– [Narrator] Hey, Psych2Goers. We're gonna jump right
into the deep end here. Do you feel like life's
not worth living anymore? Are you at your tipping
point every day? (sighs) Life may be hard right
now, maybe even unbearable. You may be experiencing trouble at school, at home, with your family
or among your friends. Maybe someone close to you betrayed you, or you feel letdown by
your lack of progress despite how much effort you've spent. The struggles of everyday life can be all too demanding at times. So this is an open letter to those who have lost all hope in life. So you may not feel
like it, but know this. You're not alone, no matter
what you're going through. It's possible to find happiness again. It might not, matter of fact,
it probably won't be easy, and you'll probably experience
failures and want to give up. But keep trying. You're strong. Didn't get out of bed early today? It's okay. Go easy on yourself
and try again tomorrow. Didn't pass the entrance
exam at your dream university or get the dream job you've
been eyeing since forever? You're allowed to feel gloomy
because rejection stings.

But know that you're always
allowed to rise above it. Life is actually never about the outcomes. For example, remember what
it's like having a crush? It was fun daydreaming about
them every now and then, but it can be devastating when you confess and realize they don't feel the same way. Some of you may move on quickly, but some may take a little
while longer to heal. You may even feel hopeless
to ever find someone again. But try to remember that
it's not your fault. When you're too attached to the results, you set yourself up for disappointment when you don't get it.

And let's face it, there's no way that life will
hand its best gifts to you all the time. There's gonna be detours, road bumps, and stop signs along the journey. But once you realize that
you can't control the things outside of your control, and you can only control how
you respond to these things, you can then start to
feel a little lighter and a little happier. You may not notice it much at the start, but you will find it eventually. The person you had a crush
on may be unreachable now, but that doesn't mean you can't
find someone else who isn't.

That job or school you've
always wanted to join may not be accepting you at the moment, but there's always the next one. And if not, then the next one after that. Whenever it feels like the
world is weighing you down, please remember you're not alone. There's always hope at
the end of the tunnel. The pain and listlessness
you're feeling now will eventually fade, and you'll grow from the experience.

Maybe not the way you once intended, but in a way that pushes you forward. And once you feel like you're slowly picking up the pieces again, which you will, you'll look back and thank yourself for putting in the consistent daily effort to become a better person and for rising above your
mind's traitorous beliefs and hopelessness. So, what should you do to
make your future self happy? Find your larger purpose. Realize you're not alone in your journey. Reach out to your friends for support, and work towards your goal day by day. Each step is hard. It might even feel impossible, but we hope you at least try.

You may fail, but try again. Fight for yourself. However tiresome it becomes, never let yourself succumb to despair. Then after time, your spark will eventually return. Maybe in a way that differs
from your expectations but it will, and a new you will emerge, happier, healthier, and wiser. Allow yourself to rest,
but never stop fighting. (exhales) Did you find this video helpful? Let us know in the comments below. Also be sure to like, subscribe, and share this video with those
who might benefit from it.

And don't forget to hit
the notification bell icon to get notified whenever
Psych2Go posts a new video. The references and studies
used in this video are added in the description box below. Thanks so much for watching
and we will see you next time..

As found on YouTube

Hello my name is Judy Heumann. I’m the Special Advisor for International
Disability Rights at the United states Department of State. I am here to encourage you to actively participate
in the online portion of the Civil Society Consultation, which will be held in June of
this year. It’s very important for us that the voices
of disabled people in Africa have a meaningful role in the final development of the action
plan for the Decade on Disability in Africa with the Africa Union.

We are hopeful that this online course will
have your active participation being able to be responsive to questions that are being
put forward so that there will be good preparation when you convene on the 18th of June. Thank you very much for your involvement. I look forward to hearing about the outcome
and I really do want to emphasize the reason that we are involved is to ensure that the
voices of disabled people who are representative of issues affecting disabled people across
Africa are fully heard. Thank you..

As found on YouTube

if you are a brand new real estate investor and you're still struggling to get your first deal because you don't have the funding or if you're a wholesaler in real estate and you've collected some assignment fees but you want to stay in some deals but you haven't been able to because you don't have the money to do your deal or let's say you're a seasoned real estate investor and you just want more money to fund your deals without relying on hard money lenders or traditional lenders well if you answered yes to any of those three questions don't go anywhere because i'm getting ready to plug you into the money right now [Music] well hello and welcome to another episode of the private money academy podcast i'm jay connor your host also known as the private money authority and what happens here on this podcast is we always have an amazing show because i always have amazing guests and today is no exception but before i introduce my guest i want to plug you into the funding as i said let's say you're a new real estate investor but you can't get your first deal done because you don't have the funding or you're a wholesaler and you want to stay in some deals or you're just a seasoned real estate investor and you want to get more funding for your deals without relying on traditional funding sources or hard money lenders well i've got a gift for you for just being here on the private money academy podcast and that is i just recently released my brand new book which is titled where to get the money now subtitle how and where to get money for your real estate deals without relying on traditional or hard money lenders in this book i reveal exactly how i went from no funding to over 2 million dollars in funding in less than 90 days so if you're in this world of single-family houses and you want some funding for your deals you can go to amazon and spend 20 bucks or let me just give you the book for free all you got to do is just spend a couple of bucks on shipping and handling and we'll ship the book right out to you and here's where you can get the book for free go to www.jayconnor j-a-y-c-o-n-n-e-r.com forward slash book that's jay connor j-a-y c-o-n-n-e-r dot com forward slash book b-o-o-k and we'll rush it right out to you well as i mentioned my guest today is an expert and he's an expert in the field of financial planning now the way my guest does financial planning is different from anybody else that i've ever had here on the show he's a member of this organization that's called bank on yourself so my guest helps real estate investors business owners even full-time employees to grow safe and predictable wealth regardless of what the market is doing and the way he does this is he uses a financial strategy that's actually been around for check this out for over a hundred and sixty years when my guest started this journey way back i say way back he's not that old in fact he's rather young when he was in graduate school and he was working on getting his mba well he's worked for companies like allstate blue cross blue shield before founding his company which is called financial asset protection which is a financial services firm that focuses on one primary concept and strategy and that is the bank on yourself concept which is also known as the infinite banking concept i'm so excited to have my guest here on the show with me today so welcome to the show sari ibrahim welcome sari hi jay thank you so much for having me on and thank you so much for that awesome introduction it's a pleasure to be here and i'm excited to chat with you well i'm excited to chat with you sari so first of all why don't you take a moment and tell folks how in the world it is you're qualified to talk about what you're going to be talking about yeah definitely um so i um i started my journey my financial services financial planning journey when i was doing my mba and i was about halfway through the program i started working for different insurance companies and financial services institutions i worked at allstate and blue cross and humana i mean i started to enjoy working with clients originally i thought i thought i was going to get into project management that's what i got my mba it was a concentration in project management but i quickly quickly realized that i love talking to people i love problem solving i loved listening to people too um and i started to notice that people became more comfortable speaking to me about their financial problems and things that they wanted to accomplish financially so then kind of a light bulb went off and it was like maybe i can make this into like a long-term career where i'm just helping people um plan financially and solve money problems either too little like too much debt or too much not sure how to position real estate deals and things like that but i wasn't really sure of a type of career like that so i i stuck through the insurance world and mostly in medicare i was a medicare consultant too and helping people in retirement plan for retirement for medicare in their retirement and um i i kept my eyes open for financial planning and just read a lot of books i read about three books at the same time um for the last 10 years and i came across a book called the bank underself revolution by pamela and the book talks about the strategy that we're going to talk about today the bank on yourself strategy what it is how it works why it was even invented why it was even created to begin with and i love the book i love the content in the book and then at the end of the book there was a section that said you know if you want to join our program as an advisor um i i applied to the program got accepted and went through an eight-week rigorous training program on how to structure these policies how to understand kind of different financial vehicles out there like mutual funds etfs stocks and all these different other types of conventional types of investments and we went through the problems with them the pros and cons of all of them um and then most importantly was how to structure bank on your self-type whole life policies and and really and i started a company called financial assets protection and that was kind of the overall point of the company is to become a bank underself organization where we can help clients use these policies especially a lot of our clients are real estate investors and private money lenders and hard money lenders so really you know i'm excited to be on your show because i think it's going to really connect really well with you and the audience that's super so i know you have a way or ways in which you can actually help real estate investors uh and private lenders but before we get into that let's start from ground zero here my guess is i probably have hardly anybody that is uh listening in to the show that even knows what the bank on yourself concept or the infinite banking concept is so where did this come from i mean you you know it's been around for over 160 years but what is this concept why did it originate and how does it work and and take your time go nice and go nice and slow because i want to make sure we understand what this is all about because quite frankly this is probably a brand new concept to a lot of people that we've got tuning in yeah absolutely so this concept really started about let's say about 20 years ago by nelson nash and nelson nash wrote the book becoming your own banker and he's kind of the godfather of the infinite bacon concept he invented the infinite banking concept and in his book becoming your own banker he starts off talking about some of the problems he had like at one point he had about 500 000 in debt and back when interest rates were like 20 percent he was paying about 67 000 a year just in interest payments alone on that outstanding loan and he started to realize that you know a lot of other people have this problem a lot of people you know the average american spends one third of their income on servicing debt so you know this realized you know he realized that this is a common problem and then kind of went through the technical details of whole life insurance and kind of for those who don't know whole life insurance isn't just life insurance it also has a cash value component to it like a savings account portion to it that grows over time and you actually earn compound interest on that money and and the point of it isn't just necessarily from an investment standpoint it's it's more of a savings standpoint and a way for you for you to become your own source of financing so nelson nash throughout the book is talking about structuring dividend paying high cash value whole life insurance policies so that way you could become your own source of financing and then you could pay the interest back to yourself so originally it was created to address the interest part of the interest problem instead of paying out interest to other lenders you would pay interest to yourself and become your own banker or you would bank on yourself now the actual asset dividend paying whole life insurance that's been around for over 160 years families and financial institutions have been using you know dividend paying whole life insurance policies for over 160 years you know but really the the concept of the infant and banking concept and it being used by more people than just banks and financial institutions and family offices it's being used now by more um everyday people people who make a hundred thousand dollars a year to 200 000 a year real estate investors who have like 10 properties you know who are on their way to becoming financially free but not just for the billionaires if that makes sense that does make sense so how does the concept work so the concept so the first step is you want to work with an advisor who understands this from a conceptual standpoint standpoint and not just a product standpoint so using infinite banking is not just going out and buying a whole life insurance policy and that's it you've already checked all the boxes you need to work with an advisor who understands the high cash value use of whole life insurance there's only a limited set of companies that could actually do these policies and a limited set of advisors who actually know how to structure and design these policies so that way you have high cash value in the first few years and you also have access to it there's also a lot of tax benefits when it's structured the right way so i guess step one is you wanna you wanna find that advisor that really knows this and does this full time and has a track record of actually working with clients and the second step too is you wanna make sure that your advisor is going through your financial analysis making sure that that you are um you're doing all these other things for the right reason so for example we do a financial analysis to understand the client's financial situation number one to see where they're at what they're doing are they invest in the stock market are they full-time employees do they have their own business we want to understand their financial life their financial health and then we also want to understand their objectives and what is it that they want to accomplish do they want to retire in the next 10 years 20 years do they want to buy more real estate do they want to loan out their money as hard money lenders or private money lenders what is it that they want to do with their money so we want to identify those objectives and then we would structure a design maybe one policy maybe more than one policy to address their objectives and also based off of their financial situation based off of their tax rates based off of all these other intricate parts that need to be taken into consideration um from there yeah and again it's important it's not a commodity this isn't a product it's a it's a way of living it's a way of kind of understanding how the financial system works and for you to become your own financial system not literally starting an actual fdic insured bank but but having the banking principles in your life where anytime you need to finance something you can go to yourself go to your whole life insurance policy leverage that borrow against that and then use it for other investments so i'm still a little confused so what's the benefit of this strategy and what pain or problems does it fix and solve yeah so there's a couple so number one so the number one benefit of this is guaranteed growth so this is based off the whole life insurance policy is based off of growing guaranteed wealth um when you start a policy there's kind of two sections to the policy there's the guaranteed growth the projections that the insurance company says for example if you're going to fund a policy over 30 years they say if you put in 10 000 a year for 30 years we'll guarantee you x amount of dollars during this duration of 30 years plus more in the future plus we'll guarantee you the life insurance and then also if everything goes well we'll also give you dividends on top of your cash value dividends are not guaranteed but we only work with insurance companies who have a proven track record of paying our dividends for over 100 years so in other words so the first benefit is the guaranteed growth and the high certainty of dividends being paid over time number two um there's a lot of tax benefits behind this so number one the the the way the policy grows and accumulates with interest and dividends it's growing tax deferred so for example you have a hundred thousand dollars in cash value year one year two it grows to a hundred and five thousand dollars you don't pay taxes on that growth it grows tax deferred also in most situations when you go to take money out of the policy either through loans or withdrawals that's also going to be tax-free because if you use after-tax dollars to fund the policy and under current tax law loans and withdrawals on life insurance policies that are non-modified endowment contracts non-mec policies are currently tax free so a lot of tax advantages also the death benefit is income tax free to your beneficiaries it could be exposed to estate taxes but it's income tax free to your uh beneficiaries either your family or if you want a business the business would get that income tax free um the fourth it's not effective which kind of goes with number one is not affected by market conditions so that means if you have all this money and whole life insurance and then there's a major market crash or a recession it's not going to affect the cash value of your policy um the way the whole life insurance company pays out interest and dividends is not correlated with market conditions with the stock market it's they're mostly invested in private loans and button in the bond market so um it's not going to be hindered by market conditions and then also you have guaranteed access to the policy loans and withdrawal so for example let's say um you've been building up the policy you have a hundred thousand dollars in cash value next thing you know there's another 2008 that happens another market crash happens banks aren't giving out loans um market values have dropped you can go to your policy that didn't drop in value based on market conditions and the insurance company will guarantee you your ability to borrow against your money uh they'll give you it's guaranteed to take out a loan against it the only collateral you need is just the policy itself you don't need any other collateral no credit check no credit scores um no other property to put up nothing no other collateral but the policy itself so this kind of opens up the doors when other people can't take out loans in in poor economic times you would be still be able to do that in your policy it wouldn't be affected by market conditions and you wouldn't need any other way to uh take the money out and then also i guess the sixth benefit is in most states the cash value of the whole life policy is protected from creditors and judgment so this means you know if you've been building up cash value in a policy somebody sues you for whatever happens you know check with your lawyer about this but in most states you could look this up the cash value is outside of kind of it's an exempt asset so it doesn't really count when you're being sued again i'm not a lawyer so um check with your lawyer about that but in most situations there's a lot of asset protection behind the use of dividend paying whole life insurance so since a person can borrow using that whole life policy as the collateral they can borrow against it no credit check or whatever that's one way that through this strategy you can help real estate investors is that right absolutely yeah and we can help them a couple different ways so one way we can help them is literally instead of go if they have enough cash value in the policy um they need to for example use for the dom payment they can go to the policy borrow against that for the down payment and then they could and then banks also allow this so if the bank asks you hey where did you get this 20 down payment from you could say i got it from my whole life insurance policy they actually like to see that in portfolios because it's because when you borrow that money it doesn't decrease the value of it your your money actually keeps growing even when you've borrowed that money so you can use it for down payments now if you have a lot of cash value in the policy you could actually use it to finance the entire deal so you're becoming your own mortgage you go to your policy you borrow against it you buy a deal as a cash buyer and then you finance it to yourself instead of paying monthly payments to a lender you pay it to yourself back into the whole life policy and then when you do it the reason why that's that's important to do it that way is that when you do it that way you have two assets now instead of just one instead of trading cash for another asset you have to you have the whole life policy accumulating in value and you have the real estate you that you buy that's also going to appreciate value hopefully over time so you have these two assets now that are growing and there you leverage one for the other assets and that's awesome so uh sari just for the sake of those it may have to leave the show early i want people to go and get your contact information right now and then we'll continue the interview so i know you've already peaked curiosity with um some of our listeners uh what's the best way for them to connect with you yes so the best way is to go to our website it's finn asset protection.com it's fin asset protection.com and then you can schedule a free consultation there you can also download a free book that talks about this concept awesome so again everyone you can connect with sarri at www.finn that's efficientfarmer in asset assct protection.com finn assetprotection.com and you can schedule a call so um back to this concept sir so let's let's talk about some hypothetical numbers all right so i'm thinking one question that some of our listeners may have is okay if i get to borrow against my um whole life policy uh that you can help them get set up and structured and all that let's do some real numbers here so let's say so so let me give you the blanks to fill in and you can give us a hypothetical situation give us a hypothetical whole life policy the words someone's going to take out 100 you decide in this hypothetical scenario they're gonna take out a hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand five hundred thousand million dollar whatever whole life policy how much money have they got to pay in to that whole life policy to where they can actually start borrowing against it for in other words in other words have they got to pay in 50 000 to where they could borrow 50 000 back or are they able to pay in a smaller amount of money into the policy and they could use that as an asset and borrow a higher amount of money that's question number one question number two is how long before they would open or establish a whole life policy before they could start borrowing against it okay so i'll start with the first one so number one typically um in the first couple years you won't be able to put in for example uh 50 000 and borrow a hundred thousand typically you'd be able to borrow out less than what you put in the first couple years eventually it's going to grow it's a long term strategy it grows over time and that's really where you can borrow more than what you put in in the future but to answer clearly num you know the first one is that no you wouldn't be able to put money in and then borrow a higher amount typically less than what you put in the first couple years and then you could actually borrow right away so for example um you know to give you numbers i worked with a client who put in you know uh 200 000 in cash value in a single premium whole life policy she put in a one-time payment uh 200 000 and then is able to borrow right away like probably i would give it two weeks until the policy gets issued you get your online account that you can access and see the cash value about two weeks after that she can access 90 as a loan out of the policy so about 180 000 can come out to her and then she could pay this back whenever she wants she's actually going to use this to become a private money lender she's going to loan this out to another real estate investor and then he's going to give her of course you know she's expecting between like 10 and 15 percent um as her roi on that interest and then she's going to take that her profits and then pay the policy loan back and then also the way we structured this policy was that she could pay she could put more into the policy than she borrowed so for example she takes out 180 000 dollars and she invests it she ends up making that 180 into 200 000 she can then take all of that 200 000 put it back into the policy paying the loan first some of the interests of the insurance company and then whatever's left over from her profit her true profit she could add it on top of the policy and then now her cash value is like you know uh 210 or 220 whatever the cases might be so it's going to go up when you've added more into the policy got you so of course over time uh interest rates are going to fluctuate yeah but but as of today on the re on the recording of this show about what are interest rates hanging around when someone borrows using their policy as collateral yeah when they borrow it's typically five percent simple interest so if you took out a low and paid it off in four years it would be about 1.9 apr 1.9 compound interest that you paid to the insurance company and then while that's happening typically you're earning four to six percent in your policy over time so that's how you can kind of have an arbitrage a split between um how much you paid in interest and how much you earn so it's very common for somebody for example to in one year have earned you know took out a policy loan paid it back in that time in that one year they earned like ten thousand dollars for example an interest in dividends depending on how much cash drive they have and they've paid like five thousand dollars in interest um to the insurance company so there was a there was an arbitrage there was a split between how much they borrowed and earned and how much they paid back to the insurance company so really when you connect this with real estate you you have a double compounding effect on your money like in this case with this client she's going to make money in her whole life policy through the interest and dividends and she's going to make money with the private money lender with the real estate investor who's who's borrowing her money she has two sources of growth in her policy that's amazing so from your experience sari um in working with people what's your overall advice um or opinion and that is is it best to uh invest in your business is it better to save cash uh which way to go and why definitely and i think that both of them have their reasons right it's important to have cash for emergencies and to to kind of grow your your wealth over time your actual cash um and at the same time there's downsides to that right it's like when you have money sitting in a bank account it loses opportunity costs you could have earned head you invested that money somewhere else you lose it to inflation and you never i think as an entrepreneur and as a business owner you never want cash you're sitting around because you're probably just going to spend it so i think that investing is really important but really that's another advantage of infinite banking is that you have the opportunity to do both you could um fund the save cash and then anytime you need to access that cash you borrow against it and i'm seeing these weird these words clearly jay that you want to borrow against it so that way you kind of um you're not interrupting the growth of your money so for example if your goal is to save for the next 20 years um and you're accessing that money in the middle of those 20 years it's not going to interrupt your overall goal you're borrowing against it you're leveraging that asset and your and your you have the ability to keep growing that asset that cash assets while still being able to invest in your business in other areas so uh i just want to make sure all of our real estate investors or those that are interested in real estate summarize for us one more time how you can help real estate investors yeah okay i can help them become their own sources of financing instead of having to rely on um banks and hard money lenders and private money lenders they can become their own source of financing i can help them do that that's awesome uh what's the minimum age uh that someone needs to be in order to deploy this strategy so there's many ways you could do this so there's you know for you to own your own policy technically it's typically the adult age 18 years old to own your own policy to be an insured i've insured the clients who were newborns that's a whole nother that could be a whole other podcast it's how you could use this as a how you can use infinite banking as a college savings funds for a college saving fund for children so i've insured children as they were newborns um where the parents own the policy they paid into it by the time the child is in college by the time they're like 18 years old they'll have like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash value for example just from putting in a few hundred dollars a month into the policy so um to be the owner typically 18 um the youngest clients i've had that are the owners are probably about 23 24 years old where they're the owners of the policies that's kind of the the youngest age i've seen but technically it could be 18.

Um usually typically we're looking for clients who are kind of not really you know they're starting their careers they have some income they have you know a thousand dollars at least a month they could save or 500 a month they could save um but we also do work with clients who are in a tough situation where they're they have a lot of debt for example and they kind of want to figure out a way to pay it down we also work with clients who you know it's not just wealthy clients but we work with all types of clients that's that's awesome uh folks one more time i'm visiting here with sari ibrahim and his company uh uses this concept called infinite banking concept also known as the bank on yourself concept uh to connect with sarri and get a consulting call uh you can go to www.fin asset protection that's fin short for financial finn assetprotection.com and connect with sari and if you're listening sarri is like larry but with an s very like larry so siri of parting comments and final thoughts yeah yeah definitely so i have a show called thinking like a bank and you know i um the reason why i mentioned is because you know one of our our ideas or theories is you want to think like a bank you know banks are the largest purchasers of whole life insurance because they're doing it for a reason because of the guaranteed growth the tax benefits the asset protection all the benefits we mentioned they're using it for that so kind of you know as an entrepreneur think like a bank you know think how you know instead of just you know um we see this a lot with real estate instead of just thinking about how to always actively manage real estate think about what if you become the bank where you are actually loaning out your money to other people um and in the sense that you're now a banker not just a real estate investor um and that's kind of what the show we talk about we talk about how to do that how to become your own banker how to become you know how to save on taxes how to save overall in your life and be able to find financial freedom by applying the same strategies that banks use that's awesome well i appreciate so much sarah you're taking the time to be here on the show and again folks you can connect with sarri at www.finnfin that's short for financial evidencenfrank i n asset assct protection.com siri thank you so much i appreciate you my friend thanks jay thank you and have it folks another episode of the private money academy podcast real estate investing with jay connor i'm jay connor your host also known as the private money authority wishing you all the best here's to taking your real estate investing business to the next level and we'll see you right here on the next private money academy podcast [Music]

As found on YouTube

I'm Dave Buchanan, Director of Consultation for FirstNet. Going forward FirstNet will embark on four key elements to help us reach those
goals in 2016 one is a kickoff meeting between FirstNet and the SPOC. The purpose of this is to connect FirstNet with the state team and the state single point of contact to discuss the expanded outreach and begin planning for the remainder of the consultation year. Khanisa Figaro: There is always a value to face to face, and we can't wait for FirstNet to come back
and do the second round of consultation. I think our team our first responders out
there looking forward to hearing more and getting involved.

We would love to see more end users come out and tell us what they expect. What do they need from FirstNet, and how it would change their lives as first responders. Dave Buchanan: The second key element its to engage FirstNet with the governance team in the
governance body meeting in the state to get critical inputs from the state,
understand what the key issues are from state in 2016 and to bring updates to the state regarding the FirstNet acquision. James Voutour: Obviously very excited about FirstNet. We're looking forward to
our second round.

We know this has to have the approval of our governor
eventually. So I think from the state sheriff's point
of view and law enforcement point of view what I would love to do is
increasing education that can be done at our level. We're so close to having
broadband that people don't realize we could sit in New York state talk to
California with public safety broadband in a matter of seconds. Dave Buchanan: The third key element for 2016 is the convening of consultation task teams.

The purpose of these task teams is to bring subject matter experts from the state and connect them with FirstNet in order to obtain inputs from the state regarding network operations and
management topics like prioritization and public safety grade. Ed Mills: What's really exciting is working with the state and being the outreach and education manager, everybody wants to
know how much is it gonna cost what what's it gonna cost to buy in? We're very clear about in our messages that really this is about getting everybody
that we can at the table. We really don't have anything to sell you. We don't
want you to drink any Kool-Aid. We want you to participate in the process. Because the process is really important. And that is one of the things that I appreciate
about this. FirstNet is giving us the ability to go out on the front and say,
"How do you want it built? What do you need?" What kind of applications are you looking at? What kind of capabilities do you want to do?" Dave Buchanan: The fourth key element of 2016 consultation is the executive consultation meeting.

FirstNet will
engage with the state through this executive consultation meeting, connecting FirstNet officials
with key influencers, key decision makers and key officials from local, tribal, state,
metropolitan public safety in order to bring about a robust dialogue about the
decision the state and decision-makers will be making about FirstNet in the future. Gerad Godfrey: If we don't know until those consultations happen what did various
stakeholders bring to the table. And we won't know unless and until they come to
the table and bring it to the table. Shelley Westall: At the beginning we didn't have a lot of concrete information. And our stakeholders
are really hungry for that. They want to know about it and they want to know how
FirstNet is going to address some of their concerns. So I think we have a
great opportunity for open dialogue and interaction between our stakeholders,
FirstNet and Washington One Net..

As found on YouTube

[Upbeat Music] Hey Psych2Goers, have you ever thought about 
joining our team of animators or writers?   Or perhaps you want to start an 
animation channel of your own?   Are you looking through as many youtube 
channels as you could for tutorials and tips,   but wasted a lot of time on some not so helpful 
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get your free trial of Skillshare Premium! Hey Psych2goers and welcome back to our channel! This video is suggested by one of our 
viewers, Army & Blink! Thanks for the suggestion! Now, lets get started. Have you been wondering if your mental 
health is possibly getting worse?   Mental health, just like physical health, 
affects everyone whether you are suffering   from a mental illness or not.

Your mental and 
emotional health can fluctuate from time to time   depending on the stresses going on in 
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your mental health is getting worse. NUMBER ONE. You’re losing interest in the little things. Do your favorite activities suddenly seem meh 
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of your responsibilities and to-do lists.   When you lose interest and don’t enjoy the hobbies 
and activities that you once did, this could also   be a warning sign of depression.

If you think this 
could be what's happening to you, know that you   are not alone, and that help is just around the 
corner. Talk with a trusted friend or a family   member, or a mental health professional to get the 
help you need to navigate these troubling times. NUMBER TWO. You get overwhelmed easier. Do you find that you’ve been getting 
overwhelmed more often than normal?  When you have a to-do list for two 
or three tasks, does it feel more like   you have ten things to do? When you start to 
get overwhelmed easily with everyday things,   this could be a sign of worsening mental health. 
According to Psychotherapist, Sheri Jacobson,   feeling mentally overwhelmed could be an internal 
reaction to excessive outside stress.

To help   cope with this overwhelming feeling, you can 
journal, meditate, or practice mindfulness. NUMBER THREE. You don’t feel like 
socializing that much anymore.  Does it feel more exhausting to 
interact with people nowadays?   Regardless of whether you’re an introvert, 
extrovert, or somewhere in between,   we all have a standard comfort level 
when it comes to social interaction.   If you feel yourself slipping below your comfort 
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There is truly something for everyone. Skillshare has a great intro class on animation that we really recommend. The course is called “Creativity Unleashed: Discover, Hone, and Share Your Voice Online” by Johannes Fast. If any of you are interested in learning basic animation, I recommend you go check it out in the link below! The first 1000 people will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium and after that, it’s only around $10 a month. Let us know what Skillshare courses you’re taking in the comments below. FOUR. You don’t have a consistent sleep schedule. Have you developed a seemingly random sleep 
schedule? Despite wanting to get up at a certain   time in the morning, do you wind up sleeping all 
day? When you have an irregular sleep schedule,   this could signify increased stress in your 
life and a decline in your mental health.   If you're struggling to regulate your sleep, 
you can try setting up a routine to wake up   and go to bed at the same time every 
day.

This will get your body back into   its regular rhythm of sleep and wake cycles, 
therefore no longer causing sleep disturbance. FIVE. You always feel drained. Despite getting enough sleep and eating well, 
do you constantly feel exhausted or drained?   According to Healthline, mental exhaustion 
can set in when you are under long-term stress   and this type of exhaustion can make it feel 
like you are trying to move up a mountain.   More than just feeling tired, when you are this 
drained and constantly exhausted, you might   struggle to get anything done.

Healthline 
suggests practicing gratitude, relaxation,   and yoga, as well as talking to a mental 
health professional to provide medication   for you if it’s needed. Treatment plans will 
look different for everyone, but regardless,   there is a way that will work best for you to help 
pull yourself out of this state of exhaustion. SIX. Your anxiety seems to be increasing. Do you wake up in the morning with a crushing 
sense of anxiety that stays with you all day?   Does this anxiety cast a cloud over your 
daily activities? Worsening anxiety can   often coincide with worsening mental health. 
Anxiety affects us all, whether or not you   happen to suffer from a particular anxiety 
disorder. It’s important to monitor your   anxiety levels because a noticeable change 
can tell you a lot about your mental health.   Anxiety is a response to stress and it can cause 
a variety of psychological and physical symptoms.   When you feel overly anxious, you might 
notice that your heart rate speeds up   and your breathing rate increases, and 
you might experience a bout of nausea SEVEN. You feel mentally 
and emotionally scattered. Do you feel like there are so many things 
happening around you, but you can’t focus   on any of them? If so, you’re not alone.

From 
time to time, it’s normal to feel this way,   especially when you are going through 
higher amounts of stress. However,   if you are feeling scattered and like things are 
spinning out of control, this could be a sign that   your mental health is under strain. According to 
Psychologist Rick Hanson from Psychology Today,   you probably feel scattered because you are 
struggling to find your center. This means that in   order for your brain to feel more organized, you 
need to feel at peace within yourself. Practicing   mindfulness, such as yoga and meditation, are 
great places to start on the road to inner peace. EIGHT. You can’t seem to pay attention. Do you have a harder time 
focusing and staying on task?   When you’re reading, is it hard to comprehend? 
Do you have to reread the same passage   over and over again? Though it could relate to 
potential psychological disorders such as ADHD,   depression, or anxiety, it is also likely that 
a lack of focus can be due to stress or poor   self-care.

It can be frustrating to start losing 
focus so frequently and those feelings are valid   and normal. Remember to take care of yourself 
and, as you recover, know that help is available. NINE. You might be struggling 
with your impulse control. Are you acting more on impulse? Are you 
possibly indulging in things you shouldn’t?   Whether it’s retail therapy, or binging all of 
your shows, or playing video games for hours,   when you act more on impulse like this, it 
can signify worsening mental health. You   might pick up some unhealthy habits 
as a way to cope with life stress,   fulfill yourself, or distract yourself 
from a major issue going on in your life.   Journaling, mindfulness, and therapy are great 
ways to start uncovering some of these issues! TEN.

You are struggling to feel grounded. Similar to feeling centered, when you 
are grounded, you are feeling confident   and balanced within yourself. According to Irene 
Langeveld, an energy worker, and meditation coach,   grounding starts with the root chakra at the 
base of the spine, known to help you feel secure.   Activities that connect your body with 
the world around you– such as hiking,   meditating, or walking outside –are all great 
ways to help you find your sense of grounding! Can you relate to any of these points made in 
this video? Do you think your mental health   could be slipping? If so, know that 
there is help you can reach out to.   You can talk to a trusted friend, family member, 
or a mental health therapist for support.   Please like and share this video if it helped 
you and you think it can help someone else, too!   The studies and references used are listed 
in the description below.

Don’t forget to   hit the subscribe button for more Psych2Go videos. 
Thank you for watching! We’ll see you next time! Video by Psych2go..

