Y Llywydd刻 queries a the next item of business is First Minister's questions and at question number one I call Douglas Ross. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Yesterday the Government finally found the missing documents in their Bowie Piasco. For a brief moment, it looked like Islanders and taxpayers here in Scotland might finally get the answers they deserve. But they didn't. For weeks, Nicola Sturgeon has stood in this chamber and told MSPs that Derek Mackay signed off the vital contract for Fergs and Marine to build replacement ferries. But operation blamed Derek Mackay has a fatal flaw. This new document, previously hidden from the public, reveals that the person who signed this deal at the final stage was the Deputy First Minister. Civil servants escalated this to John Swinney. They waited for the Deputy First Minister to give the green light. Honest John's hands are all over this dodgy deal. First Minister, how do you explain blaming Derek Mackay when your own documents confirm that John Swinney signed off this deal? First Minister, all that Douglas Ross is displaying right now is his own utter desperation, which perhaps is not surprising given events since we last all gathered here for First Minister's questions in the chamber. Let me just read from the emails that were published yesterday, the important one. Remember, and people who have listened to this will remember that I said that I thought that if this email could be found, then what it would be is a one-line email saying that the minister was content with the proposal. Here is the email from Derek Mackay's office. The minister is content with the proposals and would like it to be moved on as quickly as possible. That was the decision to proceed with the contract. The email from the official who had briefed the Deputy First Minister now understands that Mr Mackay has cleared the proposal, so it seems pretty obvious to anybody who is looking at this. The Deputy First Minister did not take the decision. He was not even copied in to the advice of 8 October that was the basis of that decision. He was simply briefed on the decision after it was taken, not even at his request but on the initiative of an official. It is not unusual—really not unusual—for finance secretaries to be briefed on all sorts of decisions that involve the spending of money. It does not mean that the finance secretary has actually taken the decision. I would say that Douglas Ross should know that that is how Government works. Of course, Douglas Ross does not know how Government works, and on recent evidence, Douglas Ross is unlikely to ever know how Government works. Douglas Ross seems from that answer that the First Minister does not know how emails work, because it is very clear in here how officials escalated it to John Swinney waiting for his green light. In those emails, civil servants state that the Deputy First Minister confirmed—this is a quote from those emails—the absence of banana skins. John Swinney could not find a single banana skin when they were absolutely littered around him. There were more banana skins in this project than there are in the monkey house at Edinburgh Zoo. Now, the latest incompetence from this SNP Government published a series of responses to the request for more information that were heavily redacted, lines blacked out. Except that they have done such a poor job at redacting the documents, if you copy and paste them into Microsoft Word, the information is revealed. In one section of the redacted document, it warns of a risk of legal challenge for this contract. It states, and I quote, that the impact of a successful legal challenge could be high. In the worst case, the contract could be declared ineffective. In other words, going ahead with this contract was such a bad idea that it could open up the Government to even more losses than they have already experienced. First Minister, it is clear to everyone now why you and your Government wanted that redacted, but it is now in the public domain. So tell us, we all knew that this was a bad deal. Was it also unlawful? I think that Douglas Ross has no doubt unwittingly just hold his own arguments below the waterline pardon the pun. Two matters here. Firstly, on the Deputy First Minister not seeing any problems with the award of the contract, that is because the Deputy First Minister had not been copied into the paperwork that formed the basis for the decision. The Deputy First Minister could not have been the person taking the decision because he was not copied into the 8th of October paperwork. He was not the decision taker. As the email makes clear, he was briefed on the decision after the transport minister had taken the decision. Secondly, on the issues of legal challenge, ministers are briefed on many issues that decisions could be subject to legal challenge. On some occasions, the minority of occasions that comes to pass on most occasions that does not. Those are issues that ministers have to weigh up in reaching decisions. Douglas Ross undermines his own case here. It did not come to pass that the contract was legally challenged. Ministers weigh up all of those issues and they come to decisions. What is now beyond any doubt whatsoever—I suspect that this is what is really annoying, Douglas Ross—is that the minister who took that decision was Derek Mackay, and that is now clear from the email chain. That is not clear, First Minister. In fact, the exact opposite is clear. Maybe the stony silence from John Swinney today, which is unusual in those exchanges, is telling in itself. There we have it, Presiding Officer. The SNP's secret Scotland is foiled by copy and paste. You cannot even read documents properly. It is little worry that these ferries are not on time and on budget. Seymal warned you about the risks. We now know that your own legal advice was high-risk, but you went ahead anyway and taxpayers and islanders are paying the price for your failures. Those new emails state that John Swinney understands the background and the way it is clear to award. If he does not clear the deal, it does not go ahead. That is what those emails say. He went ahead, knowing, as we have just revealed, that it could open the Government to legal challenge. We now know all of this, but we still do not know why the Deputy First Minister ignored all those banana skins. The most crucial document in this affair is still missing, the one that explains why John Swinney charged the head against expert advice. Last night, Audit Scotland said this. There remains insufficient documentary evidence to explain why the decision was made to proceed with the contract, given the significant risks and concerns raised by Seymal. Why did John Swinney go ahead with this deal against the advice of experts when he knew that the contract was so bad that it could be challenged in court and rendered ineffective? In government, finance secretaries are very often briefed on decisions that involve the spending of money. In this case, of course, the budget had already been approved by John Swinney. Secondly, it is interesting, because he has to do this to sustain the cases that he is trying to make here. Douglas Ross has selectively quoted from the official who did brief John Swinney. Let me read the bits that Douglas Ross read out. The email starts just finished my call with the Deputy First Minister, who of course was Finance Secretary at the time. Douglas Ross read out these bits. He now understands the background and the way is clear to award. Let me read out the bit that Douglas Ross did not read out. After he now understands the background, it goes on to say that Mr Mackay has cleared the proposal. Had Douglas Ross read out that bit, his entire argument here would have fallen to pieces. It is a bit misleading, I think, Presiding Officer. I am not sure, Presiding Officer, that Douglas Ross should be speaking to any other leader right now about their backbenchers. I suspect that he might have issues rather closer to home. Finally, Presiding Officer, the reasons for the decision are clear. The basis for the decision, in particular the mitigations that have been put in place to address the risk of no full refund guarantee, is set out in the paperwork of 8 October. Without the email that we now have from Derek Mackay, we could have assumed that that was the case, but I accept that we did not know that for sure. However, now that we have that email, it is clear that the decision that was taken was taken on the basis of all of the information and the mitigation set out in the paperwork of 8 October 2015. That is paperwork that was not copied to John Swinney, which went to Derek Mackay as Transport Minister and Derek Mackay took the decision. That is clear to anybody who reads the emails that are now published. What is clear to anybody and everybody from those emails is that the junior transport minister agreed something and it was escalated to the Deputy First Minister for the green light, for approval, so that they can put in this email the way it is clear to award. That was from the Deputy First Minister. He had to sign it off, but the document that is still missing is the crucial one, the one that explains why John Swinney did this. The First Minister has forgotten her. Her memory has gone blank again, but the good news is that the man with all of the answers is literally sitting right next to her. If the First Minister won't tell us all of the details, let's hear from the Deputy First Minister. Let's hear why he chose to ignore expert advice. Let's hear why he forged ahead with a deal that has cost taxpayers quarter of £1 billion. Let's hear why John Swinney decided to give the green light to a deal that opens this Government up to potential legal action. The stench of cover-up and corruption is running through this whole, sorry, affair. If the First Minister won't come clean, let's get John Swinney on the stand. Will the First Minister agree to the Deputy First Minister appearing before Parliament today to give a statement in this chamber today to face scrutiny and tell the public what on earth he was thinking? It's not my job to help out desperate Douglas Ross, frankly, Presiding Officer. The Deputy First Minister on this issue was briefed as finance secretary because a decision had been taken by the Transport Minister that involved the spending of money. That's why it's finance official that briefed him. I repeat again that Douglas Ross has only been able to sustain, and I don't think that he's done it particularly well his argument today, by selectively quoting from an email, by missing out the crucial words that show that underline what is already clear in the email from Derek Mackay's office that Derek Mackay took the decision. Finally, I don't know if Douglas Ross has actually bothered to read all of the paperwork on this. I suspect from his questions that the answer to that is no. The paperwork that shows why the decision was taken has always been there. It is the paperwork of 8 October 2015. We now know that Derek Mackay took the decision on the basis of the advice set out there. That is the fact. I'm sorry if Douglas Ross cannot accept those facts. I'm sorry if he is too desperate to do so, but that, I'm afraid, is his problem. Can the First Minister confirm how many investigations into bullying by current or former SNP cabinet ministers there have been if those investigations have concluded and what the outcomes of those investigations are? I was indeed asked this question by journalists over the course of the last few days. As I made clear to journalists, I am not in a position to get into these issues because there are very considerable legal data protection issues that I am bound by. Governments have a duty of transparency, but Governments also have a duty to abide by the law on privacy and on data protection. A complaint by its nature includes personal detail data of both the complainer and the person complained about. That personal information can only be made available out with the narrow confines of the complaint if there is a lawful basis within GDPR to do so. That is UK legislation, not legislation passed by this Parliament. Yes, there is a duty of transparency, but there is also a duty to abide by the law. Finally, on this, Presiding