvert the age verification requirement and this has been recognized and so the House of Lords has decided to vote that age verification should be extended to VPN use confirming what we suggested was going to happen at the time that VPNs would become a target for political interference now this comes as an amendment amendment 92 to the children's wellbeing and schools bill proposed and the amendments being proposed by Lord Nash amendment 92 would insert a new clause titled action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom and it requires that within 12 months of the act being passed the Secretary of State must make regulations prohibiting VPN services from being provided to children

40:28and that's described as under 18s VPN providers may be required to apply age assurance that is highly effective at correctly determining or not the person is a child that off-com would be would would produce guidance for VPN providers on compliance and the government would establish a monitoring regime with enforcement measures and penalties for non-compliance but has been pointing out time and time again none of this does anything to protect children who are by far put at risk far in a way the biggest risk online is by adults posing as children on websites like Roblox that have no age assurance requirement to confirm that users are actually children the biggest risk risks the children's from grooming and these are the types of platforms Roblox is the type of platform where that kind of thing happens is highlighted by Miller law on screen at the moment all this in the show notes so do pay attention on the UK column website to the show notes for this but then moving on from here of course Australia decided that under

41:28under 16 should be banned from any social media useless use recently and Francis now decided to do the same thing so they've passed a bill that will ban social media used by under 15s in their case and this of course was championed by Macron as a way to protect children from too much screen time so the national assembly has adopted that it will go to the Senate and so on Macron very excited about this it's a major step apparently in dealing with this and then finally I just want to mention that oh sorry just before we got under the finally we'll just mention of course this is absolutely happening in the UK as well because the proposals are in here's the House Commons library proposals to ban social media for children so this is coming to the UK as well and finally I just mentioned what's been going on with TikTok because TikTok users are saying they can't upload anti-ice videos in the United States TikTok themselves are saying that this is as a result of tech issues the BBC covering this as well TikTok US pushes back on claims

42:33that censoring content now they're saying that this is because of tech issues it may well be what I'll say is that if it's if it is genuine then this is an example of the next step which of course is that content gets scanned before it's uploaded and it's prevented from being uploaded in the first place if it's content that they don't like what I'm going to say about purely anecdotal I'll accept but our personal experience with tech TikTok is that it is despite its claims that it's not censoring people it is the most censorious social media platform out there and so I'm highly skeptical about their claims that this was just sort of some kind of technical accidental thing but so the censorship regime moves on at peace but let's come back to Vanessa then Vanessa lots been going on particularly in northeast Syria with the Kurds yes I thought I but I've swing back to Syria because there is I mean there has been a lot going on for the last few years

43:34right there is a lot of clashes going on between the Kurds and the Jolani HTS tech theory forces and it appears that despite the fact that allegedly the Kurds fought ISIS in Syria for years now the US allies say they've been abandoned and this is the general narrative now of course from my perspective having lived in Syria the Kurds backed by the United States effectively occupied northeast Syria and took control of the oil resources and the agricultural resources and in my opinion were absolutely pivotal to the fall of Syria by energy depriving the Syrian people and also depriving them of agricultural sources from Syrian territory in the northeast on behalf of the United States and in fact former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said this in 2019 in relation

44:39to the Kurds we tell those groups who are batting on the Americans that the Americans will not protect you they will put you in their pockets so that you can be a bargaining chip and he was always very clear as was a leadership of the Lebanese resistance that the Kurds would as they have historically be betrayed by the United States now I just wanted to show I think this is a map from 2019 which shows the territory that then was under the control even up to December 2024 that was under control of the Kurds which is the yellow section the green sections in the north there are that are under the control of the Turkish military and their proxies but if we look at a very recent maps this is January 2026 it's a little bit confusing but the two red circles there are basically where the Kurdish forces and civilians have been forced to withdraw to to as they call it Kobani and Hasuka so Kobani in the north and Hasuka in the northeast of

45:43course surrounded by the Turkish proxies and now by HTS and of course surprise perhaps for some is the fact that ISIS are now being released I'll come on to that this is a statement by Tom Barak in the last couple of days so he's basically now saying Syria has acknowledged a central government that has joined the global coalition to defeat ISIS this shifts the rationale for the US STF partnership the original purpose of STF is the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground as largely expired and in fact he goes on to say that Jolani and the HTS forces will take control of the ISIS holding camps meanwhile of course the majority of Jolani's tech theory forces comprise ISIS members so guess what they're actually releasing ISIS members from the prisons I think there's nine prisons in the northeast holding up to 100,000 ISIS fighters and their families but then if