As found on YouTube

and we turn now to First Minister's Questions question number one Ruth Davidson nothing officer this morning's audit Scotland report says that reform of the NHS is progressing but the major challenges still lie ahead nobody underestimates the work that's needed to see services improved year-on-year within our health service but the bottom line is that seven out of eight key performance standards have been missed this year so can I ask the First Minister to confirm how many of these performance standards have seen any improvements over the last five years First Minister of course in England under the Conservatives it's 8 out of 8 but let me address let me address let me address directly the audit Scotland report firstly for completeness let me point out some of the audit Scotland findings I suspect we won't hear from the opposition today firstly NHS staff are maintaining and improving the quality of care secondly there is a strong culture of continuous improvement in the NHS there is a continued focus on safety and improvement at levels of patient satisfaction are at an all-time high in the NHS and there are sayings that reforms are having a positive impact that Paul also points out that since 2008 there has been an eight point two percent above inflation increase in spending in the National Health Service and that health today accounts for a higher proportion of the Scottish government budget than it did in 2008 as we know in every Health Service across the developed world changing population patterns means that there are rising demands on our health service however in meeting these challenges in Scotland and they are big challenges I think against many measures we are seeing the NHS in Scotland perform better than the NHS in any other part of the UK and that is because of the actions we are taking increased investment in the NHS reform integration of Health and Social Care for example the focus on real estate medicine and the work we've done on Ian Ian Arno doing in elective care more generally so this is tough stuff nobody denies that but we will continue to focus on delivering the investment and reform that the NHS needs and patients across the country deserve Ruth Davidson first minister presiding officer but the answer according to audit Scotland was one in one of the eight key performance indicators there has been any improvement at all in the last five years and the reason they say is because this Scottish government is still struggling to do the basics and one of the big ones is staffing they audit Scotland horn two years ago that we needed a new national approach to worse work floors planning and the Scottish Government promised to deliver one by early 2017 now that one then drew two three two of which were still waiting on and the only one which has been published according to audit Scotland isn't a plan at all and what's more the auditor makes clear that there's no likelihood of the government being able to produce a proper plan because it still doesn't have the data to do so so audit Scotland has been warning about this for years so why is there no proper plan in place and why isn't there the data to a low one to be written First Minister actually one of the things that the audit Scotland report pointed to is the improving data that we know have not just in the acute service but across primary care that allows us not just to monitor trends in the NHS but also to drive improvement so it actually is specifically one of the things that the audit Scotland report points to as a sign of positive improvement now you know I mean this point actually seriously because I accept the challenges in the Health Service and I absolutely accept the responsibility of this government the government that I lead to face up to and address these challenges in Scotland but Ruth Davidson seems to want to say that the challenges and Scotland's NHS are unique to Scotland and somehow uniquely don't to this government know if that is the case then she has to explain why under the Conservatives in England nor NHS targets are being met is the serious question for the Conservatives now on the specific issue on the specific issue of staffing as Ruth Davidson is aware there has been a plan published looking specifically at NHS staff one of the pieces of legislation we will take forward in the coming session of Parliament of course is a built in train safe staffing levels in law something that no other part of the UK is doing but increasingly and you know anybody who knows anything about how health services are delivered these days knows that you cannot look at the NHS in isolation so the second and third part of the NHS and health more generally workforce plan will look at social care and local authorities staffing as well so that we bring together an integrated plan mapping out the staffing needs for the NHS not just now but in the years to come that's the right way to do this and that is what we will continue to take forward but the final point I would make on staffing it's a point I have meet before presiding officer and I will continue to make it one of the biggest risks we face in Scotland generally and in the NHS in particular is a growing inability to recruit people into our public services and why is that because the Conservatives want to stop a or restrict our ability to recruit the best and brightest from other countries that's one of the biggest risks we face to recruitment and Ruth Davidson should be ashamed of herself for supporting that Davison [Music] there's any officer if I can just call a little bit Atlanta for the Auditor General says specifically on this issue that the first ministers tried to sweep under the carpet the court is this it is not a detailed plan to address immediate and future issues the Scottish government is likely to find it challenging to provide any more detail in the next two plans this is due to a lack of national data on the primary care and Social Care workforces the data isn't there and the plan isn't there and let's talk about one area where that lack of Workforce Planning is having a real and immediate effect and that isn't primary care audit Scotland makes clear that GPS are central to the changes that we all agree all of us agree are needed to improve healthcare but this has been hindered by the continuing difficulties in recruiting and retaining family doctors and they're all College of GPs make it clear today they've written that the SNP government has consistently cut the percentage share of health spending going directly to GPS over the last decade and they ask how can post hospital targets possibly be met when people feel that they have to attend a and E because they can't secure an appointment closer to home does the First Minister have an answer for the Royal College of GPs First Minister firstly in terms of staffing it is precisely because we need to make sure that is an integrated plan across not just the acute health service but primary care and social care as well that we are developing the workforce plan in the way that we are we are doing it in the way that I think audit Scotland would advise us to do and that's why we will continue to take forward that work now in terms of GPS again we Scotland is not the only country that is experiencing challenges in recruiting GPS that is why we are taking forward a range of different actions from increasing the number of medical training places in our universities to establishing a new graduate entry programme which will focus specifically on general practice and of course rural and remote working we have seen this year an increase in the fill rate of year one trainees compared to last year that the the same point last year it was 65 percent is up to 74 percent this year and we of course have a commitment to increase the proportion of the total health budget going to primary care by five hundred million pounds over this Parliament taking it to 11 percent of the total NHS budget which again I think is a greater commitment that has been made by any government anywhere else across these islands so these are big challenges you know anybody can stand up here to just Davidson has done in point to the challenges I accept the challenges but this government is putting in place the actions to address those challenges and that is what we will continue to do Ruth Davidson I'm standing up here calling on the First Minister to honor the promise that she made to GPS a year ago I'm signing up for GPS her saying that she has gone back on her words and it's not being delivered now today we've had a report from the nation's auditor saying that health in Scotland is not improving and that huge inequalities remain so there's been a ninety nine percent rise in the number of outpatients waiting more than 12 weeks in the last year alone the SNP set their own targets to make things better but they've improved in only one in the last five years we know there's no long term plan even though one one was promised for the start of this year that GPS are being underfunded and that we spent a hundred and seventy 1 million pounds hiring an agency staff to plug the gaps now yesterday I met a group of fantastic trainees at the Edinburgh Medical School what reassurances can the First Minister give to them they're after 10 years of audit Scotland reporting the same feelings over health by hard government she'll actually have taken some action to turn it around First Minister actually the number of points to take on their firstly Agency spend in the last year is down something that is recognised in the audit Scotland report we are taking the range of actions to make sure we've got the right people at coming in to medical training and making sure that we can get them into the NHS delivering the excellent care that the NHS delivers for patients across the country again a reminder that the audit Scotland report points to the fact that NHS staff are not just maintaining but improving the quality of care across Iranian s no miss Davidson I don't know if she understands the detail of the commitment we have made to primary care she said we haven't kept the commitment we made last year let me tell her what the commitment is though over the life of this Parliament we will increase spending on primary care by five hundred million pounds two hundred and fifty million pounds of that will be specifically in general practice the reason not all of it is in general practice is that in order to take pressure off our GPS we need to build wider primary care teams that's the commitment that will take the proportion of NHS spend in primary care to 11 percent that's the commitment we will deliver over the life of this Parliament and I would say again that's not a commitment that's repeated by any other government across these islands but you know we come back to the the point here the central point that we saw often come back to when we are discussing public services in this Parliament at this government the government that I lead since we came to office I've increased the Health Service budget by 3 billion pounds again recognized in the audit Scotland report Ruth Davidson stands out week after week at calling for action and health or education across the range of our public services but less is the same Ruth Davidson who would reduce the amount of money we have available for public services by giving tax cuts to the richest people in our society doesn't add up Ruth Davidson cannot offer tax cuts to the richest while calling for more investment in public services the tory policies and the Tory approach has no credibility at all so we will continue to deliver the investment we will continue to deliver the reform and actually the most important finding in this audit Scotland report today is the one that says these reforms that this government is introducing are starting to show the positive effects that they are designed to do so we'll continue with that focus delivering for people across the country thanks number two our growly presiding officer is what's remembered that there was a report published a few weeks ago by Professor Jim Gallagher that showed that spend and spend and for Haiti population in Scotland compared to England had fallen as a result a direct result of decisions made by this government but which say presiding officer that anyone anyone reading this report from the Auditor General this mornin on a rainy chase in Scotland cannot be anything but concerned concerned about the budget and the financial management of the Health and Social Care and Scotland concerned about the shortages of staff every level and concerned for the end part of all of us or inpatients the report clearly states that the patient experience will get purer unless the pace and scale of necessary change as action an action now when are we going to see the level of change been actioned First Minister as any reading of the audit Scotland report would would tell you we are seeing that change happen in the NHS it's one of the key findings of the audit Scotland report one of the key points that is made in the audit Scotland report that we are now starting to see the reforms have been introduced it looks specifically integration authorities and says that these reforms are now starting to deliver the change that we need to see you know in terms of spending of course spending per head of population or in the health service in Scotland is six point five percent higher than it is in the UK as a whole 143 pounds higher for every person in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK and you know again this is a point I make frequently but parties and certainly my party is government but all parties have to be accountable for what they put forward labour went into the last Scottish election promising less money for the Health Service than any other party even the Tories for goodness sake represented in this Parliament the fact of the matter is there is record funding gone into our health service there are record numbers of people working in our health service but as audit Scotland expressly says in this report it is no longer enough just to put extra money into the health service because of the rising demand we need to deliver reforms and those are the reforms that we are delivering the reforms according to audit Scotland and those starting to show real benefits to patients across the country Alec Marley but if we if we stick to the facts the facts are that we have health boards we have health boards across Scotland not able to make the cuts to balance the budgets those same boards are then borrowing money from the government to balance the books still not there for the future prescribing costs are increasing away though that is not sustainable indeed indeed we now have council tax fund and being used to be able to pay for prescriptions through the integrated joint boards the lack of what force plannin has Drive not course and we haven't to use more and more agency staff and locums the whole thing is spiraling out of control the Royal College of Nursing presiding officer after the : for quality on how more care will be delivered in the community and they want to know how staff and the public will be engaged in the development of services community services moving forward can the First Minister answer that question First Minister I'm not quite sure which one of those questions Ali really wants Mitter and so first of always take your Ali rarely says he says just scraping costs arising Chris a prescribing costs are rising in every Health Service across the developed world probably across the entire water is a feature of the aging population it is exactly the challenge that health services here and elsewhere are dealing with that's why we've got to reform how care is delivered now he asks about how we deliver more care in the community as I am sure than Alec Riley knows for the last two budgets and again it's narrated in the audit Scotland report for the last two budgets we have taken the very difficult step of transferring money from the NHS into integration authorities so that we bring together health and social care and not just in theory but in practice because we know and again the audit Scotland talks about the reduction in delayed discharges that this integrated approach is now delivering because if we do that to build up social care then we take the pressure off the acute services so you know I would say to all of the parties in part this is no easy stuff it's not easy in Scotland it's not easy in England Wales Northern Ireland or any part of the world but actually in Scotland we are doing some of the necessary stuff that is still being dodged in most other parts of the UK were doing the reforms well integrating Health and Social Care were transferring the budgets we are taking the steps around workforce that will ensure that our NHS can deliver in the face of the rising demand that it faces and that is why well everything he wrote at Scotland report says is important and has to be addressed the key finding of the audit Scotland report in my view is First Minister with responsibility for these reforms the key finding is that the region reforms are starting to show positive signs and that says to me we stick with what we are doing because we are on the right track and that's why we keep that focus our early the presiding officer I said I accept totally that this is not easy and the thing with the audit report CCD as were not doing enough and we're not moving fast enough as important for us to remember behind all these statistics behind all these statistics as real people so today we should remember Isabelle people who have trapped in hospital because they cannot get the care packages that they need and the community has also burrows people in communities up and down Scotland who cannot get the support from health and social care that they need and as for all those people that are on the way in worse and there is the dedicated staff and our hospitals health centers and of community care centers the run of the fee that's why we need action labor will use to be in this Parliament next week to discuss this report further because I believe we do need a more detailed discussion on the findings of the support after ten years in government the first minister the first minister has a choice she can continue to do more of the same or well she published a response to this report that will tell the people of Scotland how her government intends to taco these big issues facing her health and social care services and Scotland First Minister I welcome the fact the report warmly welcomed that maybe in that to be if Labor's position is that the government is not doing enough maybe Libre will bring forward some ideas as well rather than simply talk about the problems the second point is is this the whole the whole point here which again any reading of the audit Scotland report will tell you is that we're not just doing more of the same we are doing things differently and it's those reforms that are starting to have the positive impact that the audit Scotland report talks about and you know Alec Rowley says we should do it faster well you know what I am absolutely open to doing this faster but often when we bring forward proposals for change what we find are the impediments to those change sit on the opposition benches because they just want to get up here and it is it is the easiest thing in the world and diagnose the problems every job and what we are doing is coming up with solutions and I tell you what we will not do we will not do daft and wrongheaded things that we're seeing south of the border because of the action we are taking in Scotland delayed discharges are coming down because of sensible change in England we see proposals to use air B&B terrain accommodation from local residents to get all people out of hospitals so we will continue to do the same support evidence-based things that deliver the improvements in our NHS that we are determined to continue to deliver we have a couple of constituency questions the freshmen Brian Whittle Thank You officer the aged 77 was closed for 24 hours over the weekend due to severe flooding Paul grant dennerlein's trade director says and I quote it's quite clear from this and other incidents that the current a 77 and a 75 don't reflect the requirements of fitting of a major UK Ireland and freight hub so I'm afraid that major disruptions and loss of trade could be a feature of life in this region until those responsible commit the necessary resources to alleviate these recurring problems so I can simply ask the First Minister well the Scottish Government make this warm overdue commitment to the people of the South West of Scotland and Jill was 75 and 77 a range of improvement plans for the roads and the south of Scotland as in all parts of Scotland I'm sure all members will appreciate there will be times when issues like flooding will result in had all been closed that is deeply regrettable but sometimes unavoidable I will ask the Transport Minister to write to the member about the specific issue he's raised in more detail but I think anybody looking at the the record of this come Green's often criticized for us would say that the investment we have made in our roads improving our roads over the past 10 years is a good one and we will continue to do more including in the southwest and the area in particular that the member talks about Lee MacArthur thank you presenting officer the First Minister may be aware that the conclusions of the government's review of free ferry fares duo by the end of the summer I've still not been published pending the outcome of that review holy-o's and the Northern Isles were told last month that freight fares would be frozen a week later they received notice that fares would indeed rise by 2.9 percent next year how did she justify this decision how does it square with government objectives of bearing down on the cost of living for Islanders or indeed support for Scotland's food and drink sector and does she believe it's right as audit Scotland has highlighted that freight fares paid by Holly ozone West Coast route remain largely unchanged since 2010 but have increased significantly four whole years serving businesses and residents in or denis and Shetland First Minister we've invested over a billion pounds in our ferry services since 2007 in fact we've been talking about a particular audit Scotland report this morning there was an audit Scotland report out last week that said I think that investment in ferry services had doubled over the last decade we've introduced new rates as part of that investment we've also already caught fears for calmac customers and we will shortly be doing the same for orkney and shetland something that I know the member will welcome it so we have tackled under investment that had been the case for a long time and we will continue to do so and in terms of the ferry Fears review that will be published as soon as possible Chilton McGregor Thank You presiding officer the faster better so that we are weird off the gas explosion are dead alike building and why not so recently which resulted in the tragic death of worker pavel Bansky who was thrown Corbridge can the First Minister weighing her she will be supporting the investigation and what state she's taking to enhance health and safety what regulations and Scotland First Minister well firstly I would want to take this opportunity to express my deepest sympathies to those affected by what was a very tragic incident and particularly for the family of hvala Bansky the investigation into the death under the direction of the Health and Safety Division of the Crown Office appropriate of fiscal service is ongoing and of course the family will be kept updated in relation to any developments it would be inappropriate to comment further while those investigations are underway at the regulation of workplace health and safety is of course an issue reserved to the UK government the Health and Safety Executive are responsible for drawing conclusions from health and safety incidents as to whether relevant regulations remain fit for purpose and I am sure that the HSE will do so once they have completed their investigation into this particular incident but I'm sure the the thoughts in the meantime of everybody in the chamber are with the family and friends of the individual who lost their life in this incident question number three Patrick Harvie Thank You presiding officer looking at today's report into the challenges facing the NHS I don't think anyone should pretend that there is a simple quick fix that would solve every problem at a stroke but isn't it clear isn't it clear that challenges like recruitment retention and staff morale will be made worse not better if we fail to provide a fair pay settlement for the dedicated professionals providing these essential services who have seen a real pay cut of some 14 percent over the last five years yes that is why this government is committed to ensuring that we do see fear pea settlements for public sector workers not just in the NHS but right across our public sector and again I would say I think we are still the only government any weed in the UK that is giving that has given the unequivocal commitment to lift the one percent public sector pick up Patrick re the commitment has been given to lift the 1% pay cap but no commitment has yet been given to an inflation based increase a real terms increase restoring the lost value in people's pay that they suffered over recent years we have though had the SNP scape forms the pl or to the finance sector yet someone who worked with the finance secretary very closely saying on television this week that the pay settlement for the public sector should be at inflation if not above inflation and we've also had we've also had a wider range of voices from multiple political parties accepting the basic green proposition that fairer rates and bands of taxation can raise adequate revenue to fund our public services without resulting in cuts elsewhere and without cutting the pay of public service workers I don't expect the First Minister to publish our budget today but does she agree with that basic point of principle that we can provide up an inflation based increase above inflation increase without heading Luana's through fairer taxation First Minister well firstly we have given the commitment to lift the public sector P cap we have not made that dependent on actions been taken by the UK government in the budget unlike the Welsh government which has done exactly that we have said and I have said personally that we must seek pay settlements that are fear of course they must be affordable but they must also reflect the real-life circumstances that public sector workers are facing and of course that includes the rising cost of living we will of course and in this is in the normal course of events we will confirm the detail of our public sector pay policy when we published the budget because we require to know the overall budget that we have available to us before we do that so that's in the normal way that we do things and we will continue to to set out policy in that we terms of the part of Patrick Harvey's question that focused on tax I have again said openly that notwithstanding the parties different manifesto commitments we required as a parliament to come to a consensus position on tax in order to pass a budget I think given the continuation of austerity given the implications of breaks that are becoming clearer by the day we do need to ask ourselves as a parliament how we use our still limited tax powers in order to protect our public services and provide the infrastructure that businesses need to thrive next week we will publish a discussion paper it's setting some of the options some of the principles that should gave that decision and that discussion paper will then inform the basis of the discussions we have across this Parliament in the lead-up to the budget so I suppose that's a long way of seeing I do agree with much of the sentiment behind Patrick Harvey's question but of course we have to take proper decisions in line with the proper process of budgeting because unlike the opposition parties and the governing party in any Parliament has the responsibility of making sure we can pay for the commitments that we make question number four Willie Rennie the government's policy of prioritizing full-time college courses has resulted in a cut of a hundred and fifty thousand part-time places it has deprived thousands of people the education they want and need particularly women and older people last week the Education Minister sent a guidance they are technologies with an apparent change in policy that had never been announced publicly before can the First Minister tell me has the policy changed and if so when exactly did it change First Minister well cause I think the most recent figures show that the majority of college courses were still part-time courses but we and this was this was a commitment we set out in a manifesto given the rate of youth unemployment that we faced at the time we made a deliberate decision and it was the right decision to try to increase at full time places at colleges in order to increase the likelihood of people going through ecologies getting into work at the end of that and you know what the proof of the pudding is in the eating because youth unemployment today in Scotland is half the rate it was 10 years ago when we took office in fact we've got one of the lowest rates of youth unemployment not just in the UK but anywhere across the European Union so the policy we will ask our colleges to pursue will depend on the needs of the economy at any given time and that is the basis for the guidance that the minister put forward that Willie Rennie has referred to but we've taken the right decisions in our colleges and I think we see the evidence of that in some of the economic data that has talked about Willie Rennie so nothing has changed but everything's changed the chicken I mean as a bizarre dancer has the policy changed or hasn't it changed if this was such a success story why did her Minister sneak it out in a paragraph 7 of a letter on a Wednesday afternoon surely a for success she'd be parading it in this Parliament everyone knows everyone knows the birthrate at the turn of the century is more responsible for the drop and youth unemployment than any policy of this government the truth is there's taken six years for this government to realize the economic value of part-time learners over the age of 24 this is a crushing Newton and the first minister should be big enough to admit it six years of narrowing the focus has left us short that six years of messed economic opportunity sex years of abusing those in this chamber who dare to question their policy well the first minister will the first minister no apologize to the generation of women and older people who have lost them because of this government First Minister members I'm a second [Applause] [Music] [Applause] order please order please and appreciative members I would appreciate if members would listen to the question and listen to the answer Thank You First Minister probably the fact that these powers in the opposition benches felt the need to give him so much help there it suggests the North I'm fundamentally wrong Willy Rainey is I will not apologize for the fact that we have youth unemployment at half the reap today than it was when this government took office normal I apologize for the fact that we fought an election on a manifest or commitment to maintain full-time equivalent numbers in our colleges and we didn't just meet that manifest of commitment we exceeded that manifest or commitment so these are solid achievements but you know the real flaw the real flaw in Willy Rainey's question here is the in spite of delivering that commitment to increase full-time students at colleges in order to get more young people into work the majority of course is our colleges continue to be part-time courses open to the very people that Willie Rainey is talking about so we will continue in colleges and in every other aspect of government policy to take forward the policies that are right for the needs of this country that's what we have done it's what we will continue to do let's have a couple of supplementary Murray Todd thank you for sailing officer today's Daily Record has figures showing that a quarter of Scottish councils are already spending almost nine million pounds mitigating the impact of universal credit does the First Minister agree with me that the impact on people left in dire financial streets because of universal credit is morally unacceptable and the idea that local authorities or the Scottish government should have to pay the price for field Westminster austerity is a disgrace the facts the fact that they the fact that the UK government is refusing to pause the implementation of universal credit knowing that they are pushing already vulnerable people into debt and to rent arrears making it difficult for parents to put food on the table to feed their children is not just morally unacceptable it's morally repugnant and I think every conservative should be deeply ashamed of this the fact of the matter is universal credit is not working that is being demonstrated in the pilot areas I've spoken before about a visit I made inverness talking directly to people who found themselves in these unacceptable situations so we need to see a pause to universal credit and we need to see that happen know before any other person has to suffer the indignities and the anxieties that so many have already suffered and you know again we come back to this issue about mitigation as people across the chamber know we should mitigate where we can but we should not have to spend man money that should be getting spent on education or health or college ease mitigating welfare cuts implemented and imposed by a Conservative government at Westminster the sooner we get all of welfare powers into the hands of this Parliament the better and and Neil Findlay do you believe that cotton yet more firefighter posts and causing fire stations well a maker community safer or be put more lives at rest and if you don't know the answer have a guess First Minister firstly let me sometimes you only have to listen to new Friendly's tone to understand why we put it in the dire straits firstly let me take the opportunity to thank our fire men and women right across the country for the essential and vital work that we do is the importance of that work that has meant that the Scottish Government this year has increased the operational budget of the fire service there's been a central reform no compulsory redundancies no fire station closures in fact over the last year we've seen the recruitment of a hundred new firefighters but the fire service just like any other public sector cannot stand still when circumstances are changing there's changing risks at changing patterns of demand changing technology so it's right that the fire service look closely at how they deal with that but as they do the priority of them and of this government is not just in protecting the front line but in enabling our firefighters to do an even better service for the people of Scotland in the future question number five which in La Cage can I ask the First Minister what progress has been made with the reaching 100 program to connect premises that have not received support from the previous programs for access to superfast broadband superfast broadband program has been a huge success so far it has already enabled fibre broadband to be delivered to over 800,000 premises in Scotland and we're on track to meet a target of 95 percent of premises with broadband access by the end of this year however we recognize that many areas still don't have access that's why the reaching 100 program will focus on extending superfast access to those premises there will be no not be reached in the current program we've completed an open market reviewing public consultation to formally agree an intervention area and undertaken extensive supplier engagement to maximize competition we will set out a delivery approach in little detail shortly ahead of the launch of a procurement exercise later in the year Richard Lockett I think actually the Scottish Government on a success and rolling out superfast broadband and accelerating the poor so you give them the slowest the slowness of previous UK government's tens of thousands of own constituents have certainly benefited from the program however I wonder if the first mers had recognized that the one side effect of the success is the gap between the haves and a half's naught after skip bigger and many rural communities have not benefited or received any form of public support well so we will wait the next program and the rollout of our 102 killed ministers consider any other further short-term measures perhaps working with the private sector to connect such communities who in this day and age see connection as a utility and not a luxury and cos gothis Minister has also play a key ministers to introduce appropriate regulation like introducing universal obligations and dealing with the lake's of BT who are charging customers similar amounts every month for waiving varying levels of service Christmas Day I'm very aware that some premises particularly in the rural parts of the country don't yet have fibre broadband access and that's why the reaching 100 programme will seek to prioritize these communities through the initial procurement exercise but in the meantime the better broadband scheme already offers residents of premises with broadband speeds of less than 2 megabits per second a voucher code that subsidizes the costs associated with alternative broadband solutions and I'm sure all members will want to make their constituents are we're all of that as Richard Lochhead knows telecoms is a wholly reserved function that a range of issues which I think needs addressed and we're working closely with Ofcom to ensure that Scotland's particular challenges here are considered and indeed calling for a more regional approach I do think issues like universal service obligation are important ones although with the current discussion around a us all been taken forward by the UK government the problem with that of course it's it's not delivering broad and at superfast speeds but we will continue to deliver on our own program and continue to press the UK government to take action they need to take in order to deliver the same crash number six Edward mountain Thank You presiding officer to ask the First Minister what action the Scottish government is taking to hold to account NHS boards that do not meet their waiting times targets first well we work with and support NHS boards to improve delivery of waiting times targets in May we for example announced that 50 million pounds have been made available to improve waiting teens between now and the end of March next year in August we also announced the setting up of an expert group to improve the we elective care services and managed across all boards the Dedic Bale of the Academy of royal colleges who will lead that work was the same person who did similar work care that led to the improvement of E&E waiting times and of course we're investing 200 million pounds in a network of five new elective and diagnostic centers over the period of this Parliament Edward mountain I thank the First Minister for that answer and I'd like to just put out some few things here to help the First Minister so she doesn't have to address them in her answer we accept hard press staff in NHS Scotland are committed dedicated and hardworking and we do appreciate what they do saying that failing to reach seven out of ten targets is okay because other places in the UK are worse it doesn't help people who are waiting for treatment making targets easier is not acceptable and just increasing spending on the NHS when we've solved the problem therefore are turning to the audit Scotland's report it says previous previous approaches such as providing more funding to increase activity or focusing on specific parts of the system is no longer sufficient there is no doubt the situation is getting worse for the health sector II was unable to say this morning on Radio Scotland when it would get better we need transformation and inspirational leadership what is the First Minister going to do to ensure our NHS has the leadership that it desperately needs but clearly lacks First Minister we certainly wouldn't do what other governments are doing and that is privatized in HS something that the member will know lots about but there was so much and in that well it's good to see question it wasn't really a question but there's so much in there that it's just wrong I mean making target it's easier one of the things we've done over the past ten years is make many of the NHS targets tougher that is part of the challenge we face and many of them well yes and and I've never said it's okay that we're not meeting them we are performing better against tougher targets than used to be the case against targets that we're weaker so we are toughening up many of these targets in other way in other words stretching our expectations of what the NHS delivers at the same time as demand on the NHS is increasing so we will continue to take the action that I've already set out here several times already today investing record Psalms in our NHS making sure that our record numbers of people working in a rainy chess but also taking forward the difficult but necessary reforms that will equip our NHS to deal with rising demand no and in the years to come question seven James Kelly Thank You presiding officer task force ministers government's position is and where the public sector workers should be governor real terms appear in case in 2018-19 first no sir well as I've already made clear today the one percent public sector pcap will end in 2018 19 I fully understand the impact that increasing living costs and Social Security cuts are having on working households and we will set out our plans fully in the draft budget on the 14th of December we would develop a pay policy that is affordable but also one that recognizes real life circumstances such as the cost of living well continuing to support those on the lowest incomes public sector workers both in Scotland and across the UK deserve a fair deal and the UK government should follow our lead enlisting the pcap of course ensuring that there is the improper investment in our vital public services James Kelly it's like the First Minister for that answer in recent years the policy of a public sector pcap forward by the Scottish Government has resulted in a hundred and fifty six thousand hail service and police staff been worse off in real terms versus unacceptable and the budget is the opportunity to address that when especially was raised previously with Patrick Harvie in this session we get two minutes a waffle from the phosphomonoester on it so let me give the phosphorus that another chance to answer the question does she accept the possession say oh by Kate Forbes in Scotland tonight that the Paradise should be set at at least inflation and well the government bring forward the consequential tax changes that are required to give public sector what comes to the P rise they deserve fresh master the detail of our spending plans and our tax plans in the budget that is it will be published in the 14th of December but the hypocrisy of labor on this issue is quite frankly staggering because we've said the P cap will be lifted we've not made that dependent on actions taken elsewhere and that is completely different to the position taken by Labour in the Welsh I got later here I know they won't want to hear this they will not want to hear this I've got a letter here written by the health secretary the Labour health secretary in Wales to Jeremy Hunt the UK health secretary and it says this and I'm quoting without a commitment from the UK government to give the Welsh government more money the public sector P cap will remain that's what labour in Wills see so here's what we've got Libra called for the cap to be lifted in Scotland they call for the cap to be lifted in Westminster for in Wales the only part of the UK where they've got the power not just to call for things to Doug be done but actually to do things Libre refused to give a commitment to reading the public sector peek at what is that Taylor's about leaver well this is what it tells us about labor labor are all mouth and no action thank you that concludes First Minister's Questions we now move to members business in the name of January Balfour we'll just take a few moments for members to change seats

As found on YouTube

when you run a startup or a small business you 
will inevitably face problems perhaps you don't   get enough profits or your employees screw 
up you might work day and night to solve all   those problems but they seem to never end there 
is simply no time for your family and friends   not even for yourself are you 
stuck with all the problems   does it seem impossible to solve them does 
it seem you're the only one who really cares   and even the coffee does not fire you up as much 
as before let me tell you from my heart you do   not have to be alone in the face of all your 
problems of course you can choose to fight alone   but you know it is not the only choice 
you can get professional business advice   without any criticism and without any judgment 
so why you might choose this option when all the   necessary information is available online in 
the internet before the first meeting with me   most of my clients saw the main benefit in getting 
tailored advice an advice which is relevant   specifically for them for their business for their 
situation so they don't have to absorb and process   tons of information from the books and the 
youtube videos yes getting tailored advice   distilled advice is definitely beneficial it is 
also much cheaper and more effective considering   the cost of your time but it is only a fraction 
of benefit that you will get from the consulting   the main advantage of being consulted is the 
possibility to get an alternative viewpoint of   your situation and your problems you see we are 
all accustomed to seeing our business our life   our problems in a certain way often we are stuck 
in our brain and our experience pre-defines   how we see the situation i believe the true art of 
business consulting is to show you your situation   from a different angle from a different viewpoint 
i call it the out of the box thinking when we meet   and apply different frame the solution starts to 
look almost obvious to you let me put it this way   i might not bring you a ready-made solution 
that you must blindly trust i might rather   show you the problem from a different perspective 
so that you can clearly see the solution yourself   and one more thing the hidden gem of talking to a 
business consultant it is getting inspiration to   move forward in life interaction with a real 
human being provides a whole new emotional   experience on a human to human level talking 
to someone who faced similar business problems   who understands how you feel and how to find a 
way out it gives a powerful emotional experience   to lean on it gives inspiration to move forward 
i understand there are other human beings in your   life right now your family your friends your 
employees but do they really understand you do   they really know the hard way what it means to 
be an entrepreneur you would love this feeling   at the end of the consulting session it is the 
feeling that you are not alone in this world   that you're not alone in the face of your problems 
it is the feeling of having someone on your side   you will feel that you are much stronger and much 
more robust than you thought a couple words about   myself about the unique synergy of experience 
and education i believe this is really what   differs me from other consultants there is a 
type of so-called business gurus who never had   any other business experience besides selling 
you online courses for thousands of bucks in   other words teaching business is the only business 
experience that they have in contrast to them i   have founded and run seven small businesses online 
and offline not to mention many years of corporate   business consulting working in switzerland so i 
gained lots of practical and emotional experience   being an entrepreneur a consultant and the ceo 
i know the hard way another type of advisors   do have some hands-on experience but they 
lack fundamental and systematic knowledge   about entrepreneurship in contrast to them i 
have three university degrees in the areas of law   i.t and business administration it includes an 
mba degree master of business administration   from mannheim business school it is rated by 
forbes magazine as the best one in germany   it is coupled with certification as an auditor 
of business processes it enables comprehensive   understanding of all the available solutions 
for all types of business problems this enables   me to choose the one which suits best for your 
particular case and the last point about myself   it allows me to be of even greater benefit 
for you it is my deep interest in people and   in human psychology it helps me to approach you 
on a human to human level without any judgment   and any criticism i know how stressful 
it is to be an entrepreneur to take risks   i admire your courage and i'm very thankful 
for your trust so i'm looking forward to our   first meeting please book it online at 
see you soon dot online so see you soon

As found on YouTube

If you are just starting a business, you might be asked whether you are a freelancer or a commercial worker. There are a few things to consider and everything you need to know about the topic you will learn in this video. Hey, my name is Melchior from Kontist Steuerberatung and every founder should first consider whether he is self-employed as a freelancer or as a trader. In Germany, all self-employed and two large groups are abolished, one is related to the freelancers and the other to commercial activity. You should know what you belong to, because a freelancer registers differently with his self-employment than a trader. A freelancer goes directly to the tax office and fills out the questionnaire for tax registration and the trader first goes to the trade office and applies for a trade license.