Officer, Anna Sarwar should perhaps confer with his deputy, Jackie Baillie, because she was one of the co-authors of a report published by a committee of this Parliament last year into complaints about another former minister. I'm going to quote from that report. The committee believes that the fundamental principle of any complaint's process is that confidentiality must be observed. The Scottish Government has a duty to ensure the confidentiality of the process. Confidentiality of an investigation is of paramount importance. That's what the committee of this Parliament said and, of course, those are the constraints that I answer those questions within. Anna Sarwar. That committee also found the First Minister guilty of misleading this Parliament. I don't think that she should forget that either. No one is asking the First Minister to reveal confidential details. What they're saying is to reveal the outcome of that investigation. The First Minister didn't answer the questions. Let me quote. We have to lead by example. We have to show leadership. We have to make it very clear that those who work in this Parliament and those who work elsewhere in society need the fullest protection from bullying. That's SNP leader Ian Blackford at Westminster in regard to the Preeti Patel case. I agree with him. After the allegations against Alex Salmond and then Derek Mackay and the bullying findings against UK Government ministers, we need to restore trust in politics. That must start with complaints being handled transparency. I ask the First Minister again, will she today confirm the outcome, not the personal details, of the bullying investigation into Fergus Ewing? Can she confirm if there have been any other investigations into current and former Scottish ministers, and will she commit to making public the conclusion of any and all complaints upheld against ministers in this Government? First Minister, I and the Government take any complaints about any ministers very seriously. That is evidenced by both the development and publication of the updated procedure for handling complaints made by civil servants, either about current or former ministers. That is not a question of any complaints if they are raised not being investigated, but that has to be done within the law. I have to abide by the law. I have a duty to uphold the law and there are laws here on privacy and data protection that apply. If I answer questions on that, I will be at risk of breaching that law. I am sure that next week or the week after that, Anas Sarwar or his colleagues will be asking for me to be held to account for doing that. Those are serious issues. They have to be treated seriously, but they also have to be treated within the confines of the law that applies. Let me be very clear. I am not asking for the data or the personal details of the person making the complaint. What I am saying is that the public deserve to know the outcome of an investigation relating to ministers and the SNP Government. That is an issue of public transparency. The fact that Nicola Sturgeon cannot escape from is that her Government and this SNP operate in a culture of secrecy and cover-up. It is not the first time that we have heard of today, but cover-up when it comes to allegations against ministers, cover-ups when it comes to the awarding of Government ferry contracts, shamefully cover-ups when it comes to the deaths of children in hospital, and a culture that is contempt for journalists and anyone who dares to ask a difficult question of this, First Minister. One standard for them and another standard for everybody else, one where an SNP MP can avoid being disciplined for sexual harassment and instead lead a parliamentary debate on the subject. In 2003, Nicola Sturgeon said of the then Scottish Government, that she had the arrogance of a party that has been in power for too long and no longer believed the common values of decency, fairness and honesty applied to them. I cannot think of a more appropriate way of describing this Government led by Nicola Sturgeon. After 15 years of being in government, why does Nicola Sturgeon think that it is one standard for her and another standard for everyone else? The people of Scotland have had two opportunities in just a year to decide whether they think that my party has been in government for too long or not, and I think that the answer on both occasions was pretty clear. On issues on the Queen Elizabeth hospital, I am so opposed to transparency there. I have actually, with my government, established a full independent statutory public inquiry into those issues. On questions from journalists, I stand to be corrected if somebody can challenge me on this, but I have probably answered more questions from journalists over the past couple of years than any other political leader anywhere on those islands. Thirdly, I, in my view, ended up the subject of investigations over the last couple of years, because I was not prepared to cover up accusations against a former minister. The fact is, though, that I have to abide by the law, all parties, whether I like it or not, have rights under data protection law that protects their personal data, and that includes the fact or the detail of complaints. Processing of that data can, under the law, only occur if there is a lawful basis to do so, so that is the legal position. Yes, Governments have a duty of transparency, and I take that very seriously, but Governments also have a duty to abide by the law on privacy and data protection. If we breach that law, Anas Sarwar would be one of the first standing up here to accuses of doing so. Will my move to constituency in general supplementaries? The First Minister and others across the chamber will, I am sure, join me in condemning reports of sexist, racist and homophobic comments at the Scottish Football Writers Association gala dinner and offer support to those who walked out in protest. Whilst recognising the apology that has been issued, does the First Minister agree that this appears to be a shocking illustration of the outdated discriminatory attitudes that still exist in football and, indeed, in journalism that need to be eradicated? I very much agree with those sentiments from what I have read of what occurred at that particular awards dinner. It was unacceptable, and I would pay tribute to Ailey Barber and others, whom I think very courageously took a stand against that and spoke out. It is not easy ever for any woman in particular in a traditionally man's world to speak out in that way, and I think Ailey and her colleagues deserve credit for doing so. I think that we have seen over the past week that is one example. I think that there has been another reported that sexism and misogyny still run far too deep in our society. It is a reminder that it must be tackled, but it is also a reminder that it starts with male behaviour and its male behaviour that we must see change. The First Minister may be aware that the timetable for the new residence station in my constituency does not include adequate evening services. This is a problem for my constituents. Rages have said that there are no plans for ScotRail to provide evening services, and it is for Transport Scotland to confirm. We have got an issue with 40 per cent of cancellations of trains to Tweed Bank from Edinburgh, which is caused by the pay dispute. Now we have no evening services for my constituents. Will the First Minister confirm that she will work with Transport Scotland to ensure that there are evening services, and does she think that that service is adequate for my constituents? I supported the people in all parts of the country who have access to real services that are appropriate, so I agree on that general point. I am happy to raise this issue with Transport Scotland and come back to the member in due course. My constituent, Ryan Caswell, has been a resident patient in Corsview mental health unit in Dundee for two years and three months as a result of delayed discharge. Ryan has autism spectrum disorder and learning disabilities. Ryan's parents are beside themselves with worry due to the lack of appropriate medical care being provided to their son. They fear for his life. Ryan struggles to communicate for much of the last year that he has been crying out in severe pain, which has led only to restraints and sedation. After many months of suffering without help, he had five impacted molars removed. The staff available to him do not have sufficient medical training to diagnose patients in their care. There have been two damning reports into mental health services in Tayside. The second of the strong reports has been described to me as the most worrying report in Scottish public life.  First Minister, when will it change? Those are really important issues. The independent oversight group for mental health in Tayside is providing scrutiny and assurance on the implementation of the trust and respect recommendations to improve mental health. That group continues to work with partners, third sector and people with lived experience to deliver improvements to mental health services and achieve outcomes that local communities and individuals have a right to expect. I am not familiar with all the details of Ryan's case from what has been described there. It sounds to me to be unacceptable. In fairness to Ryan and to his parents who are understandably anxious and distressed, I want to look further into that. When I have had the opportunity to do so, I or the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport will reply in more detail to the member. To ask the First Minister if she shares my disgust at the comments made by Tory MP Lee Anderson in the House of Commons that those who are using food banks across these islands do so because they cannot cook and they cannot budget and that this demonstrates clearly that the Tories are completely out of touch with those suffering from the cost of living crisis that they created. First Minister, those comments were despicable and disgusting. It seems to me that every time a Tory MP opens their mouth right now, they simply demonstrate how out of touch they are with the suffering of too many people across Scotland and the entire UK. People are having to go to food banks not because they cannot cook. People are having to go to food banks right now because they do not have enough money to feed themselves and their children. My Government is and will continue to do everything we can to get money into the pockets of the lowest income families across the country, the Scottish child payment being the chief example of that, but it is well past time that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the UK Government stood up, stepped up and took action to get money into the pockets of those who need it to stop people having to make decisions about heating their homes or feeding their children. First Minister, midwifery services across Scotland are at breaking point. A survey conducted by the Royal College of Midwives has revealed that three quarters of midwives in Scotland are thinking of leaving the profession due to understaffing, burnout and fears that they cannot provide safe care. Despite the Scottish Government's providing £12 million of funding to support the mental health and wellbeing of the workforce, that is clearly having little effect. First Minister, lives of women and babies are at risk. That is not safe, that is not sustainable and that is not acceptable. What urgent action can the Scottish Government put in place to rectify the situation? First Minister, midwives play a key role in making sure that women receive the care that they need when they need it and we value the role of the RCM and its members, the role that they have played in our on-going response to the pandemic that the health secretary actually met with the RCM this week to discuss the report and its recommendations and we will continue to work with the RCM and midwives generally to address the pressures that they and other health professionals are working under. Of course, overall, nursing and midwifery starting in Scotland is at a record high. It has increased by 14.5 per cent since this Government took office and that is the facts of the matter, but of course all of our health professionals are working