Okay, great. Hi, this is Sam Hartman again, and I have the pleasure now to introduce Michael Banke, who's going to be talking about FAI and, Goza. Goza, okay. I'm sorry, I just realized I didn't know how to pronounce that. So this morning at the ball, one of the things that we talked about was whether there was any tools that were sort of at the, between the kind of stuff Russ was talking about last hour and sort of the one machine. And it sounds like Michael's going to be talking about what fits really nicely into that space, at least on the side of installations and how that works for repeatable installations for small organizations. And so I think this will be very interesting. Thanks, Sam. So I'm Michael Banke. I have contact with FAI and Goza through my work. I'm done, I'm working professionally for Cudotif and we're helping the City of Munich to get the most out of FAI and Goza. So they are doing some pretty large scale thing as you might have heard. They're trying to migrate all their 15,000 desktops to Linux. So they're doing quite some heavily modified stuff. So basically they are based on Edge but they don't call it Edge even more. They have some other release name scheme, not Toy Story. And there's a lot of packages that they forked and a lot of packages they added. And that's one thing. And the other thing is that also they're using FAI and Goza in a pretty pushy way. Oh, it's pushing what Goza can do in some sense. So they're using multiple servers. These servers are talking to each other and I'm not gonna talk about that tonight or today. But I think it would be interesting because there had to be quite a lot of modifications to be done to get this setup going or it's still ongoing I guess to migrate. So we're still helping them. And it would be nice to at least get some parts out of it for regular stuff. So I'm not gonna talk about server-server integration that's maybe for another year because it's just so far away from anything you can easily do on Debian right now. It really takes a lot of integration work. But yeah. So first of all, who knows FAI? Who has used it already? Not that many people actually. I thought everything would go up. And who knows Goza? Okay, so quite a few less. Yeah, FAI is probably much more well known. As a disclaimer, I'm not that much of an FAI expert as compared to other people in the room. We're mostly working on the Goza side but I would really like to present what you can do with Goza and FAI and how you can install and manage systems with it. Okay, so FAI, as Russ just said, it's one of Debian's success stories. It's really great. It's on the other hand, quite size admin-centric I would say. So you need to, it's very command line based. You program in Perl and well, see if Engine or Shell in order to get things going as you want. And while the tagline is planned, your installation and FAI installs your plan or client installs your plan. Still don't know what the real pronunciation is there. And it's implemented in Perl. No. No, sorry, what is it then? Shell and Perl. Shell and Perl, okay. Others. But okay. So this is the part which is probably pretty well known. I mean, I'm not going to talk too much about FAI just a bit about how it's working. Basically, you get a client-specific pixie config. So the clients will boot over DHCP and then get a config which gets generated or which gets generated by the FAI change boot program. And depending on that config, it either says reinstall or local boot. So then the client knows whether it should go into installation mode or just boot from the local hard drive to get a regular boot up going. And then clients boot over NFS. So there is the central server which serves the root file system over NFS. And from there on, the init system is basically just FAI itself. So there's no regular init. And FAI then runs a couple of scripts which determine which classes there are. So basically the classes then in the FAI concept, classes say what particular parts of FAI should get done are applicable to that particular client. So you can customize for a range of clients or for one particular client, you can customize different ways of installation. Yeah, so these classes get determined and their configuration space gets a determined. And I will talk about that a bit in a bit. Then the installation gets executed in the sense that the target file systems get partitioned and created and the packages get installed and scripts and so on get executed. And in the end, this client-specific pixie config will get set to local boot so the next time it will not get reinstalled again but will boot from local disk. And in general it's possible to do post-install management via the soft update mechanism which I believe is not that heavily used but you can use it to figure out which packages should be on and which package should get removed or whether packages should well get updated if they are. Or you can add probably new packages which you think should be on that host. So, five classes in more detail. They define how specifically a client get installed. And, well, it's, you can, so as I said it says admin centering, it's Perlin shell so you can do whatever you want in some constraints. But generally I believe you take hardware-specific or feature-specific or client-purpose-specific classes so say you have a class I386 which you can always query and do various things which should be done on I386 compared to maybe AMD64 like installing the right kernel and that kind of stuff. Or say Grubb or Lilo if you will say, okay, this computer doesn't boot with Lilo or this computer doesn't boot with Grubb so you can set a specific class for that kind of computer. Or things like GNOME or server, you can make up packages lists of different packages which should get installed on one machine so the purpose of the machine gets executed. Basically, how it is done is there is a couple of scripts or you can of course add new ones which get run on during boot but is fine in it. And they determine the classes. So basically what they output on standard out is what the classes will get added to the classes. So in this case, U-name will be put into upper case and then as you see, this would be the I386 or AMD64 class in the first line. And then the next one would be also well, the package there and then other things. So that's like system dependent. And other classes would be host dependent, for example here, there's a host name demo host. So basically this is taken from the five example classes just so you can, if you want to look it up, it's the five dash doc package and the user share doc, five doc, example, simple. So there you can have a look how five classes are looking like and this is from that example if you want to look it up. And then here you can say that if the class is I386 or AMD64, then also install grub, for example. So you can do that. And in this case, the host demo host would have the package based classes, five base DHCPC for DHCP client and demo and any other client. Of course you can add your own here would have only five base and DHCPC. And then you have a list of classes which apply to that particular client. And from these classes, there's a couple of different things that are getting run. Various types of classes you can say. And they're all below the so called config space. In the class directory itself are the scripts which I was just talking about which determine the classes. But there are also, that can also be variable files which are the class name dot var and they just contain variables. For example, in the simple classes they also contain a hash root password for the installation client and other things. And they can be used later on by scripts and hooks. The first thing which gets looked at is the disconfiguration class which figures out or tells you how to partition a host. So the host gets automatically partitioned based on what kinds of partitions you want. You can put any kind of partition in and do basically it looks, well, it's more like it looks like a table and you say the amount point and how much size it should be. So for the boot file system you would have a couple of hundred max and for the home file system on a desktop you would say, okay, I take the rest of the disk and stuff like that. And you can do preceding of variables which everybody probably knows about. For depth conf variables you can put them in the depth conf class in a general format which is depth conf set selections and they're in the package config will have a list of packages to install and a method of it. You can also say in a class, well, if also that other class is there then