In addition, freelance work has some bureaucratic advantages and in order to take advantage of these you have to be recognised as a freelancer. What exactly is related to it and when exactly you are considered a freelancer and or a trader, we will now take a closer look at in the video. First of all, let's take a look at who is a freelancer. Whoever is a freelancer in Germany is regulated in Paragraph 18 of the Income Tax Act and basically knows two large groups of freelancers. And the first group are the freelancers who, because of the nature of their work, are freelance, namely you are a freelancer if you are a scientist, if you are an educator or if you are an artist. An additional requirement is that you have a corresponding degree in this area. The simplest example would be if you have completed a scientific degree and now you are working scientifically, then you are clearly a freelancer. If you are self-taught and a bit of a career changer in a scientific field, then it may well be that the tax office does not recognize it and does not treat you as a freelancer.

The second group of freelancers are the so-called catalog jobs. The catalog professions are freelance because of their occupation and not because of the nature of their activity, but these freelancers also need training or a degree in the area in which they are active. The catalog professions include classic liberal professions. These are doctors, veterinarians, those who practice alternative medicine, physiotherapists and so on. Then there is the whole group of legal and business advisory professions. This includes lawyers, notaries, tax consultants, auditors, but also advisory businesspeople and economists. In addition, this includes the whole group of scientific professions and yes, the group is called the mediators of intellectual goods and information.

These are in particular journalists, photo reporters and also interpreters. And two other great professions, especially in Germany, that are very important and significant and also very well known are those of architects and engineers. What is generally important with this list, by the way, you can find a whole list under the video that not only have to be exactly these professions, but also similar professions. Especially in recent years due to digitisation and yes, general internationalisation, there are many new job profiles that did not exist 20 or 30 years ago and the law is more than 20 or 30 years old and of course all job profiles are somehow changing. This means that even if you work in a similar profession, you can be recognised as a freelancer through a catalog profession. To make the whole thing a little more concrete and perhaps to give an example, we can take a closer look at programmers.

Software programmers are not classically freelancers, they are not a catalog occupation, but it may be that a software developer works very similarly to an engineer. For example, this means that a programmer can also be recognised as a freelancer. First of all, it is important that the vocational training, i.e. the degree, is appropriate and, secondly, that the project phase for a programmer is similar to that of an engineer. That means, you need a planning phase, you need an implementation phase and you need a certain amount of monitoring of your project. If that is comparable, then a programmer can also be recognised as a freelancer. It is important to know here that decisions are always made on a case-by-case basis and that is also the reason why an incredible number of courts deal with the subject, whether someone is a freelancer or not. It is perhaps important for programmers that in the past it has always been that what you do is less important, i.e.

Whether you do application development or whether you do internal systems in a company or whether you control larger IT projects, that is less important. Much more important is actually the way you work and if that is comparable to that of an engineer, then it may well be that you will also be recognised as a freelance programmer. The second large group of the self-employed in Germany are, besides the freelancers, the tradespeople. Tradespeople: the definition is actually relatively simple and if everything that I have just said about freelancers does not apply to you, then you are a trader. So the definition is actually relatively simple: if you are not a freelancer, then you are a trader.

At the end of this video we come to the all-important question: why is that interesting? Why is the world or any self-employed person even interested in whether you are a freelancer or a commercial person? This is particularly because freelancers have a few advantages over traders and that is the first point, which is relatively obvious. Freelancers do not pay any trade tax. Only traders pay trade tax, as the name actually says.

The next point is that freelancers never have to be accounted for. That means the balance sheet with double bookkeeping is a more complex form of bookkeeping and freelancers never have to do that. Traders have to do this if they exceed a certain profit or turnover limit. Another advantage for some is that freelancers are not compulsory members of the IHK or HWK. So no Chamber of Commerce and Industry, no Chamber of Crafts are responsible for freelancers. This is the reason why a relatively large number of people prefer to be freelancers. However, in a lot of conversations with our customers, and also when I read in Internet forums, on Facebook in groups and so on, I understand that people are almost afraid of being referred to as traders because they perceive this as an unbelievably great disadvantage and it can be.

I’ll make this clearer. The difference is not that big. Because the fact is that the trade tax, which only traders have to pay, can be offset against income tax. To put it very figuratively, where a freelancer pays 20,000 € income tax, a trader pays 10,000 € income tax and 10,000 € trade tax. That means the financial difference is not that big. The only thing that remains is the bureaucratic effort and although you need a trade license, you have to make an additional tax return and double bookkeeping is a little more work. However, this usually does not result in a higher tax payment. And besides, and this is only a purely practical knowledge, I have learned in the years of my self-employment, freelance work can also restrict you in an entrepreneurial manner.

If you are a freelancer, but you may have a digital business model and would like to be more flexible with your business model and try new things, then as a freelancer you should be afraid that you could lose your freelance status. This cannot happen to you as a trader. That means, if you are a bit on the borderline and that is more a matter of interpretation, then the entrepreneurial decision can be a sensible one, not to go into this dependency on freelance, but to say from the start: “Oh come on "I'm going to become a trader, which means I have more flexibility and freedom in how I organise my company." I hope this short video was able to help you and answered your questions.

But if you still have unanswered questions, you will find a comment area under this video and there you can ask your question or, another suggestion: you will find a link in the video description where you can arrange a free consultation and then just let's speak personally and clarify all questions. Also an important tip, you should definitely subscribe to the channel, because we regularly upload videos on tax issues for the self-employed or watch this video or this video directly..

As found on YouTube

In this video, I’ll discuss the standard dimension and interior space requirements for bar and facility layout design. Coming Up! Hey, Rick Uzubell again from Bar Designers,
where I share my ideas and tips on bar design, draft beer system design and product reviews. Later in this video, I'll give you 'Today's Takeaway.' If you're new here, please consider subscribing
and check-out the show notes and links in the 'YouTube Description' below. Now let's jump into the show! Considering building a bar and not sure if
you have enough space? At times it can be challenging at the onset
to know if a facility can indeed meet all of one's design criteria. The new addition to this building, which earmarked
1,000 square feet for the prospective bar, appears large enough to accommodate nearly any bar. However, the Owner also wanted a drink rail
– with seating on three sides of the room.

The space for the prospective bar was beginning
to appear marginal, because island bars require a significant amount of aisle space. As I mentioned in an earlier video about bar
planning, the first goal is to draw a preliminary cross section of the proposed bar. My sketch for 'Standard Universal Bar Clearances'
– shown here – will enable one to make a preliminary validation of nearly any bar concept. At the core of bar design layout, we need
to make space accommodations for all patrons and staff and each respective allotment must
include a factor for comfort, and can be summarized as follows: 1).

The backbar requires from 24” – 29”. 2). The backbar aisle needs to be between 31” – 37”. 3). The underbar equipment requires 24”. 4). The bar top should be between 24” – 30” deep and needs to overhang the inside face of the bar die by 11”. 5). The customer activity zone for
those seated at the bar is 24”. 6). The activity zone for servers
and ADA needs to be 36”. 7). The activity zone for customers seated in front of a drink rail should be 24”. 8). Drink rails should be 10” – 12”, but
at least 14” for dining. Whenever proving a bar concept, I usually plan to the smallest acceptable backbar aisle clearances. As you’ll see in the preliminary section view, I’m only allotting 31” bartender aisles for this bar, but in spite of that, the clearances all worked – barely! The building code requires that egress must
be maintained at all building exits. Here's our final bar plan, with all clearances maintained. Island backbars need to be at least 26” deep, as this correlates to the shallowest of pass-thru coolers. See you next time!.

As found on YouTube

Welcome to my Crusader Kings 2 tutorial for
taking land. This video lists several ways to expand your
realm as a feudal lord. Taking land is fun, and it's the usual way
to expand your influence in the medieval world. This video covers the following nine techniques:
de jure claims, holy wars, offering vassalization, pressing your claims, pressing other characters'
claims, inheriting through marriage, encouraging vassals to expand, gaining a liege's title,
and vassal inheritance. I will be throwing a lot of information at
you, and the subject matter will get a bit complex and technical, but I will do my best
to break it down. If you just want to get your feet wet, and
you're afraid of information overload, I recommend you learn only the first five techniques,
and stop the video when I start talking about inheriting through marriage.

Note that in this video, I will be playing
without any DLC or mods, but all of these techniques still apply when using all of the
DLC. Before we begin, let's make sure we understand
how the feudal hierarchy works. The map is divided up into counties – the
smallest unit of land on the map. Each county is ruled by a count. Some counties are grouped into larger land
masses called "duchies." Duchies are ruled by dukes. Above duchies, you can have kingdoms, ruled
by kings, and above kingdoms, you can have empires, ruled by emperors. Note that each county is composed of one or
more holdings, also known as baronies. Baronies are ruled by barons. Also, note that sometimes the terms can go
by different names. For example, "petty kingdom" and "emirate"
are alternate names for duchies, while "petty king" and "emir" are alternate names for dukes.

Crusader Kings 2 distinguishes between the
de facto boundaries and de jure boundaries of each duchy, kingdom, and empire. The de facto boundaries are what the current
boundaries really are, in fact. The de jure boundaries are what the boundaries
should be, by right or by law. To take a modern-day illustration, if the
United States were to conquer Ontario from Canada, we would say that Ontario is de facto
part of the United States, because the U.S. would control Ontario. But we would also say that Ontario is de jure
part of Canada, because by right, it should be part of Canada. If you select a land title, you can click
the "De Jure" checkbox to switch between viewing its de jure and de facto boundaries. The de jure boundaries of a title can change
over time, but changes occur very slowly. Every lord has command over a certain land
mass. But lords can also have vassals and lieges. A liege will take direct control of some of
his land. This portion of his land is called his "demesne." But there's a limit to how much land a liege
can effectively manage.

So he delegates control of the rest of his
land to his vassals – his subordinates. So for example, Garcia is the King of Galicia,
and his demesne consists of the Counties of Coruña and Santiago. But he also indirectly controls the Duchy
of Portucale, through his vassal Nuno, the Duke of Portucale. Each liege has one or more vassals, and his
vassals can themselves have vassals. Now that we've covered the feudal hierarchy,
let's move on to de jure claims. You have an automatic casus belli (or justification)
to fight for any foreign county that is de jure part of a duchy, kingdom, or empire held
by your character, or de jure part of a duchy held by one of your vassals. In other words, you're allowed to fight for
lands that are yours by right. For instance, I am the King of Navarra. The County of Viscaya is de jure part of Navarra,
so I can go to war for Viscaya. To do so, I right-click on the character who
controls the county, click "Declare War," select my claim, and click "Send." Note that if you have any de jure claims arising
from duchies, there will be a warning at the top of the screen indicating which counties
you can claim.

De jure claims are a nice way to clean up
some land, but if you're not using the Jade Dragon DLC, you can only take one county at
a time this way. Now let's cover holy wars. I will be playing as the King of Galicia. When you declare a holy war, you fight an
independent ruler that your character regards as an infidel or a heretic for the de jure
boundaries of a nearby duchy.

So for example, I am Catholic, and the ruler
of the Abbadid Emirate (or Duchy) is Sunni. Since my religion group is Christian and his
is Muslim, my character considers him an infidel, so holy wars are allowed. If I right-click on him and click "Declare
War," I see two options for holy wars. If I click on each of the options in turn,
I can see the de jure duchies I'm allowed to fight him over highlighted in blue on the
map. You can fight a holy war for any de jure duchy
adjacent to your realm, or under certain conditions, for a de jure duchy that is up to two water
spaces away.

In external wars, you're only allowed to declare
war on independent rulers – that is, rulers without a liege – so make sure you select
the topmost liege before clicking "Declare War." Holy wars are great because you can conquer
multiple counties at a time, and any conquered land becomes part of your demesne. The downside is that nearby rulers of the
same religion may join the war. So while other Catholic lords could help me
fight the war, it's more likely that Sunni lords would come to the enemy's defense, since
I am the aggressor. But oftentimes no other rulers will join. There is also a variant of holy wars called
"crusades," "jihads," or "great holy wars." The head of a religion will call a great holy
war for a certain target: a de jure kingdom.

When this happens, you will get a popup dialog. Like with holy wars, members of the same religion
can join the war. You can join a great holy war on the attackers'
side by clicking the "Religion" tab, right-clicking on the religious head, and clicking "Offer
to Join War." If the attackers win, a character of their
religion receives the targeted lands. If possible, the current holder of the targeted
kingdom's title receives the land. Otherwise, the game falls back to the character
with the strongest claim to the kingdom title, and then to the character with the highest
war contribution score.

Holy orders are useful for waging holy wars. They are similar to mercenaries, except they
only fight enemies of the faith, they cost piety to hire, and they have no monthly upkeep
cost if they are used during great holy wars or when defending against enemies of the faith. You can hire a holy order by clicking the
"Military" tab, going to "Holy Orders," and clicking "Hire," provided at least one holy
order is available for hire. Another way to get land is to offer to make
an independent ruler your vassal. If he accepts your offer, you become his liege,
and his land is added to your realm. You can only offer vassalization to characters
who have a lower rank than you. This is because according to the rules of
feudal organization, each vassal is required to have a lower rank than his liege. The term "rank" refers to a position in the
feudal hierarchy. So emperors are ranked above kings, kings
above dukes, dukes above counts, and counts above barons. To make an offer, right-click on an independent
ruler and click "Offer Vassalization." If he is an AI character, you can hover over
the word "Yes" or "No" to see the factors that are going into his decision of whether
to accept the offer.

An AI considers several factors, including
whether he is the same religion or culture as you, whether you are his de jure liege,
and whether he is at least two ranks lower than you. If the number of pluses is slightly less than
the number of minuses, sending him some gold might convince him to accept. To do so, right-click his portrait and click
"Send Gift." Offering vassalization can be an easy way
to sweep up some land. However, it is rare to find an AI ruler willing
to agree to vassalization.

Now let's look at how to press your character's
claims. If your character has a claim to a title,
you can go to war for the title. There are a variety of ways to get claims. A common way is through claim fabrication. To fabricate a claim, I go to the "Council"
tab. Under the chancellor, I click "Fabricate Claims,"
then click on a county. This instructs my chancellor to search for
some excuse as to why I am the county's rightful ruler. It might take him a while though. It's random how long it takes to fabricate
a claim. Note that when your character dies, you typically
lose all of his fabricated claims. If I click on my portrait, I can see a list
of my claims. As you can see, I have claims to the Kingdoms
of Castille and León. Both of these claims are strong claims, which
is good. You can press multiple strong claims against
a single character in the same war. To do so, when you click "Declare War," be
sure to select "Press all Claims" as the casus belli. Since fabricated claims are strong claims,
if I were to fabricate claims on say three French counties, I could take all three counties
in a single war.

On the other hand, sometimes you may have
weak claims. I don't have any weak claims, but this character
Urraca has some, so let's use her as an example. You cannot press multiple weak claims in a
single war. You can only press them when one of four conditions
is met, as shown in the tooltip: either the current ruler is female and the claimant is
male, the ruler is in a regency, the title is currently contested in an ongoing war,
or the claimant is second or third in line for the title. A character is in a regency, meaning his throne
is being managed by someone else, if he is a child under 16 years old or is incapable,
or under a few other circumstances. To activate a weak claim, your best bet is
often to assassinate your way to a child ruler.

Check whether the heir is a child, the heir's
heir is a child, or the second or third in line is a child, in which case an assassination
or three would ensure a child ruler. To check a title's line of succession, simply
select the title and look under "Line of Succession." Pressing your claims is good because you will
personally obtain titles. Also, sometimes you can take several counties
at once. However, it can be difficult to get the claims
to begin with.

If you are unlucky, it might take a long time
to fabricate claims. In addition to pressing your own character's
claims, you can get land by pressing another character's claims, as long as you do it correctly. The two approaches are similar: in both cases,
you go to war to install a new ruler, and you need to be mindful of strong versus weak
claims. The big difference is that when you press
another character's claim, you are fighting to install some other guy as the ruler. So how does this benefit you? The key is to make sure that when you win
the war, the character you installed as the ruler is your vassal. That way, the land you fought over gets added
to your realm. I'll explain how to guarantee this in a moment. Now suppose I want to conquer the County of
Astorga. I select the county, then click "Claimants." Note that the "Claimants" button would be
grayed out if there were no claimants.

The game shows me a list of all of the characters
who have claims on Astorga. In order to press a character's claim, he
must be one of my courtiers or vassals. I can invite a character to my court by right-clicking
his portrait and clicking "Invite to Court." A green thumbs up indicates that a character
is willing to join my court. As for characters with red thumbs down, sending
them gifts may persuade them to join my court. As it happens, one of the claimants is already
in my court, as you can see from the tooltip. And fortunately, his claim to Astorga is a
strong claim. To press his claim, I would go to the county's
ruler. Then I would right-click his portrait, click
"Declare War," and select the claim. To make sure you will get the land, you need
to make sure that either the character is already your vassal, or he will become your
vassal.

As it says in the tooltip, if the character
is in my dynasty, or if I am the de jure liege for the County of Astorga, then the character
will automatically become my vassal after winning the war. You can check whether a character is in your
dynasty by selecting him and checking for a red blood drop next to his portrait. But as usual, neither condition applies here. So I have to make the character my vassal
prior to winning the war, by giving him a county or a barony. I'll right-click on his portrait, click "Grant
Landed Title," select "County of Santiago," and click "Send." You also need to make sure the title you are
fighting for has a lower rank than you do. For example, if you are a king, in order to
get the land, you must press a claim for a duchy or a county, and not for a kingdom or
an empire.

The nice thing about pressing other characters'
claims is that if you are a king or an emperor, you can take multiple counties at once. This is a good reason to work towards becoming
a king or an emperor if you are not one already. The downside is that it might be hard to find
a claimant who is willing to join your court, or to meet the conditions required to press
a weak claim. Watch for a warning that says, "Weak Claim(s)
can be pressed." Also, you usually have to give away some of
your demesne to the claimant. Note that unlike pressing your own character's
claims, when pressing other characters' claims, you can only press one claim in a single war. Another way to get land is by inheriting it
through marriage.

The simplest way to accomplish this is to
marry a foreign ruler. I've started a new game as the Count of Mantua. Suppose I were to marry Duchess Matilda of
Tuscany. To demonstrate this, I'm going to cheat and
use the command console to make her willing to accept my marriage proposal. Don't worry about the specific commands I
am entering, as this is just for demonstration. I'll unpause and wait for the duchess to accept. Now suppose we have a child. Again, I will simulate this with console commands. The child is both my successor and her successor. When my character dies, I continue play as
the child, who inherits Mantua. And when the duchess dies, my new character
inherits the Duchy of Tuscany. Thus, after one generation, I have both Mantua
and Tuscany. Other variants of this approach are also possible. For example, I could marry my heir to the
heir to a foreign throne.

Once the foreign ruler dies and his heir inherits,
and once my character dies, my new character would be married to a foreign ruler. So as before, I would be one generation away
from inheriting foreign land. The important thing is that the inheritance
laws had better ensure that at some point, a single character will inherit both your
lands and the target lands. You can hover over a title to see its inheritance
laws. For simplicity, I will not explain all of
the different types of inheritance. However, I will note that under the gavelkind
and primogeniture inheritance types, the oldest son or oldest child typically inherits. So as long as both your title and the desired
title are gavelkind or primogeniture, this strategy will probably work. The succession is less predictable under feudal
elective, elective gavelkind, and seniority, so this strategy is unlikely to succeed if
the desired title has one of those inheritance laws. The main advantages of acquiring land in this
way are that you can potentially gain a lot of land in one fell swoop, and you don't have
to win any wars.

However, there are a few potential issues. The ruler of the target lands must not be
replaced before you inherit them. Also, it is difficult to convince AI characters
to accept marriages involving their heirs. If an AI will not accept a preferred marriage,
see if the desired spouse will accept an invitation to your court. To sweeten the pot, you may need to send him
a gift first. Once in your court, he is required to accept
any marriage you arrange for him. If you can't get a marriage with the heir
to a title, you might try for a marriage with the second or third in the line of succession,
followed by an assassination or two. There are a couple more wrinkles. Later, when I cover vassal inheritance, I'll
explain these issues in detail, so for now I will only summarize them.

First, it is possible for the high or max
crown authority law, or with the Conclave DLC, the regulated inheritance law, to interfere
with inheritance. It could cause an attempt to gain land through
marriage and inheritance to fail. Second, you may get a new liege as a result
of this strategy. While the extra land is probably worth it,
it might be annoying to go from having no liege to having a liege. Back to playing as the King of Galicia. The next technique for getting land is to
encourage your vassals to expand, by putting them in a position to conquer foreign land. When a vassal conquers foreign land, it becomes
part of your realm.

For this to work, your laws must allow your
vassals to declare war against foreigners. This means a crown authority lower than max,
or with the Conclave DLC, a "Vassal War Declaration" law of "Allowed" or "External." If one of your vassals is currently fighting
to conquer foreign lands, you can help him by offering to join the war, declaring a separate
war against the same opponent, or giving him gold. But ultimately, more important than immediate
assistance is the long-range planning that goes into encouraging vassals to expand. I'm not an expert at this though, so take
my advice with a grain of salt.

Mainly, you should put your vassals in a position
where there are good conquests available to them. You affect which vassals are where and how
powerful they are primarily by your decisions to grant, revoke, create, and usurp land titles. In particular, pay attention to the vassals
who are adjacent to rulers who are infidels or heretics, because such vassals are able
to declare holy wars. If possible, make sure they are more powerful
than their infidel or heretic neighbors. You can get a sense of a character's strength
by clicking his portrait and checking his troop count. A lot depends on how your vassals behave. When the AI controls a ruler who has the "ambitious"
trait, it expands more aggressively. Likewise, a ruler with the "content" trait
expands less aggressively.

So you should try to arrange for ambitious
vassals to border foreign lands. The main risk with this strategy is that a
vassal might become overly powerful and threaten your rule. Ideally, you should keep a careful balance,
making sure your vassals are powerful enough to conquer foreign lands, but not powerful
enough to challenge you. In general, I see room for creativity with
this strategy. One approach I've seen mentioned is to have
one super-strong vassal, and to constantly pamper him so that he doesn't revolt. You might try to arrange an informal division
of labor, whereby you pick certain lands for your vassals to conquer and certain lands
for you to conquer personally. While this strategy takes a long time to execute,
and it risks resistance from overly powerful vassals, it is quite satisfying to see the
automatically expanding realm that comes with successfully pulling it off. The next approach for obtaining land is gaining
a liege's title.

To demonstrate this, I've switched to the
Duke of Portucale. My goal is to become the King of Galicia. There are two main ways of bringing this about:
being elected the successor to the Kingdom of Galicia, and fighting to replace the current
king. Let's look at election first. In order to be elected king, the title's inheritance
laws must be feudal elective, elective gavelkind, or tanistry. Right now, the inheritance laws are gavelkind,
so I need to have them changed. To change the inheritance laws, I will start
or join a faction in favor of changing them. The idea behind factions is that one or more
vassals join together to issue the following ultimatum to their liege: "Either give in
to our demand, or we will go to war to enforce it." At the time I am recording this, there is
an apparent bug with factions. Specifically, without the Conclave DLC, it
is currently impossible to start a faction for feudal elective inheritance. This bug has been present for about a year,
but there's a chance that it will be fixed by the time you watch this tutorial, so I
will act as though the bug is not present.

In order to start a faction for switching
to feudal elective, the crown authority law must be set to min, or if the Conclave DLC
is enabled, the council must have all voting powers. So the first step in forcing feudal elective
inheritance is starting a faction for lower crown authority or for council power. To create a faction, I click the "Factions"
tab, then I click "Start a Faction" and select the desired faction.

As you can see, the faction has 69% of the
strength of the liege. This might not be enough strength to win a
war against the liege, so I would want to wait for other vassals to join my faction,
or for the king to be preoccupied with other wars. Once I was ready, I would click the "Intrigue"
tab, and then click the scroll icon to issue my ultimatum for lower crown authority. Once I forced Galicia to switch to feudal
elective, it would be a matter of winning the election. If Galicia had elective gavelkind, only members
of the ruler's dynasty would be eligible candidates, so my character would not be eligible. But in feudal elective, the eligible candidates
are, roughly speaking, close relatives of the current ruler, anyone with a claim to
the title, and voter-rank vassals.

Voter-rank vassals are vassals who are one
rank lower than the title, or in the case of an empire, up to two ranks lower. As a duke in the kingdom, I'm a voter-rank
vassal, so I would be eligible. While by no means a sure thing, getting the
other voters to like me would improve my chances of winning. Elections are a bit fickle, so if at any point
I were winning the election, I would try to assassinate the king while I was still the
heir. Rather than trying to get elected, I could
take the title by force instead.

There are three types of wars that can accomplish
this: a war to press my claim for the title, a faction war to replace the ruler with my
character, and with the Conclave DLC, a faction war to oust the ruler. Suppose I wanted to press a claim for Galicia. I don't have a claim on Galicia yet, so I
need to get one first. Since I am de jure a direct vassal of the
king, and he is not my father, I can right-click on the kingdom title and select "Plot for
Claim." This starts a plot to fabricate a strong claim
on the kingdom.

To strengthen the plot, I go to the "Intrigue"
tab. Under the plot, I click the plus button to
view a list of characters I can invite to the plot. I click the dagger icon to sort them in descending
order of plot power. Anyone whose portrait has a green thumbs up
next to it is willing to join the plot, while anyone with a yellow hand will join if I send
him a gift first. I'll send a gift to the character with a yellow
hand and invite him to the plot. Then I'll unpause and wait for him to accept. Now that he's joined my plot, the plot power
has increased to 55%. I can attempt to fabricate my claim by clicking
the scroll icon next to either of the options for fabricating a claim. As it stands, the scroll icons are grayed
out. If I hover over the question mark icons to
their left, I see that I can't execute the plot because it doesn't have enough power. So at this point I would wait and hope that
in the future, I could find more backers. With any luck, I would eventually fabricate
my claim, which I would then press by going to war with the king.

Instead of pressing a claim, I could start
a faction to install my character as the King of Galicia. Unfortunately, while I do have the option
to install someone else as king, there is no option to install my character as king. In order to start such a faction, either my
character must have a claim, or the title must have feudal elective inheritance and
I must be a voter-rank vassal. So first I would need to either fabricate
a claim on Galicia, or force a change to feudal elective through other factions. The final option for taking Galicia is a faction
to oust the king. This option is only available if the Conclave
DLC is enabled. If the faction succeeds, the title goes to
the most popular vassal who meets a handful of eligibility requirements. With some gifts sent to your fellow vassals,
including barons, and with any luck, your character will be the most popular.

In the interest of completeness, I will note
that the conditions for factions are more complicated than I've let on. In particular, there are certain conditions
that disqualify you from joining any factions. Also, Muslims aren't allowed to form factions
for changes in the succession law. For more details, consult the official Crusader
Kings 2 wiki. Gaining a liege's title is nice, because it
can win you a huge amount of land at once, and it may free you from having a liege. Unfortunately, as you've probably gathered,
it can be a long and difficult process to pull off. A powerful technique for getting land is vassal
inheritance. This technique has to do with a certain rule
concerning inheritance.

Before thinking about how to get land, let's
make sure we understand the principle first. The rule is as follows: if a character inherits
a title that has a higher rank than the character, then the character's liege becomes the liege
for the inherited title. That's a bit of a mouthful, so let me repeat
it: if a character inherits a title that has a higher rank than the character, then the
character's liege becomes the liege for the inherited title. To clarify this rule, let's go over some examples.

I've arranged the game so that the Count of
Sens is the heir to the Duchy of Lower Lorraine. Now let's see what happens when the Duke of
Lower Lorraine dies. To demonstrate this, I'll cheat and use console
commands to force the game to kill the Duke of Lower Lorraine. Then I'll click the "Realms" button to refresh
the map.

See that? Sens became part of the Holy Roman Empire. Why is that? The Count of Sens just inherited a duchy – a
title that had a higher rank than the character. Therefore, his liege became the liege for
the Duchy of Lower Lorraine. The liege for Lower Lorraine is the Holy Roman
Emperor. So all of the character's land, including
the County of Sens, is now part of the Holy Roman Empire. Let's look at another example. The Duchess of Normandy is the heir to the
Duchy of Meissen. What happens when the Duke of Meissen dies? This time, Meissen became part of France. The Duchess of Normandy inherited the Duchy
of Meissen.

She did not inherit a title with a higher
rank. Therefore, her liege did not change. She remained a vassal of the King of France. So the land she just inherited became part
of France. One last example before we discuss practical
applications. The Duke of Bavaria is currently the heir
to the Kingdom of France. Now suppose the King of France dies, and the
Duke of Bavaria inherits France. In this case, Bavaria left the Holy Roman
Empire and became part of France. Since the Duke of Bavaria inherited the Kingdom
of France, he inherited a title of a higher rank. Therefore, his liege changed to the liege
for France.

France is independent, meaning it has no liege. Thus, the Duke of Bavaria became independent,
meaning he no longer has a liege. Since the new King of France holds the Duchy
of Bavaria, Bavaria is now part of France. Now that we understand the principle of vassal
inheritance, let's see how to apply it to take some land. I am playing as the King of Denmark. What I'll do is find the heir to a foreign
duchy, give him one of my own duchies, and then wait for him to inherit the foreign duchy. Since he will inherit an equal-rank title,
I will remain his liege, and the inherited duchy will be added to my realm. I'd like to get the Duchy of Saxony. I need to give the heir to Saxony one of my
duchies.

Since I can only give land to my courtiers
and vassals, I will invite him to my court. But first, I'll send him some gold to persuade
him to come. I'll unpause and wait for him to arrive. You're not allowed to give someone a duchy,
kingdom, or empire if he doesn't already own a county, so the next step is to grant him
a county. I right-click the heir, click "Grant Landed
Title," select "County of Blekinge," and click "Send." Now I want to give him a duchy. Unfortunately, my character doesn't hold any
duchy titles. But according to this warning at the top of
the screen, I can create a duchy. I'll click the warning in order to select
a duchy I can create. The "Create" button is grayed out because
I don't yet have enough gold to create the duchy.

For demonstration purposes, rather than waiting
for tax revenue to come in, I will cheat and use the console to give myself some gold. I'll click the "Create" button to create the
duchy, then I'll give it to the heir to Saxony. At this point, I could either wait for the
current Duke of Saxony to die, or I could expedite the process by assassinating him. My preference is to assassinate, because there
is always a risk that the heir will die before the Duke of Saxony does, or that someone will
take Saxony before the Duke of Saxony dies.

So the basic strategy is as follows: find
a title with a lower rank than your own, get the title's heir to join your court, give
him a title of equal or greater rank than what he will inherit, and wait for him to
inherit. If you can't convince the title's current
heir to join your court, you could invite a potential heir, such as the second or third
in line to the throne, and then assassinate some people to turn the potential heir into
the current heir. There are a few pitfalls to avoid here. Most importantly, you must give the character
a title of equal or greater rank than what he will inherit.

If you were to give only a county to the heir
to a duchy, then when he inherits the duchy, it will not become part of your realm. Instead, the county you gave him will leave
your realm! There is another way that this strategy can
backfire: if the heir's heir is the original title holder. As it happens, this holds true for Saxony:
the heir to the heir of Saxony is the Duke of Saxony.

This occasionally happens when the inheritance
laws are gavelkind, primogeniture, or ultimogeniture, and we are dealing with a father who has one
son and no grandsons. If you were to attempt to take the father's
duchy by making the son one of your dukes, then if the son were to die before the father,
the strategy would backfire. The father would inherit the duchy you gave
to the son, and it would leave your realm. While it is a potential problem, this situation
is somewhat uncommon, and it often goes away once the son has a son of his own, giving
him a proper heir. Before attempting to take land through vassal
inheritance, check the inheritance laws for the title you are trying to take. If the heir is liable to change, as with feudal
elective, elective gavelkind, or seniority, then this strategy is liable to fail due to
a change in the heir. It's better if the inheritance laws are gavelkind
or primogeniture, provided that the heir is one of the ruler's children, and therefore
won't change if he has another child. Another pitfall is that this strategy won't
work if you target foreign lands that are subject to high or max crown authority or
the Conclave DLC's regulated inheritance law.

This is because a ruler is legally disqualified
from inheriting from an equal- or lower-ranked foreigner who is subject to one of those laws. So before attempting to take foreign land
through vassal inheritance, you should click the "De Jure Kingdoms" button, hover over
the land you intend to take, and check the resulting tooltip. If under "Active Crown Laws," it says, "High
Crown Authority," "Absolute Crown Authority," or "Regulated Inheritance," then you cannot
take the land through vassal inheritance. In this case, it says, "Autonomous Vassals,"
so I am able to take the Duchy of Saxony.