under extreme pressure and through our investment support and reforms we will continue to support them in the invaluable job that they do. The First Minister will be aware that this week is Mental Health Awareness week with a focus on loneliness. Findings from the mental health foundation showed that in Scotland 25 per cent of people surveyed had felt lonely some or all of the time over the previous month and, concernily, 31 per cent of people said that feelings of loneliness had negatively impacted on their mental health. Action is needed and, despite having 15 years in office, the Government has failed to deliver an effective mental health strategy that supports the well-being of the Scottish population. Why has the First Minister failed so badly in this regard and what steps can she set out today, both in prevention and intervention, to address the crisis that is in our mental health services? Mental health is and will continue to be a priority, as I have said many times in this chamber. The fact that more people feel able to come forward with mental health problems now is something that we should continue to support, but we must make sure that the services are there for them when they need them. The focus of Mental Health Awareness week is loneliness and isolation. In that regard, the Scottish Government is supporting a range of work. Last year we provided more than £20 million to local communities through the community's mental health and wellbeing fund for adults. Earlier this month we announced that a further £15 million would be available in this financial year. That fund is supporting almost 2,000 local community projects, many of them addressing loneliness and isolation. We are investing £10 million over the course of this Parliament, specifically to tackle social isolation and loneliness. We will continue to make the investments and do everything that we can to support the many organisations across the country that do such good work. 3. Alex Cole-Hamilton Thank you, Presiding Officer, to ask the First Minister when the Cabinet will next meet. First Minister, Tuesday. Alex Cole-Hamilton I'm very grateful for that reply. Presiding Officer, raw sewage is released into our rivers every single day. It is routinely done by Scotland's government-owned water company. Thanks to investigations by the ferret, we now know that this happened more than 10,000 times last year—that's 30 times a day. Scottish water is only required to monitor 3 per cent of sewage release points, so the true figure will be much, much worse. Scotland is way behind England on this. This is an SNP green coalition that claims to champion the environment. However, the Environment Minister herself described the routine dumping of untreated human waste in our rivers as vital. Presiding Officer, this shouldn't be allowed to happen. We're talking about excrement, wet wipes and sanitary towels. In West Edinburgh, right now, there are otters, fish, children and dogs playing in the river Armond, where sewage has been dumped hundreds of times. So can I ask the First Minister why aren't there targets to end the release of sewage into our rivers and how long does she plan to allow this to continue? This is an important issue that Alex Cole-Hamilton has raised. The cleanliness of our rivers and our seas is of paramount importance and how we deal with waste of all forms in our country, of course, is a big challenge for Governments everywhere. I have not, my apologies to Alex Cole-Hamilton, I have not seen the investigation by the ferret. I will take steps to ensure that I do see that and I'll come back to him with more detail about what the Government is doing and what more the Government needs to do, like all Governments across the world, to tackle what is a serious issue. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's response is to the report published last Friday, owning the future, a framework of regulations for decarbonising on or occupied homes in Scotland, commissioned by the Existing Homes Alliance. The Scottish Government welcomes the publication of this research by the Existing Homes Alliance. Heating our homes and places of work is the third-largest cause of emissions in Scotland. In light of that, our heating building strategy, published in October, set out over 100 different actions to support households and businesses to make energy efficiency improvements and transition from fossil fuel heating systems. The strategy includes a commitment to regulate for minimum standards in homes and will consult in detail on our proposed approach in the coming year. The Existing Homes Alliance and others have worked positively and constructively with us on this to date and will continue to engage with the organisation and others as we finalise our approach. I thank the First Minister for her detailed reply. This is a highly complex area with very detailed recommendations, including the need for legislation if we are fully to decarbonise our buildings by 2045. Scottish solutions identified in the report include the installation of low-temperature heat pumps, distigating and for some homes at biomass boilers. The key driver will be improving building fabric efficiency. Can the First Minister confirm that as we focus more on decarbonisation, her Government will prioritise a fabric first approach, introduce a fabric energy efficiency standard, begin the phase out of fossil fuels for heating and act to ensure that we have the skilled workers in our communities necessary to deliver on our vital climate change targets? We have a very long-standing commitment to a fabric first approach that is critical to reducing demand, making homes warmer and preparing them for zero emissions technologies. We have committed to regulating minimum energy efficiency standards in homes by 2033. The standard will be equivalent to EPCC, reformed to focus on fabric measures. Fabric improvement alone though will not get us close to net zero, we need a strong focus on heating system change. We will phase out the need to install newer replacement fossil fuel boilers in off gas from 2025 and in on gas areas from 2030. The opportunity presented by the heat transition will require further capability and capacity in our supply chains. We are also developing a new heating building supply chain delivery plan with industry so that we can deliver the work at the pace and the scale that is needed. Daniel Johnson I thank Kenny Gibson for raising this, because 28 per cent of people in Scotland live in tenemented dwellings. The proportion is even higher in my constituency. On page 3 of the report, it sets out very clearly that we need to look at existing forms of heating beyond air source heat pumps because they quite simply will not work for people in tenemented dwellings. Likewise, the legal framework right now makes it difficult for tenement owners to do the sorts of retrofitting that are required. Will the Scottish Government give consideration to plans for investment in municipal heat networks and for a change in the law to make it easier for tenement owners to come together to fit the retrofitting that they require to heat homes sustainably even for people who are living in tenemented dwellings? Yes, we will do all of that. I certainly have a lot of sympathy with the points made. I also represent a constituency, albeit in a different city that has a high number of tenemental properties within it. In terms of the heat network fund, the £300 million heat network fund will support both large networks suited to urban environments as well as small rural and community-led heat networks and communal systems. Those are complex issues. I recognise that in my response to Kenny Gibson and the issues that we are working through in partnership with industry, but it is important that all of those points are borne in mind as we continue to do so. Liam Kerr, the cost of the heat and building strategy is £33 billion. This Government has offered £1.8 billion towards it. Who will pay the rest? I think that Liam Kerr should know the process that we have under way right now. Of course, the £1.8 billion is over the course of this Parliament. That is significant investment. It will support those that are least able to pay. It will support our Scotland's heat network fund and the social housing net zero heat fund, for example. However, we have also established the green heat finance task force to recommend ways to increase private sector investment and to look at contributions from individuals that we all want to keep to a minimum. As the minister set out when he launched the strategy, it will require us to lever significant private capital investment. I was at the All Energy Conference yesterday and I heard Keith Anderson of Scottish Power make this point. The good news is that there are significant amounts of private capital looking for ways to invest in the net zero transition. The task force has an important job to do and that work is under way. To ask the First Minister what meetings the Scottish Government has had with the private and voluntary nursery sector regarding delivery of its early learning and childcare strategy. We continue to engage with the childcare sector in open and constructive discussions as we develop a new strategic plan for our childcare commitments for the remainder of this Parliament. Providers in the private third and child-minding sectors are playing a crucial role in the successful delivery of the transformational 1,140 hours offer through which over 111,000 children are accessing high-quality funded early learning and childcare. Scotland has the highest ELC funding rates across the UK as a result of the expansion. Average rates paid to providers for three to five-year-olds receiving funded ELC have increased by 48 per cent between 2017 and 2021, so we continue to work closely with partners in local government to ensure that providers are paid sustainable rates that reflect the cost of delivery. Scottish Conservative MSPs have met with concerned nurseries across the PVI sector who have continuously raised concerns over the relationship with local authorities. We have tried to range a meeting with the Minister of Children and Young People to raise those concerns on their behalf, in particular the funding formula that creates inequality between local authorities and the PVI sector. Regretfully, the minister has now rescheduled two meetings that were due to take place. First Minister, those matters are pressing, so if the minister cannot meet with concerned MSPs, will you? The Scottish Government officials have already met with representatives of the ambition 1140 hours group recently to discuss specifically their concerns. A commitment has been given to a further meeting in the near future to continue those discussions. Of course, there will be ministerial engagement as required. I think that it is important to recognise that the funding agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA supporting the expansion that has been delivered so far allows local authorities to pay sustainable rates to private and third sector nurseries who provide free early learning and childcare places and also to childminders, but I know that there are concerns and we want to address those. The financial sustainability health check that was published in August 2021 found that 88 per cent of private and third sector providers delivering funded ELC plan to pay all staff in their setting the real living wage from August last year, and that compares to a position before the expansion in 2016, where around 80 per cent of practitioners were paid less than the living wage at the time. Of course, public funding accounts for around 33 to 45 per cent of overall income for private childcare services. The majority also provide private services, so there are bigger issues here that need to be addressed, but we will continue to engage with those in that sector and have a determination to do so. With energy bills and inflation skyrocketing unchecked by the UK Tory Government, thousands of parents are having to resort to skipping meals to ensure that their children can get fed first. Can I ask the First Minister, as more and more young families struggle to stay afloat through the cost of living crisis, what further action the Scottish