also install these in that packages. And, well, files are files you can, which you, that's a bit difficult to explain. They, you have a directory hierarchy there and these files then get copied over by fcopy which you have to do in one of the scripts. I will talk in a minute. So you basically say for the file boot grab manual list you would have files slash grab slash s slash boot slash grab slash manual list slash and then uppercase gruv if, as it pertains to the grab class. And they can also have post and pre-inst scripts which run directly before or after the file gets copied and they are pre-panned, so they're just post-poned pre-panned by pre-inst post-inst. And finally you have the scripts which do all the configuration and they are, they have a priority, like a two-digit priority for each class so they will get run in succession so you can say, well, which script should be run first and later and so on. And there, again, you can use the variables or the installed files to do various packaging, various setup stuff. And the hooks, it's a bit different. They're not running in that particular order but you can hook into some parts of FAI and do things you believe should be done at that point. For example, when there's an error you can do some more cleaning up. You want to do on your site or what to do on a soft update action and what to do when Microsoft gets installed. Okay, so that's a very short overview of FAI. I mean, if there's more questions about that we can go to that back later but now I want to go a bit into Goza because that's probably a part which is not so well known. It's a configuration management system built by a German company called Gunikos and it's LDOP backed. So basically everything is stored in LDOP and as a front end, you have a web-based front end which brings me back to this size admin thing I was talking before. So as you can see, it's very much different to what regular size admins would go to. I mean, it's something which for example for the city of Munich is very important because the team is only like a dozen people but there is tons of admins who have to finally install all these 15,000 machines that they don't want to do that all by themselves. They're just providing the infrastructure and all the admins are not necessarily trained in Perl or Python or CF Engine and Shell and FAI. So for them it's quite convenient that people are able to do that kind of things in the web front end. So it's not necessary that you're a senior unit size admin to do that. It has some terminal server desktop integration called GOTO which I believe stands for Gunikos terminal operations or something where for each user you can for example define in LDAP shares which should get mounted or desktop icons which should show up and it's actually pretty KDE centric still I believe. I mean, I'm not talking about that here just saying that it's possible and they're using it for the city of Munich to do various customizations of the KDE desktop. So that's quite nice. And it has a pretty powerful plugin infrastructure. So there's loads of plugins. As you can see, you can do a lot of management of various things. And the most important probably is maybe the mail stuff for your favorite mail or groupware servers. So all the mail gets routed properly and things like that and you can do that via LDAP lookups. So basically what you need to do to hook into that is that your system is able or that's at least the perfect way is able to hook up or to look up things in LDAP and GOSA will do that for you and then you have the integration going and you can easily manage that. And what I'm talking about, what I'm going to talk about is how it can be used for system management. That means installing and keeping up to date workstations, servers, well also terminal clients. So the difference to FAIS, it's implemented in PHP and it can be sometimes flake. I mean, there's some very stable parts of it but especially the system integration part is not very, very stable yet. So just as a data point, so far everything we were looking at for the city of Munich, even when we thought it had something to do with FAI, it was actually always a GOSA bug. There was never any problem with FAI for that project at least. It was always a problem with GOSA. Just so you get a look or you get a hold of how it looks like. I can quickly show you that's the main GOSA screen with just a couple of plugins. So as you install more plugins, more would get visible and probably you have to log in again. No, so right now, this is just a test setup. So one thing I'm also not going to talk about is migration of data in LDAP. So that can be a bit tricky if you have large installation and you have lots of stuff already, lots of users already in LDAP and then maybe some custom objects and things like that. Then it could be quite tricky to get it probably going with GOSA but it certainly can be done and then it has been done and there is also some migration assistance and things like that. But yeah, basically, well the administrator is able to do quite a bit but users are able to change all their stuff, change their password and as in, well for example, this seems to be not working but you can add users to groups or change your home directory and their account, change how their password should be done and stuff like that. I mean, things that you could do easily as a UNIX admin but which might be not so obvious to people who are new to this. It has departments so you can set up different, always wants me to cancel. So you can set up different departments, actually the city of UNIX is using hundreds of those. I'm not going to talk much about that and you can group things, group people into groups so you can have like a group of admins or a group of users or a group from that department and give them different things like different default shares they should have on the lock-in and things like that. Okay, what the thing is I want to show is the systems, lock-in. And here you see three servers so I put some two shadow servers which is FTPDE, Debian Arc as a package repository and Debian Pool, NTP Arc as a time server and I talk as my local server that I've reproduced here. And so you can see the server, the IP address, MAC address and well, this is not applicable because I just installed the server automatically, not via this mechanism but if you want you can do that as well. For example, the city of UNIX, they install all their GOSA repository servers via FI as well. Okay, well, just going back for a second. So what can you do with GOSA and FI? You can edit classes in LDAP or in the web front-end basically so that's of course on the other hand also, I mean it's quite nice for non-tech savvy people but on the other hand it's not the greatest thing of course if you're used to doing that in VI or Emacs so I can show you how that is done. This is the software deployment module and you can define various releases, I defined a linear release and basically what I did here is recreate the simple demo class of FI. So you have, as I said, you have this grub class which has as a template this boot grub menu list file you can upload the file or you can edit the file. Oops, sorry. So this would be the file. It's also start in LDAP, base 64 encoded. So everything's really in LDAP and with that file you have, these are the three scripts which are done by the default simple class which set up grub appropriately. This one for example does the F copy of the menu list entry and this is the post-inscript which are recreated here which sets in the right boot device, boot partition into the menu list so everything gets done appropriately. So as you can see you can edit this over the web front end. I'm perfectly clear that it's not the thing that some people at that point might do but I just want you to convey that it's certainly a good thing for people who are not that experienced who can do this kind of things easily. This would be the main package list, network terrible, there we are. So these are the main packages for this and what you can also do is edit the depconf well not in this one apparently. So there is some limited functionality for configuring packages for preceding. It's not working very well all the time but for a reasonable subset it works rather well so you see the templates in here, they get extracted out of the packages and people can then decide what should be the configuration options for that and they get implemented. So go back to the talk. Then yeah as I said you can edit the classes in LAP only, I mean that's maybe something which should be thought of in the future, I don't