But note that the restriction on inheritance
only applies to external land. So if the character whose land you want has
the same topmost liege as you, then the crown authority or regulated inheritance law won't
prevent you from taking land through vassal inheritance. So as we've seen, vassal inheritance has its
drawbacks. You usually have to give away at least one
land title, including a demesne holding. It can be difficult to find an heir or a potential
heir who is willing to join your court. And your attempt might fail or in some cases
even backfire. Nevertheless, vassal inheritance is really
quite powerful. It enables you to get land without going to
war. You can use it to take land from rulers you
are too weak to fight head-on, or from characters who have the same liege as you. If you are a king or an emperor, vassal inheritance
lets you take multiple counties at once. In any event, it is always possible for you
to lose land through vassal inheritance. If there is a risk of this happening, a warning
will appear that says, "Vassal Inheritance Warning." Clicking on the warning will show the character
at issue, such as a vassal whose land you would lose if he died.

The best way to avoid losing land depends
on the situation. You always have the option of stopping it
by revoking the vassal's titles. So there you have it, that's nine ways you
can take land. There isn't one technique that's definitively
better than the others; it all depends on the situation. Think of them as tools. If you practice using different techniques
to expand your realm, I think you will find it to be a rewarding experience..

As found on YouTube

10 secret tips to winning more consulting clients 
you decided to start a consulting business   because you wanted to share your expertise well 
congratulations because the consulting industry is   growing at 14 a year and they expect this growth 
to continue through 2028. here's the question   though how do you keep getting the clients okay we 
want to keep getting the clients in this video i'm   going to share with you ways you can continually 
get clients for your consulting business and we're   going to start right now don't forget you got to 
subscribe hit that subscribe button down there if   it's red click it turn it gray don't forget a 
bell is going to pop up ring the bell turn on   all bell notifications so you're notified each and 
every time i do a new video now by the end of this   video you're gonna have all the tools you need to 
get all the clients you want for as long as you   care to work number one out of ten number one is 
identify the perfect client for you i think we're   all tempted when we start consulting to take just 
about anybody that's willing to give us some money   and wants to know something from us but 
unfortunately we end up with bad clients we   end up with bad results if we do that so we want 
to identify who our perfect client is now when i   was doing consulting of which i don't do much now 
just because my time doesn't allow for it but i   had all the clients i wanted but what i did was 
i was very selective about who i selected to be   a consulting client the first thing i i thought 
of was i want all these people to be successful   now the only way i'm going to have all these 
people to be successful is i need people   who have successful traits okay so i wanted 
people who weren't newbies i wanted people who   had already had some experience i wanted people 
who have already had some success i wanted people   who had money to pay me because if i had all those 
things and they were already successful and they   were hard working and they had some money odds 
are if they've achieved all that without me when   you add my expertise to what they've already done 
they were going to be successful so the big key is   select a client that you think is going to be 
successful don't try to change somebody that's   really hard to do and besides that i didn't want 
anybody not successful because that would speak   to my skills if they weren't successful so 
i wanted people who were going to work hard   who already had proven themselves to some degree 
number two is know your unique selling proposition   what is it that's unique about you what is its 
skill what's the skill that you have that you   can easily teach to somebody else and they can 
get results too mine was making money online   i can pretty much take any product or service 
right now and market online so i wasn't out   there trying to help them find products to 
sell that wasn't the skill that i wanted to   impart to somebody it was how to market whatever 
product you've already selected how to sell that   product online so that was my unique selling 
proposition what is yours number three is get   known how are you going to get known you're going 
to get known by sharing valuable content you can   do that in the form of a blog you can do that in 
the form of videos like what i'm doing right now   i'm sharing valuable content that i know will 
help people out so i do that through video you   can also do it through post you can do it through 
blogs you write on other people's sites you can do   it on your website you can do it through courses 
any way you want to do it but you want to get your   information out there so that people see that you 
really do have good content number four is ask for   referrals there's nothing wrong with that i think 
referrals are a really good thing and i think that   when somebody gives you a referral and you say 
to them will you let them know i'm calling and   warm up that referral i think you get a lot better 
results but if somebody's happy with your services   and they've got good results out of it and they 
know other people that could benefit from it why   wouldn't they refer people to you um and i i know 
it's all and how you say it too i say to a client   i said well you know you've gone from you know 
ten thousand dollars a month to fifty thousand   dollars a month and you know you get good results 
if you do what i tell you to do and they're gonna   agree with you oh yeah j.r you're great you know 
you really help me out and all that good stuff   and i say great then you probably know some other 
people that could benefit from the results that   you've gotten you know most of my clients will 
always refer two or three four people to me   who do you know they could benefit so you see what 
i did there i said most of my clients will refer   other people to me that they know will benefit 
from my training who do you know that would fit   so when i do something like that it's putting 
something in their mind well most of the other   people always do it so i guess i should too so 
that really helps you get referrals number five   spend some money invest in paid 
advertising when you run ads out there   people think you're more official they look at 
you more like a business they see you advertising   it's also going to make you better known even 
if they see your ads and they don't buy from   the ads and later on you talk to them it can 
be very beneficial to you getting that client   number six attend meetups meetings conventions 
whatever it is where you may meet people who could   benefit from your services i went on a cruise 
not too long ago last few years now but i met a   client there and that client ended up paying me 2 
000 an hour for consulting services i made 66 000   because i met them on a cruise was that cruise 
paid for oh yeah the cruise wasn't 66 000 okay   so just being there and then being able to talk 
to me and see the things i've done online and the   amounts of sold millions of dollars of products 
online they knew that that would be beneficial   for their company so they hired me to work for 
them number seven is you can partner with other   consultants or other firms if there's another 
consulting firm that does something similar   to what you do but doesn't do what you do you 
know maybe they work on seo and building sites   but they have a lot of clients that need to learn 
how to market online you could partner with them   and vice versa when you get a client then you're 
teaching them how to market online and they need   some of these other services done you can refer 
this client back to them so that you can kind of   repay them for what they did for you number eight 
is join groups there's a lot of facebook groups   there's a lot of linkedin groups i'm sure there's 
a lot of other places you can join groups but two   of those are very very good for meeting clients 
for going into let's say there's a group on   facebook that's all about e-commerce and i go in 
there and i give good information about e-commerce   and i tell people what i've done in e-commerce and 
i see other people's you know ads or i see other   people's listings and i tell them how they can 
improve those listings people are going to see me   in there they're going to get to know me in there 
and probably hire me as a consultant at some point   so if you want to do something like that and find 
more clients get where those clients would be   get where they're asking questions and answer 
some of those questions for them number nine   offer to speak at meetings and conventions offer 
to speak don't even charge somebody just say hey i   want to go speak i want to help your audience out 
believe me these people who run these conventions   and things around the country they need good 
speakers they need people who can get on stage   and really turn on an audience and if you're good 
at that uh then you should do it and if you're not   good at that then you should learn okay because 
that's what i did i had to learn how to speak   in front of an audience i had to learn how to 
impart that information and if you have this   information you owe it to society to share it you 
really do if you know how to make money online   like what i do i owe it to people to share that 
with them so that they can get the benefits of   firing their boss okay but that i i owe it to 
them to share that information with them so   just check out anything that is in your industry 
um that's a meeting that's a meet-up that's a   convention contact the organizers of that and 
let them know that you're willing to speak   for free at their particular meetup or convention 
or whatever it is and you will get some clients   and what you can do when you're speaking at them 
is you can you know offer some type of opt-in some   type of download or whatever and you can also 
build your email list while you're doing that   so do that also and you can also get a whole 
lot more clients out of something like that   number 10 use online job listings now this is a 
really pretty interesting thing a lot of companies   think they need an employee they think 
they need somebody to do their marketing   they think they need somebody to run their 
ads they think they need somebody to build   websites for them when in fact what they really 
need is a consultant to do this stuff for them   so in many cases you know they may be advertising 
a marketing director for a hundred thousand   dollars a year and you can contact them and 
say what is the marketing that you need done   and it may be a few simple jobs that you could do 
and charge them twenty or thirty thousand dollars   and you would make a nice commission and they 
would get the job done and not have the hassle of   having another employee a lot of companies think 
they need employees because they're not used to   dealing with consultants if you're a consultant 
and you can help out a lot of these businesses   ideally you could do it for less money because 
they don't have to pay you year round they only   pay you when they need you to do particular 
jobs it's a great great way to find clients   and clients that didn't even know they wanted 
to be clients but when you offer somebody   you know services that's going to cost them 20 
grand and they were willing to spend 100 grand   guess what a lot of times they'll just jump on 
top of that and in the meantime if they still   want an employee to work full-time doing that 
you could maybe assist them in finding somebody   that wants to do that but in the meantime you can 
fill their needs get the job done get the services   done for them and you can move on to the next 
client so i hope that helps you out it gives you   10 different ways 10 ways that you can get more 
consulting clients none of these are hard to do   all of these take effort right they're not 
hard they just take effort so try them out i   think you'll get good results i'd like to hear 
what your results are if you would put in the   comment section below i would really appreciate 
that any questions any questions you may have   about doing this i would also appreciate that if 
you would put that in the comments section below   i want to help you out are you a consultant if so 
put in the comments below what kind of consulting   you do what kind of fees do you charge people love 
to see this they love to hear about it so if you   put that below you're going to help out a lot of 
people i also have a free course you can get below   it's a 97 course absolutely free all you have to 
do is click and learn no credit card required i   also use a really good software and i do want to i 
do want to to torn for a second it's called cartra   i have a link below you can watch a video 
on what cartridge does and if you need to do   marketing online of any sort you need kartra 
if you watch the video you'll understand why   you don't have to give a credit card you don't 
have to give your name an email none of that   just watch the video but once you watch the video 
if you use my link down there you can actually   get karcher for one dollar and it will really 
expedite any type of marketing you're doing trying   to get you know consulting clients trying to sell 
products anything you're trying to do get cartro   i promise you you're gonna love it don't forget 
if you haven't subscribed subscribe by hitting   that button down there if it's red turn it gray by 
clicking it and then a bell will pop up like this   you want to ring the bell turn on all 
bell notifications so you're notified   each and every time i go live or i upload a new 
video thank you so much for watching this video i   really appreciate it and i'll see you in the next 
one hey thanks for watching my video don't forget   to subscribe to my channel and click that little 
bell right here so you can be notified every time   i do a new video also click on one of those 
videos there keep watching on my channel

As found on YouTube

The Committee of the Whole Parliament will consider stage 2 of the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Bill. For the duration of the proceedings, I am the convener of the committee. In dealing with the amendments, members should have the marshalled list and the groupings of amendments. The division bill will sound and proceedings will be suspended for five minutes for the first division of the afternoon. The period of voting for each division will be up to one minute. Members who wish to speak in the debate on any group of amendments should press their request-to-speak buttons or type R in the chat as soon as possible after I call the group.

Members should now refer to the marshalled list of amendments. Amendment 1, in the name of Jackie Baillie, is in a group on its own. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am not sure whether I should call you “Convener” now—I will stick with “Presiding Officer”. Amendment 1 is my legislative attempt to be just a little bit cheeky. The Government and members will be aware of my frustration with the narrow scope of the bill—a deliberate choice made by the Scottish Government—that has inhibited members lodging amendments of substance to fill policy gaps. Most such amendments have, unfortunately, been ruled inadmissible by the Presiding Officer on the basis of the narrow scope of the bill. Amendment 1 sets out the purpose of the act to increase its scope, and thus the amendments that could be accepted for debate.

The delicious irony is that amendment 1 has been accepted but the other amendments of substance have not. I continue to live in hope, but my experience with the Government is, as Dr Johnson would have said, “a triumph of hope over experience.” I move amendment 1. I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests. I am a member of the Law Society of Scotland, and I own a property from which I derive rental income. I thank Jackie Baillie for her bold attempt with amendment 1 to extend the purpose of the bill. I understand exactly where she is coming from and the point that she is trying to make. In the stage 1 debate yesterday, I set out our concerns about the fact that the bill has been too rushed. There has been no time for consultation or detailed scrutiny. Unlike Jackie Baillie’s criticism of the bill, ours is not that it does too little but that it does too much too quickly. What Jackie Baillie is trying to do would exacerbate an existing problem, because she is trying to broaden the scope of the bill to allow more amendments to be lodged on which there has been no consultation and for which there will be no time for detailed parliamentary scrutiny.

For those reasons, I cannot support amendment 1, which would make the problem worse rather than better. This is getting us off to an absolutely fabulous start. It is refreshing to be reminded that Jackie Baillie is, if nothing else, up front in what she does. Murdo Fraser’s contribution contrasted with Jackie Baillie’s makes me feel that I am between the devil and the deep blue sea in arguing that the provisions of the bill are designed to follow a very narrow purpose, which is to ensure that a number of practical operational factors and provisions that are in place to help us to manage the challenges of Covid are either maintained in statute or expired as a consequence of the bill.

Who knows, perhaps more of them will be expired as a consequence of amendments. I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for her explanation of the purpose of amendment 1, but it is an unnecessary and potentially confusing amendment. The Government’s general approach to the drafting of bills is to avoid including purpose sections. We avoid them because they have a legal effect by virtue of their inclusion in a bill, which means that they are open to legal interpretation, and that interpretation may have unintended consequences for other provisions in the bill.

The long title of the bill already makes it crystal clear to the reader what the bill does. I do not think that the addition of a purpose section adds anything. Instead, it introduces an element of uncertainty that I think that it is important that we avoid. For those reasons, I invite Jackie Baillie to not press amendment 1. If she does, I encourage the Parliament to vote against the amendment. I am glad that the cabinet secretary described Murdo Fraser as the devil and me as the deep blue sea. I would have worried a little if it was the other way around. It was a choice! The cabinet secretary made the right choice in this instance. I would like to rebut Murdo Fraser’s argument. I entirely accept that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We might be seeing light at the end of the tunnel, but we are still in an emergency situation and this is about policy gaps. We are talking about ensuring that people who most need protection are covered by the legislation and that we do not create any policy gaps. I do not agree with the cabinet secretary—he will be surprised to know—that there are consequences of my proposal or that it creates uncertainty.

However, in the interests of time and because this is not a point of substance, I am happy to withdraw my amendment 1. Amendment 2, in the name of Jackie Baillie, is grouped with amendments 3, 15, 19, 20 and 21. I rise to speak to amendments 2, 3, 15 and 19 in my name, which are grouped with Murdo Fraser’s amendments 20 and 21, which we will support, too. I will address each of them in turn, briefly. Amendments 2 and 3 would remove the power to extend the provisions to September 2022. Emergency legislation is just that—it is for emergencies. I believe that we have come through the worst of the pandemic. The First Minister believes so, too, given her upbeat statement yesterday. I think that that is something that we all hope is now happening. The vaccine programme is now being rolled out at pace, and restrictions are slowly but surely being lifted. Even pubs are now allowed to open late, if the Euros go to extra time or penalties.

Although that is unbelievably inconsistent with the other restrictions that are in place, it is a sign that normality is returning. However, that action is not consistent with an emergency. As it stands, the bill will be extended by six months to April 2022. I do not believe that it is necessary to go beyond that. If there is another emergency, there is time to bring forward legislation at speed to cope with it. Does Jackie Bailie agree that, all the way through the pandemic, we have kept hoping that things would be finished quicker than they were, and that problems such as new variants or shortages of vaccine have arisen? Is it not wiser to leave the other six-month period in place? I genuinely do not think so, because, certainly in the discussions that it had with me, the Government was prepared to consider a shorter extension period. The principle is the thing that applies. At the moment, the extension would be for six months beyond September. I think that that is enough, but it also allows the Parliament time, should there be a need, to bring forward urgent legislation, and it allows this Parliament to scrutinise provisions that give sweeping powers to the Scottish Government and ministers rather than simply rolling them over.

Amendment 15 is about improving scrutiny. It seeks to expire rather than extend the power to use the made affirmative procedure for Scottish statutory instruments in urgent situations. As I said yesterday, I think that the context has changed. Restrictions are lifting, Parliament is sitting and committees are constituted. There is absolutely no reason why regulations should not come before this chamber or before the Parliament. I note that even the United Kingdom Government has agreed to bring changes to be voted on in the House of Commons.

If the Conservatives can concede that in an effort to be open and transparent, why is the SNP setting itself a lower standard to meet? Parliamentary scrutiny, openness and transparency are essential for a flourishing democracy. It is time for this Parliament to do its job on behalf of the people who elected us. Finally, I will not move amendment 19, and will work with the Scottish Government to bring it back at stage 3. Again, the amendment is about improving scrutiny. I want a statement to be made to Parliament before changes are made to measures that are in place to respond to the virus. I entirely accept that 14 days is just a little too long to wait for that and a much shorter timescale is needed to allow for a speed of response.

However, the principle of the amendment is important. Statements must be made to this chamber by ministers. I am not going to speak at length about recent events, in which decisions were made that appear to lack consistency and simply do not make sense. Members will have an opportunity to scrutinise, and that will benefit the Government and our democracy. I move amendment 2. I will speak to amendments 20 and 21, in my name, and comment on the amendments in the name of Jackie Baillie. Unlike in the previous group, I am happy to support Jackie Baillie’s amendments in this group. I start with Jackie Baillie’s amendments 2 and 3, which she just explained. They remove ministers’ power to extend provisions beyond the initial six months for a further six-month period. If that extension were to go ahead, it would mean that the powers contained in the coronavirus acts that we passed in spring last year will be in place for two and a half years from when they were originally introduced. To put that into context, yesterday the First Minister told Parliament that we were hoping to be in a situation where the great majority of restrictions affecting us would be lifted by the middle of August.

I accept that that was a caveated statement, as it was dependent on a number of things, including the data continuing to improve. However, if it proves to be correct, it will mean that the various provisions of the bills that we passed 15 months ago will continue until the end of March next year—about eight months from now. If there were an extension of a further six months, the provisions would extend for a year and one month after the point at which the First Minister has told us that we should be getting back to a degree of normality.

I find it really hard to understand why we should be in that situation. Indeed, if we get to the new year and there is still an argument for the restrictions, the proper way to deal with that would be to bring forward new legislation, instead of just rolling over something that has been rushed through and passed in a desperate hurry. Therefore, I support Jackie Baillie’s amendments 2 and 3. If they are not successful, I intend to move amendments 20 and 21, which are a further safeguard in relation to the additional extension of time. Those amendments require ministers, should they wish to extend for that further six-month period, to give at least 45 days’ notice of that intention. Why? That would give us the opportunity to have detailed consultation and debate on the impact of rolling those powers over for a further six-month period. That would be very welcome, in stark contrast to the situation that we have been in over the past few days, where we have had to deal with this bill in a dreadful rush, without having the opportunity for external input and consultation and without time for detailed parliamentary scrutiny.

I am grateful to the Covid-19 review observatory at the University of Birmingham law school, which has input ideas in relation to the bill; I read its submission with great interest. That is why I have lodged amendments 20 and 21. I am happy to support the other amendments in the group. The outcome of the vote on amendments 2 and 3 will be very important to the Liberal Democrats when it comes to deciding whether to support the bill at stage 3, because they seek to support the fundamental principle that these are emergency powers—they exist only in the context of an emergency. We simply do not know what the context or the landscape of the pandemic will look like in 2022. As we all know, coronavirus is unpredictable and it can lead to unimaginable change, but the weathervanes all point to the fact that we might finally be emerging from it, and the roll-out of the vaccine is going well. We have to hope that there will be some version of normality in the near future without the necessity for draconian Government powers hanging over us all.

The bill will allow ministers to extend those powers in a wholesale way to September 2022, by regulation. As I have said before, the existing coronavirus legislation contains powers that are far reaching and, indeed, illiberal. They are necessary only because of the clear and urgent need brought about by the pandemic. There is no need to extend such powers. As we speak, ministers are showing their ability to legislate quickly. If the Government insists that three days is enough time for scrutiny of a new piece of legislation on this occasion, why could that time not be found again in the new year? I reiterate our support for amendments 20 and 21, in the name of Murdo Fraser, on the same basis. I am gratified to hear that Jackie Baillie has chosen not to move amendment 19. I look forward to working with her on that at stage 3 because I have a lot of sympathy with her intentions. The amendment would require that a statement be laid before Parliament 14 days before any proposed changes came into force. My party has expressed frustrations with late changes, some of which have been poorly consulted on. There have been times when businesses have spent serious amounts of money preparing for one scenario, only to find themselves plunged into an entirely different situation at the last minute.

However, I share the concern that a requirement for 14 days’ notice would not give the Government the flexibility to respond to urgent health threats. If such a rule were to apply to adding countries to the red list, would we be able to respond with the speed required in the event of a new variant emerging? We know that a delay in making such decisions can have serious and far-reaching consequences. The Government has stretched and, at times, overstepped the boundaries in making announcements to Parliament and doing so in good time, but I recognise the need to afford ministers flexibility so that they can respond to serious and fast-moving situations. I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for not moving amendment 19 and I look forward to working with her at stage 3.

I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for her explanation of her amendments, starting with amendments 2 and 3. Although I understand the rationale behind those amendments, the Government intends to resist them, because they attempt to remove important flexibility from the bill. As was commented on several times yesterday, we cannot predict the path of the pandemic or how long we may need some of the important measures that are contained in the acts. Will the Deputy First Minister explain what he means by “flexibility”? When they presented their arguments, Jackie Baillie and Murdo Fraser said that, should there still be a need for emergency powers, we would work co-operatively across the Parliament in order to give the Government the powers that it would need in such an emergency.

Why is the Government resistant to that? It does not make any sense to someone like me who is listening to this kind of debate for the first time. We recognise that we are in a very uncertain situation. We are optimistic about the situation—that is obvious—but there are still anxieties. The case numbers today cause me further anxiety. We are not absolutely certain about the course that the pandemic will take and we are therefore not certain of the implications over the coming winter. There may be a requirement for us to use some of the powers over a longer period of time. I will come on to explain the rationale about the situation that we could face, which could see us having to return to more emergency legislation. I am trying to minimise the recourse to emergency legislation by having sufficient flexibility in the legislation that Parliament passes this week to enable us to address any circumstances that we may face in due course. It makes no sense to remove a safety net that we may well need, especially because any further extension would require Parliament to scrutinise and approve affirmative regulations.

I want to be clear on that point. The bill only enables the Government to ask for Parliament’s approval for an extension. It is for Parliament to determine any decision about whether such an extension should be granted. The Scottish Government remains committed to retaining powers only for as long as they are necessary and appropriate. I remind members that Parliament will, on a bimonthly basis, scrutinise the decisions of this Government in relation to the continued need for measures in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 and the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No 2) Act 2020, which this bill proposes to extend. There will therefore be numerous opportunities for Parliament to scrutinise the continued necessity for the provisions. The removal of flexibility would also have an impact on the timing of a permanence bill, which we will soon consult on. Without that flexibility, the permanence bill would have to be in force by the end of March 2022 to ensure that there is no legislative gap.

Parliament would therefore be deliberately choosing to put a deadline on the date by which the bill placing measures on a permanent basis must be enacted. That does not appear to be consistent with the mood in Parliament, and is likely to have the effect of reducing the amount of time that Parliament will have to scrutinise the bill. 16:00 In addition, if it is necessary to extend the measures further, it could result in another emergency measure, without this power. Parliament will still be able to consider and debate any extension, and the necessity for that, through debate on the regulations. I do not consider an emergency bill designed to achieve the same aim would be an appropriate and effective use of Parliament’s time. I therefore ask members not to support amendments 2 and 3, which seek to remove important flexibility, have wider implications for legislative planning, and may necessitate further emergency legislation in six months’ time.

I am sure that Jackie Baillie will be glad to hear that the Government is content to support amendment 15, which will expire on 30 September 2021 the provisions relating to scrutiny of subordinate legislation in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020. The provisions in that amendment relate to allowing regulations to be progressed under the main affirmative procedure rather than the draft affirmative procedure, and therefore enable regulations to be brought into force immediately where necessary, but to remain in force only if parliamentary approval is secured.

As a result of Parliament’s willingness to accelerate timetabling of the scrutiny of relevant draft affirmative regulations, it has not been necessary to use those so far. Therefore, although it would be helpful to retain those provisions in case accelerated timetabling of necessary draft affirmative regulations is not always possible, the Government is willing to accept Parliament’s view on that matter. For those reasons, I lend my support to amendment 15. However, I wish to make Jackie Baillie aware that, if the amendment is agreed to by Parliament, technical tidying-up amendments will be lodged by the Government at stage 3 to make small consequential amendments. Although I appreciate the sentiments behind amendment 19, it is, in my view, unworkable, and much more widely drawn than Jackie Baillie suggests. Obviously, Jackie Baillie has indicated that she will not move that amendment. The effect of that amendment could be to require ministers to lay a statement before Parliament on any change to any measure in response to Covid proposed by any person or authority.

I do not think that that is deliverable, or what Parliament would want—nor would it be feasible for ministers to lay such statements 14 days before they are intended to have effect. By its very nature, the pandemic has necessitated urgent action in response to its changing impact. I wish that that were not so, but that is the reality that the Government must deal with, and which is likely to be the case for the foreseeable future. At every stage during the pandemic, the Government has fully committed to being accountable to Parliament and its committees.

We have agreed specific arrangements with the Parliament for the detailed scrutiny of ministerial statements and accompanying regulations. We stand ready to act on any further measures that the Presiding Officer or Parliament consider would assist scrutiny. However, ministers must retain the ability to move at pace where the public health and clinical advice indicates the need for immediate action. On that basis, the Government cannot support amendment 19. However, I am happy to commit to Jackie Baillie and other members that the Government will continue to have dialogue about how best to keep Parliament informed about any significant changes to measures that we consider necessary. The Government also intends to resist amendments 20 and 21, as they attempt to remove important flexibility from the bill. It has been the Government’s view that a fine balance needs to be struck between making available as up-to-date evidence as possible and allowing sufficient time for scrutiny and implementation in order that stakeholders and public bodies can prepare for any changes.

Indeed, we have been discussing that matter over the past couple of days. In my view, it is unhelpful for the Government to be unnecessarily constrained by having an arbitrary 45-day deadline imposed. It would instead be more helpful to maintain a balance and necessary flexibility. I therefore suggest that amendments 20 and 21 are unnecessary and invite members not to support them. I intend to press amendment 2. I will make a couple of comments in closing. I recall that, at Westminster, MPs kicked up such a fuss when the UK act was first extended in September 2020 that the UK Government agreed that, wherever possible, it would bring a debate and vote on new regulations to Westminster before they came into force. It has done that. For example, the UK Government decided to delay the lifting of lockdown on Monday of last week; MPs voted on the regulations on Thursday, three days later. In contrast, on 11 June, the Scottish Government made regulations about the social distancing that is required in the fan zone and at Hampden, which MSPs are not voting on until today, after the events have basically happened. We cannot continue to operate in such a way.

I am pleased that the Government will accept amendment 15 on the basis that the provision has not been used at all. That proves that there needs to be better scrutiny by this Parliament, because the Government was simply going to extend an emergency measure that has never been used. On amendments 2 and 3, I think that scrutiny is important. In my view, there is no need to extend, and no sensible justification for extending, emergency legislation with such sweeping powers for more than six months. As I said to John Mason, in discussion with the Government, a compromise of an extra three months was suggested. That tells me that the Government was prepared to negotiate on whether the extension would be six, nine or 12 months, which does not appear to be based on any scientific approach. There is no logic to the cabinet secretary’s argument when he says that he does not want any more emergency legislation, but that the Government wants the option to extend emergency legislation. If we are coming out of the pandemic, we should not have emergency legislation in place for any longer than is necessary. We need accountability to the Parliament; therefore, I will press amendment 2 in my name.

The question is, that amendment 2 be agreed to. Are we agreed? There will be a division. Proceedings will be suspended for the first division of the afternoon. Members should cast their votes now. The vote is closed. On a point of order, convener. I did not realise that we were voting on amendment 2. I would have voted no. Thank you, Ms Burgess. That is noted for the record, but we cannot change the recorded vote. The result of the division on amendment 2, in the name of Jackie Baillie, is: For 55, Against 65, Abstentions 0.

Amendment 2 disagreed to. Amendment 3 moved— The question is, that amendment 3 be agreed to. Are we agreed? There will be a division. Members should vote now. On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My vote appears not to have registered; I would have voted yes. Thank you. I call Clare Adamson for a point of order. Unfortunately, we cannot hear you, Ms Adamson, but I can confirm that you did vote.

The result of the division on amendment 3, in the name of Jackie Baillie, is: For 54, Against 66, Abstentions 0. Amendment 3 disagreed to. Section 1 agreed to. Group 3 is on justice. Amendment 4, in the name of Pauline McNeill, is grouped with amendments 6 to 11, 22, 23 and 27. I will speak to amendments 4, 7, 8 and 27, which are in my name, and I will move amendment 4. I begin by asking the Deputy First Minister to acknowledge that, in a rather rushed process, we have all done our best. I thank the legislation team for ensuring that we could draft and lodge our amendments in time. Amendment 4 seeks to address the welfare of prisoners by hooking in the provision to regulate for early release so that Government would have a far-reaching power to do that. It also seeks to enable discussion of the wider implications of prisoners spending long periods in cells because of coronavirus and concerns about the lack of fresh air for prisoners who cannot get outdoors. The amendment would require the Government to report every two months on the welfare provisions. Organisations including Amnesty International have already expressed concerns about the length of time that prisoners have spent in prison.

Given the human rights responsibilities of the Parliament, some supervision of the conditions in which prisoners are held, particularly when the virus is present in the prison, would be a helpful provision. Amendments 6 and 7 relate to expiration of the increase to £500 in the value of fiscal fines, and to the extension of time limits. The fine of £500 would, I imagine, be for high-tariff crimes. I would be concerned if that increase were to be permanent, so I wish to probe the issue in debate, and to probe expiration of the extension of time limits for criminal proceedings, which should not be extended.

Before coronavirus, there were already significant delays in the courts, particularly the High Court, with cases going well beyond the 140-day limit that is set out in the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. The first coronavirus legislation suspended certain time limits and had the effect of increasing the maximum time period for an accused person to be held on remand prior to trial. The current bill seeks to extend that period again. I realise that all those time limits are slightly shorter than those for summary cases. I have expressed extreme concern at the number of people who are held on remand in Scotland, which almost doubled during the pandemic, from 982 to 1,753 between April 2020 in April 2021. Even before the pandemic, we therefore had an issue with the number of people being held on remand. The Scottish Government acknowledged that point in January 2020, noting that Scotland has the highest prison population per head in western Europe and that approximately one in five prisoners in Scottish jails were held on remand. Howard League Scotland published a report last month titled “The Scandal of Remand in Scotland” and noted that 57 per cent of people who are held on remand do not go on to be given a prison sentence.

There were reports this week as well on women in remand that are concerning. Amendments 6 and 7 are probing amendments. I realise why the Government would want to extend the time limits, but I ask it to acknowledge that the numbers on remand were a serious issue before the pandemic and that we should be careful about using those powers. I understand why the Government wants to extend those provisions, but it would be welcome if it would note that point. I have more concerns about amendment 8, which relates to hearsay evidence. I question whether we need the provision on hearsay evidence now, given that there are more opportunities for people to attend court.

When we passed the first coronavirus legislation, the Scottish Law Commission noted that the provision would be used only in a narrow set of circumstances. Amendment 8 seeks to expire rather than extend the option for hearsay evidence to be accepted. The rationale for the original coronavirus legislation allowing the use of hearsay evidence was that it would allow evidence by statement where there would be a particular risk to a person’s wellbeing from the coronavirus or a particular risk of transmitting the coronavirus to others.

However, a statement cannot be cross-examined by the defence and, further, the legislation does not specify whether it would be a witness diagnosed with coronavirus who would use the provision concerned. More important, though, I am not clear whether the provision would be used for the complainer in a trial or for a witness. I hope that the Government can see that, if that provision was more widely used, it would not serve the interests of justice if a complainer provided a statement that could not be cross-examined.

I am looking for the Government to say in what circumstances it would be happy for hearsay evidence, which is hardly ever allowed in the courts, to be used. Amendment 27 seeks more information on how fiscal fines are used. For example, it is unclear what sort of crimes would incur fines of £400 and £500. I want the Government to be clear about that. I would like to see some transparency by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service about how the powers would be used and for what types of crime.

That transparency would be in the interests of justice and fairness. I am sympathetic to the concerns behind Jamie Greene’s amendments 9 and 23, which I am sure I will hear him express in the debate. It would be helpful if the Government could confirm that, when the provisions on the early release of prisoners are used, the prisoners would be near the end of their sentence, the release would be related to a coronavirus outbreak and there would be no intention to use those powers for general prisoner management. The same confirmation would be helpful for payback orders too. I move amendment 4. I call Jamie Greene to speak to amendment 9 and other amendments in the group. This is the only set of amendments that I will deal with, so I hope that members will bear with me, as there is a lot of them and there is a lot in them. This is the only opportunity that we will get to talk about the justice-related issues of these emergency powers, so I hope that we give them a good airing accordingly.