Government has taken to help new parents to make ends meet so that neither them or their children need to go hungry? I remind members of the needs to ensure that supplementaries reflect the substantive question. Is a really important issue. The difficulty people are having feeding their children right now is perhaps one of the most important issues that any politician and any Government has to address. The free childcare expansion is very relevant here because it is worth up to almost £5,000, £4,900 each year for eligible children. It is one of the significant interventions that the Government has made. In addition to that, our five family benefits include the Scottish Child Payment, which is now £20 per week and is set to extend to under 16s and rise to £25 per week by the end of this year. The problem is that there is a massive exodus of staff from the private and voluntary sector as a result of the fact that those nurseries cannot compete with the wages from the council because there is not a fair funding formula. That has a direct impact on the capacity but also on the flexibility that the First Minister will remember that she promised that there would be available for parents across the country. This situation is stark now, so will the First Minister intervene and fix this situation? The fact of the matter is that parents across the country have more funded childcare available and available more flexibly. The funding agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA to support the expansion did allow local authorities to pay sustainable rates. I have recognised, however, the issues that those in private and voluntary sectors are facing, and I have given a commitment that we will continue to engage with them to seek to address them. To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government will convene an emergency summit on abortion healthcare in response to anti-abortion rights action in Scotland and around the world. First Minister, women have the right to access abortion without fear or intimidation. To that end, let me say again to anyone wanting to protest against abortion, do it outside Parliament. Protesting outside hospitals or sexual health clinics targets women, not lawmakers, and it causes stress and anxiety to those accessing healthcare. That, in my view, is deeply wrong. I strongly support the introduction of buffer zones and the Government is actively considering how this Parliament can legislate in a way that is effective and also capable ofwithstanding legal challenge. I am also aware that Gillian Mackay may shortly consult on a member's bill. On that latter point about legality, members will be aware that the law on buffer zones passed in Northern Ireland has recently been referred to the Supreme Court. The outcome of that may have relevance for any steps that we take here. In the meantime, as we consider and hopefully resolve issues around national legislation, we will support any local authority that is willing to use bylaws to establish buffer zones. Finally, I am very happy to convene and, indeed, I will personally chair around table summit to discuss buffer zones and, indeed, any other matters that need to be addressed to ensure safe and timely access to abortion services in Scotland within the current law. I warmly welcome the First Minister's agreement to convene an urgent summit that more than a dozen women's organisations have called for. Her personal commitment to chair the talks and facilitate politicians, campaigners and healthcare experts working together is hugely important. I thank her for that. Does the First Minister agree that we must use that forum to actively demonstrate our solidarity with women in America and around the world who fear that their legal rights are slipping away, whereas urgently taking action to deal with the challenges facing those who are accessing and providing abortion healthcare here in Scotland? Although operational policing matters are for Police Scotland, does she agree that it is important that any member of the public experiencing harassment or intimidation when seeking to access or provide abortion healthcare must feel confident that if they come forward to the police with any complaints that they will be properly investigated? I agree with all that, but let me briefly try to address each of the points made. I agree that it is important to show solidarity on those issues. The attack that we are seeing on abortion rights—let's call that for what it is—is an attack on the right of women to control our own bodies. The attack that we are seeing chiefly in the United States as a result of the concern about the overturning of Roe versus Wades, but we are seeing that in other countries, is deeply concerning. I believe in a woman's right to choose, and I believe that those of us who hold that view have a duty to show solidarity with those in other parts of the world, where it is coming under more significant attack. On the issue of police powers, of course, those are operational matters for the police, and it would be wrong for me to say how the police should use those powers. However, there are powers under antisocial behaviour legislation that are there for the police should they judge that it is appropriate to use them. Finally, everybody, without exception, should have the right to access healthcare without fear and intimidation. That applies to any woman, and no woman does that lightly. However, that applies to any woman seeking to access abortion services completely within the law. To those who want to protest, it is in a democracy absolutely a right to protest, but to Parliament and to protest against lawmakers do not cause women fear, anxiety and intimidation. Can I ask the First Minister if there is going to be a summit on abortion healthcare with the 24-week limit being under review? I think that science and medicine have moved on since 1990, and many children are surviving at 23 weeks. On the agenda of the summit, I have agreed to convene today that I do not support a reduction in the current time limit for abortion. On the contrary, I think that the challenge in Scotland is to ensure that women who need to and let me repeat that it is something that no woman does lightly can access that right in a safe and timely manner. As we have heard, the First Minister will be aware of the loud protests outside the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow yesterday. Not only do those protests intimidate many of the people who use those services, clinicians have contacted me to say that it also forced the clinic to close particular rooms on one side of the building due to the amplification system that the protesters were using. As part of the summit that the First Minister has just committed to, would the First Minister ensure that clinical representatives and trade unions are present, as well as patient representatives, to ensure that clinicians are not subject to harassment when simply doing their jobs? Yes, I will give that commitment. I would also take the opportunity to pay tribute to Gillian Mackay for the work that she has done in this, and I hope that she will agree to take part in the summit that we are talking about today. In terms of the protests outside the Sandyford clinic, even if it was only providing abortion services, those protests, in my view, would be wrong because they cause women intimidation and anxiety. However, there is a range of sexual health services provided by the Sandyford clinic. The last thing that anybody should be doing is making it harder for people to access those and make it harder for clinicians to go about the jobs that they do. I will appeal again to those who want to protest, and let me underline this. It is a right in a democracy to protest. I am not questioning that in any way, shape or form, but the place to protest is where the laws are made. The people to protest too—or us, parliamentarians, lawmakers—allow people to exercise the right to access healthcare in the way all of us have a right to do, without any fear and intimidation and without added stress and anxiety. That is the decent thing to do. That concludes First Minister's Questions. The next item of business is a member's business debate in the name of Maggie Chapman.


What's up everyone, Takedown here. Welcome back to another video. Today I'm really excited because I'm going to be talking about the games that are coming out in 2021 that I'm really excited for and plan on purchasing. Now by the time I upload this video there is a chance that some of these games might already be released and that that is okay but let's get right into this. So up first is a game that I remember playing different games of this back when I was a kid on the PlayStation 2 and that is Monster Jam Steel Titans 2. I remember I purchased the first Steel Titans game and absolutely loved it. They have advanced it with the second game and I've looked at gameplay and things that are going to be included in this game. There's a lot more new monster trucks, a lot more new events and different things like that and a lot more world changes because it's kind of an open world aspect at certain points of the game. So I'm really excited to play this game and I loved playing them back on the PS2 back when I was younger and I know I'm going to love this game because I love the first Steel Titans game. Now this game is going to be a lot of fun but it's likely something that I'm only going to purchase is if it becomes on sale likely part of Black Friday this year. The next game is something that once it was announced I'm extremely excited for. Now I haven't looked into any of the details for this game of what era of war it's going to be but the game we're talking about is Battlefield 6. Now for some odd reason a lot of people hate Battlefield 5 and Battlefield 1. I absolutely love them. I love the whole authentic World War 1 and 2 aspects. I love these stories. I love the war stories. I love the graphics, the gameplay and one of my favorite things to do in Battlefield is to do sniping. I love being a sniper and those games were a lot of fun.  For me I absolutely love Battlefield I'm going to stick with it and I know for me personally I'm not going to be going back to Call of Duty because I prefer Battlefield over Call of Duty because it's a lot more fun. Bigger maps, bigger missions, bigger gameplays online and I love everything that they do with the Battlefield games. Like I said I don't know what era this game is going to be right now. I haven't really looked into it. All I know it's been announced and I'm really excited and ready for it. If you guys know what era of war it's going to be please comment down below and let me know. The next game is something that is likely already released by the time I upload this video. I know it was set to release by the end of 2020 but it got pushed back until February 2021. Now at the time I'm recording this video I don't know if that has been pushed back even further. All I know is right now it's supposed to be released in February 2021 and that is Far Cry 6. The first Far Cry game I played was Far Cry 5 because I loved that not only was it back in North America but that it was like a cult related game and it was a lot of fun. I absolutely loved Far Cry 5. Even more I went and purchased the next year when it came out Far Cry New Dawn which is basically the story continuing from Far Cry 5 after the events of Far Cry 5 and I loved those games so much. I went and purchased Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4. I have only played and finished Far Cry 3 and I'm going to be hopefully soon, hopefully before I purchased Far Cry 6, I'm going to be playing and finishing Far Cry 4. The Far Cry games are just a lot of fun and to some people they're very repetitive because at times you have to do the same thing over and over but it is still a lot of fun. I love the gameplay. I love the graphics. I love the story that the Far Cry games tell. I know I'm going to love this game. I'm likely going to purchase it hopefully near the holidays of 2021 because right now and I should have mentioned this earlier in the video, I don't know for these games if I'm going to purchase the PS4 copy or the PS5 copy or if the PS4 copy includes the PS5 version I'm likely