know. And you can assign a repository and an FAI profile so the difference between FAI as I said before and NGOSA is that through to this shell script evaluation in the beginning of FAI you have a very dynamic way of doing things and also for example in the package list you can tell what other packages should get installed if another class is there. So you don't have this kind of dynamic things, this is a pretty static way. So the whole configuration space of FAI for one client is pretty determined. What you can do though is you can put several profiles. So profile is a list of classes to apply. So it's a set of classes basically and then you can say okay I have one package list for this and then I have a slightly modified package list for that and depending on the client I want to install I'm choosing this profile or that profile which would include the right package list or the right scripts or that kind of things. So the easiest way to install a client would be to add a profile to it. And what you can also do is you can set an action, I mean you can set a wake up for things which can be woken up over ethernet or a reinstall a soft update mechanism that would get triggered by the next reboot. What you can also do is monitor the installation progress which is pretty nice. So if you have like 50 different clients which are installing you can see them all on one page what the progress is, whether they had a problem. That's actually I think one of the main advantages I'm not sure about any other like five. I mean of course you can always look at the file lock files on the clients or on the server but that's a nice way to have a good overview. And you can also view the fine installation locks of that. They get sent to the server and they get stored on the server and you can look at them in a somewhat convenient way. The other thing is you can mass install a list of clients so that's also the feature that City of Munich is using a lot so you can have a CSV list of MAC addresses and what time they should be installed and you can import that and then all the clients will get installed at that time. Or you can just click through a list of all the systems and say okay every system which has this name or well click through and they get all installed at the same time. So how does it work in practice? It works in so far that goes hooks into fire at various places. So the first thing is that the TFTP boot service gets supervised by a program called FTS. And this one, so if the client, the booting client requests the configuration file for itself by requesting pixieboot.config slash its MAC address, then there's a fuse file system which will figure out the read on that non-existing or virtual iNode and FTS will then query the other database via a file module what the system statuses of that particular client and if it's set to local boot it will generate a pixieconfig for local boot. If it's set to install then it will generate an appropriate pixieconfig for install and then it will well write it out dynamically on the fuse file system for that client which can read it and will boot accordingly. So that's the first thing and well the insulation and the root file system over NFS is basically the same thing except that also goes hooks into or also goes hooks into make phi NFS root script which generates NFS root and does a couple of local and changes there as well. And then the main difference is the configuration source. So the variable phi config source is set to goza which means that the script user libtfi getconfig via goza will get executed and this one runs the so-called goza system integration client on the client which talks over the network over socket with another goza system integration server on the server and does a shake handshake at the beginning and then will tell about the status of the installation and other things later on when the client has been booted you can for example, trigger a reboot on it and it will do that on the client. And then it runs LDAP to fire which is the main script which does the configuration space determination. So it queries LDAP for the client classes and configuration spaces so which profiles do pertain to that client and it figures out which classes are in that profile and then it downloads all the necessary script hooks and variables and partition tables and stores them on the disk as is for a regular static phi config space but that's a dynamically generated one. It merges in a couple of default classes which do some goza specific things as well and there are a couple of hooks which override some parts of goza, some parts of phi for example, for the progress thing and stuff like that. And then installation gets executed and during that go to phi progress will send that progress over the server via goza.si and after that, phi stays again set to local boot. And just, well so the main problem is it's not as easy as app.get install goza plug in phi. So it's not quite, I mean the status so far is that goza itself just this like last month or yeah late last month was finally updated to the two six version which is the newest version so that's finally in unstable and probably soon in squeeze but goza.si has not been uploaded yet. It needs a couple of more modules and maybe some more integration. And the other problem of course is for setting up phi itself is pretty difficult so if you just set it up, it doesn't really do much itself. You need integration with LDAP a lot. You need to do quite some other things and especially for the FAI plug in and the goto plug in which is dependent on that. You need to install quite a couple of pearl modules which have not yet been uploaded as well. So what is there and what I've been working on over the last couple of weeks is Mark Pavlichuk has been creating some install scripts. So basically what he's doing is these are scripts you can run and then when app get install or build from source appropriate packages you need and they will also modify the, well they modify for example the PHP config because some parameters have to be in set. So it's something that it's not very nice at the moment it needs much more integration but with those scripts you can at least try it out on a host and then see whether that setup might be might suit you. And for example it adds all the schemers to slapd.conf it does other stuff. And as I said it compiles unavailable module packages from subversion. So I fixed it up quite a bit to get it working because I think he never managed to get a real client installation working with it. There were quite some loose ends. So for example he didn't, he hadn't set the five config source variable to goza or just didn't do anything. It just did the regular five install basically. Stuff like that. So I just wanna demo now for a second if I manage to set up or add a new client. So you can create a new workstation. It's called a demo host. There is, I set up a virtual box image for this with this MAC address. You have to set an NTP server. You have to set kernel and LDAP server. And here you can assign as I said you can assign a repository and the five classes. So this is my local repository which has been just a regular Lennie repository which I have cloned on this external USB hard drive for, well, performance reasons. Lennie is the only release I have and these are the classes that are defined and I'll take this demo host profile. You also have to set use DCC and then there is the new demo host. It's still blocked. So now I'm not sure whether it will actually work. We will see. Okay, so it's booting from local disk which means I didn't figure out it correctly from LDAP. So there's a problem there. Just so you can see how it looks like I'll try to quickly force it into installation mode. If that works. I hope that helps. Now it's running the VM Linux install kernel. It's loading the inner RAM disk and it will immediately boot from NFS route. Takes a bit. Okay, so can, there we go. Well, so just to finish up this while the demonstration is going. Um, as I said, it's very much a work in progress still. I mean, it's worked. You can, well, for, except for that slide problem I was just fixing. Oh, yeah, that's my problem with the port map, usually. It's getting better. Yeah, it's not, I'm also doing this in a change route so I didn't want to use my whole notebook for this. So this why it's a bit weird set up, which I hope. There we go. It has booted the NFS route and it's now within the real one. And now you can see the progress of the installation of PHY has created all the scripts and the templates over LDAP and it's now performing the PHY installation. That