UK Column News — 28th August 2026

**Brian Gerrish** (0:08)
Good afternoon, today is Friday, the 28th of August, 2026, just after one o'clock. Welcome to UK Column News. I'm your host, Brian Gerrish, delighted to have you with me in the studio, Ben Rubin.

**Ben Rubin** (0:21)
I've never been in the office on a Friday. Amazing.

**Brian Gerrish** (0:25)
There's no answer to that. We're also delighted to be joined by Basil Valentine. We've got a very busy news today. It is very serious because there are some truly very serious things happening in the country, and it's certainly the job of the UK Column to expose what is really happening to lift off the veil of propaganda so that people can see what is being done. We can only do something about it if we can actually see and understand what's happening. Now, we thought today we had to start with Middlesbrough, and really the headlines in the papers say it all because here we are, town gripped by fear, nine lives lost after the horror crash. That was the crash between a vehicle going the wrong way and a police vehicle. A couple of days ago, we got a deadly fire. We've got a brutal gang war, and I have no doubt that certain families in Middlesbrough are actually very frightened indeed. Now, this theme carried across some of the press in the United Kingdom here. So here we've got the Daily Telegraph, police surge to tackle northern gang wars, and this is really following up on the fact that the local authorities were indicating that another 200 police from other forces are going to be drawn into the area to deal with the trouble. And so this is clearly a very, very serious event. And if I just bring in the sun, well, of course, 200 cops sent to tackle gang feud that killed girls seven. How did the UK town become a war zone? So perhaps we can say today, that's a key question that the sun is actually choosing to answer. Now, I decided to go to the Cleveland Police website in order to see what had been reported on the problems. And I was very surprised that once you got onto the website, there was nothing really to see. There was a banner headline, but the banner headline is giving people advice. If they've got any concerns about the recent landslide, the mudslide in Nepal.
And I found this extraordinary. I did actually speak to Cleveland Police and asked them why they had no information on what was actually happening in Middlesbrough. The press team couldn't explain to me, but they did tell me that the banner about Nepal had actually come from an automated broadcast, if you like, from the Met Police. And so if we just pop that one back on screen, I'll just add in there that absolutely nothing the latest news from Cleveland Police. And it seems that what's happening in Nepal is apparently more important to the Met Police and presumably the government than what's happening in Middlesbrough itself.
Now just to get a feel for how things are with the police. This is a clip from the Chief Constable talking a couple of days ago at the very sad death of two police officers in that collision.
However, her presentation to camera was described as being very emotional and that was indeed the case. Let's look at it.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:58)
At 3.39 this morning, a Volkswagen Passat that was traveling the wrong way down the A66 has collided with a marked Cleveland Police armed response vehicle which was travelling on the correct side of the road. Tragically, two police officers, PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, died at the scene along with the five occupants of the Passat, as a result of the collision.

**Brian Gerrish** (4:41)
I've got some comments to make here. Possibly our audience will think I'm being exceptionally hard, but of course, a tragic event, two lives lost. But that Chief Constable can barely speak because the emotions have got on top of her. And yet, this is the woman who's now in the seat to deal with gang warfare unfolding in Middlesbrough. I personally think, Ben, there are some deep questions to ask as to whether this lady is really capable of managing this job. I would have thought that the families of those two men would have been reassured by her making a much more robust statement about the sad loss to be followed by robust police action in order to deal with what appears to be gang warfare getting out of control.
And you've got an extraordinary piece of video footage here, which raises a whole raft of other questions about what's actually happening in Middlesbrough.