going to go that route so I get not only the PS4 version and the PS5 version but I know at the end of the year I'm going to be purchasing a PS5 so I know if I purchase the PS4 version and includes the PS5 version I'll have the game to play on both consoles and double up on the trophies but also be able to play the game a lot more. Not only do I have to play and beat it on the PS4 but I have to play and beat it on the PS5 as well. This game here I don't know which console I want it for yet. The next game is a game that I get every two years and that is NHL 2022. That's the game that's going to be coming out this year. Now I know a lot of people don't like hockey or sports games in general and that's okay. I myself can't even justify purchasing the game every single year because even though there is smaller things and I know 2021 or NHL 2021 it had a lot of new features with career mode which I would have loved to play. I assume they're going to be continued with 2022 and I can't justify purchasing the game every year because not only is that a lot of money for basically the same game the only thing that usually updates is the roster other than they do update some features and I know 2021 had a lot of cool aspects to career mode making your player an actual player not just worrying about the sport things off the ice as well. As a huge hockey fan I can't wait to play 2022 and I'm assuming that Seattle is going to be included in 2022 and I can't wait for that. At least mentioned and have the arena and jerseys and things like that as their expansion team because they're going to be a new team starting when that game comes out. The next game is a game that came out actually in 2020 and that is Spider-Man Miles Morales. I love the first Spider-Man game this one here is not a full game it's kind of an expansion it's not Spider-Man 2 which is something that is hopefully in the works in the future but it's kind of an extension like a half game with the Miles aspect to Spider-Man so Miles is the new Spider-Man in this game and I think it's going to be a lot of fun now I could have purchased it at the holidays 2020 I decided to wait and I go wait till it's on sale because it's something that's I had the choice between Avengers and Spider-Man I decided to basically go with Avengers to get a new style of game by a new creator for Marvel and I know I'm going to eventually get this game so I didn't want to purchase at the time and it's something that this year I know I'm going to be getting. The last game is something that I'm going to mention but right now I don't even know if number one it's going to come out number two if it's going to even be announced or if it's something that's realistically going to happen and that is going to be WWE 2K 2022. WWE 2K 20 was the last annual game that came out for WWE and for a lot of people it was a broken game it was a garbage game and a lot of people hated it so much so that the next year 2K announced that they were not making WWE 2K 21 they were taking a break and they're going to fix all the problems they had for 2020 before they make another annual game. There's rumors right now that 2K might not be making the next game it might go to EA it might go somewhere else but right now there's no word on the truth of what's going to happen with the WWE annual games. For me personally WWE 2K 20 everything worked for me all the trophies popped up I got the platinum for the game and the main things that I love is the championship creations the attire creations and universe mode and having all three of those aspects work for me is why I purchased the game and why I play the game so I'm really excited for 2022 if that game does come out and it's made by 2K and made rights or if there's new features like GM mode which is rumored I think that would be a lot of fun and I can't wait if that does happen if not we'll be waiting another year 2023 but these are the games as of right now that I'm going to be getting this year like I said I don't know if it's going to be the ps4 the ps5 versions of the games but I can't wait to get these games comment down below the games that you plan on getting this year and I'll see you guys in the next video please take care peace


Good afternoon everyone, welcome back. It's theCUBE live at Snowflake Summit 2023, coming to you from Caesars Forum in toasty, warm, sunny Las Vegas. I'm guessing I've been inside for about 24 hours now. Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Dave, we've been talking a lot about cloud cost optimization the last month or so on theCUBE. It's an incredibly important balance for customers to get optimization performance. We're going to be talking about that with one of our alumni next. Yeah, I mean other than AI, it's sort of the topic of du jour, right? Companies facing headwinds, they're a little bit careful, they got cloud they can optimize, that's the beauty of cloud, right? It's not a feature, I mean it's not a bug, it's a feature. It is a feature. Please welcome back. One of our alumni, Patrick Bartsch is here, Senior Director of Product Management at Capital One Software. Patrick, it's great to see you, welcome back. Thank you very much, good to be back with y'all. So give the audience just a quick refresher, Capital One Software, this is the software business of Capital One. Everyone knows Capital One, what's in your wallet. Talk to us a little bit about that. Why did Capital One launch this last year? Capital One Software is the enterprise B2B division of Capital One that's focused on bringing our cloud and data management products to market. Over the last several years, we've had to build a number of products and platforms to enable us to operate as a regulated entity at scale in the cloud. And so it was a natural evolution for us to start bringing some of these tools to market. Talk a little bit about cloud cost optimization. As Dave and I were bantering, we've been talking about it a lot in the cloud. It is a hot topic besides AI. What's your advice on how companies should be thinking about cloud cost optimization, balancing cost, and performance so that they can really drive competitive differentiation? And so the key challenge here is that the cloud is a story of more. More power, more flexibility, more speed of adoption, more data into the hands of more people to create more and better business insights. But if you lean too heavily into that story of more, you open yourself up to risk on two fronts. Data security risk and cost overruns.  And so we think about this as optimizing price performance and striking that perfect balance between efficiency and enablement and governance. I think your timing a year could have been more perfect because we entered this year, practitioners were expecting IT decision makers to spend probably a five to 6% increase in their budget. That's down now, that's down to mid twos. Okay, so everybody what they did is they said, all right, let's do what we can, consolidate, redundant vendors, and one of the things they obviously did is get a lot of data in the cloud. Let's dial that down, maybe store less data. We actually, I wrote a piece in May and one of our ETR, our survey partner, which of the metrics is most prone to surprise cloud bill overages? I thought it was going to be compute. Database came up, number one. And I was like, hmm, I wonder if there's a lot of snowflake accounts in there because it's all embedded, it's all in there. And so your tooling can help with that problem. I said the timing has been perfect. What's the reception been like? So to address your first point, everybody goes to the cloud, they think, oh, the unit cost of storage is zero. Well, it's approaching zero, but it's not zero. And so you kind of have to keep an eye on it. You have to have visibility on how much you're spending on all of your cost drivers across all of your accounts because you don't want to wake up one day and say, oops, what'd we miss? The reception so far has been really positive. We're really happy with the feedback that we've gotten from customers. We had one company tell us it was like having an extra data engineer on staff at the fraction of the cost. One company told us that they were really excited because we've automated a number of tasks that they used to perform manually. We actually are partnering with Pitney Bose on a theater session tomorrow at 2.30 where they're going to talk about how Slingshot fits into their overall data mesh construct. And so we're really excited about what the feedback we've gotten from customers. And I think historically about how pre-cloud, how organizations would save money, it was like cleaning the attic. You never wanted to do it, but if you had to, if things were tight, you had to go reclaim wasted storage and things like that that was just a heinous exercise. The cloud obviously different. It's easier if you have the tooling to figure it out. My premise here, Patrick, and I wonder if you could comment is I think a lot of this is going to be permanent. I think people are going to say, well, I learned the muscle memory of how to cloud optimize during this, let's say 2022 to 2023. And I don't have to give that up now, even in good times. I'm going to keep doing that and then invest elsewhere. Do you buy that premise? So I think the overall objective is to ring every last ounce of efficiency out of every dollar of spend. And so as long as you're doing that, and you're monitoring that, then you're free to invest more in additional use cases and additional value for your customers. And you can trust that if you're spending more, it's because you're doing more and you're driving more business value, not because you're, there's wastage in the system. Absolutely, yeah. So okay, so what specifically can I do with Slingshot? So some of the new features that we're really excited to have launched last week, one is offer more customization.  You could go into each account individually and tag the infrastructure and workloads with a common set of values and then build a custom process to extract that data to a central location and then build another custom process to visualize it. Or you could use Slingshot, do that all in one step through automation. So we're excited about that. Second is we've broadened the scope of our recommendations to not just focus on cost savings, but to focus on efficiency and optimization as well. Because there are times when maybe you have a really important job that's running and you don't mind spending a bit more. It's not always about saving money. And then third is one of the challenges of the cloud is that for the first time bad queries cost money because they don't let your warehouse sleep. And so we launched a intelligent query advisor tool that analyzes your queries and optimizes them and helps your analysts be more efficient with how they're using SQL. So this puts money right to the bottom line. I want you to explain shrinkage because Target earlier this year announced they projected they lost $800 million last year. I mean, huge numbers and a half a billion dollars in projected for an upcoming quarter.  Explain specifically how you might help. The point that I'm making is really about being able to track a common set of use cases or a common function across multiple accounts. That's one example. Example of Capital One might be something like fraud where you want to track it across retail bank, commercial bank, credit card. But the point is we make it much easier to identify those horizontals and tag those horizontal pieces of infrastructure with common values that let you extract relevant information so that you can make decisions that are right for your business. Talk a little bit about the retailer example. Retailer example is interesting. We've seen so much change. You mentioned Target, lots of stuff going on recently. But talk about some of the key benefits that an organization, whether it's a retailer or a life sciences organization, is going to achieve obviously cost optimization efficiency. And some of the other things, visibility sounds like you mentioned governance. So visibility for sure. We make it really easy to understand where you're spending money on all of your snowflake cost drivers, not just storage and compute. We make it really easy for you to identify and optimize the poorly written queries that are driving kind of the wasted spend. And that's really common across any industry. I mean, you look at some of the customers in our press release. They're not just other financial institutions. They're not just other regulated entities. Some are, but we've got retailers. We've got CPG companies. And we do have a couple financial companies as well. That's the interesting thing about this is it's very Amazon EWS-like where you guys develop this internally, sort of I guess perfected it, or prove the product market fit internally and then pointed it to the external world. But it's not just confined to financial services. It's a classic horizontal play. That's right. And we've been really excited about the feedback we've gotten from companies and other industries. We spent the last year making sure that we're building the right product for the right set of customers. And so we're, we've been pleased that it's applicability across industries.  