was a bit fast maybe, but now it does the partitioning. It's making the fast systems and here you can see the progress. It's inspecting the hard drives. Yeah, so and on the go-to side, there is a system employment status and it should show in principle, well, that's the demonstration effect. Usually it should show the status of the installation but did it fail? Well, I'm sorry about that. Not sure what's wrong. I had it working for quite. Check the error line. Yeah, maybe I didn't properly, there we go. I think you did the demos never work more. Sorry? You've hit the law of demos never work. Well, yeah, I forgot. I didn't buy them on the Devin repository into it so you couldn't find the packages. That was the problem. Now it's again between local disk. Okay, well, I think we're running out of time anyway so it was there 10 minutes, yeah. I mean, that's virtual box. There is some, any questions? Yep, yep. Do you want to repeat or we'll take a problem from Trinity College? Yep. My first question is in goes are there tools for mass account creation? If you get a CSV list or a database lookup of a bunch of names and maybe your company ID, can you do a mass account creation? Why, you can certainly mass add LDAP entries. Because you display doing an account creation of a single person. Yeah. Is there a way to do that more efficiently for 300 people? As I said, you can just create the LDAP objects. So you're another then. Just LDAP however you want to do it. Right, an LDAP file, if it's the right Shema and everything. I mean, in generally it's certainly possible for, certainly possible to just migrate your existing LDAP. That's the main reason to do it. It just might be a bit hairy at some, I don't know, you have to fix up some stuff. Depends on what Shema you were using and stuff. But yeah, that's possible. And of course you can just, I mean, everything you can do in the web, you can just do via LDAP manipulation over, as you just saw, for example. I have no idea why it currently doesn't work. So I'm just putting the file state back to where it's, to install as soon as possible anyway. So yeah, further questions. Okay, I'll take another question. Can FII install non-debian things? That's a question to FAI people, right? So, do you want to answer it? Yes. So the answer was yes. The answer. Can it install things like Zen server? Zen? Zen server? Yes. And the answer was yes again. That's a Debian. What is Zen server? Is that a special distribution or from Zen source or? Or is it just a Debian-based Zen? Zen server is sold by Citrix. Okay, right, so it's, yeah. Any other questions? Yeah, can you please stand up? What's on? For LDAP schema, when you create a user, is there a standard schema or what? Yeah, it's, I'm not too sure on that question actually. There is certainly a standard schema. I don't think it's particularly weird in a sense, but I'm not, I mean, I don't really know what is standard in that sense, so I can't really, so I just invite you to look at the schema that they're using. For a male user, for example, what are attributes for alias, for example? Let's go for the default. So that's the attributes that the system administration has. CN, object class, description, and well, the other things I haven't really added, so. No specific, goza object class? There's an object class, yeah. So that's maybe, sorry. I guess I won't get it working at this point, as I said, there's some way to go. I mean, I will talk with Mark and try to get it going, and well, my personal goal is to get it working for, for example, say you got a research group at university, there is a postdoc who is quite good at UNIX, but every two years, another person will do the administration and make it easier for those people to set it up and maybe have some other people help them who are not that tech savvy. So I'm not sure whether it will be eventually possible to do that. I mean, it's clear that it's a viable thing in so far as the city of Munich is using it for a couple of thousand workstations already, and it just needs quite a lot more integration now. Okay, so if there is no more further questions. Is there? Okay, well, thank you.


So, my purpose is basically looking at food prices that you need and inequality, and then I ask further whether inequality is underestimated in Malawi when you control food price differences. This is basically the outline. I'll talk about the motivation of the paper, the recent trends in growth, poverty and quality in Malawi, and a bit of the methodology and the results, and then if I have time, I will give my concluding remarks on what the paper is coming up with. So, there's a literature which is growing, which shows that actually there are food price differences in terms of what the poor pay for the same items and the rich. This literature basically talks about a poverty penalty that the poor face in the food market, so that they usually pay studies, actually those listed studies show that actually the poor pay more for food, right? There are different reasons for that. Of course, a good review can be found in Mendoza 2011 and Mula 2002, but one of the key reasons there is that it may be more cost to save the poor because maybe they're staying in remote areas or where they're staying it's not safe and therefore you have to impose the premium to cover the costs. And then of course the poor may face equity constraints, which means that they may buy food in smaller quantities, which means that actually they cannot enjoy discounts and therefore they need to pay higher prices. In the context of Malawi actually this is an issue that actually which was found with the World Bank in 2007 that around May-June everybody has harvested their maize and their other food crops and because they're facing equity constraints, they want to buy other things, but they will sell their maize. So they will sell it cheap in May-June and in February or next year, they will have to buy the maize at an expense actually. So why do they do that? There's a problem of reliable storage facilities, right? And they're also facing equity constraints, so they are forced to sell their food. When they have it in excess supply, they need the money to buy the things and then they end up selling the food. So we have a situation where those poor households end up buying the same food that was selling earlier more expensively. And then of course the poor may face higher search costs, right? Of course, I mean there's an argument there in the literature that search costs are invading you in income, that their search costs are lower for middle income families, they're very high for high income families and very high again for low income families. That's basically the background because it's that the poor may face inequalities in terms of the food prices that they face, and then how does that affect inequality measurement in my life? That's basically the issue. So the poor may not have implications as I said on the measurement of inequality. As you may recall, the interest law simply implies that actually in a poor country context, food expenditure, the share of food in a poor expenditure is so high, and if the poor are paying high prices, it must be actually the desecrizing effect of a poverty penalty will be much, much high actually in a developing country context. So what is implication of this? Well, aggressive food prices will need to, and the estimation of real income inequality. And in a number of papers that I've shown this in different work, why you need to control for, you see what we see in most countries what they do is deflation of consumption expenditure or income is done at a much, much higher level. And therefore this doesn't indicate into account the fact that actually households face different prices, that food prices are income dependent in a sense. And to sum up what we see in the literature, and this goes for all African countries and other developing countries, what Mola says, that deflation of warfare using regional national level prices in developing countries is a norm rather than the exception. So it is a norm in most developed countries to deflate a higher level using regional prices or even in some cases national level price indices. So with all these, first to capture the fact that actually you have the poverty penalty in the food market. So what do I do in this paper? Well, I'm trying to reexamine the inquiries measures in Malawi, taking into account the fact that actually there's a possibility that households may face a poverty penalty. So the current practice just in keeping with in other developing countries is that our national