I thank members for lodging amendments that I, too, tried to lodge but could not. I thank the parliamentary chamber desk and the legislation team, who have been superb over the past few days and have gone beyond the extra mile to turn what were just concepts into meaningful and workable amendments. The problem that we identified, as is the case with Pauline McNeill’s amendments in this group, is that the only way in which we could bring some of these issues to the table is through the process of revoking or expiring the provisions that the Government seeks to extend. That is far from ideal. We will hear from the Deputy First Minister about some of the unintended consequences of full revocation or expiration of the measures, and I understand why he will make that case—indeed, he probably has a case on some of them. I caveat my comments by saying that some of the measures were necessary for an emergency footing and some of them may still be necessary as we live through the pandemic.

Some of the measures may even have long-term benefits, and I would be the first to admit that, but emergency measures by their very nature cause us to do things differently, and that is most apparent in relation to our judiciary. That has consequences, and we know from some of the briefings and feedback that we have had from stakeholders that some of the measures have caused concern. It is important that we get those concerns on the table. We had to make a judgment call about submitting these amendments. The problem was that not submitting them would have meant that there would be no debate on them—then no one gets their voice heard in the Official Report or by ministers. In many ways, I would rather have approached the amendments very differently, and I appreciate that they create some technical difficulties. That is by the by, and I will now address the amendments, starting with amendment 6.

Initially, we supported the raising of the fiscal fine limit from £300 to £500, because the case was rightly made at the time that we could deal with a far greater number of cases in that way rather than through formal court proceedings that put more pressure on courts with burgeoning backlogs. This is an important question: what impact has that had on the serving of justice? How many cases that would have been met with harsher measures have been dealt with by administering fines? Has that provision watered down the dispensing of justice in relation to certain types of crimes? The problem is that we do not know—we do not have the data and we have not heard evidence to the contrary. I am minded to support amendment 6 if it is pressed. Amendments 7 deals with the extension of time limits for prisoners on remand, which is a much bigger issue. I tried to submit an amendment of a similar nature, but it was deemed inadmissible.

We took the approach of extending the total number of days that a prisoner can be kept in custody, which was a difficult decision at the time, but the maximum of 140 days was clearly not going to be enough in a number of cases. It is clear that we could not allow a situation in which some prisoners who are accused of very dangerous crimes could be allowed back on to the street before the trial comes to pass. Like many areas of public service, the justice sector has been hit hard by coronavirus. Howard League Scotland warned us of the problem that the number of Scottish prisoners on remand has grown immensely over the course of the pandemic due to those delays. However, the way to tackle the problem is not simply to let people out of prison but to speed up the processing of those backlogs.

I know that the cabinet secretary will tell us what the Government is doing on that, but there are thousands of people who are awaiting trial. There is an issue with the remand population that I tried to raise at topical questions the other day, and it relates to the shocking suicide statistics of those on remand. Almost half of all deaths of remand prisoners are suicide; the figure for the general prison population is a third. That is shocking. Howard League Scotland has described that as the scandal of the Scottish Prison Service. Given that Scotland’s remand population is double that of England and Wales, how can this endless extension of keeping people on remand deal with the number of people on remand or the nature of remand.

We are faced with an impossible conundrum: nobody wants the automatic release of potentially dangerous criminals on to our streets due to forced expiration of the measures but, equally, we do not want—and should not countenance—endless and limitless remand caused by backlogs of court cases, which is not acceptable or humane. I turn to amendment 8 and the hearsay provision. It is an important amendment; we have had much feedback on it and it was much debated in the original legislation. The latest briefing from the Law Society of Scotland, which I thank for its information, raised a particular concern about the changes to the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 and the continued changes to hearsay requirements.

Under the current emergency measures that the Government plans to extend, a witness in a trial can give evidence but not necessarily be required to give evidence under oath or be subject to cross-examination to test that evidence. That is the key point. The use of untested evidence in criminal trials is extremely problematic and muddies our entire criminal justice process. As members will have heard, I share Jamie Greene’s concerns about that provision. Even the appeal court has been conducted in a virtual setting so, if the Government wants to provide flexibility to allow courts to proceed, it could do so in other ways. Does the member agree that the big question is whether it serves the interests of justice if someone who is accused of a serious crime cannot cross-examine a witness or complainer when an accusation has been made, because a statement cannot be cross-examined? Exactly. On Friday, one lawyer described the situation to me by saying, “You cannot cross-examine a piece of paper”, and he is absolutely right.

We need to consider where there is a necessity to tolerate the practice on a long-term basis. This is not simply a short-term extension—it is for six or 12 months and potentially even longer, given that we have seen the powers being rolled on and on. The legal profession is saying to us that the practice cannot become the norm and should not be acceptable to us as the norm. In response to the original proposals, the Faculty of Advocates warned about what the interpretation of the term “reasonably practicable” might be, and the faculty’s briefing at the time said: “Abandoning the hope of sworn oral testimony is only done as a last resort, knowing that it is at the expense of the quality of that evidence. It is not a step taken lightly.” We do not know how much the power is being used in practice, because we have not taken evidence on it, which is another by-product of this rushed affair.

I move on to my amendments. To save time, I will cover amendments 9, 10 and 23 together. We need a much wider conversation about the use of community orders, but we will not have that today, as it is a complex matter. However, we need to stimulate proper debate on the issue. The problem that we are faced with today is that we can either approve or revoke the emergency procedures, and in this case neither would be ideal. In the early stages of the virus, we all got behind the need to reduce face-to-face contact. That made sense, no matter how difficult it was, so the community order provisions made sense at that time. However, we are now 18 months on and we are in a completely different situation. The stay-at-home message has been rescinded, people are mingling outside, seemingly more than ever, and 80 per cent of Scots have received their first dose of the vaccine.

Therefore, I argue that there is no excuse for writing off or rescinding community orders and that people should be carrying them out. Unless the cabinet secretary can give clear evidence to the contrary, it seems that there is simply no need for the power to be extended. I believe that community service can be carried out safely if the scientific evidence allows it. The consequence of the emergency powers is that 300,000 hours of community service have been written off—they are just gone.

That will raise eyebrows, not least among those who have been the victims of crime. Social Work Scotland has warned that there is a backlog of 700,000 hours of community service yet to be served within the designated timescale, which it says is impossible. We do not know, but up to 450,000 hours of that might be written off. I ask the cabinet secretary to think carefully about extending the powers. My amendments seek to revoke the powers. No doubt, we will hear that there are issues with that but, nonetheless, I want to probe the Government on the issue, because the measures cannot proceed without debate. My final points, which are important, are about my amendments 11 and 12 and amendment 4 in the name of Pauline McNeill—we tried to lodge a similar amendment.

The amendments are about the early release of prisoners, which is perhaps one of the more contentious issues and one that my predecessor, Liam Kerr, spoke about in detail. I know that the issue is a concern for the Criminal Justice Committee. We will support amendment 4, which includes useful and important reporting metrics that would at least give us an indication of the situation. We are again being made to decide on a complex policy matter with a simple yes or no, or keep or do not keep. It does a disservice to the Scottish Prison Service when we execute policy decisions in that manner. The provision on the early release of prisoners was originally intended to mitigate a health crisis and an emergency in our prisons and I understand the reasons: it allowed the Scottish ministers effectively to grant prisoners early release if they were serving less than 18 months and had fewer than 90 days left in custody on 4 May last year. Members should think about the date and what was going on at the time, especially if the prisoners were at high risk of catching Covid in prison.

We supported that provision, perhaps reluctantly, in March 2020, but we had no idea what was facing us. Today, we are in a very different situation. We have a tremendous vaccination programme, which is also taking place within the prison population, and the decision to vaccinate prisoners, in line with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommendations, was valid, although it is unclear how many prisoners have been vaccinated. The average age of a prisoner in Scotland is in the 30s, and more than 70 per cent of those who are in the 30 to 39 population group have had their first jab.

Although I think that prisoners pose a far lower infection risk to each other than they did before, any risk that still exists must be addressed and the way to address that is not simply to release prisoners but to deal with prisons on a one-to-one basis and work with the staff and protect them. Again, we will object to the on-going extension of those powers, unless the cabinet secretary can justify them. With all those measures, I revert to my opening comments. The process is already rushed, and we should not be doing it that way. We should be taking evidence on those important matters that affect our justice system, but we are not able to. Therefore, it is with regret that the Parliament has voted to navigate those complex matters in the way that we are doing, in the few short hours that we have. I rise in support of all of Pauline McNeill’s amendments and some of Jamie Greene’s amendments. The Scottish Liberal Democrats worked hard to highlight the crisis in our prisons, which were unsafe and overcrowded well before the pandemic struck, because the Scottish Government has repeatedly failed to get a grip on the instinct to imprison.

I have long supported evidence-based proposals for reducing the prison population by stopping the overreliance on remand and giving confidence to community sentencing options that do not rely on extra bunks in Barlinnie. The release power was a mechanism that was put in place as part of extraordinary measures, at an extraordinary time, in the interests of health and safety. Fifteen months into the pandemic, with the vaccine roll-out well under way, that threat to health and safety is not what it was and the Government should not get comfortable with the power of executive release, because it is not a sustainable option for the long term. Likewise, options for automatic rebates on community orders do nothing to give confidence in those orders. If there are resource or deliverability issues, as opposed to health and safety issues, they need to be dealt with through proper funding, so that people can be supported to meet the terms of the orders.

The legislation cannot be used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Scottish Government’s failure to properly support Scotland’s justice system. I close with a word in support of amendment 7, in the name of Pauline McNeill, which would disapply the extension of time limits to criminal proceedings. Yesterday, I spoke in the stage 1 debate about the issues of remand that Jamie Greene has eloquently pointed to this afternoon—in particular, the rising population on remand.

A rising number of people are going for a plea of convenience by pleading guilty to a crime that they perhaps did not commit, because they know that, otherwise, they will spend longer on remand when waiting for their case to come to trial. We support amendment 7, because we believe that the extension of time limits has caused a drift in the criminal justice system that is no longer acceptable. Amendment 4 would duplicate reporting that is already undertaken on conditions in prisons. On its website, the Scottish Prison Service already regularly provides updated information on the effects of Covid, including a regular update on the numbers of prisoners who are infected or self-isolating, the number of prison staff who are absent from work due to Covid, and updates on prison operations and policies in response to Covid.

There is also already regular reporting to Parliament on the legislation’s provisions. I also fear that amendment 4 would not have the intended effect of requiring Scottish ministers to produce a report on conditions within prisons every two months. As drafted, the trigger for the report seems to be the use of the release power, so it would not happen unless that power was used again, and there are no current plans to use it. If the power were used, it does not seem proportionate to initiate an on-going reporting requirement that might end up continuing well beyond the period of release, when the context might have significantly changed. Does the reporting that the cabinet secretary mentioned currently include how often prisoners get to be outdoors and things like that, which I mentioned in my remarks? I do not think that it will carry systematic volume data, but there will be information on the way in which prisons are able to operate within the context of the current situation.

I am happy to write to Pauline McNeill with further detail on that issue. If ministers considered it necessary in future to make use of the early release power, specific regulations would have to be presented to Parliament on the proposed process, which would have to demonstrate why the action was considered necessary and proportionate and how it would support the effective operation of prisons and protect the health of prison staff and prisoners.

I therefore urge members to reject amendment 4. Amendment 6 seeks to expire on 30 September 2021 paragraph 7 of schedule 4 to the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020. That provision increased the maximum available fiscal fine from £300 to £500 and introduced a new scale of fixed penalties to give practical effect to that measure. The measure, which has been in force since 7 April 2020, represents a small but important part of the wider response to the on-going recovery of the justice system from the significant impacts of coronavirus, which is expected to last for a number of years, and certainly beyond 30 September.

The increase of the available upper limit of fiscal fines from £300 to £500 has allowed a greater number of cases to be diverted from summary court proceedings without the need for court procedure and associated appearance at court. That has, crucially, freed up the courts and prosecutors to deal with more serious cases and eased the burden on the courts during a time of significant resource pressure as a result of coronavirus. As members are aware, there remains a significant backlog of cases in the court system as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, and retaining the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service’s ability to divert a greater number of cases from the courts through the measure is an important and proportionate part of the wider approach to enabling the justice system to recover from the impact of coronavirus. Therein lies the issue. We are using emergency legislation to extend what are extraordinary measures.

I am not saying that I do not support what has been achieved through the measure; the problem is that, as the cabinet secretary said, the backlog could take a number of years to clear, far beyond even the longest extension of the legislation. Would it not be proper and prudent for the Government to produce fuller proposals and for Parliament to debate the matter properly so that such measures become long term with the overt approval of Parliament rather than through emergency legislation? I think that we are in danger of repeating ourselves. Of course, Mr Greene is perfectly entitled to repeat points that have already been aired in debates, including yesterday, on the approach that the Government has taken. Through the bill, the Government is trying to take forward a number of practical measures that are necessary to cope with the disruptive impact of Covid on public services.

Mr Greene and I can agree that there is a backlog of court business—that is beyond dispute. With the benefit of legislation that the Parliament has already passed—and had reports on—over the past 15 months, the Government is trying to continue the practical, mitigating approaches that are in place, which Parliament has already agreed to, where that is justifiable. The justification here is that there remains a significant backlog of court cases. The provision contains sufficient flexibility to deal with that, and it could exist for a further 12 months after 30 September if Parliament agrees first to the bill and then to a renewal after six months. However, if there needs to be consideration of longer-term provisions beyond that time, the permanence bill, which we will consult on over the summer and take forward in the normal parliamentary sequence, as I assured Mr Fraser yesterday, could be a place for that to be undertaken.

I agree with Mr Greene, in that I do not think that this is a desirable long-term provision, but we need it now because of the backlog in the courts. The reassurance for Mr Greene is that, in accordance with guidance issued by the Lord Advocate, the measure will be used only where independent prosecutors consider such action to be appropriate in the public interest, having regard to the facts and circumstances of each case.

Safeguards are built into the operation of fiscal fines, which are not mandatory penalties. Anyone who is offered a fiscal fine as an alternative to prosecution may refuse such an offer by giving notice to the court to that effect. In such an event, the refusal is treated as a request by the alleged offender to be prosecuted for the offence, in which case the procurator fiscal decides what action to take in the public interest. The measure allows, where appropriate, for a greater range of cases to be dealt with outwith the court setting. It remains an important part of the on-going recovery of our justice system from the impacts of coronavirus.

I therefore invite Pauline McNeill not to move amendment 6. Amendment 7 seeks to expire the provisions suspending certain time limits that are contained in the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. It might be helpful if I explain to members why the suspension of the time limits will continue to be important in enabling the justice system to recover from the effects of the pandemic, even after the immediate impact of coronavirus has abated. The purpose of the provisions is to preserve scarce court resource from having to be used to extend time limits in individual cases. Expiring the provisions will not, in itself, provide any additional court capacity or result in anyone’s case being heard any more quickly than is currently the case; indeed, it could have the opposite effect.

As members may be aware, almost all the time limits in question can be extended, case by case, on application to the Crown Office. The changes were made following discussion with justice agencies, which noted that, at a time of significant pressure on court resources, it would not have been an efficient use of court time to have to hold individual case hearings in potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of cases. That reasoning is the basis on which an extension to the effect of the changes is being sought in the bill. It is anticipated that the resource pressures caused by the backlog will last for a number of years. Retaining the suspension periods as part of the operation of time limits is a policy that is designed to adapt to a changing environment. Over time, as steps are taken to reduce backlogs in the criminal justice process, it is expected that the suspension periods will not be needed to be used as extensively when someone is subject to court proceedings, and that when they are needed, they should not need to be used to their maximum extent. The numbers involved should reduce each year, but it is crucial that flexibility is retained to allow for effective and efficient prioritisation throughout the recovery and renewal period for the processing of court cases.

I therefore invite Pauline McNeill not to move amendment 7. Amendment 8 seeks to expire the provision that allows the court to admit evidence by statement when a witness is unable to attend the trial because of a risk attributable to coronavirus, for example because they are self-isolating or shielding, and when it is not reasonably practicable for them to give evidence in any other competent manner. That legislative change helps to minimise the impact of the outbreak on the ability of courts to proceed with trials, and so ensure that the justice system continues to operate as effectively as possible. It is especially important at a time when a number of people are required to self-isolate. It should be remembered that section 259 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 already permits statements to be used in evidence in court when a person is, among other things, unfit to give evidence.

However, that provision does not cover people who are unable to attend court because they are self-isolating for public health reasons. The measure should be considered along with the provisions that allow witnesses to give evidence remotely. Evidence by statement would only ever be admissible where the witness could not give evidence in a competent manner. Someone who is self-isolating cannot easily be in contact with others, which includes when giving evidence remotely, as the courts would not generally permit evidence to be given remotely without safeguards through the presence of others to ensure that evidence was being given in a fair manner. My concern is that the provision does not seem to apply exclusively to a witness or a complainer who is isolating. I can understand why the cabinet secretary might want the provision, but can he confirm that the power would not generally be used when someone was not fit to attend? Some of the lawyers I have spoken to say that the provision is not specific in its drafting. That is only part of the concern, but it is a concern. I will reflect on that point and take some further advice.

The body of the argument that I am putting forward is that the provision would be utilised only where it was impossible for evidence to be given in a competent manner. I think that that is the crucial test. Our court system operates on the assumption and presumption that evidence is given in a competent manner. Therefore, the provision would not be utilised unless there were very limited circumstances that surrounded the giving of evidence in a particular case. To complete the point that I was making before I accepted the intervention, it is not the case that a person could simply give evidence from their home, because safeguards would have to be in place to ensure that evidence was being given in a fair manner.

Judges will assess the weight to be attached to evidence introduced by statement and may be expected to take into account the fact that it has not been given on oath or subject to cross-examination. Where evidence in the form of a statement is introduced in a jury trial, the judge is obliged to give a warning to the jury that the evidence was not given on oath and was not tested by cross-examination.

In appropriate cases, a judge may disregard such evidence or direct a jury to disregard it. Nothing in the provision detracts from the duty of the court to consider the fairness of the trial and to keep the fairness of the trial under review, which I think is the significant reassurance that Pauline McNeill requires. On the basis of that assurance, I invite her not to move amendment 8. I am sorry to prolong the debate, but it is an important matter. The cabinet secretary’s statement might offer reassurance to members in the chamber but it does not offer reassurance to the Law Society of Scotland, which stated explicitly: “We cannot …

Support the extension of hearsay provisions” as detailed by the Government. What does the cabinet secretary say to the Law Society of Scotland? Obviously, there are many issues on which we find common ground with the Law Society of Scotland, which is an important commentator on these questions. What we are trying to do is to put in place measures as part of a number of steps to try to address the substantive court backlog problem that we must address for all the legitimate reasons that Mr Greene and Pauline McNeill have raised about the remand situation, which is of concern to all of us, regardless of our perspective in this debate.

Amendments 9 and 10 would expire the provisions in the bill relating to community orders. Although all powers relating to community orders in the 2020 act are exceptional, significant risk and uncertainty remain, and the provisions are necessary to ensure that justice social work services do not become overwhelmed, especially as new orders from courts increase as the backlog is addressed. A number of provisions relating to community orders are being expired, and those that are being retained are necessary at this time. We are seeking to retain the provisions that extend the time limit for the completion of unpaid work or other activity requirements in community payback orders to 12 months from the date when the order was imposed, or such longer period that the court specifies in the order.

If amendment 9 were agreed to, the time periods would revert to three months for level 1 unpaid work or other activity requirement and six months for level 2 unpaid work or other activity requirement. That would put additional strain on the system at a time when significant pressures remain. It would also require lower-level orders to be prioritised, as they would have shorter timescales. We are also seeking to retain a power to allow for regulations to be made by Scottish ministers to vary or revoke requirements imposed on community payback orders. Amendment 10 would expire that power. Regulations to reduce unpaid work requirements in existing community payback orders by 35 per cent, with exceptions for domestic abuse, sexual offending and stalking, were scrutinised and approved by Parliament. All existing orders imposed up to and including 15 March were reduced. The regulations did not affect orders made after 15 March. Amendment 23 seeks to revoke those regulations, which is surprising given that they were approved by Parliament so recently and have already taken effect.

The regulations are a proportionate measure that has helped to address the unavoidable build-up of unpaid work resulting from essential public health restrictions while ensuring that those on community orders still serve the majority of their sentence. Amendment 10 would prevent the Government from implementing a similar measure up to March 2022, if it considered it necessary and proportionate to ease the pressure on the system. To aid Covid-19 recovery work in 2021-22, approximately £11.8 million has been allocated for use by justice social work services to directly address the impact of the pandemic. Although the regulations and the funding mitigated risks to the system, there remains a risk of community justice services being overwhelmed, as unpaid work simply cannot be delivered in reasonable timescales due to necessary public health restrictions and increasing demand.

Current advice from justice partners suggests that such a scenario of court disposal capacity exceeding community justice capacity in the months ahead is a realistic prospect, and it therefore presents an on-going risk. Although the Scottish Government is working with national and justice partners to mitigate the risk as far as possible, it is important to extend the provisions as set out in the bill to ensure that there is flexibility in the system in case it is required. I assure members that there are no current plans to use those powers. Social Work Scotland states that it supports the extension of the proposals as outlined in the bill, noting that justice social work continues to face a significant challenge due to the pandemic and that the extension will ensure that, should there be a resurgence of Covid-19, action can be taken swiftly to mitigate any further impact.

I urge members to reject amendments 9, 10 and 23, which are in Mr Greene’s name. I thank Pauline McNeill for her amendment 27, which would introduce a statutory requirement for a one-off report on the use of fiscal fine powers. I accept in principle the policy that lies behind the amendment, but I ask her not to move it, and I commit to developing a revised amendment that takes account of the following concern. As drafted, the amendment would require the Scottish ministers to comment on the appropriateness of the use of fiscal fine powers by the Lord Advocate. As members will know, the Lord Advocate carries out prosecutorial functions entirely independently of any other person, and it would not be appropriate for such comments to be made by Scottish ministers. However, I accept the rest of the amendment in principle. It would provide a useful one-off report on the usage of fiscal fine powers, to complement the reporting that the Lord Advocate gave directly to the Justice Committee.

I understand that the Lord Advocate agrees with the approach and I hope that Pauline McNeill is also content with it. I will develop a revised amendment for consideration at stage 3 tomorrow. I urge members to reject amendments 11 and 22. Amendment 11 would remove the only power of emergency release from prison that exists, and would do so during an on-going pandemic. That power has been needed once and, although we have no plans to use it again, expiring it would be an imprudent action, given the uncertainty about the on-going impact of coronavirus. Amendment 22 would revoke two existing regulations that have been laid under that power. Revoking the Release of Prisoners (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 would have absolutely no impact, given that the time periods that were set in them are long past. Revoking the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Temporary Modifications) (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Regulations 2020, would remove the changes that were made to extend victim notification to cover release arrangements. Therefore, I urge members to reject amendment 22. I offer my apologies, Presiding Officer, for detaining Parliament for so long on this important and detailed grouping. I call Pauline McNeill to wind up and press or withdraw amendment 4. I begin by agreeing with Alex Cole-Hamilton and Jamie Greene that this has been a very rushed process.

In some ways, what we are trying to do is impossible, because on the one hand we are trying to defend the interests of justice, and on the other we understand some of the issues facing the Government in relation to managing the courts. I will first address amendment 6, on fiscal fines. The cabinet secretary says that fiscal fines enable a greater number of cases to be diverted.

We do not know what kinds of crime those cases would involve, but the use of fiscal fines would be based on recovery from coronavirus. I note that the cabinet secretary said that retaining the provision would not be desirable in the longer term. That is an important statement to me. I do not support the general increase of fiscal fines to £500. If I can be so bold as to differ with the Lord Advocate, I imagine that fiscal fines of £500 would be used to deal with fairly high-tariff crime. The Parliament would have a legitimate interest if fiscals were issuing fiscal fines for what we regard as serious crime. Members may say that that might never happen, but I would say that it is quite legitimate for the Parliament to have an interest in that for the reason that I have given. However, if the cabinet secretary is indicating that the provision will be used primarily in Covid times, I am less concerned about it. Amendment 7 relates to time limits. I think that Jamie Greene said that we are in an impossible position, and I agree with him. On the one hand, I am very exercised about long delays to court proceedings, not just for the accused but for victims, and I am generally not happy about extending time limits.

However, I appreciate that there are difficulties finding court venues across the country that are suitable for to social distancing. I have some sympathy with that, but I remind Parliament that the law says that someone in custody awaiting trial should wait no longer than 140 days. Shortly after our discussion of the bill, we will need to think about how we can return to that provision, which, after all, is the current law. In relation to reporting procedures, I seek to withdraw amendment 4, on the basis that the cabinet secretary will write to me on that specific issue. He said that the amendment duplicates existing reporting mechanisms in Scottish prisons.

I would like to hear from him about whether prisoners are getting out of their cells and outdoors, particularly in light of coronavirus. I will move amendment 8, on hearsay. I listened to what was said about the hearsay principle helping to minimise disruption. Given that section 259 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 already permits hearsay evidence on application to the court when a person is not fit to give evidence, the provision that amendment 8 seeks to expire is not needed. I know that the cabinet secretary will return to the point, but it does not seem, from the wording in the legislation, that that provision is to be used for exclusively for evidence from those who are isolating due to coronavirus. Hearsay evidence is seldom used in the courts, and section 259 is not used often, but the provision is dangerous and, for the reasons outlined by Jamie Greene, we must be very careful about its use. In the interests of justice, and to be absolutely fair to the accused, any statement can be cross-examined.

I realise that the provision is intended only for extreme circumstances, but given that relevant provisions already exist, I will move amendment 8. Amendment 4, by agreement, withdrawn. Amendment 5, in the name of Mark Griffin, is grouped with amendments 16 and 24. I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that I am an owner of a rental property in North Lanarkshire. In the stage 1 debate yesterday, I highlighted guidance issued by the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, which states: “Housing has become the front line defence against the coronavirus.” At all points of the pandemic, the key public health advice to people has been to isolate at home, no matter whether they have symptoms, have been in close contact with a confirmed case or have Covid 19. With that in mind, I lodged amendments that would have extended the eviction ban to level 1 and 2 areas to protect those threatened with eviction, through no fault of their own, due to a global pandemic, and to protect their ability to isolate at home under any of those circumstances.

However, because of the way that the Government has drafted the bill, those amendments have been deemed out of scope. Since Jackie Baillie’s amendment 1 has been withdrawn and the Deputy First Minister talked yesterday about supporting policies raised by Opposition members that can be taken forward without the need for legislation, I hope that the eviction ban is at the top of his list. In the absence of an ability to amend the bill to include a ban, I lodged amendment 5, which would require ministers, for as long as the legislation is in force, to report on the efficacy of measures to protect tenants in Scotland from eviction.

The amendment would hold the Scottish ministers accountable for their policy decisions in that area and place the reporting requirement on a statutory footing that would ensure that the Parliament was fully aware of the effect of the Government’s decisions on some of the people made most vulnerable by the effects of the pandemic. I turn to the other amendments in the group. The Scottish Government’s £10 million tenant hardship loan fund was supposed to help people to avoid the risk of losing their home because of pandemic-related financial pressures. However, so far, only £490,000 has been paid out. Putting people into more and more debt is also not a viable solution to their housing debt. We have repeatedly called for the loan fund to be converted into a grant fund, and we welcome yesterday’s Government announcement to do just that. Amendments 16 and 24 should be considered together as a package. If amendment 16 is agreed to but amendment 24 is disagreed to, tenants will be in a weaker position and I want to avoid that. Amendment 16 would expire all the pre-action checks that landlords must complete, under the current legislation, before raising a notification of proceedings against a tenant.

However, amendment 24 would replace those provisions with a requirement that notices of proceedings against tenants cannot be raised until they have received a grant from the Government to pay off their rent arrears. The amendment would also give a statutory basis to the tenant hardship grant fund that the Government announced yesterday. The amendments have been lodged with the intention of supporting tenancies and ensuring that individuals and families are able to comply with one of the most important pieces of public health advice during the pandemic: isolate at home. I ask members to support all the amendments in the group.

I move amendment 5. The question of tenants’ rights and the evictions ban was subject to significant debate during stage 1 consideration of the bill yesterday. We have been clear that we support the provisions in the legislation that was passed last year to protect tenants, including the requirement of a six-month notice period prior to a landlord commencing proceedings for eviction, because it is right that tenants who are in financial difficulty get additional support while the Covid pandemic is impacting on the economy and people’s incomes. We would support the continuation of that six-month notice period for as long as that was appropriate. However, we recognise that concerns have been expressed by many groups about the long-term impact of an evictions ban being in place.

We have had representations from registered social landlords, including the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, which have pointed out the unintended consequences of a long-term ban. Those voices are right to point out that an evictions ban is not a solution to the problem; it simply postpones the problem. The solution to the problem is to provide better financial support for tenants so that they are able to reach an agreement with their landlord about paying rent arrears. In that respect, I agree with Mark Griffin about the inadequacy of the loan fund, and I welcome yesterday’s announcement from the Deputy First Minister about the new grant scheme, although we do not yet have any details of how it will work. I turn to Mark Griffin’s amendments. Amendment 5, on additional reporting, seems reasonable, but I will listen to the Deputy First Minister’s response to it. As it stands, amendment 16 would remove protections from tenants, although I hear what Mark Griffin said about that amendment being tied in with amendment 24. However, amendment 24 seems very prescriptive in its terms.

It refers to a grant scheme that has not yet been established. We do not know what the terms of the grant scheme will be. We do not know how generous it will be. We do not know whether it is realistic, as amendment 24 suggests, for every tenant to receive a grant that is equal to the full amount of the rent arrears that have been accrued. I do not know whether any assessment has been done on the amount of money that would be involved in that. It seems premature, at best, to tie the question of evictions to access to a fund of which we have no details. Although I welcome Mark Griffin’s approach and the debate, we would struggle to support amendments 16 and 24 as they are drafted.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in support of amendments 5, 16 and 24, in the name of Mark Griffin. An evictions ban that applies to all levels of Covid restrictions has been a central ask of the Scottish Labour Party for many weeks now. It is disappointing that the amendment to give effect to it has been ruled inadmissible, largely because the Scottish Government has quite deliberately made the legislation very narrow in its intent, such that many of the amendments that we and others sought to lodge were out of scope. The cabinet secretary points to a permanence bill, but the timescale for it is not altogether clear, and there will be a legislative gap in protection.

Eviction orders are before the courts now, and people could be in danger of losing the roofs over their heads, all because the protection applies only in levels 3 and 4, when it should apply in all levels while the restrictions continue, the economy is still struggling and people are about to come off furlough without knowing whether they have a job to return to. Things are financially precarious and, on that basis, I welcome John Swinney’s response to Labour’s demands to turn the tenant hardship fund from a loan fund to a grant fund.

We know that the loan fund was not fit for purpose, given that it disbursed less than 5 per cent of the money that was available, and it rejected double the number of applications that it approved. When the Government does the right thing, praise is deserved, but the cabinet secretary needs to urgently tell members what the criteria for the fund will be, when it will be operational, whether it will convert the small number of loans that have already been made into grants, and whether, in the interim, it will defer loan repayments. It is important that people who are in debt and who are struggling are not saddled with more debt.

If we are to prevent people from losing their homes, there is no time to waste in setting up the fund, and no barriers should be put in the way of people’s access to it Amendment 5 asks the Government to report on evictions. It is a much weaker amendment than we wanted, but it is the only version that would be considered admissible. I say to the Government that amendment 5 is critical, because we need to work harder to understand what is happening with evictions, and use the fund to prevent evictions when they are matter of hardship due to Covid.

I urge members to support amendments 5, 16 and 24 in Mark Griffin’s name. Amendment 5 seeks to amend the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 by placing an additional reporting requirement on the Scottish ministers in relation to the operation of schedule 1 to the act, on eviction from dwelling houses. Subsection (1) of the section that amendment 5 would introduce is drawn widely, and it is unclear whether it refers to adequate “protection for tenants” on social, economic or health grounds. Subsection (1) would also require the Scottish ministers to set out any “limitations in protection for tenants” that are encountered—which provision is also widely drawn—together with the reasons why such limitations exist.

That would make the reporting requirement cumbersome and, in some cases, potentially impossible to comply with. In addition, much of the information is already publicly available and is included in the bimonthly reports that are and will continue to be produced for the schedule 1 provisions. For example, the bimonthly reports set out how many orders to evict have been issued by the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland housing and property chamber, as well as levels of rent arrears in the social rented sector. However, we are always seeking to improve the data that we collect, and the Scottish Government is working with local authorities and the Society of Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers in order to collect new data to better understand what evictions are taking place across the country and for what reasons. As we develop new sources of data, they will be reflected in bimonthly reports and I would be happy to discuss some of the issues and how we can enhance the reporting with Mr Griffin and other interested members to ensure that the reports that we supply to the Parliament for scrutiny meet the legitimate aspirations for information that Mr Griffin has highlighted today.