46:51we look at what Lindsey Graham is saying who's come slightly more to prominence recently under Trump he says it would be a disaster for US reputation and national security interests to abandon the Kurds I will be introducing legislation this week designed to impose crippling sanctions on any government or group engaged in hostilities against the Kurds to save the Kurds act so this is getting a little bit silly now because Trump is just allegedly withdrawn the Caesar sanctions on Jolani's government whereas now Lindsey Graham is going to bring in an act to re-impose sanctions on the HTS government for the massacres that are now being committed against Kurdish civilians in the areas where HTS is advancing then let's have a look and this is in my opinion entirely what this is all about this is from a U.S central command sent com US forces launch mission in Syria to guess what transfer ISIS detainees to Iraq so what are they actually

47:52saying they're saying the transfer mission began while US forces successfully transported 150 ISIS fighters held a detention facility in Hasuka Syria to a secure location in Iraq ultimately up to 7000 ISIS detainees could be transferred from Syria to Iraqi controlled facilities now I'm sure this is absolutely nothing to do with the upcoming potential aggression against Iran Trump is bringing in his big beautiful armada as he's described it and if we just move on Trump is saying I'm hearing that the great country of Iraq might make a very bad choice by reinstating Noreal Maliki as prime minister last time Maliki was in power the country descended into poverty in total chaos nothing to do with the United States of course that should not be allowed to happen again because of course how Trump perceives it and how the region perceives it Noreal Maliki will be very sympathetic to Iran with the upcoming aggression yet again he also says Trump

49:01make Iraq great again and I just wanted to include so the fact that ISIS is now being transferred from Syria to Iraq Russia is withdrawing its troops from the Carmichael base in the North East and Jolani is in Moscow today to discuss the movements and the bilateral agreement with Putin I'll leave people to speculate on exactly what that means but I wanted to draw attention also to the UK involvement in the ISIS camps in the North East because again I'm sure people are probably saying well this has nothing to do with the UK in 2021 the UK provided funding for the expansion of one of the ISIS camps in Hasika North East Syria rather than repatriate British nationals the UK foreign office condemn them to a life imprisonment in conditions that are described as inhumane by various human rights groups according to a report in defense one the effort will double in size the current facility at Hasika a series of three converted school buildings that hold roughly

50:025,000 prisoners according to British Army Major General Kevin Cropsey the coalition's deputy commander for strategy so Britain very heavily involved in this also and a recent article I think in the last two days from Kit Klarenberg where he talks about leaked documents demonstrating how the MI6 infiltrated ISIS refugee camps and were involved in the indoctrination particularly of children in radical ideology so as we've talked about the radicalization of elements in the UK that would then be sent to fight alongside al-Qaeda in Syria the UK apparently appears to have been doing that within the ISIS holding camps that they are funding in the North East of Syria to effectively be weaponized against wrist resistance movements in the region which we have formed for Vanessa with al-Qaeda as well and HTS over the years yes okay well I'm sure we're talking about that and extra as well that Charles let's and then with China because of course Mark Carney was in China

51:09a week or two ago and now Kierstamer has gone it's time has done he has announced on Twitter where else that he has landed in China you'd be forgiven for thinking he's gone there in his capacity as a postman or a courier he says he's I'm here to deliver for the British people he goes on in his press release to make a point of striking honesty but obviously an attempt to extract political capital and take the high ground he said already it was written for him for years our approach to China has been docked by inconsistency blowing hot and cold from the golden age to ice age but like it or not China matters for the UK and it does seem that he has hit at the heart of the inconsistency surrounding commentary on China which is to say that people are prepared to make damning criticism of the place whilst remaining absolutely content to rely upon all the goods which are imported from there but Salma himself wanting to appear tough banging the drum for national security he says or rather the press release says that he will be clear that we will not

52:10trade economic cooperation for our national security and he'll raise the areas where we disagree with China so that the language sort of softened to a certain extent now what one has to ask is coincidence that the BBC has chosen exactly this moment to suggest that Chinese military is in complete disarray with an article here China has purged its highest ranking military general why now this is about the disappearance in fact back in November of General Zhang and he's the senior figure in the Central Military Commission and to substantiate their position the BBC has loyal Morris from the Rockefeller Rockefeller funded Asia society policy institutes who speculated that there are lots of rumors floating around we don't know at this point what is true and what is false and he went on to be absolutely certain in saying that it's certainly bad for Xi Jinping for his leadership and control over the people's liberation army quite how you