Please go ahead. I was going to say, are you kind of mirroring from a partnership perspective with SNF? Like I know you guys are a large user mirroring how their data clouds are kind of being aligned to vertical industries and then the latest is public sector. Is that something that's going on with Capital One software as well? Snowflake's been a great partner for us. I mean, we were one of their biggest users. We were one of their earliest investors. We have a great relationship with them. And, you know, we look at the services that they offer almost like building blocks that we can build experiences on top of.   That's right, that's right. And so we can put several of those things together to create end-to-end use cases for our customers. So how is Capital One and Slingshot, how is it different from sort of competitive products? Couple different ways. So this is the only product that I know that allows companies to roll out really the new way of operating in the cloud, which is federation and self-service. To strike that right balance of governance and enablement that I was talking about before, you have to enable your teams through a central platform that's tooled with central policies. Kind of a data meshy principle. We're the only product I've seen that does that. Second, the breadth of our recommendation engine is pretty significant. And third, I mean, it's battle tested. Like we've used this internally. We're using the exact same product to operate at scale in the cloud. And so we're excited about the differentiation we bring. Are there any particular announcements that you heard this morning? But maybe you didn't hear them. You might have been busy. Were you in the keynote or no? I got a couple updates. Okay, is there anything in there that you see as a developer to say, okay, this is going to make my life better. Maybe it's the AI stuff. We heard a lot of excitement, hype last night from Jensen. Bring us back to sort of real world in terms of how you can apply some of this stuff. The two things that I'm most excited about that they announced this morning were their budgets capability and their utilization metric. It's going to make it easier for us as a third party tool to understand what's going on under the hood of our customer snowflake account and help our customers more easily manage their spend. And so, you know, AI is super hot right now. But what is the raw material of AI need? It needs exceptional data management and it needs exceptional cost controls. And so, we're excited about our ability to support our customers as they dabble in those spaces. Right. Go ahead. How are you helping customers? One of the things that I think Frank Sluteman said this morning in the keynote is an AI strategy requires a really solid, robust data strategy. When you're talking to customers, where are they on that data strategic front? So that they can leverage the value of AI and develop new apps and products and services. I would say that most companies, the way I think about it is where are you on the maturity curve of your operating model? And so, in the old world, business teams would make data requests of a central enterprise data team that team has a fixed capacity and they quickly become a bottleneck. When you move to the cloud, you have to empower teams to operate via self-service in a federated model through a common set of platforms and tools. And so, I kind of look at customers as where are they on that maturity scale? And that kind of drives what value we can offer them. Because if they are sort of in this older mindset, then they're going to get value out of our visibility, our recommendations, our query advisor. But if they are more forward-leaning, then they can leverage all of our functionality around governance and workflows and separation of duties and federated approvals. I heard Cybersyn was up there this morning. You might not have caught that. They said they're exclusive to Snowflake. Are you exclusive to Snowflake? Currently, we are, yes. Currently, but that sounds like that might be in the future plans to expand? Nothing to announce right now. We'll of course keep y'all posted if that ever changes, but we're excited to be here at Summit. We're excited about our partnership with Snowflake and that's what we're focused on. As we've evolved over the last, over the first year, I said, going into year two with Slingshot, some of the, you talked about some of the features that were just announced. What are some of the things that excite you about, if you had a crystal ball looking into the future for Slingshot, I want to make a pun there with Slingshot going forward, but I can't quite think of it right now. So when you look at how you optimize your Snowflake spend, you have two levers. There's right sizing your infrastructure and then optimizing your workloads. We have, in my opinion, the best solution for right sizing your infrastructure. We've launched the first version of our workload optimization tool. And so our continued progress there, our roadmap to how we deepen that functionality, how we offer more value around workload optimization is where I'm excited about where we're headed. Awesome. Maybe a new tagline for Capital One Software. What's in your data cloud? You know, we've joked about the what's in your cloud tagline before. Didn't want to say it. My comms person might yell at me. Sorry guys, it was me. It was me. I take full responsibility. Patrick, great to have you back on theCUBE a year after Slingshot. Congratulations on the success that you've had, the best practices that you're sharing with the customers, the growth, the adoption, and the evolution. We look forward to talking to you next year. Thank you so much. Great to be here. It's a pleasure. For Dave Vellante and our guest, I'm Lisa Martin. Up next, Cube alumni, Matillion joins Dave and me with customer EDF energy. We're going to be talking about recent survey data from Matillion on the challenges data team space. We're going to talk about how EDF energy out of Britain is partnering with Matillion and Snowflake to remain really competitive and innovative among energy providers. Stick around, Dave and I will be right back with our next guests.


Hi, I'm 83 Leo Barth and I'm an aviation machinist mate and test cell operator in the jet shop onboard Big E. My job is to repair and test jet engines for the F-18 Hornet and Super Hornet aircraft. Before testing we look over the motor and test equipment to ensure it is all properly installed and restrained. During testing several leak checks are performed to be sure no fuel, oil or air is escaping. Leak checking is the most exciting part of our job because it's done while operating at maximum speeds of over 17,000 RPM and with a 15 foot flame coming from the exhaust. Once testing is complete for the motor it's ready for use by the squadrons.


Hello, hello, folks, I'm Philip Magnus here with a review of Mark Lawrence's fantastic grey sister. If you're up for that kind of review and more, why don't you subscribe? Now, let's jump into it, shall we? How I have longed to return to another story in the year and several months since I read Red Sister. Time and opportunity conspired against me, until this summer, when I read through the second book of the Ancestor in two sittings. A return to the sweet Mercy monastery was most welcome. Following a timeskip, I was happy to be reunited with Nona and company. Things were both the way I remembered and different. Nona's breezy temperament and cheery attitude have not changed in the least, except for the voice in her head of a devil made of violence and darkest desires. Forced to carry within herself the devil-kiot, Nona has to come to grips with her darker urges. She is either to embrace self-control or risk becoming no different than some of the foes she faced down in the previous novel. Yet kiot is not all bad, I cite. She'd come to think of him as a broken thing. Part of her mind, perhaps, filled with fragments of knowledge, occasionally useful as the shards of a pot can be, offering a sharp edge but no good for holding soup. All of this is to say you can find use for her and even grow fond of even the darker aspects that linger within yourself. And there are moments where parasite and host bonded in intricate and unwholesome ways. The demon makes a valuable addition to the mammoth cast of supporting characters, Nona but friends, threatens, crushes or otherwise engages with. That's a lie, it's only ever one of the first three. Zoll, the four-blooded chosen one, steals the spotlight repeatedly, bode by exhibiting frightening competencies and by slowly revealing layers of herself hidden behind a mask of stoicism. Sister Kettle and Ara and Darla don't make it easy for Zoll, mind, always the deadly sister of discretion. Kettle goes to every length to help a sister in need. Ara and Darla, meanwhile, not only the best friends our girl Nona could hope for, they're also great at her party. Even a certain traitorous ker from Red Sister makes a most memorable appearance. Abbas Glass made for an excellent secondary point of view character. I might be wrong when I write this, but I have a lingering suspicion her chapters in this book made a much larger chunk of Grey Sister than they did the previous book. Of all the older generation of skilled martial artists and deadly prisoners Lawrence has introduced in this prayer of nuns, or however you'd call a group of them, it might just be the Abbas I am fondest of. Glass plays the most elaborate political games just as she did in the previous novel, her machinations far reaching and promising deadly consequences. It's all sharp falls and apocal leaps in the deadly arena of political religious games with Glass and I wouldn't change this fierce lady for anything or anyone. I quote, she's so old she must be fifty. Close goes a young nun or Grey exclaimed at one point to the bemusement of everyone over twenty. Said pieces, ambitious battles, monsters beneath the deepest rocks, endless barbs across monastery and royal court alike, and camaraderie to warm your heart. Grey Sister has much I loved and much worth celebrating. Little surprise there, in my experience, Mark Lawrence delivers page thinners without stop. On a side note, this has been the bursting consistent I've been with how I approach a series in forever. I read Red Sister on my Kindle, grabbed a trade paperback of Grey Sister and I've had an audiobook of Holy Sister sitting around forever now, so I'm very likely to finish the series with that one. Long live diversity in material conditions. Whatever that means. I'm Philip Magnus, if you enjoyed this video, why not share it with your friends? Make sure to press that subscribe button and smash the like button as well. Have you read anything by Lawrence? I believe I've had a good few novels now on the channel. It's been two, hasn't it? Maybe three. Eh, well no, the other. But it's a great book that is written by Mark Lawrence usually, that's the case, and I probably should sit down and write my review of the book that wouldn't burn. I read that one several months ago now around its release and kind of got distracted by my marxistesis, but might be a good time to return to it and share the word, the good word, on it. I'll see you again next time. Bye!