statistics when they are carrying their figures, they will just deflate their consumption expenditure using regional CPI, which will then use maybe a base for rural and urban. And then in the light of what I've just said, that doesn't take into account the fact that if households may be facing food prices depending on their income. So what do I do? First of all, I establish whether there is indeed a poverty penalty. And then next I then examine whether this has consequences on measurement of inequality in Malawi. Why is this important? Well, it is very, Malawi has been experiencing high levels of economic growth over the past 10 years. Actually, it was one of the star performance, if you read the World Bank documents. So what is the problem? Which is that actually with high levels of growth, we have experienced marginal declines in poverty. And then that has also been followed by increases in inequality. So you have high levels of economic growth and then high levels of inequality and then marginal declines in poverty. So this paper sort of tries to contribute to that puzzle. What is going on? Is it that inequality is so high? Is it that inequality is underestimated? That's what we're trying to do with this paper. So if poverty is high, you are familiar with the poverty growth inequality tri-album, which simply talks about the possible interrelationships between inequality, poverty, and growth. So we can argue that. So the findings from this paper try to contribute to this puzzle. But there's another important dimension to this start, which is that actually, if inequality is indeed underestimated, there are long-term implications of that. There are so many factors that is including forces to align, which show that actually if inequality is high, the poverty-reducing effect of growth is actually minimal. So if inequality is indeed high, which is as a result of underestimation, that has long-term implications of the impact of economic growth in addressing poverty. That's physically why this study is important. So just to talk about the growth figures, you see that actually this is for an average for 2005, 2007. Malawi was growing at 6.2 percent, and then between 2008 and 2011, it's going at 7.5 percent. These are high levels of economic growth. But at least see what happens to the poverty-headcounts. National level, if the 2.4, five years later, marginal decline. Of course, actually what you see in rural areas, there's an increase in poverty. So what is going on there? If you look at the genetic coefficient, again, it's an increase in inequality. So the gene was 0.39 into 0.5, and it goes up to 0.5, 0.452. And you never see a pattern in rural and urban areas. Okay. So what data do I use? Well, I'm using the National Survey, the second and the third integrated household survey, IHS-2 and IHS-3, which was collected by the National Statistical Office. This is an LSMS-type survey, so it's funded by the World Bank. IHS-2 had 11,000 pound-eater households, IHS-3, 12,000 pound-eater households. So all these data says collect information on food consumption. So IHS-2 had information on about 115 food items. These are categorized into cereals and vegetables and all that. And then 124 food items on IHS-3. The issue then becomes how do you... So the food consumption was collected in terms of different units. So some of the items were used kilograms and grams, or milliliters or liters, the standard units. For some of the items, they used non-standard units. So how do you convert all these non-standard units into the standard units? So the statistics office has an organization of conversion factors. So you can use these to simply then convert the non-standard units to standard units. But then these two guys, Fidozo, Galo, and Eka to Sanfo, actually found that actually there are so many inconsistencies and errors in the official conversion factors. So what do I do? These two authors propose they come up with a new set of conversion factors, and that's what I use in this paper. Mo did us about what happens to actual consumption when you use these new conversion factors. I gave it in back 2014. This is a paper that was presented here last year. So what do I do? Two-to-four total food consumption is basically composed of three items. You either purchase the food or it's coming from your own production or it's a gift. But remember I'm talking about a poverty penalty in the food market. So what do I do? My main focus is on the purchased food. In the paper, I give Mo did us about the shares between ruler and app in terms of purchased food and in the three components. How do I then measure the poverty penalty? Well, in the literature, the standard practice is to use the regression based method, which is basically to run a regression on price indices. Could be a household price index on income or consumption expenditure. So that's basically the practice by Mo and beta 2010. What I do in the paper is to take it apart from that, I use concentration indices. Why do I use concentration indices? Well, I view the poverty penalty as a form of socioeconomic inequality. That if it's possible, if there's a poverty penalty, it may be that there's a high concentration of high prices among the poor. So what do I do? I then construct a household specific glass base index. This is a formula that I use where the base category, the base is basically the price, the winning average price for rural areas. So rural or urban depending on which where the household is located. And the quantity again is the base quantity to be weighted quantity for rural or urban depending on where the household is located. So essentially I have a household specific price index that I then use to deflate my consumption expenditure, which is what we're using in the fighter measurement. I'm departing in a sense from what the statistics office does, which is to use regional price indices. So I'm saying I'm using concentration indices. How do I interpret these things? Well, simple. If the concentration index is negative, it simply means that there's a high concentration of high food prices among the poor. Essentially there's a poverty penalty in the food market. If it is greater than zero, again, the rich are paying more for food. If it is equal to zero, there's no income dependent food price in equities. All right. And the magnitude of CG, the G is actually rural or urban, the magnitude of the concentration index will be telling us the strength of the poverty penalty. If it is very high, it tells you actually the food penalty is kind of extreme. Now, it's simply a question of testing a simple hypothesis, which is that, well, the analysis at CG, the concentration index is zero or it's less than zero. That's basically what I do to check whether it's indeed a food penalty or not. So what do we find? Well, in terms of, so before I go to the results of the concentration indices, in terms of, so of course we find that actually the poor pay more for food, but then what does that imply in terms of measurement of inequality? Well, how do I measure inequality? Well, I use the standard measures and these are the measures that I also use by official statistics. I use the genetic efficient and the two generalized entropy measures, the tau L and the tau T. How do I handle my warfare indicator? Well, essentially, I have the new consumption aggregate, which is based on the new conversion factors. So in here, I have three sets. So I have no real per capita consumption expenditure, real per capita consumption expenditure, where I deflate the new consumption expenditure with the official CPI series, and then real per capita consumption expenditure, where I then deflate using the household specific price index. For purposes of comparison, then I also use the nominal consumption expenditure, his official aggregate, and then of course I have the real consumption expenditure, which is deflated by using the official CPI series. So what do we find in terms of evidence with respect to poverty then as well, all the concentration indices, so the analysis is done for all areas and in both 2004 and 2011. So I'm looking at spatial differences and intertemporal differences. What we find for all the survey periods and all the concentration indices are negative. Well, when I test that, when I test whether it's indeed these are negative, where we find that we end up rejecting the now that the concentration indices are zero in favor of the alternatives that are indeed negative, which is evidence, that is co-evidence that there's indeed a poverty penalty in Malawi. What we also note in the results actually is that the concentration indices