UK Column News — 25th September 2026

Mike Robinson (0:08)

Good afternoon, it's Friday the 25th of September, 2026, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Mike Robinson. Joining me in the studio today is Patrick Henningsen. Welcome to the program, Patrick.

Patrick Henningsen (0:17)

Great to be with you, Mike.

Mike Robinson (0:18)

And by video link as usual on a Friday, Basil Valentine. Now later in the program, we're going to have more on Burnham's censorship announcement at the UNGA and Israel's reaction to the walkout from Netanyahu's speech.

And we'll have a special guest, Ben Timberley is joining us to discuss the upcoming Israeli election, also the Green Party position on Zionism. And we'll have more from Basil on facial recognition rollout in the UK. But we'll begin today with the psychological operation being run in the UK and elsewhere to prepare us for war. Because Patrick, in your presentation on Saturday, you mentioned a BBC article. Sunday, sorry, you mentioned a BBC article that had been published over the weekend.

Patrick Henningsen (0:59)

And there's a lot of these types of stories, Mike, but obviously the BBC, we have to roll that out because they are the masters at war propaganda. In fact, they wrote the book on it here. We'll bring this story. This is by Alan Little here. War may be coming. Are we psychologically ready? We're seeing this across all European media outlets in the UK as well. Not so much in America, but it shows you that they are trying to prime the public for this type of inevitable war. But let's take a closer look at this piece, because this is really classic propaganda. We'll bring this up here. So there's the article. Pay attention to the image, Mike. Look closely here. What exactly are they trying to say? Are you ready for war? Well, what they're saying is this transition between a female and a soldier and a female of color.

Mike Robinson (1:50)

But also flip-flops to army boots.

Patrick Henningsen (1:52)

Flip-flops to army boots and fatigue.

So some applied behavioral psychology is working here. But this is propaganda, folks. That's all it is. This is the most blunt form of war propaganda. Let's take a look at what's inside. That's going to bring us to, I think, what you have to share with this, Mike. But what are they saying here? If the UK suddenly found itself at war, would you know what to do? Do you know what would be expected of you? Wow.

Wow.

So I know Eric Blair is turning in his grave right now. The government wants us all to start preparing for severe disruption to our lives, like it's inevitable. And, you know, it's amazing here. We'll continue finally here. It's not the tanks you need to worry about, says historian Margaret McMillan. No, no, no. It's the cutting of cables on the ocean floor. It's the hacking into systems on which so many things depend. The possibility for asymmetric war, for cyber war is growing by leaps and bounds, says this article by the BBC here. So they're really setting this up like, no, we're not going to have Russian troops on the streets, but you still need to be afraid anyway. And we're going to make sure that we have total sort of fifth generation warfare, total warfare, total mobilization to, I guess, fight the Russian threat here. So this is right across Europe right now, right throughout UK media outlets. It's pretty ubiquitous, Mike, pretty consistent. There is an agenda here and it's intergovernmental.

Mike Robinson (3:31)

That's absolutely right. Now, other countries, as Patrick said, are ahead of us in this score by the end of them perhaps being closer to Russia. So I just want to cover preparations in Poland to give us an idea of what we might see much more of in this country. Now, under the Civil Protection Act in Poland, the Government Centre for Security and the Chief of the General Staff are drafting a national evacuation plan, and that's built from prevention plans, and that's for approval by the Interior Minister. One of the things that BBC article was talking about was the British government's equivalent of that.

Patrick Henningsen (4:08)

The war book, I think.

Mike Robinson (4:09)

The war book, exactly. Now, every one of Poland's 2,477 municipalities has had to produce its own evacuation plan within the last year, and they all met the deadline.

So far, so good, but the psychological, so I'll just translate the headline there. So border crossings were evacuated, state of heightened alert at the border.

So the psychological attack in Poland has gone beyond making these plans. Six crossings into Ukraine in two Eastern Polish provinces were put on heightened readiness in the first hours after Russia's drone strikes in Western Ukraine. This is over the last week or so. The Interior Minister said that new procedures limit how many people and vehicles are on any border crossing at any one time, and that's to allow for quick evacuation. Shelter points, they say, have been designated with more to be built on an emergency basis where they're lacking. And then on the 17th of September, air attack alerts were sent because a Russian drone hit the ground three miles from the Polish border on the Ukrainian side. There was no breach of Polish territory, and the sirens sounded in every county of those two provinces. 630 sirens in total. Evacuations were ordered in 120 buildings, and the alert was lifted after about an hour, but independent Polish media are reporting that residents had been getting similar alerts about Russian strikes on Ukraine almost daily for several days, and the effect of this is just chilling on people's, you know, their fear levels are absolutely rising. And then another part of this is that eastern Poland is being prepared as a transit corridor for residents of the Baltic States. So Lithuania has approved a national evacuation plan in July this year, and one of Vilnius' three routes runs via Altus to the Polish border.