Mark, Chaisa Fforest Green, Low and Chaisa Park, will yn ennig y port bael gan ymddangos, how's the move being around with camp this week? It's been fine, we're disappointed, we haven't got our home form going as yet, but another opportunity of the weekend to address that. That's why we finished the game really strongly and had chances to really get back on level terms, which on reflection, over the course of the whole match, I think our performance probably just about deserved that to take something out of the game. Maybe not doing enough maybe to win it, but certainly I thought our last period was encouraging again, so it's about just getting a complete home performance. We've played well up to a point in good periods in all the games we've played, but it's about just getting that complete performance that enables us to win. Is it a few focusing on those positives that we've seen in the chunks of the hammer games and really having that hand to the players? No, I think the players themselves, they know that these times when we haven't quite done what was needed in any given situation, so that happens is about decision making, football's all about making the right decision at the right time, sometimes if you don't get those decisions individually and collectively correct, then the opposition can hurt you, so we've had examples of that, but no, the confidence is still high. We're enjoying the work that we're going through and every week it's a process of going through what we need to highlight from the game, just gone and work on the repetition of the thoughts and the ideas that we have in terms of what we want to do, so that's an ongoing process, that's what we do day in, day out to repeat good messages that they can use and translate into good performances. You talked about after finding different ways to play and adapt, did you mean by that on a game-like game basis or is that something you can work on during the week and how receptive have the players? The point I was making was sometimes opposition will make it difficult for us, ideally when we're playing really well, as we've shown in certainly in our way performances, then teams will look at those games and think, well, goodness me, they're a good team if you allow them to play, so teams will come and try and stop us playing, so the point I was making is that when that happens we've got to be able to have another string to our bow and be able to adapt and change and ask different questions of the opposition so that they are unable to answer those and so the momentum of the game swings back your way if it's gone the other way, so it's just about having an acknowledgement during a 90 minutes of football that times you can't dominate throughout the 90 minutes and there's only a certain few at the top end that can do that, so we have to accept that times momentum will go against us and we've just got to be aware when that happens and be able to bring it back to ourselves and you can do that with certain things that we've worked on this week. And just coming into the Newport game, do you have any fresh injury concerns or team news going into Newport? No, no, I think from last week we're okay, we're likely to get Elliot and Alex Ciliad back the other injuries that we have are still absent, but no, we're strong enough, we have 20-22 players out there today so that's okay, we've still got a few injury concerns longer term once I come back into the group but apart from that we've got good numbers so we've got good options. Alex Ciliad pre-port bail there a bit so it can go weren't there, is there a case this weekend we can expect them to start or is it more they'll just be involved? We won't see, we won't see, they haven't missed a great deal for Paul, they've back trained with the group so we're hopeful they're not going to get any reaction leading into the game but I would have no crabs on them straight back in if I felt that was the right selection but there's no concern in terms of those maybe a little bit different for Alex Ciliad Charles Vernon who obviously had a longer term injury and he had a great introduction when he came on last week, had an instant impact so he's in my thoughts but we're mindful of that, he hasn't had a great deal of football and that 30 minutes or so that he had was probably more than we expected him to have to play in his first game back so we're still a little bit cautious with Charles. I was going to say about Charles obviously coming on and scoring probably chomping it a bit to be in that 11 is it a case for a bit of man management when it comes to managing how quickly they come back? Well yeah, we've got good support staff here and I'm getting good information in terms of loads and how much work the guys should be exposed to so I take that on board sometimes as a manager sometimes if circumstances dictate sometimes you have to ignore all that because you're going to school where you've got feeling and circumstances and sometimes I try and avoid that because sometimes I can compromise a player but we're not in that situation I've got good numbers and if we have to give the guys a little bit extra time to make sure they sound then that's what we'll do. I want to ask you about your goalkeepers because you've got Alex Bass who's on loan but you've also got Richard who's out of contract at the end of the season now that's what we see in one position but Richard might be thinking why don't I want to try and prove myself and fight for my place? Yeah, it's difficult for any number of players that haven't got that knowledge of where they're going to be next year and we're not at that process where we're going to start offering deals to players at this moment we're not far away if I'm honest so yeah, Richard's one of a number of players that have a little bit of anxiety in terms of their position but I would just say that to any number of players a lot of decisions haven't been made yet there's a certain stance obviously with the goalkeeping situation that is obviously a key position and will be resolved but we're probably not at that point yet. Is it something that you would like to get a rough idea of who's going to go? Oh yeah, I would like to think by the time we come back for pre-season all those issues are in place and we know exactly what we're going with the reality will probably be something completely different because we won't have everybody we want through the door when we want them but I think it's a process everybody's got to go through a league too there's a lot of churn in terms of players moving around and coming to the end of their contracts and looking for deals so there's a lot of work to go through and a lot of information that's regarding players that you might be interested in that works on going that's something we're going through now. Okay, the playoffs albeit not mathematically but probably out of reach we can't really see Bradford City getting involved in a relegation fight but there's still so much contracts to play for if you let the players know your expectations and what you want to see from that. I'd like to think they understand where I'm coming from now in terms of standards and how we train and how we behave and the levels that we have to hit we can't just switch that on and off, it's got to be a constant and that runs right through the club from Monday to the weekend so there's a lot to play for touch on obviously guys playing for future contracts that's always there others obviously I will look at some maybe at this point in time having made a decision in my own mind so there's a lot of things a lot of factors and players are the opportunity and the ability to influence that by their performances so it's in everybody's interest that everybody plays really hard from now to the end of the season. And just some of the younger like some thinking Key and Scales restored and is this a time of season where we can maybe expect to see them give them a little run out? I'd never guarantee anybody a game definitely because circumstances change very very quickly on a daily hourly basis it seems sometimes in football so if an opportunity presents itself and a player is trained exceptionally well and I'm of the view that he merits an appearance and he will get that but that would have to obviously be my decision and we'll have to see if I'm not too sentimental in that regard just giving games for game's sake I think guys have to really earn the right to play in in brother city suits so that shouldn't change. Looking ahead still looking obviously for your first home win in Valley of the Raid another big crowd on Saturday wouldn't it be great to send those fans home happy when the people are managing? We're all waiting for that it's we've been close in all the games in my view we just need that performance that gets us over the line and I feel we're very very close we've got good options we've got guys that don't make the first 11 who can come on and make an impact we know that as well so if things aren't quite going our way then we can make changes that will affect the game so I think it's very close that first home win everybody feels that the atmosphere in the stadium illustrates that there's huge support for what we're trying to do and they can see that we're trying to do the right things at the right time and as long as we continue in that vein then we'll get that support because I'd like to think the way we want to play will encourage everybody. I'm sure we'll go forward into next season we talk a lot about this league awaiting its upcoming to Valley of the Raid and almost here it's like a cup final it's the place they want to go and get three points you would be wanting to make that into a fortress next season well yeah yeah I think I mentioned a couple of weeks back we shouldn't have any anxiety playing at home it should be it should be a joy whenever I was playing at home I'd look across the tone to the opposition and think well they can win today because we never get beat here so we've got to get to a point where we feel the same at Valley of the Raid and if we're playing well and we've got a huge crowd in the stadium and they're right behind us then it's going to be very very difficult for away teams to come and enjoy the experience we're not that level yet but that's our intention Just on you Paul another site that you've shown in recent weeks for a screen that you can more than compete with The teams that we're playing almost each and every one even from now to the end of the year the teams that are going for some playoff positions trying to go up automatically and that's why they've been difficult games so I haven't had an easy game yet so I don't anticipate we'll have too many from now to the end of the season it's a good challenge and it's a good test and it helps me obviously see how guys deal with a good opposition going up against us and it gives me a real insight into the league itself on what's required to be successful I'm really enjoying this period at the moment I think it's a great learning experience for me in terms of the level that we're at and the level that we want to go to Just lastly away from Bradford City to be playing for Wales tonight a game away from that play a fine I'm sure you'll have one eye on that if not two Thankfully I've got this role now but if I was in here I would actually be there with all the other Welsh men and women It's a huge opportunity for Wales it's just the first step obviously if they overcome this one they go into the final I got close a couple of times where I was never able to play in a World Cup finals and that's probably the one glaring omission from my CV was that I was never able to play in a major championship for my country so I was a big regret but these guys some of them have already done that in the Euros so it would