smaller in the sense of they're more negative in rural areas, which implies that the poverty penalty is much more prolonged in rural areas than in urban areas. And then we also note that actually the poverty penalty is declining over time. So it's more concentrated in rural areas, but it's declining over time. And these are basically the results. I've left out some output here, which you can get from the paper, but basically this is what I was saying, okay, the significance of the concentration indices. Now before I look at the inequality results, just let me just give you a sense of what is going on when I do the deflation for the different consumption aggregates, the official aggregate and the new aggregator of yes, percent rate, cost that constructed. So what I do there is to create percentile specific averages of each aggregate and then see how that changes. And then what we see is that actually deflation leads to decreasing consumption of all areas and then locations and the decline is more substantial for poorest households, right? If we look at the first percentile, the decline, if we look at HS2 for example, the decline is 27.8 percent in consumption for the the decline is only 8.9 percent for households in the 99th percentile. So what are we saying here? Deflation is having a different impact on the consumption of different households, right? The poor households, the reduction in consumption expenditure is much, much bigger, right, than for the rich, which is basically what we're saying here that actually we have a footpath by poverty penalty in the market, okay? So I've said I'm using the results based on the tau, the tau L, tau T, and the genie. I will represent the genie results here. The other results are in the paper. But what do we find? Well, the genie coefficient is underestimated, right? The genie coefficient, so there are two things here. If you look at the new consumption aggregate, right, and for all the years and all the areas, we find that actually the new, if it isn't the new consumption aggregate, the genie coefficient is underestimated by official figures as well. In some cases, 10.4 percent or 5.7 percent if RHS-3 and RHS-2. So there's an underestimation on the account of the fact that we're using a new consumption aggregate, right? If you deflate by using the new price index, household-pacific price index, you also find evidence that actually is an underestimation of inequality by official figures, and the underestimation ranges from 3.9 percent to 7.41 percent. Similarly, you get similar figures when you're using the entirety and the entire area. So the poverty penalty here leads to a quantitatively substantial understanding of inequality. And essentially what this means is that official figures closely understand inequality. Here I try to say, well, I'm using unit values, which are not actually prices. They're process for prices. And in unit values, can't be contaminated by quality effects, right? High unit values may simply be a reflection of the fact that each household is buying more expensive food items, right? So I follow a detour, and then I just go into effects, which is basically, this is a quality effect, and this is the price, which is unobserved. And then when I do that, you run this regression, this zeta here basically will be a price, right? Like unit value without a quality effect, sort of, right? Then I do the analysis again using the adjusted unit values. What do I find? Well, the results are robust. There's still a poverty penalty. Inequality is underestimated. And then the difference between before adjusting for quality and after adjusting for quality is minimal. In other words, quality does not seem to be driving what I'm finding here. Conclusion, well, as I've just said, no mean or inequality, unless there's really inequality. Official figures in Malawi actually understood the inequality problem. And as I said, remember that this has implications both on why this is part of increasing high growth rates and low poverty reduction, or indeed increasing inequality. This partly contributes to the explaining that puzzle. But of course, it also has implications on the long-term path, poverty reduction path that Malawi may take. If you have very high levels of inequality, which I underestimated officially, that has implications on the reductions for poverty. Thank you.


The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 7, 9, 2, 4, in the name of Daniel Johnson on respect for shop workers week, 13 to 19 November. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I will ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request to speak buttons now, I call on Daniel Johnson to open the debate. Mr Johnson, please. I should begin by referring members to my register of interests. I am a director of an O-shareholder of a company with retail interests in the city centre of Edinburgh, and I am also a member of Asdor, the shop workers union. Indeed, that is not so much a declaration of interest as probably a statement of commitment or even did a call to arms, because I think that retail is a hugely important industry and I make no apologies for being an advocate for it. It is the largest private sector employer in Scotland. It is worth about 10 per cent of the economy. I would go as far as saying that I think that it is the very interface of the economy. It is where people take their hard-earned pounds and exchange them and that money flows round the economy again. All too often, the retail industry gets dismissed as being an industry of low pay and low skill. I do not think that that does the industry justice at all, because for me retail is about work and that work is about people. It is not just about selling stuff, it is about people providing goods and services, providing that point of contact. More importantly, retail work is very often people's first job. I am sure that I am not the only person who was introduced to the world of work by working in retail and increasingly it is also becoming a job that people take in retirement. It is people's first job and last job. Above all else, I think that one of the things that retail industry does is that it provides opportunity. It is one of the last remaining industries where you can genuinely start on the shop floor and work your way to the top. For all those positives, there are also some serious issues that concern the world of retail. I know from personal experience that confronting people is stressful. One of the most difficult things when I was a shopkeeper was having to eject people from my shop that we suspected of shoplifting. There was that moment when my heart was pounding, I was going to say, I was sure of what the person would do, what they would say to me, what they might do to me when I asked them to leave. Nothing ever did happen, but I always felt that it was important that I took that on to protect my staff. For too many people working in retailing, that is exactly the sort of situation that results in abuse and violence. I saw the shop workers union estimate that around half of shop workers regularly receive verbal abuse. Around 6,000 retail workers are abused on a weekly basis, and 200 are assaulted every day across the UK. Indeed, those are numbers backed up by employers organisations, too. The Scottish Grocer's Federation estimating that around a third of its convenience store staff are regularly suffering from violence. Indeed, the British retail consortium estimates that retail crime has increased by 40 per cent in the last year. That has real human impacts. Those are situations that lead to stress for the workers involved, leading to depression, mental health issues and, for some people, them being unable to work. There is a fundamental of the nature of retail work. Shop workers are exposed to the public. They have no option but to keep putting themselves in that same position where they are exposed to risk. Whereas you or I who might encounter an incident walking down the street or the park, you could avoid that situation, avoid that place. However, if it is where your place of work is, you have but no option but to keep going back to where you have experienced those issues and those incidents. That is why Asdawn's respect week and their freedom from fear campaign is so important. It also allows us to show the consensus between trade unions and industry, but fundamentally it is about that real human cost, that violence and abuse in the retail environment has. Ultimately, violence and abuse at work is unacceptable. It does not matter where you work and what context, whether you are working in an office or