In its dashboard report, the Scottish Housing Regulator already reports on the number of notices and proceedings that have been issued to tenants in social housing, and on the total value of rent arrears in the social housing sector that have accumulated during the reporting period. For those reasons, I do not think that it is necessary to proceed with amendment 5 and I urge members not to support it. I am surprised that Mr Griffin has lodged amendment 16, which would expire the pre-action requirements for rent arrears on the one hand but, through amendment 24, seek to preserve them until such time as all tenants who are applying for or receiving a loan under the tenant hardship loan fund have received a grant for their rent arrears.

Amendment 24 appears to be designed to enable the continuation of pre-action requirements until such time as all tenants in Scotland have all their rent arrears paid by the grant from the Scottish Government or another body. In any event, amendment 24 would be time limited because the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No 2) Act 2020 will, by virtue of the current bill, expire either in March 2022 or September 2022. We will make sure that everyone who is in receipt of a loan through our tenant hardship loan fund is made aware of the £10 million tenant grant fund that I announced yesterday. If people who are in receipt of a loan are eligible for a grant, they will be able to take that up. Mr Fraser made the fair point that, in relation to the details of the tenant hardship loan fund, amendment 24 is rather premature. We intend to consult stakeholders over the summer and introduce the grant fund later in the year.

Again, I would be prepared to engage with members—as would the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government—about the approach to the tenant hardship loan fund. The pre-action requirements formalise the steps that all landlords should be taking to support tenants who have accrued rent arrears, which is why we committed in “Housing to 2040”, our long-term national strategy for housing, that we would take steps to place pre-action requirements on a permanent footing. The move to introduce pre-action requirements permanently has been broadly welcomed by tenant and landlord representatives alike. I confirm that our consultation on a permanence bill will seek views on making the pre-action requirements permanent, to prevent any gap until that bill is superseded by any future housing bill.

Jackie Baillie raised the issue of the timescale on the permanence bill. We are consulting on the bill over the summer and the Parliament will then scrutinise it after the summer recess. Mr Griffin’s amendments to expire the pre-action requirements on the one hand and to continue them, in effect, on the other are therefore unnecessary. In addition, they would introduce complexity for tenants and landlords as to when the pre-action requirements actually apply. That complexity does not currently exist, so I ask members to reject amendments 16 and 24. I take on board members’ comments about this group of amendments and I concede that they are not ideal. We are left in this situation because of how the bill has been drafted.

We would like to have lodged amendments that extended the ban on evictions to level 1 and 2 restriction areas, but that has not been possible. I take on board the points that the Deputy First Minister makes about amendment 5 and the range of support mechanisms that are already in place. I will seek to withdraw amendment 5, and I will consider the Deputy First Minister’s points and have discussions between now and the deadline for lodging stage 3 amendments to consider whether it would be appropriate to lodge amendment 5 again. On amendments 16 and 24, as I said earlier, I would not want amendment 16 to pass if amendment 24 failed. The intention of the amendments is to ensure, as much as possible, that while the emergency powers are still in place, no evictions can be carried out until the grant fund is put in place. Again, I have listened closely to the Deputy First Minister’s points and will review the amendments overnight, with a view to potentially lodging them again, so I will not move amendments 16 and 24.

Can I confirm that you seek to withdraw amendment 5? Yes, that is correct. Amendment 5, by agreement, withdrawn. Section 2—Expiry of provisions The question is, that amendment 8 be agreed to. Are we agreed? There will be a division. Members should cast their votes now. On a point of order, Convener. My digital machine did not pick up my vote; if I had been able to vote, I would have voted yes. I will ensure that that is recorded. On a point of order, Convener. My device would not let me vote. I would have voted yes. I will ensure that that is recorded. On a point of order, Convener. My vote did not register. I would have voted yes. I will ensure that that is recorded.

On a point of order, Convener. My device did not record my vote. I would have voted no. I will ensure that that is recorded. On a point of order, Convener. My app was not working either, and I would have voted no. I will ensure that that is recorded. The result of the division is: For 62, Against 59, Abstentions 0. The question is, that amendment 11 be agreed to. Are we agreed? There will be a division. Members should vote now. The vote has closed. On a point of order, Convener. Apologies, I got the error message. I would have voted no. Thank you. We will ensure that your vote is recorded. The result of the division is: For 33, Against 88, Abstentions 0. I will suspend the meeting for a short comfort break. The next group of amendments is on admission of public to meetings. Amendment 12, in the name of Graham Simpson, is grouped with amendment 13. There are two amendments in the group—my amendment 12, which relates to licensing boards, and amendment 13, in the name of Alex Cole-Hamilton, which relates to meetings of councils, and which I support. Yesterday, the First Minister gave an unusually upbeat statement to Parliament, albeit with her usual caveats.

If we are to take her at her word, life should return to something like normal in the next few weeks. Social distancing should be coming to an end by August: we will be able to go to the theatre and return to watching football in numbers next to our mates, and office staff will get back to work with colleagues and not just chat to them using Teams. You never know—MSPs might be able to occupy all the seats in the chamber by September, which would be a good thing. If all that happens by September—it should, if we believe the First Minister—and if we judge by the figures that she has announced, there is simply no reason at all left for why licensing boards and councils should be able to exclude the public from their meetings. The public health reasons for having the restrictions were good, because they allowed licensing boards and councils to continue, but those reasons do not now exist. By the end of September, physical distancing will not be a thing, so licensing boards and councils should be meeting in public—not virtually—by that point.

Public access to such meetings is an essential part of our democracy, so to allow the restrictions to go on longer—it could be up to a year longer, when the public would not be allowed into the meetings—would be beyond the pale. There is no reason to allow it. I move amendment 12. I am grateful to Graham Simpson for his comments. I rise to speak to amendment 13 and I offer support to Graham Simpson’s amendment 12.

Paragraph 13 of schedule 6 to the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 has modified section 50A of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 to read: “The public are to be excluded from a meeting of a local authority whenever it is likely that, if members of the public were present, there would be a real and substantial risk to public health due to infection or contamination with coronavirus.” There has remained a requirement on authorities to publish an agenda and minutes of all meetings, but that was the extent of the reach of the requirements of publication. When we passed the first coronavirus act in spring last year, we were in the first wave of the pandemic. Those weeks of high infection required that Parliament second guess the causes and mitigation of community transmission. As it stood then, paragraph 13 made absolute sense; we had banned all public gatherings, closed all hospitality, prevented people from being together in enclosed spaces and asked them to stay at home.

It was self-evident that should people attend in-person meetings of a local authority, they would pose a substantial risk to public health and could spread infection. Paragraph 13 gave local authorities the option to exclude the public from in-person meetings based on a subjective assessment. It was the best that we could do at the time, but those times have changed. By the end of September, cinemas and theatres will, likely, be operating almost normally. We might even have dispensed with any form of social distancing and face coverings, because our citizens no longer represent the real and substantial risk to public health that they did in March last year. It is crucial to remember that the end of September would come just six months before the start of the local authority election campaign. To allow the provision to continue could allow local authorities to proceed with unpopular decisions away from the scrutiny of the electorate, by whom they will be held accountable in just a few months’ time.

I understand that we are not clear of the pandemic and that new surges and variants might once again create a heightened risk to health, but the bill will continue ministers’ powers to take measures that are sufficient to mitigate the risk of any activity, up to and including a stay-at-home order. In short, paragraph 13 of schedule 6 of the first 2020 coronavirus act is no longer needed, and its use in such close proximity to a local authority election would undermine the democratic accountability of our councils and councillors. Removing it would not compel local authorities that are still meeting virtually to broadcast their proceedings if they do not have the technology or resources to do so, but it is our hope and expectation that, when the first two coronavirus acts expire and fall away, our local authorities will be able to meet in person once again. Some of the biggest decisions that affect my constituents and those of other members take place in our local councils—on planning, on education or even on the local recovery from the pandemic. People at the business end of those decisions need a line of sight to how they came about.

Paragraph 13—well intentioned though it was at the time—no longer has a place in the pages of the legislation or, indeed, in our democracy. Amendment 12 would expire the provisions relating to the ability of licensing boards to exercise their discretion as to whether to hold meetings in public due to coronavirus. Although we are making good progress with the vaccine roll-out, the recent rise in cases indicates that new variants, such as the delta variant, might come to the fore and create further challenges and difficulties. Mr Simpson is, however, right to have characterised our assessment as being more optimistic than it has been for some time.

Licensing stakeholders have welcomed the flexibility that has been provided by the provision since its introduction in the first coronavirus act, and are broadly content for the provision to be extended beyond 30 September, on the ground that we cannot say with any certainty that new variants will not arise. Licensing stakeholders support the holding of meetings in person, but we and they agree that the added flexibility is important to ensure that the alcohol licensing regime can function, should there be a requirement to reimpose restrictions throughout Scotland or on a local authority basis. The effect of amendment 12 could be that users of the alcohol licensing system would be unable to receive an effective service from licensing boards, including being unable to sell alcohol. That would be unfortunate and counterproductive at a time when we are all keen to do all that we can to support the hospitality sector. My officials engage regularly with licensing stakeholders and have been made aware of examples of good practice that has enabled members of the public to view proceedings online.

Of course, if anyone is participating formally during proceedings as an objector, necessary arrangements are put in place by the licensing board to ensure their participation in meetings. For those reasons, I oppose amendment 12, and I ask members to oppose it, too. I turn to amendment 13, which is in the name of Alex Cole-Hamilton. Scotland’s local authorities have responded extremely well in order to keep essential services available during the pandemic. Crucial to ensuring that that has been possible has been allowing governance structures in councils to continue to operate so that decisions about services can continue to be scrutinised and made. The provision in question was never about universally excluding the public from local authority meetings; it was only ever to be applied at physical meetings where there was a risk of transmitting Covid. At all times, the Scottish Government, in the interests of openness, democracy and transparency, strongly encourages councils to make every effort to live stream their meetings to the public.

We believe that the provision has enabled local authorities to continue to function and conduct committee business while simultaneously taking action to reduce and suppress the spread of the virus. Councils have reacted well to the changing environment and have acted quickly to implement new governance arrangements that are safe and flexible. For example, all 32 councils now have arrangements in place to support remote meetings. In light of that, and recognising that the provision was being used only in limited situations by some councils, we recommend that Parliament supports amendment 13, which is in the name of Alex Cole-Hamilton. I will press amendment 12. I am slightly confused by the Deputy First Minister’s response. On one hand, I am encouraged that he agrees with Alex Cole-Hamilton’s amendment 13, but on the other I am utterly baffled as to why he would agree that councils should meet in public but not agree that licensing boards should do so.

Licensing boards are made up of councillors, so they are, essentially, the same thing—a meeting of councillors, who are just dealing with different matters. Therefore, there is no logic to what the Deputy First Minister has said. I encourage members to back both amendments in the group, because they would do the same thing. They are about democratic accountability. I used to be on a licensing board. I therefore know that licensing matters can be contentious, so it is important that the public are allowed to sit in on those meetings.

In my earlier comments, I accepted that the restrictions were necessary at the time and that they have allowed licensing boards to continue, but there is no reason for the restrictions to persist. The question is, that amendment 12, in the name of Graham Simpson, be agreed to. Are we agreed? There will be a division. The result of the division on amendment 12, in the name of Graham Simpson, is: For 54, Against 66, Abstentions 0. The next group of amendments is on business support. Amendment 14, in the name of the cabinet secretary, is grouped with amendment 26. In relation to amendment 14 on irritancy measures in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020, the Government has listened to the views of stakeholders and has lodged the amendment in order for those provisions to be extended beyond 30 September 2021. Although initial discussions with stakeholders indicated that there was general support for the expiry of those measures from 30 September, we have since listened to further representations, including from the Federation of Small Businesses, and given the uncertainty that exists regarding when coronavirus restrictions in Scotland can be removed completely, we have reconsidered expiring the provisions.

As other Government support initiatives, such as the furlough scheme, begin to wind down, it is likely that some viable small businesses might face short-term cash-flow difficulties over the summer, into the autumn and beyond. In those circumstances, we would want landlords to grant their tenants some further flexibility. We believe that retaining the increased notice period beyond 30 September makes that more likely. The extensions that have been afforded under the provision to date have helped landlords and tenants by giving them time to come to revised rental arrangements on an agreed basis without the need to seek eviction. As eviction has always been possible under the Scottish provisions, it is considered that these would largely have already taken place in the 18 months from the commencement of the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020, and this proportionate response will now continue, hopefully without the need for evictions, as our aim is to keep businesses afloat and retain employment. The Scottish Government is therefore happy to listen to the views of stakeholders and proposes this change to the bill. I urge members to support my amendment 14. I turn to amendment 26.

Since March last year, business support has been offered through the existing powers of local authorities, the enterprise networks and a range of other public bodies, rather than under specific provisions of the coronavirus legislation. Further, decisions on business support have been taken in response to emerging pressures and there is no allocated budget for future financial support. Future funding options will be contingent to a large extent on funding decisions that are made by the United Kingdom Government. As restrictions are brought to an end, decisions on any further support will be made to support recovery and economic transformation in the longer term. That may continue to change substantially over a longer timescale than the two months within which amendment 26 would require a report to be made to Parliament. The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 includes a range of improved tools for local transport authorities to improve bus services in their areas, recognising that buses are a local service and should be tailored to meet local communities’ needs. However, I am sympathetic to what Mr Sweeney proposes and the Government will lodge a stage 3 amendment tomorrow to reflect some of the issues that are raised by his proposal.

I look forward to hearing his remarks. I move amendment 14. While Covid-19 continues to disrupt livelihoods, we must have measures in place to support people and adequately protect them from the fallout of the pandemic. Businesses have required financial support from the Government, which has been paid in millions to mitigate the adverse impacts of Covid-19. However, we could be doing more to conditionalise that business support with a view to achieving better economic and social outcomes—for example, fairer work obligations and enhancement of our public transport system. My amendment 26 would require the Scottish ministers to lay before Parliament, as soon as reasonably practical and within two months of royal assent, a report on the implications for business support of the extension or expiry of provisions in the act. The report would have to include, in particular, consideration of further support that businesses required. The key thing would be whether business support had been adequate over the period—we know that it has often not been adequate. The Government should be required to consider, in particular, whether those who have felt the impacts of the pandemic disproportionately—such as wedding businesses, entertainment establishments, nightlife businesses, taxi drivers and the self-employed—have been adequately supported.

We should also consider whether any limitations or conditionality should be placed on the provision of further support, including whether conditions related to fair work practices should be placed on businesses of a certain size that receive support. The Welsh Government has been seeking to explore that. In particular, I would like to explore the idea of introducing an element of compulsion when it comes to the provision of further support to a large business with at least 250 employees that does not recognise a trade union. In fair work terms, all large companies should be open to trade union organisation in their workplaces. The rise in precarious work that we have seen since the financial crisis in 2008 has been compounded by the pandemic. Some 35 per cent of Scottish workers say that they often get less than a week’s notice of shifts.

Pre-pandemic, four in 10 of those who worked in retail and wholesale were paid less than the living wage, according to the Resolution Foundation. Fair work practices are even more pertinent than they were before, especially as we look towards the longer term and recovery. I also want ministers to consider the suitability of taking equity shares in private bus companies instead of simply providing grant-based support with few strings attached. In the year of COP26, we should be investing in a green, publicly owned public transport system. Last year, the Government gave £191 million of no-strings subsidies to private bus company owners and underspent the transport budget by £343 million.

Indeed, the total allocated budget for bus firms between the start of the pandemic and October this year is £288 million. We could be doing so much more with that investment to effect meaningful change and reforms in our public transport system. As the grant terms are currently conditionalised, they only oblige bus companies to continue to deliver around 30 per cent of bus service levels for the period of the scheme, in order to maintain core services, and to continue engagement with relevant local authorities and health boards to determine what bus services should be operated when and on what routes. I would like the benefit from that money to be used to buy shares in those companies, with a long-term view to increasing public ownership. Single fares on privatised First Glasgow services are now £2.50, compared with £1.80 on Edinburgh’s publicly owned Lothian Buses services. In Glasgow, we need our regional transport authority, Strathclyde partnership for transport, to use the powers in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to re-regulate our region’s entire bus network through franchising. That would allow us to plan routes, cap fares and ensure the same standards of accessibility, emissions, staff training, staff conditions and much more across the whole region.

Everyone in Scotland is entitled to a world-class integrated public transport service. I hope that the measures that I have proposed meet with the approval of members. Paul Sweeney has raised a number of significant points in amendment 26 and his comments on it, and I am happy to consider how that and a variety of other requests for additional reporting requirements in the various amendments that we have heard today can be considered further in tomorrow’s discussions. Amendments 4, 5, 18, 25, 27, 28, 29 and 30 all seek additional reporting requirements, and I would like the opportunity to reflect on the issues and to formulate amendments to be lodged for stage 3. I want to ensure that the legitimate request for further reporting can be integrated into the already significant reporting requirements that the Government fulfils—and is happy to fulfil—to Parliament in this respect.

I urge Paul Sweeney not to move his amendment and to give us the opportunity to formulate proposals that can be considered in tomorrow’s session. The next group is on social security. Amendment 17, in the name of Pam Duncan-Glancy, is grouped with amendments 28 and 29. As members will know, I am a bit new to this, so I thank the chamber desk team, my staff, the Labour support unit and colleagues across the chamber for all their help. I ask members to be patient with me as I talk to the amendments in an odd order, taking amendments 17 and 29 together and providing a bit of explanation, and coming back later to amendment 28. Scottish Labour is clear that, had the scope of the bill been wider, we would have sought to do more to ensure that people were protected for a while longer, and we would have sought to add provisions that are needed to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

For example, had the scope of the bill been wider, I would have been moving an amendment today to continue and extend the provisions that were put in place to support carers and disabled people. Specifically, we would have wanted to double the carers allowance supplement again this year, as was done in 2020, and to continue doing so until the end of the pandemic, which would make a huge difference to the thousands of unpaid carers in Scotland. Recognising that disabled people faced additional costs before the pandemic and that we have not begun to assess the impact that the pandemic has had on that group of people, we would have sought to use the opportunity to discuss a Covid payment to disabled people and to implement a £5 uplift to the Scottish child payment for families that include a disabled person.

Introducing such a supplement now and increasing it to £10 by 2022-23 would lift approximately 10,000 children out of poverty. As we heard earlier from the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, we are—sadly—on track to miss our child poverty targets by 4 per cent, which makes it even more frustrating that we have not been able to do that today. Navigating the bill—any bill, I imagine—is tricky, especially for the first time. Had all our amendments been in scope, the first thing that we would have needed to do was extend the powers in the act that provide for the double payment of the carers supplement, rather than expire them. That is what amendment 17 sought to do. That amendment was ruled in scope but, sadly, the amendments to double the supplement and make the payments were ruled out of scope. Therefore, amendment 17 is somewhat null. However, I hope that the chamber will appreciate that that was perhaps an imperfect situation and will understand and be patient with the first-time attempts to bring scrutiny and impactful change to an issue of this gravity, with meaningful discussion in the chamber.

I do not intend to press amendment 17. Here is where the other amendments come in. As we are not able to call for those policies as we would have liked to in this debate on the bill, we are instead seeking a commitment, through amendment 29, that, within one month of the bill receiving royal assent, the Government will produce a report on the expiry of the current provisions that are intended to protect carers and families with disabled people in them and on whether further measures, including those that we have set out, and a Covid payment for disabled people, are required. Had we been able to, Scottish Labour would also have sought to take the opportunity that is presented by this bill to introduce self-isolation payments for all adults who are forced to self-isolate.

The chamber will be aware that some self-isolation grants are available at the moment, but they are available only to specific people and are subject to very specific eligibility requirements. However, as we know, Covid-19 does not pick and choose its effects, which is why it is clear that we must do more to offer support to those who are not able to access it, so that anyone who is asked to self-isolate does not see themselves out of pocket. As we have not been able to make that call directly, Scottish Labour is instead proposing, in amendment 28, that the Government publish a report on the effect of the provisions in the bill on the support that is available to people who are forced to self-isolate. Again, we would like to see that report no more than one month after the bill has received royal assent. I thank the chamber and the Presiding Officer for their patience. The amendments that I have lodged seek to draw attention to those serious issues, apply as much scrutiny as possible in the time that we have and encourage meaningful and impactful discussion, decision making and action on the part of members at this time.

I move amendment 17. I feel that there is absolutely no need for Pam Duncan-Glancy to apologise for detaining the chamber, given the length of time that I have gone on this afternoon. I am sure that that observation has attracted wide support from the Labour Party, despite the generosity of spirit that I have demonstrated today. Amendment 17 will prevent the expiry of the provisions relating to the carers allowance supplement in the 2020 act.

The majority of increased payments of the carers allowance supplement were made in June 2020, and around 83,000 carers received an extra £230.10 to help them deal with the unprecedented circumstances of coronavirus and the additional pressures that were brought by lockdown. The provision is being expired as it is no longer necessary, because it relates only to the period from 1 April 2020 to 30 September 2020, and backdated payments in respect of that period can still be made notwithstanding expiry. We absolutely value the support that is provided by unpaid carers and we have brought forward the Carer’s Allowance Supplement (Scotland) Bill to support unpaid carers with an additional coronavirus carers allowance supplement payment. That will be paid with the December carers allowance supplement, as we did in June 2020. We proposed to do that through a stand-alone bill, as that allowed us to bring forward proposals for greater flexibility to make future payments to carers in receipt of carers allowance supplement, should they be required.

Pam Duncan-Glancy has indicated that she will not press amendment 17, and I hope that what I have said provides the necessary reassurance to her of the Government’s intent in this area of activity. I acknowledge the significance of the points that she raises in relation to support for carers. The purpose of amendment 28 is to require ministers to produce a report assessing the effect that the expiry of provisions by the act is likely to have on the social security support that is available for carers.

The report must consider whether, due to coronavirus, further measures are required to support carers, and whether a further coronavirus carers allowance supplement should be paid. The report must also consider whether a Scottish child payment supplement of £5 should be made, where the payment is made in respect of a dependent child who has a disability. Where no further support is being provided, the report must set out the reasons for that. The Government absolutely values the role of unpaid carers and we have brought forward the bill to which I have referred to support unpaid carers with an additional coronavirus carers allowance supplement payment.

The bill also seeks enabling powers to allow greater flexibility in making any future increases to the carers allowance supplement. I would like to reassure Parliament that there will be no impact on the support for unpaid carers through the expiry of the provisions. I have placed on record the Government’s commitment in that respect. The reporting requirements in amendment 28 fall into the category of reporting requirements that I referred to in my earlier contribution. The Government will reflect on those issues as a consequence of the debate today, and I ask Pam Duncan-Glancy not to press the amendment, because the Government will bring back enhanced reporting requirements in a stage 3 amendment tomorrow. The Government is resisting amendment 29, which will mandate the publication of a report on the effect that the extension and expiry of provisions by the act will have on the support that is available for people who are self-isolating.

The same issues apply as with amendment 28—we will consider the reporting requirements and bring forward tomorrow a consolidated proposition that Parliament can consider. Therefore, I ask Parliament not to agree to any of the amendments in the group, on the understanding that the Government will bring forward enhancements to the reporting arrangements in stage 3 amendments tomorrow. I call Pam Duncan-Glancy to wind up and to press or withdraw amendment 17. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I thank the Deputy First Minister for his response. On the point about the Carer’s Allowance Supplement (Scotland) Bill, which has come to the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, I think that we missed an opportunity by not doing some of that in the bill that is before us today. Then the bill that has gone to committee could have been on less of a tight timescale, which would have allowed us to consider issues such as bereavement payments. However, specifically on amendment 17, I understand that the reason to have the amendment is no longer there, because the amendment that we needed it for was considered out of scope.

On that basis, I will not press amendment 17. Before we move to the next group, members may wish to note that we are a little behind time—perhaps by five to 10 minutes. The next group is on social care support. Amendment 18, in the name of Jackie Baillie, is grouped with amendment 30. In the interests of time, I will speak just to amendment 18, and will do so briefly. Care homes were at the epicentre of the pandemic. Some 3,774 people died in our care homes of Covid-19. That affected their families and it affected staff, and many more suffered from the virus but, thankfully, pulled through. At the start of the pandemic, there were issues with personal protective equipment, a lack of testing, and inconsistent and ever-changing guidance. Care homes across all sectors were crying out for support. Having an overview of what is happening in our care homes across Scotland is essential while the virus remains. I appreciate that the Care Inspectorate has resumed reporting on individual care homes, but that does not provide an overview of what is happening in care homes across Scotland. We are debating the extension of emergency powers, because we think that there is a continuing issue or a potential problem in the future.

I say to the cabinet secretary that, if vulnerable people in care homes were the worst affected during the pandemic, anything that monitors what is going on in care homes across Scotland is therefore critical and should be kept. Thank you. I move amendment 18. I call Craig Hoy. I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, in relation to— Sorry—I must interrupt you briefly. I made an error. I should have called Pam Duncan-Glancy to speak to amendment 30 and the other amendment in the group.

Thank you, convener. I was pleased to have an extra moment or two to consider what I was going to say about the amendment. I am sure that we have made it clear by now that Scottish Labour would have looked to do a bit more with the bill had we been able to, including calling on local authorities to recommence care packages and respite care. With amendment 30, we have once again opted to lodge a reporting amendment to place a duty on Scottish ministers to lay a report before Parliament no more than one month after the bill receives royal assent, in this case so that we can understand the impact that ending or extending provisions in the act will have on social care services. A report by the Scottish Human Rights Commission shows that the removal of care packages during the pandemic has had a direct and detrimental effect on disabled people’s human rights.

It recommended that social care be reinstated to at least pre-pandemic levels. Many of us will have heard stories over the past year of individual people going through the pandemic and being left in degrading and inhumane situations as a result of losing their care. That is why we need to have a clear focus on this area. Testimony gathered for the report was incredibly distressing reading: disabled people unable to wash or get out of bed, being left asleep in their wheelchairs, and having to leave their homes and move in with family. None of that is ever okay. The protection of social care services is vital—it is an investment that we need to make. We must ensure that disabled people get the care that they need and we must provide essential care and support for them to participate in society and lead an ordinary life. In the past year, due to the pandemic, that has not been the case. It is incredibly important that we continue to consider the impact that that has had on that group of people, which is why Labour lodged an amendment requiring the Government to report on it.

For the second time, I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests in relation to rental properties in my name. I will briefly address the amendments relating to social care. I welcome the Government’s intention to allow provisions relating to reporting by the Care Inspectorate contained in paragraph 22 of schedule 1 to the act to expire on 30 September. I recognise that, during the eye of the Covid storm, there was a huge focus on the activities in care homes—and rightly so. Families, residents and care home staff were literally living in fear, and the regular reports addressed those legitimate concerns. However, we must remember that the root cause of the problem of transmission and deaths in our care homes often related to Covid-positive patients being discharged from a hospital setting into a social care setting.

With vaccines now providing extensive safeguards, and care homes having put in place advanced infection control mechanisms, those reporting rules can now be relaxed. The system of fortnightly reporting by the Care Inspectorate to Parliament has put undue pressure on the Care Inspectorate to deliver those reports, which has removed it from its much-needed inspection and improvement work. It has prevented the normal relationships being restored and does not give care homes time to reflect on and respond to the reports before they are released publicly. Jackie Baillie’s amendment 18 has the effect of extending the provision for fortnightly reporting. Given that that is the case, the Scottish Conservatives will not support it. However, we welcome amendment 30, in the name of Pam Duncan-Glancy. Although I have spoken out against the fortnightly reporting regime, amendment 30 seeks a one-off report by ministers to Parliament on issues that include exploring the effect of the extension and expiry of the act’s provisions on social and respite care, and identifies further measures that may be required to restore social care support packages and respite services to pre-pandemic levels. I believe that such a report, especially if it comes forward within one month of royal assent, will provide Parliament and our care providers with timely information that will assist in the restoration of vital social care services.

The Scottish Conservatives support that objective and are content to support amendment 30. In relation to amendment 18, I have engaged with Scottish Care, which has serious concerns about the impact of the continuation of the reporting provisions on the Care Inspectorate’s ability to carry out its other obligations and provide support to care services. I absolutely agree with Jackie Baillie that, given the situation that we have had during the pandemic, we have to have some form of overarching reporting and accountability. I would be grateful, therefore, if the cabinet secretary could commit to working with the Care Inspectorate and perhaps other parliamentary colleagues to bring something back at stage 3 that would not only reflect both sides of the issue but ensure that the Care Inspectorate has the ability to discharge its duties effectively and continue to improve standards of care.

The Scottish Greens will support amendment 30. I have said before that when the history of Scotland’s pandemic is written, there will be no more tragic a story than what occurred in our care homes. They were missed out of pandemic exercise planning and then received more than 3,000 untested patients from hospital. Many families did not learn for months and months what really happened in the homes of their loved ones. They deserved to have all the facts all along. The repercussions of the failure to protect care homes and their residents will continue to be sorely felt, which is why we need a public inquiry to start without delay. 18:30 I am very grateful to Jackie Baillie for lodging amendment 18. Scottish Liberal Democrats also considered whether there is a need to retain the additional care home reporting on inspections and deaths that was introduced at the start of the pandemic.

The policy memorandum discusses that in some detail. Before the powers are expired, I would like to hear further assurances from the Deputy First Minister and his Government that that will not have an impact on the quality of reporting on care homes. The policy memorandum says: “inspection reports are published usually within 10 days of the inspection.” I want to know what proportion take longer than that and whether there is a hard time limit for the publication of the reports. How will the Government ensure that there is still timely access to care home inspection reports? Are there any parts of the weekly reporting of deaths under the emergency powers that are not now covered by National Records of Scotland? Before the powers are expired, I would like the Deputy First Minister to guarantee that that will not have a negative impact on the quality of reporting on our care homes, because it has been hard enough over the past 15 months for families to acquire that important information.

Jackie Baillie’s amendment 18 raises very difficult issues. Her fundamental concern is about ensuring that appropriate arrangements are in place in care homes and that they are applied effectively. That is an absolutely legitimate subject of inquiry. The question is not whether there should be scrutiny, reporting and gathering of information about performance in care homes; the question is how it can best be undertaken. Gillian Mackay raised legitimate points—they are at the heart of the arguments on the matter. They were about whether all that would best be served by enabling the Care Inspectorate to carry out the long-standing previously agreed and legislated for scrutiny of individual care homes, or whether some resource has been distracted by the overarching reporting and analysis that were envisaged for the circumstances. The fortnightly reports on inspections—the 28th such report will be published this week—have been helpful in getting information into the public domain and in providing assurance to Parliament and the public, at a time when the level of anxiety about the safety and wellbeing of care home residents and staff has, understandably, been high.

However, preparing the fortnightly reports has reduced the Care Inspectorate’s capacity to carry out wider scrutiny activity, because inspectors are involved in preparation of additional reports. As we move into recovery and remobilisation, it is important that inspectors can refocus their attention on scrutinising and supporting all care services and not focus only on care homes that are at the highest risk from Covid-19.

There is unnecessary duplication of effort. There has been a return to a near-normal pre-Covid process in which full inspection reports are published by the Care Inspectorate, usually within 10 days of an inspection. The result is that, in many cases, full reports are published at about the same time as the associated less-detailed parliamentary reports. Gillian Mackay asked me to consider whether, should Parliament not agree to amendment 18, wider synchronisation of reporting could be don.

I undertake to examine that in advance of stage 3 tomorrow. On Alex Cole-Hamilton’s point, the weekly reporting of deaths in care homes has been heavily reliant on accurate reporting by care homes. The official statistics that are published by National Records of Scotland are now well established and include data on care homes. I therefore urge members not to support amendment 18, but I give an assurance that I will explore the point that Gillian Mackay raised. I would like Parliament not to proceed with amendment 30, so that the Government can reflect on the matter and on wider scrutiny of the reporting requirements that can be included in the bill to enhance the existing reporting arrangements. There have been a number of requests that we enhance reporting requirements. I would like the opportunity to consolidate those requests to allow reporting requirements to be put into the bill at stage 3, in order to ensure that Parliament is properly updated on and advised of performance against the requirements of the legislation.

I urge Pam Duncan-Glancy not to move amendment 30, on the basis that I will introduce reporting requirements at stage 3 tomorrow. I call Jackie Baillie to wind up and to press or withdraw amendment 18. I am sure that it was not his intention, but I thought that Craig Hoy’s contribution perhaps suggested a degree of complacency. There is nothing normal about the pandemic. Care homes suffered the very worst of deaths, and Parliament put in place reporting mechanisms because we believed that they were needed. There is the possibility of new surges and new variants, and care homes are vulnerable in that context. I understand that there might be capacity issues. I favour Gillian Mackay’s suggestion and, on the basis that the cabinet secretary does too, I am happy not to press amendment 18. I hope that the cabinet secretary will consider the matter and bring back an amendment tomorrow.