be great if we finally get there we got close too many times in the past and got obviously upset at the final hurdle so I wish them all that Best of luck for South Wales tonight When you look at Newport they've been there when they were about last few years and always failed Is there a case that you can maybe play all that against them and in clattitude will we fail again? Well yeah they've been a solid team for a number of seasons and done really well and I actually went to the playoff when they came up into the football league I'm right in saying they played Wrexham because I was there as a Wrexham supporter so unfortunately they beat us so they're doing well it's a side obviously that problems in this history but they've resurrected themselves and come again and credit to them so yeah they'll be challenging I'm not sure how much the fact that they're close and they've missed out how much that will affect the group as a whole we have to obviously hope that's the case because then we can benefit from that but I think you can look on the reversal that obviously they've had experience of getting this close maybe in the past perhaps they have the means to go that one step further so we'll have to wait and see but it's our intention to upset them Presumably looking for a better start last week against Port Mail in terms of the way they're playing Well you have to factor in what the opposition will try and do to you so teams as I've already mentioned they won't come and allow us to play how we want to play where we've no question of not asking questions of us so we've got to be ready for that so I think we've certainly talked about this week about making sure that we're more dynamic than maybe we were in the opening period I think we allowed ourselves to just get a little bit sucked into how Port Mail wanted to play that type of game was to be strong enough to play the way we want to play and allow ourselves to dictate the opposition not the other way around so that's what we've talked about that's what we'll aim to do the weekend I'm saying Mark about the home record the support is staying with you as well as they have done the fact that I think we're working out there's been 100 in the last five months so I couldn't have they've not had much the other way so if you get it right the potential we don't take for granted the support that we have it's always a case of trying to give our supporters everything that that we can and you touch on the fact they're staying with us I think that's because they can see progress and they can see that there's a real demand from me and that there's a real drive from the players themselves to make things better and the fans see what they see they see that for themselves where we're not trying to kid people it's what we do on the pitch where we get judged by and at the weekend it's another opportunity to put the record straight to a certain extent we felt that we have deserved more in the game certainly I've been involved in at home so that's okay saying that but you've got to go out and actually that's the aim at the weekend when you say that it's all habit for me if you can get this elusive win hopefully it's sort of a habit players will probably say it's not effective at all and it probably isn't but in the back of your mind there'll still be that thing of possibly you only get rid of that by playing well in winning games as you've said and that's our intention I think the players themselves in a group are frustrated because they've seen opportunities to certainly get positive results in these games and we haven't quite been able to get it over the line but we all feel we're very close and good times that would be the weekend and it's torn to the young song of the start of the week obviously he's played this season half of the central midfield and half to centre half and he's sort of, I'll say which role we prefer he's sort of about six or one half doesn't the other, how do you sort of see where do you see him as more I think he's doing really well I think in the first week he pulled me over one side and reminded me that he was a midfield player but I think he's doing fine I think he's doing very well in the role I'm asking him to do I appreciate at times he's still come to terms with the position but I think he's had influence on the way we've played he's been prepared to maybe in his own mind sacrifice a little bit it's a natural game to really help the team out and everybody appreciates him for that I think he's a player that's got a better understanding of how to play the position now just by virtue of obviously the time we've spent with not only Jan but the whole back floor in terms of what we want and what I expect from him so I'd like to think he's enjoying learning that part of it but yeah I mean it's always better to have a number of strings to your bow and Jan's got that so I know I could call on him if I felt I needed his type of player or his potential to play midfield I can call on that because I know he can play that and also he's got very good experience particularly at this level he's had success at this level so he knows he's not yeah no absolutely we tap into that on a daily basis so we really understand the level and can impact games wherever he plays it might be and he's also probably not one you want to upset because he's quite a big guy anytime soon he's okay Jan he's not problem but he accepts criticism and I think he's a good professional he recognises if there's been a mistake and he's he's good enough professional to hold his hand up if it's if it's down to him there haven't been too many occasions that has been down to him since I've been here so that's great too I might be obviously a reference you put up there just thinking about your career you had a time when you played for a club that happened on the league for 20 years you had the wales experience and nothing since 1958 just thinking in terms of the hand form how significant is it when you just break that career and get that belief again yes and it's an important cycle to break you don't want obviously to to have a home record mentioned every week because when that happens it's clearly something not quite right with where we are at that time so the sooner we just get rid of that I mean the results that we've had are away from home back to back wins I think that was first time since August I was reminded just before so you can get rid of all these comments or areas of discussion just by winning if we do that on the weekend then another trend may develop and I'll have to discuss that but ideally we want to get back to winning ways at home and why shouldn't we be good enough to win at home because I mean when the margins are so small and you're playing one away as well do you feel it really just doesn't need much just no it doesn't need much it's as much as maybe and we have been able to do this scoring the first goal it's so violent at this level and at all levels if I'm honest that first goal is key and I think we've been guilty when we have conceded goals even if we've gone ahead in games we conceded at bad times in the round obviously the half time break and obviously at the end of games we conceded penalties that have hurt us so it's just recognising those times in the games when you've got to be really focused and manage those periods of the game so that you get the result that you want because obviously in the flip side you've then played in successful teams and as you say you're in the tunnel looking just thinking we're going to win it does feel like with the crowd you get here and the stature of the club that if you can just get that one it will get you through tight games it's our intention in the future at some point sooner rather later that we don't hope to win we expect to win but obviously we need to have and that's where we need to get to where we're not there now at this moment in time clearly but we can get there where there was shadow around so it's about utilising all the strengths that we have and I include the playing staff, the support staff the stadium and clearly the fans that come and watch us because without them we're nothing we can't achieve what we want to achieve so the key is to to have an environment here that enables us to expect to win not to hope to win Respect to what he calls earlier he seemed very happy with life to just enjoy this football when you follow a manager who's been sacked on top of all the technical work how important is it to just get them enjoying the football again? Yeah that's a huge thing unfortunately when managers and I know myself having left many jobs unfortunately there is a time where players are a little bit in limbo they're not quite sure where they stand with a new manager and it's change is good for some guys others don't like change and it affects them adversely but I just think if you come in and you're positive and give them good direction and give them an understanding of the way you expect them to perform and how they'd expect to perform then very quickly they recover from any issues they had with the change in management And again you're saying enjoying the style of play as well I guess the fact that you try and play a positive style of play that just naturally feeds into it Yeah we're trying to play a little bit more a little bit more passing but it's always with the view just to get it up to the front end of the team and at the top end of the pitch to enable us to score goals and win games and so we're not messing around on the back in my view it's always with the intention to get up the pitch And I would imagine all three of your managerial career you probably work with players who couldn't hold the ball like you could, couldn't volley it like you could but I guess it's more pronounced like you're working at this level Does it take a bit of a sort of mental jump to just appreciate that these players can't do what you could do and what reconciled to that actually over the years Well the reality is I'm 50 years now and I can't do it anymore so they can, so they're better than me now so it doesn't come into my thinking at all I've been a manager for a long time and it's always been about making the individual better so that the team becomes better and if someone is struggling with one area of their play that I know where I can improve them by just giving them a little bit of insight and a little bit of experience of my knowledge then that's what I'll do and on a personal level and a professional level that's really satisfying because you can see when people take on board the information you give them and actually try and work with what you feel will help them and when it comes off of them you're really pleased so it's really satisfying the role that I have hopefully they feel that the knowledge I've got and the experience I've got will enable them to become better players and I've seen that for myself already so that's encouraged me for me certainly as their manager I mean I've heard you say in a couple of interviews already you've been very impressed by the standard that you've made two football on board so now you're a few weeks in has the transition been easier maybe than you? the only difference, the level of players it's all about decision making in my view it's the better players, the world class players are the ones that make the best decisions on a more regular basis and that's why they play where they are at times we'll make poor decisions and not make the right decision for the right situation and that's at times why we play at the level that we do but everybody can pass the ball everybody can head it and follow it and trap it at this level it's just using the skill at the right time that's what skill is technique, they can all do the techniques it's just using the right one at the right time