in the shop, it should never be just part of the job. What needs to happen? First of all, we need a change in culture. That is part of a pattern where all too often people see that denial of sale, denial of service is something that you can respond with abuse, that someone who is wearing a work uniform, a name badge, is no longer a human being but someone who can direct your anger and rage. We have to call an end to that behaviour. We must also call on retailers to play their part. There can be zero tolerance to those incidents and the behaviour in the working environment. They must have adequate security and investment in protection. They must afford staff the training that they need in order to deal with those situations. I have to say that most retailers take those duties seriously, but we must also call on the police and the Procurator Fiscal to make sure that those crimes are treated as a priority and that they result in prosecution. One of the other startling statistics that Azdor has put forward is that 32 per cent of shop workers suffering from abuse and from violence are simply not reporting it. Those incidents have become normalised, just part of what they have to deal with. That comes to us, the Parliament. We have to challenge whether the law is working, whether it is protecting retail workers from those unacceptable incidents. That is why I am very pleased that, in the coming weeks, I will be bringing forward a consultation to propose a new bill. It is very clear to me that there is a growing problem, that this is a situation and that those incidents are escalating. Therefore, the law and the way in which it is enforced is simply not working for too many people working in retail. My bill will seek to consult on how we can provide adequate legal protection, making sure that retail workers do not have to suffer from that violence, making it very clear that those things are unacceptable and, in fact, they are unlawful. Part of that is also looking at why those incidents occur, the trigger points, the things that cause those situations to arise. Part of that is around the legal obligations that shop workers have to carry out. Challenge 25 is the obligation of individual workers, not their employers, to carry out. It is the individual worker who is required to uphold proof of identification and proof of age, and they are an individual who are prosecuted if they fail to do so. What we are asking people to do is to uphold the law in such a way that very often causes the conflict and leads to the situations that cause abuse and violence, and they are legally obliged to do that. My bill will seek to provide that very clear line, so that it would be unlawful to impeach someone upholding the Challenge 25 principle, therefore breaking that chain of events and providing a very clear and early threshold at which a crime has been committed. I would ask all members, taking part in this debate today, to take the issues of violence against retail workers and abuse of retail workers seriously. I would call them to look at my consultation and ask for their support and input into that, but above all else, to support us-dos campaign, freedom for fear campaign and respect week, which is coming up next week. I thank Mr Johnson for the opportunity to discuss the subject tonight. He has referred to the bill that he proposes to bring forward. A member's debate is often a useful way of introducing the subject of a prospective member's bill to Parliament and ramping up the discussion of it. I shall look with interest at the proposals that Mr Johnson seeks to bring forward. I certainly support the principles that he has described. I do not yet know whether I will ultimately be able to support the detailed implementation, but that kind of noises off. The important thing that is at the centrality of this particular debate is those who are in the front line of retail, those who are meeting the public in all its diverse forms, from the regular old man going to the convenience shop in the corner who builds a personal relationship with the shop staff at one end of the spectrum. However, this morning, as I travelled by train here in the metro, unfortunately, there is a story here of a shop worker who was attacked on Sunday in East Ayrshire, whose paper reports are now critically ill in hospital. That illustrates the kind of problem that Daniel Johnson asks us to engage with today. Usdaw is making the more general point on behalf of all retail workers. It, in the most stark way, illustrates the nature of the problem. It is too common, and it has to be dealt with. We will assess whether legal protections of the nature that are proposed are going to help. That shop worker is an easy thing and a proper thing that we should all support. Without retail, we would be impoverished in many, many ways. As one of our biggest industries, it is important, but it is a very personal industry that delivers to us. Too often, the police are called to incidents that happen in shops, particularly in relatively small shops. In larger shops, it is perhaps easier for those who are of ill intent to be observed and they know it. It is the little corner shop that is open at 10 o'clock at night, the shop that is open at 6 o'clock in the morning that is the one that is most commonly in the front line. Usdaw form an important backstop to support people who have been subjected to unacceptable behaviour and who deserve our support for what they do. It is not part of the job spec of someone standing behind a counter that they take whatever comes in their direction. They should have the respect from all those who visit the shops. Good citizens should look out for shop workers and should be part of protecting them from those who are not showing the right attitude to shop workers. I certainly hope that the person who is attacked, as the report says, in East Asia recovers and is able to resume her work if she wishes to do so. I would say that there are many parts of society where people face the public in all its multi-various forms. Shop workers are a very important part of it on another occasion. We might also think about others who have to engage with the public in sometimes quite difficult circumstances. I am happy to support the motion in the terms that it has laid before us. I am very grateful for the opportunity to deliver a speech this evening, and I pray that Tributon can congratulate Daniel Johnson on bringing the members' business tonight to the chamber. Retail is the lifeblood of our economy of giving opportunity and service to individuals and organisations across our economy. As we already hear, next week, the union of shop distributives and allied workers launches its annual respect for shop workers. This week, the theme will be to keep your cool, something that we should all consider in any job that we are participating in. On-going research continues to reveal that every minute of the working day another shop worker is verbally abused, threatened with violence or physically attacked. That cannot continue, and we must do all that we can to stamp out that vile behaviour. The retail crime survey published in February of this year showed that staff continued to be abused, and around a 40 per cent increase had been indicated since 1516. The catalyst of many of those can easily be pointed to alcohol sales. I think that there is an element of that, but that is not all. Identifying individuals who have a wish to purchase alcohol can sometimes cause some difficulty, and we have the 25 discretion that shop workers and managers have to deal with. However, in my lengthy retail experience, abuse of behaviour has merely attributed to it. It is not just the grocery or the sales or the off-trade that has caused the problem. It is any individual who faces the public and faces customers that can be abused and continues to be abused. We have to think of the dramatisation consumer programmes that sometimes give us the wrong impression by showing customers that airports or motor traders or in high streets are shouting and abusing individuals on camera. In the main, the programmes are there to try to educate, but at times they give the wrong impression that shop workers can be easy to beat and individuals can have the opportunity. That is totally and utterly unacceptable. Many employers also exploit individuals who work in shops, and that has to be considered. Some business owners often have working-length hours and ensuring that people do not have the cover and breaks they require. Because of the working situation that we find ourselves in, some individuals feel that they are unable to stand