The question is, that amendment 20 be agreed to. Are we agreed? There will be a division. The result of the division on amendment 20 is: For 55, Against 67, Abstentions 0. The question is, that amendment 22 be agreed to. Are we agreed? There will be a division. The result of the division on amendment 22 is: For 33, Against 88, Abstentions 0. The next group is on marriages and civil partnerships. Amendment 25, in the name of Pauline McNeill, is the only amendment in the group. Amendment 25 is on a procedure to produce a report on “(a) social distancing requirements that remain in place, (b) the permissibility of live music,” and (c) limitations on indoor household gatherings”. Today there was a Government-inspired question, which Jackie Baillie referred to, on extended opening times for hospitality during Euro 2020, which have caused distress for parts of the hospitality sector that are not able to benefit from those provisions. Amendment 25 asks for a report detailing the progress made towards ending restrictions in relation to weddings, permissibility of live music and limitations on indoor gatherings. The Scottish Wedding Industry Alliance said: “Yesterday’s announcement will not be the guidance everyone wanted, we’re also disappointed regarding dancing (something we campaigned for).

We are continuing conversations to ask for the new guidance to go live on the Friday dates and we will carry on fighting for everyone.” Only yesterday, a constituent who is due to get married very soon wrote to me—they are not the first one—and said: “Some leeway would certainly make sense, all things considered. Especially seeing as most of the wedding party will be fully vaccinated already. Surely that should count for something. We have a DJ hired which is costing almost £3000. A large deposit already paid when we thought the end of June would be the reopening date. It’s not even as if it’s going to be a rave, just some cringey dancing for a couple of hours”— I am only quoting here. [Laughter.] We are all thinking of weddings that we have been at where there has been “cringey dancing” but also a lot of enjoyment. My constituent continued: “Also with indoor social distancing being reduced to 1 metre, you’d be closer to a stranger on a bus than you would be up having a dance.” He knows that I was going to read that out to give you all a laugh—he was definitely okay with that.

It is a serious question. Many couples, along with people in the wedding and events sectors, are asking why people cannot dance until 19 July. Will dancing really be such a high-risk activity? I hope that the cabinet secretary will give us some indication of what the clinicians are saying the risk really is. For the sake of nine days in my constituent’s case, there will be a big difference to that couple’s wedding. I ask the Government to focus on that, which is why I seek the reporting procedure in amendment 25. There is also a lack of clarity on some of the issues, and a report before Parliament might provide such clarity.

Some announcements yesterday were very welcome—for example, the lifting of restrictions on bands from 28 June is very much welcomed by the live music sector—but there is a need for clarity on some of that. Today, Hireaband told me that it had reports of cancellations of ceilidh bands—such cancellations are obvious, because people cannot dance, and dancing is the purpose of a ceilidh band. However, confusion is being caused: bands do not know whether to take the cancellation fee or to take another date. It seems a little arbitrary. Wedding receptions are of course the main thing, but pubs and clubs that rely on live entertainment are also keen to have that back. A mechanism for reporting after 9 August would give some clarity, because the Government would be required to say what restrictions, if any, were left in place. Finally, nothing has been said about what the provisions will mean for nightclubs after 9 August. I hope that that issue can be included in the reporting procedure. England, Northern Ireland and Wales have mentioned nightclubs in their statements, but Scotland has not.

What do the restrictions mean for live music venues and promoters? I believe that reporting on the restrictions will give some clarity to the live music sector, which it really needs. It would focus the Government’s mind on some things that it has perhaps not thought about and which are important to the sector. I move amendment 25. I rise briefly to support Pauline McNeill’s amendment. I think that it offers some hope to the sector and a signal that the Parliament finally has the wedding industry at the centre of its attention. Thousands of couples across Scotland have had the best day of their lives deferred or cancelled—in some cases more than once, and often at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds—because of decisions by the Parliament and the Government. It is only fair to adopt a reporting duty, as Pauline McNeill’s amendment prescribes. If we do that, not only will we send a very important signal, but it will concentrate the minds of the ministers who are responsible for coming to those decisions.

In that way, in situations such as we had last week, when much of Scotland expected to go down to level 1 but was kept in level 2 and, at a stroke, we had to halve the number of wedding guests at many weddings around the country, such things will be considered and there will be reporting to the Parliament. Scottish Liberal Democrat members are therefore happy to support Pauline McNeill’s amendment. I am grateful to Pauline McNeill for lodging amendment 25—well, I do not know that I am grateful, because this is a very challenging part of the debate. I accept that the issues that Pauline McNeill raised, whether on weddings or on the impact on the live music sector or venues as a whole, are of significance. This morning, I had a very helpful conversation with representatives of the Glasgow city centre task force, on which many live music venues are represented. A number of the points that Pauline McNeill made were raised during that discussion.

The concern that somehow those issues are not on the Government’s agenda is not, I assure Pauline McNeill, valid. The Government has wrestled with those questions, because none of us wants to have to disrupt or delay the life plans of individuals at such important moments in their lives. However, clinical advice and guidance inform our decisions. Yesterday, the First Minister set out our hope, subject to continued progress and the meeting of the caveats that we have set out, that the current requirements for 1m physical distancing will end once the country goes into level 0. Beyond that, we will remove all restrictions. There is therefore a clear pathway for the sector, so that it can understand the changes that are going to be made. We are allowing live entertainment at weddings from 28 June. On the type of specific additional circumstance that Pauline McNeill raised, if she writes to me I will happily consider what can be done in such circumstances. I am trying to get as much clarity as possible, and I appreciate that there is a lot to consider.

Does what the cabinet secretary said mean that, after 9 August, live music can be played without restrictions in pub venues, for example, as well as at weddings? It looks like that to me. It would be good to get the clarity that we did not get yesterday. The short answer to Pauline McNeill is yes, but there will be other considerations: mitigating measures such as ventilation and wider hygiene requirements might well go with such an approach. I do not want to give a signal that we are going back to a pre-Covid situation, with absolutely no wider considerations; there will be conditions that have to apply. I discussed such issues at length with the Glasgow city centre task force this morning. Over the next few weeks, we must go through some detailed dialogue with the live music sector and the wedding industry, to make sure that we cover off all the issues that need to be covered off.

I assure Pauline McNeill that that will be done in dialogue with the sector. On that basis, I ask Pauline McNeill not to press amendment 25. I will reflect on her proposal—amendment 25 is one of the amendments on reporting requirements on which I have agreed to reflect. I do not think that the issues that she wants resolved need legislation; what is needed is for us to respond constructively to the legitimate issues that she has raised.

I undertake to do that in preparation for the stage 3 debate tomorrow. There will be on-going dialogue with the sector, and I confirm that the Government will engage constructively in that dialogue in the weeks to come. I call Pauline McNeill to wind up and to press or withdraw amendment 25. I welcome what the cabinet secretary has said. As I said, I am trying to get some clarity. The cabinet secretary knows, because there was a meeting with the wedding sector yesterday, that that sector and the wider night-time economy and hospitality sector have felt that engagement could have been a lot better. Perhaps we are making important progress. I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on what I have been trying to achieve. There would be no harm in allowing some reporting. Mitigation measures make sense and would be expected. Let me reiterate two points. First, the Government is actively engaging with the wider sector.

My colleagues have done a lot of work to engage with sectors over the Covid period and I, with my new responsibilities, give an absolute assurance that that will be the case across all the areas that we are talking about. Secondly, the reporting requirements on which I will reflect in preparation for stage 3 are designed to ensure that Parliament receives proper and full reports on all aspects of the application of the legislation, and Pauline McNeill’s proposal can feature in that regard. I acknowledge that, but I again ask the cabinet secretary to acknowledge that the sector has been critical, albeit at a time when the issues were outwith his responsibilities. I just want to push the Government to engage with the wider hospitality sector—it is a diverse sector and includes live music, with all the risks that are attached to that—to ensure that we have the closest engagement and the greatest clarity as we ease restrictions.

On that basis, I will not press amendment 25. I call Paul Sweeney to move or not move amendment 26, which was debated with amendment 14. In the light of the Government’s commitment to bring forward amendments at stage 3, I will not move amendment 26, but I reserve the right to bring the amendment back if those amendments are not sufficient. I call Pam Duncan-Glancy to move or not move amendment 28, which was already debated with amendment 17. On the basis of the cabinet secretary’s commitment to report, I will not move the amendment. Similarly, I will not move amendment 29.

I will not move amendment 30. I thank members for their support for that amendment. That ends stage 2 consideration of the bill and concludes the meeting of the Committee of the Whole Parliament. I close this meeting. There will now be a very short suspension.

.

As found on YouTube

In July 2014 Adelaide City Council embarked
upon a mission to ask the Adelaide community about what they wanted for the future of
their city. Stories were collected, forums were held and we listened to what you
love about this great city and how you want it to grow and to change as well as
what we must protect and hold onto. Now everything we have heard has been
directly applied to shaping our new Strategic Plan which sets out our vision
for the future of our city. The 2016 to 2020 Strategic Plan is
our vision for Adelaide's growth story whereby Adelaide becomes a smart, green,
liveable and boutique city full of rich experiences. We want to build upon our
city's rich character and heritage. All the things we love about Adelaide but we
also want to see the City of Adelaide thrive and prosper in the future. This Strategic Plan is supported by four key themes: Smart, Green, Liveable and Creative.

Smart is about being a world smart city with a globally connected and
opportunity rich economy. One example of this will be the implementation of smart parking technology to move towards an expiation free environment. Green is about being one of the world's first carbon-neutral cities and being an
international leader in environmental change. One of the things we will do to
achieve this is to form the Carbon Neutral Adelaide Partnership with the State
Government.

Liveable is about creating a diverse and welcoming capital city with an enviable lifestyle and strong community. One way we'll achieve this is
by delivering a three-year capital works program to create world-class
infrastructure for the city and for the Park Lands. And Creative is all about
offering a city of authentic and internationally renowned experiences.
A key example of this will be attracting a major international event
and a live music festival to Adelaide in our winter months. We want to know if this is the exciting future that you want for your city.

As found on YouTube

JAKE ARCHIBALD: Hello
everyone. Welcome to the Offline panel. Most of us, as web
developers, we– I think I was about to say that
we declare game over when there's no network connection
available or when it's faulty. But if we want to compete with
the cream of native apps, then having the network as
a dependency is simply not good enough. But the five brave souls in
front of you today, they laugh in the face of zero bars
of connectivity.

And they do not want your wallet
to be drained when you are roaming. And they do not want to give up
on you when your ISP has. We have Matt Andrews from the
"Financial Times." You've got Craig Cavalier from
Liquid Frameworks. And we've got Calvin Spealman
from Caktus Consulting. These guys have been building
stuff with the current crop of inadequate APIs that
we have on the web. But they have suffered
through that. So give them a hug afterwards,
because they've been damaged by that. But we also have Anne van
Kesteren from Mozilla and Alex Russell from Google.

And these guys have been working
on the future APIs that are going to solve all
of our worldly problems. Is that fair to say? Yeah? OK. That's good. So we're hoping that in the
future, making a site work offline is not going to be an
act of self flagellation. And on that note, Alex, I
believe you're going to introduce a topic. Are you good to go? ALEX RUSSELL: Sure. [LAUGHTER] ALEX RUSSELL: As Jake
says, I'm Alex. Do we have slides? Did I fail at this
miserably again? I'm so good at this. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So yeah, we've
changed the name of the new stuff a couple of
times recently. It kind of started off as
Navigation Controller, but it's been expanded. It spent a little bit of
time as Event Worker. And now it's Service Worker. But it has been pointed out by
Lady Ada King on Twitter that Service Worker does sound
somewhat like the oldest profession in the world. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: So
I don't know. We kind of thought, maybe,
Service Controller. But does that sound
like a pimp? I don't know.

But an app pimp, that's
pretty cool. We all want to use
an app pimp. So maybe we'll go with
that, pimp our apps. That could be cool. So, yeah. We're going to have to find a
name for it that doesn't evoke that kind of negative thing. But how are you doing, Alex? Because I'm running
out of filler. ALEX RUSSELL: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: Is it because
it doesn't work offline? Is that your problem? [LAUGHTER] ALEX RUSSELL: That might
actually be it. Yeah. So as Jake says, I am Alex. And I am re-scaling the
slides as we speak. So I spend a lot of
time offline. I most recently lived in London
before I returned to San Francisco. And they did something in the
tube for the Olympics where they said they were going to
put Wi-Fi in all of the stations, which technically
speaking is accurate. They did happen to put Wi-Fi
transmitters and receivers in all of the stations. But one of my most frequent tube
journeys was to and from airports, because I spend a
lot of time in airplanes. And it always seemed really
punitive, because you would get to a station and for about
20 seconds, while people were loading and unloading, your
wireless Wi-Fi radio would be attempting to connect
frantically to the thing.

And you'd be trying to log in
a little bit so you can just download the next– no! Fuck! We're moving. [LAUGHTER] ALEX RUSSELL: So I got really
good at figuring out how to turn off the Wi-Fi in my device,
because the network just wasn't reliable. Even when I absolutely
wanted it– I wanted to see the news, I
wanted to get the latest "Times" or "Guardian,"
whatever it is. OK I've outed myself
as a lefty, fine. And the end of this journey, of
course, ends you up in an airport where you are at the
whim of whoever happens to have the crappy Wi-Fi in
whatever bit of hell you've ended yourself up in with a
captive portal and all the rest, right? So these are hostile network
environments.

And they mediate our lives. Like I think the work
environment and the home environment are special cases
of how we interact with the stuff around us. And it's in those environments–
the airport, the tube, the ones that are
really stressful where you're trying to get some place,
you've got a thing. Where the heck was I going? What's this thing I'm trying
to do right now? I don't remember. I look at my phone and ff– right? It's that environment that we,
as a technology stack, fail at miserably, largely because we
have built ourselves the assumption that what
is remote is cheap. Because everything
is remote, right? The web is designed around the
idea of the URL, the thing that is over there that's
cheap to do. And that little tiny anchor
tag makes it look like everything is connected to
you all the time, right? a href is the most innocent
thing you can possibly imagine.

And at the same time,
the implications of a href are massive. It says nothing about
whether or not you can get to the network. And the tube gives us a good
window into what it means to know whether or not you're
online, right? So we keep getting requests for
a bandwidth property in the browser, right? Tell me what my bandwidth is. Tell me what my available
bandwidth is. There's no way to
actually know. So if I show up at a conference
and there's a captive portal to go get me my
thing, my bandwidth to a thing which does nothing I want
might be infinite. Whereas, my bandwidth to all
of the services that I actually care about
might be negative. So we find ourselves in
this situation a lot. And it's very difficult, from
the browser's perspective, to say anything meaningful about
your connection, right? Saying something other than "I
can't do anything because there's no radio turned on
and it's not connected to anything" is a very difficult
call to make. So we've put ourselves in a
situation on the web where we've architected an entire
stack of stuff around the idea that the thing that's over there
is really cheap, or at least as cheap as everything
else is.

And the thing that's local
is unreliable, right? Caches are things that get
evicted, they're things that you can't trust, they're things
you can't rely on. And this isn't how we build
anything anywhere else, right? I would never build a
browser on top of this technology stack. And I don't mean that in the
sense that there are things that you can't do. I just mean that you would never
put up with the idea that the Close Tab icon
might be evicted. That's not a thing that you
would ever put up with. So let's think through
how we got here. So imagine a little website
that's a little tiny two-man agency, two-person agency,
two-alien agency, two beings.

And they're trying to put
together a website. And it's the simplest thing
that could possibly work. And if you deconstruct this
layout, it tells you everything you need
to know, right? This is really, really simple. This is static content
effectively. And it probably will
bit rot, right? They're probably not going to
change their team website if they're even moderately
successful because it will outstrip their ability to
actually build websites for themselves because they'll be
doing it for clients, right? OK. So this is going to be
effectively unmaintained. And if you look at how it's
built, you can sort of get a sense for what it takes to
get started on the web.

You have some resources, you
have some HTML files. And when you really start out,
it's copy and paste. If you're going to get advanced
from 1995, you'll eventually configure Apache to
do server side includes. And you'll change
these to .shtml. Thank you, very much. And you'll have your server
side includes for the navigations and the footers
at the top and the bottom. And you will have whacked
all that in. And so now we're starting to see
that there is a repeated bit of content around some
of the things that we're addressing with URLs. So I have a blog, right? Please don't read it. It will save you time
and embarrassment. But that blog is much more
sophisticated than that little tiny layout for a static
website, effectively, like a brochureware site, largely
because it's actually– the location of my domain,
infrequently.org, has nothing to do with an individual
bit of content.

It's not addressing some
bit of content. It's addressing a database
query, a reverse chronological order query across these
tables, right? And when we ship this stuff down
to the client, we don't ship those tables. We explode a bunch of
that stuff out. We denormalize it entirely,
serialize it through templates, and then
spit it all out. Right? But if you go look at any
individual article, it sort of corresponds to one item in
one of those tables. And then we take all the whole
machinery again, which is the shell around that little bit
of content that we're addressing with the URL, and
we explode it all out. And we ship this huge bundle
of content down, which effectively wraps the stuff.

And if you look at the
HTML, that's actually what happens, right? It's just document and then tons
and tons of stuff around it, and then this thing that
we were actually putting in the center of this template
thing, which is what the URL is kind of actually
pointing at. When we talk about meaningful
URLs, we tend to mean meaningful with regards to the
thing that's the primary thing you, as a user, would
focus on, right? It's a very subjective view,
because it's about what the user is experiencing about that location, about that state. So if we think about it like
what is the URL actually talking about, we start to get
this idea that we've done for a couple of decades now is to
take server side graphs of state and pre-explode them for
digestion by the client.

And that pre-explosion means
that HTML is something that's incredibly powerful and,
effectively, display-only. And it gets really confused, as
soon as you start talking about doing dynamic stuff. Because there's that big model
over on the server which is written in– at least in the case
of WordPress– it's PHP and MySQL. OK? These are two technologies
which, without extraordinary acts of inhuman and inhumane
technology, are not going to be running in my browser
anytime soon, right? I'm sure there's a ScummVM that
would run something like this, right? But today, we're
not doing that. And the latency characteristics
haven't been set up to do it. So let's imagine the next leap
from little, tiny brochureware thing to blog, which is
moderately complicated CMS, to the biggest thing that we can
think of that's still effectively static content,
infrequently updated static content. I submit Wikipedia. So the question becomes, if
you're building Wikipedia as an app, or if you're trying to
make it possible for me, while sitting on a tube, 20 seconds at
a time of connectivity, if I'm lucky, to go and read an
article and click on a link to go to the next article, what
is required for us to think about making that a meaningful
thing to do? It turns out the thing that you
really require is the help of the user.

Because it's not possible to
think through this whole system and say I'm going
to go grab all of it. Like my blog is relatively
small. You could maybe fetch it all. But you couldn't fetch
all of Wikipedia. I've tried this. Decompressing this takes about
20 minutes on an i7, a really ballsy laptop. Downloading it took a couple
of minutes too. So think about Gmail, right? What am I indexing when I
go to one of these URLs? Or when I go to a music site,
could I possibly download that entire library? My Gmail is really,
really full.

I don't want the entire
contents. In fact, I want some
subset of that. And I, as the user, am willing
to help you go figure out what that is. And as the atomic size of the
media gets bigger and the more of it that I've got, the more
that pressure builds up on us. We don't really have a way
of thinking about it. So the way I phrase this now is
that there's an application that you'd like to think about,
which is what helps the browser render content. And then there's content. And in the old days– quote, unquote "old days"– we try to conflate the two
as much as possible. We would smush the shell into
the content with server side includes and CGI, right? And as we get more sophisticated
and more dynamic, we have to serve the
shell and think about the shell differently
to the content.

They're different entities. So it turns out the offline
problem is actually about making applications that can
bootstrap themselves. It's not about this how do I
transparently turn the thing that I've got into that other
thing over there. It's about the data model
and where it's split. Who owns the data and
where does is live? Am I doing synchronization over
a thing that I've synced part of to the client? Or am I shipping a series
of pre-exploded pages? That's kind of the
core problem that we have with offline. So a Service Worker is an
attempt to get us through a couple of these problems, by
saying that we don't know the answer for your application. But what we do know is that
you don't have enough control right now. We spent a lot of time
looking through it. And basically, it's an
in-browser proxy that you can install from the perspective
of your origin.

And when you do, at some point
later, when it finishes installing, you'll get notified,
and the ability to proxy, do whatever you like
with the response, for any request those documents make. You get to own the request,
cross-domain, same origin, you name it. And it gives you programmatic
control over a series of caches as well. So it's relatively simple. You say, I would like
to register for one of these things. And it gives you
a promise back.

Yes, promises are coming
to the [? dome. ?] You can thank some
people later. And you can actually compose
stuff from third parties. You can pull in resources to use
with these cache objects. And then this addEventListener
for fetches actually gives you the ability to go and
construct– you see that e.respondWith(new
SameOriginResponse there toward the bottom? That's actually creating
a response out of whole cloth, right? You're just programmatically
saying, this is the content that you should send back
to this document, right? That's the idea. You've never been able
to do this before, except on the server. What if we could do this
on the client? And why can't we, by the way? You can imagine another
couple of ideas. I would like to, when
I'm offline, serve some fall back, right? Or if I've got pictures of cats
and I would like them to be responsive cats, I would
like you to, through some magical API, figure out what
we've already stored about the client, what we know, the device
pixel width, the aspect ratio that we probably are
displaying at, the kinds of things that a document could
tell us while it's populating the Service Worker.

And then have the Service
Worker respond with the correct one, as opposed to
trying to figure it all out preemptively up front
and make CSS do the heavy lifting for us. All right. I'm actually getting
to the end. So there are a bunch of big
implications for this design. What does it mean to have real
URLs in these applications, when we think of a shell
that boots up but then mediates content? What does the URL mean? It means something that's
interpreted by the shell. Can we build transparent
caching proxies? The answer is yes. It's the simplest thing
to possibly do. You actually just populate a new
thing in this cache object every time you get a request. And then suddenly, things
mostly work offline. Is that good? Is that bad? We're not sure yet. We don't know. And we don't really have good synchronization technology today. There's some work happening. I know the media guys are
spending a lot of time on operational transform.

And the Ember guys are
looking at it. But synchronization technology
is not our lingua franca. This is not how we have
thought about building the web. And it's the sort of thing that
we're going to have to get good at, if we really bite
off this idea of building applications that are shells
that boot up to mediate content, and not simply
documents which happen to be fully formed things sprung
from the head of Zeus. So there's a bunch of
open questions. And I guess it's time for
us talk about it. JAKE ARCHIBALD: And Alex
is out of time. Thank you, very much. Good boy. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] JAKE ARCHIBALD: No, the
underground example is a very good one. When I was building lanyards,
the underground was the most convenient place to go and
test a real world offline situation, because turning some
things onto airplane mode is not quite sufficient.

But I remember though, it was
with like five mobile phones. And one of the staff came up to
me and he just stood there staring at me. And I looked behind me. And I was standing in front of
a poster which essentially said, if you see someone with
more than one mobile phone, they're probably a terrorist and
you should deal with them. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: So first off,
before we go to the first question, did any of the
panelists have anything to say about what Alex was talking
about there in the intro? CALVIN SPEALMAN: I had just
one comment which is, I do wonder how many people working
on the Service Navigator Controller– whatever the eventual name is–
how many are the same people who built Google Gears,
which I think had almost exactly the same mechanism for
dealing with offline, just in sort of a proxy, into
the browser? Is there a connection there? ALEX RUSSELL: So it's
a good question.

So Michael Nordman was
on the Gears team. And he's one of the people who's
helping us implement the Service Worker. We've tried at least
twice before– from the Chrome prospective,
before there was Chrome, it was Gears, and then inside
of Chrome with the application cache– to give you tools to make
things work offline. And we have failed
miserably twice. And Gears wasn't what
you thought it was. So if you go back and you pull
the documentation out of the internet archive, what
you'll find is that Gears has a thing called– oh, what was it? JAKE ARCHIBALD: Local
Server, isn't it? ALEX RUSSELL: Yeah,
Local Server. And the Local Server wasn't a
server that you could script. You couldn't ever give it a bit
of code and say, please go run this whenever I request
a resource. That never happened in Gears. You could give it a manifest, a
declarative format, which is exactly what we did in the
application cache too. And in both cases, they were,
I think, like Jake put it at Edge in London, like playing a
game where you can see the effects of what you're doing a
couple of turns later, but you can't actually control
any of it.

And as a result, we don't have
a lot of data about what you actually need. We've never given you the
primitives that you need to go build the stuff you want and
evolve and iterate on that. And I think there just hasn't
been a lot of exploration, because it takes a
lot to get going. And there hasn't been
the ability to explore these patterns. JAKE ARCHIBALD: I think Gears
was essentially the precursor to Appcache, rather than
the precursor to this thing we have now. I think we should go to the
first question and, if I'm reading right, documents. It's from some chap called
Andrew Betts. Never heard of him. Where are you, Andrew? Can someone get Andrew
a microphone? There he is. [INAUDIBLE] ANDREW BETTS: OK. Currently offline data may be
evicted at any time by the user agent. Can we have storage persistence
guarantees, or at least provide hints to the
user agent to tell it to prioritize AppLogic
over content data? JAKE ARCHIBALD: Yes.

This is a very interesting
question, because the whole thing about using
it in airports. If we make a guarantee that yes,
as a user, your data of when your flight is going to
be will be available to you offline, the spec does
not currently let us make that guarantee. It can chuck all of the data
under a bus whenever it feels like it. CRAIG CAVALIER: This
is really important for us, as a business. To give a bit of background, I
work with field engineers. And they work on
oil refineries. And they write up their
invoices and their equipment tracking.

We can't have their data just
disappearing on them as they're writing up these
new invoices. We don't want to
lose that data. So that's a really important
problem for us that we need to solve. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Is this a
problem that you actually encountered in the "FT"? Or is this a problem you
encountered, data disappearing like that? Or is it just a theoretical
problem? CRAIG CAVALIER: It's a
theoretical problem, at this point for us. MATT ANDREWS: We have real
experience in this, particularly– I can't say this on record? Ah, dammit. iOS 5, we suspect strongly that,
occasionally, it wiped our apps in certain
situations. But not sure. Can't prove it. But we have strong suspicions. [LAUGHTER] CALVIN SPEALMAN: I'd like to
add that, I think, the most important aspect of this is how
the user understands where the data is and when the
browser may evict it.

We can't tell the browser that
they can ever evict something. Only users should be
able to say that. We have ways of installing an
app in an implicit way that the user is invisible to. And the data should
be tied to that. So the user might say, this is
an app I want to keep around. And therefore, they're opting-in
to keep that data. And then it would be
safe to not evict. So I think the bigger problem
here is not so much the APIs we have, but the way
that the browser presents that to the user. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So to say that
the user has to be responsible for the removing of data, they
have to be responsible for the adding of the data as well.

CALVIN SPEALMAN: Yeah. And if the user hasn't said,
I want this app to stay available and its data to
stay available, then it's safe to evict. And so they need to
opt-in to this. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So, Alex? I'm looking at the wrong
one when I say that. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: So we've
been looking into this for Firefox OS as well, because the
problem comes up there as well for apps. And it's really hard, because
once you get to persistence it mostly becomes a UX problem. So we have this sort of concept
of you have temporary storage which we just
grant to everyone. We'll just grant you a slice
and you can use it. And the other concept would
be persistent storage. But that is much harder, because
the user sort of has to be aware of it. But then most users are not
really aware of storage and how that is allocated through
apps and how that works across their device.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: It's not
a problem on the phone though, right? Because if my phone tells me I'm
low on space, I can go to the apps menu and it says, oh,
this game you don't care about is using 200 megabytes. And this thing you really care
about is using less than that. So I can throw one of
them out the window. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: Right.

Yeah. So I think we have to evolve
it into that direction. Yeah. But the thing is do you ask
the user right up front? And which apps do
you grant space? Or do all apps have to ask for
persistent storage or not? Whenever you hit the UX side of
things with standards, it becomes a lot harder
to get things done. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Is there an API
or a standard that this kind of work fits in? Is it the Quota API? Is that the plan? ALEX RUSSELL: Yeah. So there is a Quota API. And it does have this idea
of persistent storage and ephemeral storage. And right now, persistent
storage is only available in Chrome for certain file
system calls.

You can't, in a granular way,
opt some bit of your cookies and your local storage and your
IndexedDB into persistent storage and then say,
this other stuff I don't really need. And there's no clear way, in
the UX, to communicate to users about what
they're doing. It feels to me, like Anne was
saying, there's a very clear missing moment of intent where
you give users the power to say no, I really want
to keep this thing. I like this a lot. I would like to get back
to this easily.

I would like to bless it with
the ability to keep all of its data around. And we don't have
that moment yet. We are missing what is,
effectively, a very small manifest and then some
UI to let users say, yeah, I like this. I want to keep this. And once users have said they
like it, I don't see why we should ever be second
guessing them. I mean, I trust myself to be
mediating the content of my phone in a lot of
cases, right? And in many cases that means
throwing out an application. And I like doing that– not like getting so annoyed
by an application that I uninstall it.

But I like the ability to do
that and reason about that at that level. MATT ANDREWS: Don't we sort of
have this already with web apps on iOS, where you add the
web app to your home screen? So that's kind of similar to
saying, I want to keep this app around. I know Firefox, as well, I
think, it asks you, when you load the web page in Appcache,
whether you want it to stay around offline. And you can say no, and
the website will continue being a website. Isn't that equivalent? ALEX RUSSELL: Yeah. I think that's a great point. And I think that's kind of the
direction that we all need to figure out a way to get to. And someone asked about
the Quota API. The Quota API is probably
something that we definitely need to integrate into the
Service Worker design.

We've talked to the folks who
are in charge of the Quota API about this. Because it should also be the
case that, when applications get under pressure, you should
be able to give an application the ability to say, hey,
I'm about to ask you for this much storage. You need to figure out where
it's going to come from. And if you don't do that, maybe
we evict you entirely. But one of the nice bits about
the Service Worker design versus the HTTP cache
today is that it's not HTTP cache, right? Once resources are there, unless
you pull them out, they're there for the lifetime
of the thing. It'll get evicted as a bundle. But it's up to you, as an
application, to make smart decisions about what
you prioritize. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: Yeah. And it's a little bit harder. Like you can put it on the home
screen, but it doesn't mean how much storage were
you granted then. Like it might need 2 gigabytes,
it might need 4, it might need most of
your hard drive.

And is the user comfortable
with that? Does the user even know
what that means? MATT ANDREWS: One of the other
problems we had when we were developing the HTML app for "The
Economist" was, in IE10, you can actually configure
exactly how much space you can give to your web apps. You can make that
one megabyte. So for us, that's far,
far not enough. So we have to detect how
much space we have. So I think too much control
can also be a bad thing, quite limiting. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So if you did
this installable app thing, is that going to replace the number
of toolbars we get for each permission? What's that going to
replace it with? Are we going to get this
Android solution where, upfront, you get the list of
permissions, and you just ignore it and click next? Is that the kind of model that
we see working on the web? [LAUGHTER] ALEX RUSSELL: If I had my
druthers, it would be a system where the user can always
say no, right? And to the extent that they've
said yes, they've said yes.

But they can change
their mind later. So the Android model of a bundle
of permissions which can't be split apart from each
other implies APIs that aren't allowed to fail, right? There's only a return true. There's never some sort
of a failure case. And I think the web has gotten
a long way on the basis of APIs that can fail. Like that's how we adapt,
is the ability for the environment to just not be
there, or for feature detection to help us understand
and live within the contours of whatever
the runtime is. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So I think it's
about time we moved on to the next question. And this one's from
Natasha Rooney. So if we can get Natasha
a microphone? NATASHA ROONEY: Hi. Thank you, very much. So should network information
APIs be extended to include triggers for a user having less
than optimal connection speeds and not just offline
or online triggers? Could this help developer's
courage for content caching? JAKE ARCHIBALD: So this is a
question that came up at the last Edge Conf.

And this was voted up quite
high in the moderator. But I also had some people
coming up to me and saying, this just really went on too
long and was really boring at the last Edge Conf, this kind
of debate, whether we should be offering developer
information about the connection speed. So as a compromise, I'd like
each of the panelists to answer the question, making
only a sound. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: So in a sound,
should the developer be given details on the current
connection speed? ALEX RUSSELL: Neh. CRAIG CAVALIER: It doesn't
bother me. JAKE ARCHIBALD: That's
not a sound. You can leave now. MATT ANDREWS: [INAUDIBLE]. JAKE ARCHIBALD: That's
not a sound. CALVIN SPEALMAN: Eh? ANNE VAN KESTEREN: Eh. JAKE ARCHIBALD: OK. That's a good percentage of
the panelists kind of, eh. But we should have a serious
discussion about the– we've got these online, offline
event triggers.

And so how should we be
using them to make something work offline? Should we build, assuming the
network is there, and then fall back using this method? Or should we build, assume
offline is there? And you had an example, Alex,
with using offline detection. ALEX RUSSELL: The online
thing is a lie. I think that's really what
it boils down to. It's a dirty, nasty,
terrible lie.