53:15reach that conclusion remains to be seen they then asked associate professor from the National University of Singapore who again speculated completely saying that he'd heard rumors everything from leaking nuclear secrets to the United States plotting a coup and factional infighting there are even rumors of a gun fight in Beijing so essentially the entire BBC article based on nothing but circumspection the reader is obviously expected to come away with increased suspicion of the Chinese state and indeed there to consider that they're now very vulnerable militarily despite the fact that people's liberation army still numbers over two million men and women now whilst I'm not going to claim to have the answers that the BBC couldn't quite grasp I can point out one or two things that they failed to collide with the first being that the 15th five-year plan here shown on the state council website begins in March and General Zhang has been out of the public eye since November as I said he's also 75 years old so like Starmer perhaps it is time for a change despite the allegations of corruption and wrongdoing and all sorts of other

54:18things which may indeed be the case as well not only that but the military is looking to modernize so again is this coincidence as the state council announces that the regulations which will take effect focus on accelerating the modernization of military theory optimizing the top level design for innovation in military theory so is that the sort of change that one would implement with the 75-year-old at the helm that is simply a question that I might put there now Starmer also referenced the relationship between defense or as he calls it national security and trade and this is precisely what Trump's board of pieces is bringing to the fore and here's the news the invitation as published by the Chinese Embassy in London all of which puts the spotlight on the relevance and the role of NATO now of the many commentaries out there I had a look at the diplomat which has an article out recently published titled the disintegration of NATO would not be in China's interests and what they're positing among other things is that the Chinese experts have argued

55:24that NATO began looking for a new adversary after the Cold War to justify its existence not not exactly a contentious position necessarily but of course the point to be brought out of it is that the situation with NATO which regards China as a challenge rather than a threat is one of stalemates so it doesn't none of this present prevents NATO from posturing and we can consider the awkward confluence of running military operations as Luke Pollard said to boost trade and we're looking here at the carrier strike group which set off from the United Kingdom last year touring the South Pacific region with occasionally just composed of United Kingdom vessels and aircraft and occasionally with other NATO fleets but what they did do whilst they were there was to boast that they transited the South China Sea of course no actual engagement with China but to refer back

56:26to Starmer's point which is that one so many are so determined to ignore of course the United Kingdom imports more from China than any other country except for the United States and Germany so as things stand the United Kingdom is much more dependent upon China than China is on the United Kingdom now UK economy is going to be doing more more of what we should which is finding out for ourselves so we'll hope to build a great new greater insight on this in the coming weeks because Mike and I will be in China for the latter stages of the Starmer visit and we'll be able to talk a bit more about that in extra but for now Mike what do you think about the UK's attitude towards China I suppose especially in the United the comments of Mark Carney and so forth yeah yeah I think UK has demonstrated absolute schizophrenia with respect to China for a number of years now we have we have produced the China report from the House of Lords I believe we have

57:30decided that Huawei is not appropriate because it's a national security threat to it's not appropriate to have that on our 5G networks because 5G networks are used for dual use these days and of course we don't worry about the fact that our 5G networks are often heavily polluted with is really you know daily 200 inspired hardware so you know if we're worried about countries stealing data which countries is that we should be most worried about and so yeah there seems to be definite efforts to try to demonize China while at the same time keeping relations there I suspect Britain and Carney probably represents this policy as well it is very keen to do anything that it can to split China away from Russia if that's you know if that's how they view the major threat yeah well that was actually one of the things that the article in the diplomat went on to to refer to it but of course the line that they take is that is that Russia is

58:35is acting you know in the sort of mainstream sense in terms of the aggression and whatnot and what if anything do you think Starma will come away from China we're here I'll come away with absolutely nothing yeah exactly so hence the use of the word deliver rather than yes yeah break back yes exactly yes yeah so we'll see what happens there but as I say we should have some more commentary on that by next week so that brings us to more or less I think the end of the it does indeed yes so we do have to finish there for today unfortunately but with much more in extra if you UK column member if you're not a UK column member maybe you'd like to join us and that helps us do what we're doing and you can join us for extra anytime we are hosting a news program I want to say thank you to Vanessa and Charles of course for joining me today and for everybody that's been watching don't forget if you want to look at the documentation behind this stories that we've covered today have a look in the show notes but we'll be back in a few minutes

59:35on this stream if you're a UK column member otherwise don't forget the interviews this evening an interview going out at 1pm tomorrow news again 1pm on Friday we will see you then bye bye bye you