And the only thing that you'll
ever be able to do that's meaningful is to ping
your service, right? You'll be able to send a request
out to your service. And if you get a response back
under deadline– like let's say you've got a performance
guarantee that you need to meet. And you get a response
back under deadline from your service. Great. So it's over HTTPS. It's from your service. Things look legit. Any other case is failure. But it's just a giant panoply
of potential failure cases that would all be online under
some strict definition of I connected to the radio, and
I got a TCP [? socket ?] warmed up. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: Craig,
Calvin, did you use the .online in anything
you're doing? Or did you want that
kind of extra detection around the network? CRAIG CAVALIER: We've made use
of the online and offline. We don't have so many
requirements for the gray area of not having a decent
amount of connection.

So for us, we tell the user
whether they can sync or not, based on whether they have
this online or offline. But as he said, in a lot
of cases, online is a bit of a lie. But for our users, when they
have a connection, they have a connection. And it's often that they've
come back off of a rig and they're at a hotel and
they're making use of the connection there. So for us, just having the
yes and no is enough. JAKE ARCHIBALD: I think we'll
take a question from the audience from [? Shavasse? ?] ANNE VAN KESTEREN: Just to add,
I think it will also get easier, once browser's and
OSes get more capable at detecting captive portals. And I know, like Mozilla, we're
going to add this to Firefox, in case the OS falls
through and figuring out if you're in a captive portal. And then tell the web pages
they're offline and not give them a false impression
and stuff. [? SHAVASSE: ?] When caching AppLogic rather
than content, is there a way to cache free JITed code, A, so
that you don't need a JIT for faster startup, and B, as
JITers gets more intelligent, so that you can reuse what the
JITer learned about how your app behaved for the last five
hours of usage, both for offline and for online scenarios
as a faster startup.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: Does anyone
want to take that? CALVIN SPEALMAN: No. That actually was an issue that
came up, I know, in the assembly dot js project. There is a very bad problem
there with the time it takes to compile especially
large demos even. The actual function, parsing,
compiling is all synchronous in blocking. So that's the issue that came
up there, not necessarily being offline or reused, but
just the time it takes and could it be asynchronous. And so I know from that that,
right now, the only thing is parsing it from the
raw JavaScript and compiling it at the time. It would be, I think, a really
important thing to look into, if they're going to look into
asynchronous API, to also have a way to then reuse
that result. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So back onto
the kind of network state stuff, if I'm asking the
browser, am I online? It's going to say, yes. And what we're going to end up
with is it could just have one bar or a kind of intermittent
bar of data, which eventually is just going to take five
minutes to try getting something from the network
and then ultimately fail.

Anne, is that something that
is solvable as a problem? ANNE VAN KESTEREN: That might be
harder, the case where the captive portal gives
you a timeout. But you would have to do
periodic checks or something like that. Yeah. I think it might be there
forever, until captive portals actually start returning
different status codes. Like there is some kind of RFC
that makes captive portals actually part of the network
stack, instead of just a hack. You would still have some logic
in your application that detects it as well. Yeah. It's hard to get away from,
given the legacy. MATT ANDREWS: I think a more
analog kind of quality of connection over the past
X period of time will be more useful. But really, I think, most of
the time, as long as you're implementing error callbacks,
you can always try and fail gracefully or offer something to
a user first and then fall back to something else. I think that's a much
better pattern. JAKE ARCHIBALD: I think
we've got a follow-up question from Natasha. NATASHA ROONEY: Yeah. Sorry. Ooh. Gosh. So just to give a proper use
case from the reason why I asked a particular question
which might be able to help, [INAUDIBLE] subscription models
is probably the best one to go on, which I know is
important for any publications like "FT" and other
such newspapers.

What if a user who was on a
subscription method and that meant that they kept out– say they read 10 articles. They read that on the tube– which I'm also a tube user– so they will read that
on the tube. They consume that. And then they violate
their subscription. They've gone over, right? So they shouldn't be able
to read any more. So some trigger has to happen
at some point for it to go back to the server to
say this user has gone over their limit.

Don't give them any more. So my real idea is trying to
understand how that can happen, because that
has massive implications for some markets. Like I'm talking videos, as
well as publications. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So this is
offering the user a different experience, if they are on
some kind of metered connection where it's going to
disappear after a certain points, or potentially bring
a financial situation. Does the phone even know if the
user is in that situation? CRAIG CAVALIER: A lot of times
I've found that it's not necessarily the technology that
has to care about that. There's usually a business
process around this. So for instance, if you're in a
banking system, you're going to a cash point and you
withdraw some cash.

If your spouse has gone to
another cash point and withdrawn that amount as well
and that would take you over your overdraft, they've
got this concept of overdraft in banking. So they've got a set way
of handling that. And usually in these business
scenarios, there are business processes for handling
those cases. So for instance, in the case of
your videos, I've watched a couple of videos offline.

Someone else has used
my account to watch a few more offline. Then there must be some kind of
consolidation, some kind of process to pick up those pieces
and then trace that back to the billing. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Are we
collectively happy with a mobile site or app sending
us into our overdraft? ANNE VAN KESTEREN: I think we're
collectively unhappy about that even being
a possibility. Like the whole bandwidth cap
thing is like bullshit and should be gone at some point. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Well, I've been
in situations where my phone knows that I'm roaming. But I've actually managed to get
a deal with the provider where I essentially have the
same quality and amount of data that I have at home.

I guess if an app at this point
was to serve me lower quality content, I'd be a
bit annoyed about that. I'm being treated as a second
class citizen when I'm not in that situation. So I mean, is this going to be
a site per site option to say can you be easy on the data? Or should sites just be doing
easy on data by default? ALEX RUSSELL: I think there was
a billing issue, not so much about the data that Natasha
was bringing up. But there's some
non-packet-based metric for use, right? So the question I always
ask is, what is a Wikipedia article? Is it the text? Is it the history? Is it all the images that
are part of it? Is it the set of things
that it's linked to? Is it the URL? It's actually probably a
bundle of actual binary resources and then some
ephemeral metadata around it. And so you're talking about
consuming one of those at a time, right? So if I'm on "FT" or the "New
York Times," or whatever, and I'm clicking through, how
do I get to my limit? And then how do I
enforce that? Not to go design a solution for
enforcement for anybody, but you can imagine a relatively
straightforward sort of soft landing for users
where there's a bit of code on the client that's watching usage
and then it attempts to enforce some soft limit with a
cap, with one or two extra.

And then at some point later,
if you haven't synced in N number of days, then maybe the
content becomes inaccessible. I mean, those are the sorts of
solutions that folks who have to implement DRM are doing
today for things like my [INAUDIBLE] offline data, right? You have to show that you're
willing to be part of the ecosystem for some period of
time, otherwise the device itself decides to
stop playing. JAKE ARCHIBALD: I think
we'll take another question from the audience. Henrik, where abouts are you? Get that man a microphone. Just throw it. ALEX RUSSELL: That's a good
question, [INAUDIBLE] microphone. HENRIK : So this is back at
the permission model.

It seems like, at the point
you're going offline, you're making a fundamentally
different type of app than a website. There's a distinction
between a site and a website at that point. It's very clearly an app. And you're talking
about requesting permission for storage. But also, that's a perfect time
to ask for permission for other things as well. So there's this whole
installable model that you're seeing a little bit in
Android and Chrome installed apps as well. Is there standards efforts to
really unify that experience? Like for example, if I'm going
to do video conferencing, why shouldn't I be able to ask for
that upfront as a mandatory requirement? And if they say no,
then sorry, I can't install the app. I mean, whatever. I mean, that's just
an example. But unifying that, standardizing
that process, and seeing that as the
permission point where you ask for everything that you need. JAKE ARCHIBALD: I feel like I
could sink the rest of the panel into a discussion of do
apps actually exist as a term? Or is it just a bit of marketing
fluff like web 2.0? MATT ANDREWS: Let's
not go there.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: But we're
not going to go there. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: I feel
Alex already answered his question earlier. Like he said, on the web you
want to feel gracefully for each of the things. So you don't want to bundle and
then get the user to give up his location data, all his
storage, and all those things. You want to let the user be in
control, which sort of argues in the way of doing a
per feature grant. HENRIK: Yeah. But isn't that always going
to make you a second-class citizen to the installed app? ALEX RUSSELL: I don't
think so.

So just to answer directly, I
don't think that makes you a second-class citizen to the
installed applications for a couple of reasons. One, it leaves it up to the
system to mediate the length and breadth of that
grant, right? So you can imagine that iOS
versus Android running the same application. As long as the API is the same,
they can make different choices about how often to
prompt someone about a thing. Secondly, you can imagine this
being a consent and review kind of a system where users
are always able to see the list of permissions that are
currently granted to do a thing, and maybe choose to give
it forever and/or revoke it entirely. And as long as the API allows
revocation to happen– you say you demand this thing,
well, I think it's not reasonable to demand a thing
at install time. I think it's reasonable to try
to explain that behavior in context of use, right? I click on a link to go do
a thing and you say no? OK, great. I did a thing and then we had
a conversation about it.

And then you can tell me
why you need me to do that thing for you. It's not fool proof. And it may train users
the wrong way. But it's at least a start at
having a conversation about why you want permissions. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: I can maybe
see in a way how it's second-class from a developer's
perspective. But I think, from a user's
perspective, it's a way better deal. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Can we get the
microphone to Kyle Simpson for the next question? But first, Matt, you with the
"Financial Times." taking that stuff offline, some of
that stuff was quite heavy due to imagery? MATT ANDREWS: Yeah. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Did you
deal with that in any particular way? Did you ask the user within your
app before doing that? MATT ANDREWS: So when you
first laid out the app, originally, it was
designed for iOS. And their limitation in iOS is
you can have 5 megabytes of [INAUDIBLE] storage without permission.

So we first gave them 5
megabytes of data, which is they ask for it, basically. And then, once they've used the
app a bit or it pinches their home screen and actually
using it properly, we then ask for more. So I think you can definitely
design your applications so that you have a set number of
mandatory requirements, and then you add things on. It starts off as a website. You can always fall back
to being a website. All this stuff is extra. JAKE ARCHIBALD: I've just caught
myself on the screen looking like I'm advertising
the thing I'm drinking. So I'm going to balance it out
by saying it's actually quite disgusting. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: We've got a
question now from Kyle. Ah. Kyle's over there. KYLE SIMPSON: So usually, I am
the one who's screaming for more APIs, more functionality
to be given to us.

But I'm going to flip the table
here and say, going with the theme that browsers are
generally better at a lot of these tasks, as a developer of
apps and sites, one thing I'd really not like to deal
with is the idea of online and offline. So one idea that I would just
want to bounce and see if you think would be possible. We've talked a lot about
persisting the actual app, the files that make the app run. But what about all the
network requests? Could the browser proxy the
requests that I'm making for me, and then, when I come back
online, prompt me and say, do you want to still send
these tweets? Do you want to still
send these emails? Because you requested that
a few minutes ago. That way I, as an app developer,
don't have to think about those details. I just make the app, assume
online, and let the browser take care of it. CALVIN SPEALMAN: I think,
actually, there's two areas there that need to be addressed
differently, which is things and things you do,
keeping the data locally first and allowing synchronization
to happen separate from your app.

For example, CouchDB has a
PouchDB layer that will be implemented inside
the browser. And you have all your
local data. And the synchronization happens
as a separate process. Synchronizing API calls like
tweets and things, I don't think it makes sense to do
separately or to queue up in the background, because the user
needs to know that that hasn't happened yet. You can't just make the tweet
and say here's my API call. I hope the browser did it
sometime later, maybe. You have to tell the browser
or the browser user, this hasn't sent yet. This hasn't completed. They have to know
what's going on. ALEX RUSSELL: There's a related
issue, which is what does it mean to get success
back from an API? Like if I get a 200 response
and the return content is error, how do I cut the browser
into the conversation so that it retries? KYLE SIMPSON: So I was under the
assumption that a browser knows that it doesn't
have connectivity. It tries to talk to the radio
and the radio doesn't give it any sort of response back.

But also there's plenty of UIs
that we do this already. Like when I'm downloading files,
there's UIs that tell me the status of my downloads
and let me unpause it. So I don't understand why the
same sort of API couldn't present to me, the user,
that here is the requests that I've made. And I want to say, yes, these
are OK to make, now that you're back online, no, that
tweet is not one I want to send out, or whatever.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: It sounds like
the difference between adaptive requests and predictive
requests, in terms of what we expect to get
from the network. Is that something that
comes into this? Are we going to have
APIs around that? ALEX RUSSELL: I think there's
a fundamental difference between the download case that
you just tried to outline and these other cases, which is
that, in the download case, we're talking in terms of a
single resource that the browser knows everything
about. The browser knows the entire
protocol for downloading a file, right? And in fact, it's the thing
giving you the UI for downloading the file. This is a situation in which
were asking the browser to coordinate with the application
that it's hosting to talk about mediating
that conversation about content, right? It's running the application
and then saying, hey application, you're
doing stuff.

The user intends
to do a thing. You're going to tell me what
that thing is and then tell me how that relates to the
rest of the world. And we don't have any higher
level semantic equivalence. There's no way to tell the
browser, oh, this thing is sending a tweet. Processors don't know
what tweets are. These are just different
data types. One of them is a composite
data type and one of them is a primitive. And browsers are OK at
primitives they understand. But when it comes to composites,
we have to give applications control. JAKE ARCHIBALD: I think
we're going to move on to the next topic. The next question is
from Nick Molnar. Whereabouts are you hiding? Over there. Get a microphone over here? MALE SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE]. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Oh. That's good. Someone was just going
to the toilet. I thought they were
asking a question. Never mind. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: Should ask them
them a question anyway. CALVIN SPEALMAN: That's
a bad omen. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Serve them
right for getting up.

NICK MOLNAR: All right. So users only expect offline
behavior from apps downloaded from their app store. Will initiatives like iOS's
Startup image and Touch icon ever be expanded to include a
full metadata set suitable for web apps to finally be included
in app stores? JAKE ARCHIBALD: I think this is
a very important question because, even if we solve all
the API issues, we still have that user expectation that they
do not think they can go into the browser, type in a URL
and expect it to work when they know they have
no connectivity.

So the guys have been building
stuff using the current set of APIs. What would you do to let the
user know that, yeah, this is going to work? CALVIN SPEALMAN: Well, I first
started looking at these offline apps in Firefox 3. So my choice then was I'm just
not going to use this, because there's no solution. And the point of that was,
it's been a long time. We should have solved
this by now. We do have a mechanism for our
users to keep the access to an app or a website and to indicate
to the browser that it's important to them and to
remember to come back to it. It's the bookmark. And we have this one
that's barely used. And it makes a lot of sense
to connect that into the permissions, into quotas, into
all these things that we need to remember about a website.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: So Craig, you
built a specialized app for a particular set of people. How did you communicate to them
that, although this is a browser, this is going
to work, this is going to work for you? CRAIG CAVALIER: We go about this
in different approaches, depending on the different
requirements for hardware. So one of the nice things about
iOS is you can add apps to your home screen. And that becomes kind
of difficult in some of the other browsers. I think you can add to
a home screen in other browsers as well. Yeah. It's a bit shaky. So yeah, it would be nice if
there was some way of saying, hey, I want to be able
to install this. I know Firefox have made some
progress in that direction with the manifest file. So you can specify things that
your application needs when you install. I think having some
standardization around those kind of processes is going
to help companies like us make that work. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So Matt, your
site was open to all users. You had to explain to them
that this was possible.

How do you do that? MATT ANDREWS: Well iOS,
like you say, is easy. The rest of them,
we just don't. And unfortunately, this is one
of the reasons why we don't see that many users on Chrome
for Android, even though the app works absolutely
brilliantly on it. And the Chrome Web Store– you
said there was two ways of making web apps work offline,
the Google Gaze and Appcache.

Chrome Web Store offers an
alternative approach. And you can use that to get
your App icon on the [INAUDIBLE] menu. And I think that would be really
nice to make that more open and accessible
to other places. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Well, now is
there anything in the spec that's going to make
this better? Or how can we communicate this
better to users, that the web will work offline? ANNE VAN KESTEREN: So we've been
looking into the manifest thing and making that better. But I think a lot of the
standards, how they evolve, is like in small, incremental
steps.

So first, we need to
solve this offline thing and get it right. And then people can start
building apps. And then we can start thinking
about how to improve bookmarks, to make
that work better. And then, long-term, hopefully,
we can obsolete the concept of app stores entirely,
because you can just browse the web and bookmark
things to your home screen and no longer need those. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Can we get this
right, before we have the mechanism for users to
realize it works? Because we don't know we've got
it right, until we've got users using it and we see the
behavior patterns and we see the bits of the APIs that
aren't working. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: I'll
check on that. I guess you have to grow
into getting there. You can't really just design the
whole thing up front and then present it and
it just works.

MATT ANDREWS: When you say
"getting offline working right," you mean the terminology
formally called Navigation Controller, right? ANNE VAN KESTEREN: Yeah. Well, I'm hoping Service
Worker is the answer. We'll have to find out. We have to test. We have to incrementally
evolve. We're at the prototyping stage
now, so it's early days. MATT ANDREWS: But from the
user's perspective, as much as our cache is a bit loathed,
it does kind of work. I mean, it will give you an application that works offline. Can't we not just fill in
that little step to get that icon on there? And then it will be compatible
with both? ANNE VAN KESTEREN: So the
problem with Appcache is that we've got like a universal
no back from developers. So people don't really want to
experiment with it and roll it out on their sites. Yeah. CALVIN SPEALMAN: Right. ANNE VAN KESTEREN: And if
there's no adoption, then we can't really further experiment
with other things.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: So Alex, it
seems like the sentiment of the rest of the panel is that
Chrome for Android's doing this very badly, where the
installed Home screen is great for [? us. ?] Where is it? ALEX RUSSELL: That's
a great question. John? [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: Are you prepared
to answer this, John? JOHN: Uh-huh. Sure. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: We'll get a
microphone to John, anyway. And he can at least
tell us that he's not allowed to answer. ALEX RUSSELL: If I had
my druthers, we would absolutely have that. I mean, I think that's
a reasonable thing to want to have. I mean, my personal view– and
I'm not speaking for Google here– is that the manifest
destiny of web apps is that they can do everything
that apps can do.

Everything that your system
application should be able to do, you should be able to write
as a web page first. And then you should be able to
transition to a world that's much more powerful. And that just depends on getting
users to a point where they believe that that's
a safe thing to do. And if that's saying no to
some permissions to get others, that sounds good, or
asking users to install or bless a thing, that
seems reasonable. But yeah. JAKE ARCHIBALD: John, do have
a comment or no comment? JOHN: Thank you, Alex. I think we have a lot more to
do in this space to make web apps more capable. We're putting [INAUDIBLE]. We'll see what happens.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: Well, we'll take
one more question here from the audience. CRAIG CAVALIER: One more
thing to add on that. Being that Chrome for Android,
the Navigation Controller– sorry, the installable apps
is only part of that. And we found that, actually,
Chrome for Android has the best [? of all ?] of things like
IndexedDB, which we don't get on other devices
like Safari on iOS. So we need to have that problem
solved consistently across browsers because, at the
moment, we have to rely on things like shims to fall
back to webSQL. And with iOS 7 and the five-meg
cap that we have for the user prompt that now– yeah, it's really important
to get that piece of the puzzle solved.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: Thanks,
for that. We can declare war now between
iOS and Android now. That's brilliant. We're going to take one question
from the audience, before we move topic. Eric Sheppard? Wherever I saw you. A microphone over here. ERIC SHEPHERD: This is sort of
a follow up, the flip side of the payment question
from earlier for the number of issues. There are a whole host of other
things that you may want to know about that, if people
start using the web offline in large numbers, we're
going to lose.

Third-party networks want to
know things for tracking purposes, for re-marketing
purposes. We want to know what people are
looking at so that, when we're giving more and more
customized recommendations in e-commerce or article
recommendations in publishing, those are things we wanted
to know about too. Are any of the ad networks or
anyone looking into possible APIs for how to deal with
this kind of stuff? ALEX RUSSELL: I haven't been
talking to them and probably should be, with regards to the
Service Worker design. But I can only talk about
the thing I'm working on, which is that. And it allows you to– a thing I put on the screen oh
so briefly was the import scripts API, which
allows a worker– these things are
just workers– a worker of any kind to just go
out and import some other script, like a require
call in [? AMD, ?] something like that, right? So you can compose behavior from
multiple origins so that, if you're working with a
third-par;ty, you could include their offline
handling code too.

And because the service worker
sees requests for all origins, including those third-party
ones, you can write your handlers in such a way that
well-behaved service worker scripts will only pay attention
to the requests for their origin and do the
right thing by them. And you can import scripts
from other origins to do things like handling those kinds
of tracking and counting when offline. And they get the ability to run
when you're online too. So they'll be able to do their
own synchronization. It does require the global
coordination thing that we love so much about
Java scripts. And so we get ES6 modules. But I think that's
going to be the state-of-the-art for a while. It's possible. It will require care. JAKE ARCHIBALD: OK. We're going to move on
to the next question. And the next question is asked
by Jake Archibald.

Oh, not that guy again. OK. Well, this is a bit weird. So I should probably ask the
question– oh, John's back. Hello. JOHN: This on? Yes. We are actually working
on adding [INAUDIBLE] Chrome for Android– it's a public commit, so I can
talk about it, excellent– coming soon, hopefully. I think that we had an about
flag recently, it's in [INAUDIBLE]. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Declassified. Excellent. OK. MALE SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE]
install? JOHN: Oh. And I think Vivian
was asking– VIVIAN: I'm interested in
knowing if the [INAUDIBLE] want to have the similar API
like iOS, allow you to have the API access to prompt
the user to install on a home screen? MATT ANDREWS: Yes.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: OK. I'll take that as the whole
panel's opinion. [LAUGHTER] JAKE ARCHIBALD: So onto the
question from this Jake Archibald guy. I'm going to try and read in
a different accent, so it doesn't seem super weird. Maybe that will make it
seem even weirder. I'll sit over here slightly. So I'll do an American accent. I'll try and do your accent. So currently, if a post fails,
I can stick it in IndexedDB and post it later, right? But if the user has to visit
the site later to actually send that data, how
can I do that? Is there a better
way for that? That's a very good
question, Jake. Yeah. We're going to put that to the
whole panel right now. So yeah. We don't have anything to
do synchronization. Is there a sync API coming? Can we do this when the
user's not actually sitting on the site? CALVIN SPEALMAN: So I think
that there are background needs for APIs added in Firefox
OS for things like push notifications and that
there is a definite possibility of integrating the
need for those to happen in the background whenever you
don't even have the tab open to also be built upon to have
some kind of synchronized process or cronjobs
for your websites.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: So Craig,
you have this specific problem, right? CRAIG CAVALIER: We do. I mean, going back to the
question of having it running in the background, it's kind
of tricky because, firstly, you've got situations like,
actually, does the user really want to be syncing when
they don't know it? I mean, we could be eating up
all of their bandwidth for roaming, for instance. So in some cases, it makes a lot
more sense for it to be an explicit question [INAUDIBLE]. But in other cases also, and
particularly for business data, you have this process of
making business decisions when merge conflicts happen. So for us, we do something
that's kind of similar to a git rebase when we're
synchronizing. So we actually can prompt the
user and say, hey, we've detected that these two events
happened and they conflict with each other and you need
to take some action. So that's running in
the background. That becomes kind of tricky. JAKE ARCHIBALD: So, Alex,
Anne, you guys are from the future. What's in the future for us? ALEX RUSSELL: You have to
do this in his accent.

[LAUGHTER] ANNE VAN KESTEREN: I'm not
sure I can do that. I think push notifications
will have to be opt-in. I think background updates for
apps like for your caches and stuff, we can do if the user
is connected to wireless. I guess, in that case, we can
assume there won't be a cap, although, it's not
universally true. In Russia and stuff, they still
have quite low caps, even on those kind
of connections. So there has to be a preference
of sorts. Like do you want to allow apps
to update in the background? And it could even be a
preference that the user wants his apps always up-to-date,
even on 3G or 4G. And the browser will just, every
now and then, wake of the worker and give it the
event to start updating. And then the worker does
its updates and then it shuts down again. And when the user next visits
the site, he'll get all the latest stuff.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: So we're going
to go to the audience for the next question, Jeffrey
Burtoft. Where abouts are you? Down here. JEFFREY BURTOFT: Yeah. I guess this ties in
a little bit more with the last question. So there are a lot of developers
in Microsoft platform who are developing for
both our store apps, which are HTML5-based, and then for
the web apps and trying to bring those closer together. One of the questions I hear a
lot about web apps is about the safety of the data that is
stored, which I think tends to push us more towards developing in the native space. What are we doing to make sure
that that data can be trusted, can be safely encrypted and meet
needs of different type of developers? JAKE ARCHIBALD: So if we're
storing something like credit card data or people's contact
information, what can we do to make sure that other apps
can't sneak in there and get that data? Is it something we do already? CRAIG CAVALIER: I think there
is a certain amount of that.

I mean, you have to be on the
same domain to be able to access things like
local store. So there's a certain amount
of security in place. There's only so much you can do,
I think, with these kind of devices. ANNE VAN KESTEREN:
I'm not sure. Is the question about what
the origin can access? Or if someone has physical
access to the device, they can access the local stored data
because it's not encrypted.

So in that case, it depends on
the security characteristics provided by the OS. And I think, in all the cases,
browsers default to what the OS provides and don't have
additional layers on top. Because if the OS is not
secured, then you're compromised anyway. ALEX RUSSELL: It depends on the
threat model, obviously, but there is an API called Web
Crypto API, which Microsoft is heavily involved in working
with Netflix and eBay and Google and a bunch of other
people on this.

And one of the key aspects of
the Web Crypto API is that it allows you to have wrapped
keys, which is are just hardware tokens or tokens
protected by the OS which are not owned by user space code, so
you can't actually see the key material. And you can do operations
with that. So in that world, as long as you
trust the OS, you should be able to get encrypted content
stored and allow that to be trusted all the way
through the search chain back to the server. And I think that's a pretty
deft answer, actually. I think it gives you most of
the control that you want, without giving you most of the
complexity that you would like not to have.

JAKE ARCHIBALD: And I think
that takes us out of time. I know the bathrooms at Google
UK are completely out of Wi-Fi and cellular data. So it sounds like, if we can get
all this stuff solved, I can be a lot more productive
than I am currently in my spare time. But if you're interested in any
of this stuff and want to look at the spec as it is
currently, it's github.com/– ALEX RUSSELL: slightlyoff/– JAKE ARCHIBALD: serviceworker,
right? ALEX RUSSELL: serviceworker,
yes. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Excellent. MATT ANDREWS: When will we
get that in a browser? ALEX RUSSELL: So I can't speak
for Firefox, but I know that there's prototypes happening
on the Mozilla side. And on the Chrome side,
we've built a prototype which does work. And we're in the process
of implementing now. JAKE ARCHIBALD: Excellent. Well, thank you very
much, everyone. [APPLAUSE].

As found on YouTube

10 secret tips to winning more consulting clients 
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to get known by sharing valuable content you can   do that in the form of a blog you can do that in 
the form of videos like what i'm doing right now   i'm sharing valuable content that i know will 
help people out so i do that through video you   can also do it through post you can do it through 
blogs you write on other people's sites you can do   it on your website you can do it through courses 
any way you want to do it but you want to get your   information out there so that people see that you 
really do have good content number four is ask for   referrals there's nothing wrong with that i think 
referrals are a really good thing and i think that   when somebody gives you a referral and you say 
to them will you let them know i'm calling and   warm up that referral i think you get a lot better 
results but if somebody's happy with your services   and they've got good results out of it and they 
know other people that could benefit from it why   wouldn't they refer people to you um and i i know 
it's all and how you say it too i say to a client   i said well you know you've gone from you know 
ten thousand dollars a month to fifty thousand   dollars a month and you know you get good results 
if you do what i tell you to do and they're gonna   agree with you oh yeah j.r you're great you know 
you really help me out and all that good stuff   and i say great then you probably know some other 
people that could benefit from the results that   you've gotten you know most of my clients will 
always refer two or three four people to me   who do you know they could benefit so you see what 
i did there i said most of my clients will refer   other people to me that they know will benefit 
from my training who do you know that would fit   so when i do something like that it's putting 
something in their mind well most of the other   people always do it so i guess i should too so 
that really helps you get referrals number five   spend some money invest in paid 
advertising when you run ads out there   people think you're more official they look at 
you more like a business they see you advertising   it's also going to make you better known even 
if they see your ads and they don't buy from   the ads and later on you talk to them it can 
be very beneficial to you getting that client   number six attend meetups meetings conventions 
whatever it is where you may meet people who could   benefit from your services i went on a cruise 
not too long ago last few years now but i met a   client there and that client ended up paying me 2 
000 an hour for consulting services i made 66 000   because i met them on a cruise was that cruise 
paid for oh yeah the cruise wasn't 66 000 okay   so just being there and then being able to talk 
to me and see the things i've done online and the   amounts of sold millions of dollars of products 
online they knew that that would be beneficial   for their company so they hired me to work for 
them number seven is you can partner with other   consultants or other firms if there's another 
consulting firm that does something similar   to what you do but doesn't do what you do you 
know maybe they work on seo and building sites   but they have a lot of clients that need to learn 
how to market online you could partner with them   and vice versa when you get a client then you're 
teaching them how to market online and they need   some of these other services done you can refer 
this client back to them so that you can kind of   repay them for what they did for you number eight 
is join groups there's a lot of facebook groups   there's a lot of linkedin groups i'm sure there's 
a lot of other places you can join groups but two   of those are very very good for meeting clients 
for going into let's say there's a group on   facebook that's all about e-commerce and i go in 
there and i give good information about e-commerce   and i tell people what i've done in e-commerce and 
i see other people's you know ads or i see other   people's listings and i tell them how they can 
improve those listings people are going to see me   in there they're going to get to know me in there 
and probably hire me as a consultant at some point   so if you want to do something like that and find 
more clients get where those clients would be   get where they're asking questions and answer 
some of those questions for them number nine   offer to speak at meetings and conventions offer 
to speak don't even charge somebody just say hey i   want to go speak i want to help your audience out 
believe me these people who run these conventions   and things around the country they need good 
speakers they need people who can get on stage   and really turn on an audience and if you're good 
at that uh then you should do it and if you're not   good at that then you should learn okay because 
that's what i did i had to learn how to speak   in front of an audience i had to learn how to 
impart that information and if you have this   information you owe it to society to share it you 
really do if you know how to make money online   like what i do i owe it to people to share that 
with them so that they can get the benefits of   firing their boss okay but that i i owe it to 
them to share that information with them so   just check out anything that is in your industry 
um that's a meeting that's a meet-up that's a   convention contact the organizers of that and 
let them know that you're willing to speak   for free at their particular meetup or convention 
or whatever it is and you will get some clients   and what you can do when you're speaking at them 
is you can you know offer some type of opt-in some   type of download or whatever and you can also 
build your email list while you're doing that   so do that also and you can also get a whole 
lot more clients out of something like that   number 10 use online job listings now this is a 
really pretty interesting thing a lot of companies   think they need an employee they think 
they need somebody to do their marketing   they think they need somebody to run their 
ads they think they need somebody to build   websites for them when in fact what they really 
need is a consultant to do this stuff for them   so in many cases you know they may be advertising 
a marketing director for a hundred thousand   dollars a year and you can contact them and 
say what is the marketing that you need done   and it may be a few simple jobs that you could do 
and charge them twenty or thirty thousand dollars   and you would make a nice commission and they 
would get the job done and not have the hassle of   having another employee a lot of companies think 
they need employees because they're not used to   dealing with consultants if you're a consultant 
and you can help out a lot of these businesses   ideally you could do it for less money because 
they don't have to pay you year round they only   pay you when they need you to do particular 
jobs it's a great great way to find clients   and clients that didn't even know they wanted 
to be clients but when you offer somebody   you know services that's going to cost them 20 
grand and they were willing to spend 100 grand   guess what a lot of times they'll just jump on 
top of that and in the meantime if they still   want an employee to work full-time doing that 
you could maybe assist them in finding somebody   that wants to do that but in the meantime you can 
fill their needs get the job done get the services   done for them and you can move on to the next 
client so i hope that helps you out it gives you   10 different ways 10 ways that you can get more 
consulting clients none of these are hard to do   all of these take effort right they're not 
hard they just take effort so try them out i   think you'll get good results i'd like to hear 
what your results are if you would put in the   comment section below i would really appreciate 
that any questions any questions you may have   about doing this i would also appreciate that if 
you would put that in the comments section below   i want to help you out are you a consultant if so 
put in the comments below what kind of consulting   you do what kind of fees do you charge people love 
to see this they love to hear about it so if you   put that below you're going to help out a lot of 
people i also have a free course you can get below   it's a 97 course absolutely free all you have to 
do is click and learn no credit card required i   also use a really good software and i do want to i 
do want to to torn for a second it's called cartra   i have a link below you can watch a video 
on what cartridge does and if you need to do   marketing online of any sort you need kartra 
if you watch the video you'll understand why   you don't have to give a credit card you don't 
have to give your name an email none of that   just watch the video but once you watch the video 
if you use my link down there you can actually   get karcher for one dollar and it will really 
expedite any type of marketing you're doing trying   to get you know consulting clients trying to sell 
products anything you're trying to do get cartro   i promise you you're gonna love it don't forget 
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