up and challenge that from time to time, because they may find themselves being dismissed or replaced. That is also not acceptable in our current situation. After finishing university, I had the opportunity to work through the ranks in retail, having been a shop worker who then became a management trainee, who then moved on to a store manager and then having my own shop myself. I have been in different elements of that sector, and I believe that it is vitally important that we examine all that we do to ensure that customers and staff are given a good opportunity to develop their skills. It is also very important that we understand that some shop proprietors think that the best way to justify individuals is to let them work on the shop floor and witness what happens, and allow that to take place because they see that as some sort of experience. I also find that difficult to assimilate, because that is very wrong. As I have indicated, I successfully run my own retail business, and I know too well that getting the best from staff and customers alike can only be possible by employing the highest level of courtesy, respect and transparency at all times. Treat people as you wish to be treated yourself was always my motto, and I think that that is very important. In conclusion, some do not find it quite so easy to do both, but it is very important that, if individuals feel that they are abused or compromised, they stand up to that. The annual campaign gives us the opportunity tonight in this chamber to highlight the successes that have taken place and to highlight the worries and concerns that individuals face. We in this Parliament must ensure that we stand up and protect our workers. The laws that we pass must do that and inform them to ensure that we are treating them with the respected reserve. Support, respect and tolerance must be our watchwords, and we should do all that we can to protect, assist and ensure that any worker, regardless of their sector, is treated with dignity and respect. I am a proud member of Azdor, the shop workers union. I thank my colleague Daniel Johnson for bringing this member's debate to the chamber and paying tribute to Azdor for their continued campaigning for shop workers rights, although I have to say that I am disappointed that there is still a need for this type of debate in Scotland today. The motion before us today recognises Azdor's freedom from fear campaign and, specifically, respect for shop workers week, which begins on Monday. I am sure that all members across the chamber will agree that the campaign is important, because, after all, it affects shop workers that we meet in our high streets, our supermarkets, people who provide a service to other constituents as well. With the retail crime survey showing that shop workers are facing increasing levels of violence, it is a campaign that all members should get behind and support. Freedom from fear seeks to prevent violence, threats and abuse against workers. Abuse should not be part of a shop worker's job. They should not have to go to work and face the possibility of being threatened. However, for too many shop workers, abuse is part of their everyday working life. They face regular threats and abusive behaviour from customers, and it is simply not good enough. Abuse should not be any part of their job. Let us remember that as we approach Black Friday and the busy Christmas shopping period. I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for giving way. I recognise the work that Daniel Johnson is doing on the issue. Does she recognise that some shop workers face additional fear and alarm because of the late nights that they have to work, often without the public transport to get home, often on buses and other forms of transport that are faced with people who are perhaps drunk or out of order? That is part of the freedom from fear campaign as well. I do absolutely recognise that. It is not just the abuse that takes place in a shop, but it is the abuse that is in the wider community, and we need to challenge that culture, so Kezia Dugdale is absolutely right to raise it. However, as a result of Osdor's campaign, many employers have reviewed security measures in and around the shops and carried out staff training. That is certainly a very welcome step forward, but the campaign requires more than can be done by trade unions alone. Exactly, Kezia Dugdale's point, because the campaign must be about issues about neighbourhood policing, underage sales and additional legal protection for workers. Tackling those issues requires political intervention. I am pleased to say that previous UK Labour Government and, indeed, this Scottish Government have done a great deal towards tackling this type of behaviour, both here and across the UK. However, we need to do more. We have extra police, not all of them are on our streets. We have seen a reduction in crime overall, but abuse of shop workers has increased, according to the Scottish Retail Crime Survey, by a staggering 40 per cent. I am very proud that successive Labour politicians Hugh Henry, Daniel Johnson, have tried to make the workplace safer. When Hugh Henry introduced the protection of workers Scotland bill, he received support from major supermarket chains such as the co-op, Morrison's and Asda. They called on the Parliament to take action to protect their employees, so clearly, because that did not progress, the current law still is not strong enough. The Retail Crime Survey shows that one of the major trigger points for abuse or violence against staff is alcohol sales. In fact, 41 per cent of shop staff experience abuse at least once per week when asking for proof of age, and that is simply not acceptable. Shop workers should not be threatened or abused for simply adhering to the law. Challenge 25 imposes a duty on retail workers to ask for proof of age for anyone who looks under 25 when purchasing items that require a customer to be over 18. It is a long time, Presiding Officer, that we have certainly had our proof of age required, but I look forward to that happening in future. Daniel Johnson's bill would make it illegal to obstruct or hinder a retail worker when they are carrying out their legal duties. Those are legal duties that we, as politicians, have placed on workers, so it is up to us to protect them from that threatening behaviour when implementing the law. I urge all members to get involved in Asdawn's freedom from fear campaign in their local shops and supermarkets, in their local communities and, above all, support Daniel Johnson's bill to give shop workers the protection at work that they deserve. Thank you.  I call Jamie Halcro Johnston, followed by Neil Findlay. Mr Halcro Johnston, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First, I congratulate Daniel Johnson for bringing forward this debate. It is important with Black Friday and Christmas fast approaching and a timely issue to discuss. It is regrettable that, sometimes and too often, shop workers join other front-line staff in not being afforded the respect that everyone deserves while seeking to make a living, provide a service and contribute to society. We have seen that only the last few days with the bonfire night issues that many of our emergency services have faced. Most shop workers work long hours, often not for the highest of wages and, for many young people, it is their first taste of the jobs market. Yet, on occasion, they have to deal with difficult, sometimes abusive customers and even threats of violence. In my own region, the Highlands and Islands, we see a greater number of smaller and independent businesses. Shop workers in many of those businesses must not only act as customer service, but also as a security guard, doorkeeper, complaints representative, as well as organising much of the backroom activities of the business. In recognising the most overt problems confronting shop workers, we should also consider some of the deeper issues. Workplace stress and the physical side of the job come to mind, but in some cases inadequate training and skills development continues to constrain staff. We place additional expectations on shop workers. Watching for shop lifters, the responsibility of checking dates of birth for age-related purchases, but often the additional responses do not come with additional benefits. Instead, sometimes they create disadvantages—situations that can be a catalyst for a confrontational situation and often a role that they are thrust into without sufficient training. We may frequently use the term difficult customer. Many of us in this chamber may indeed have one time or another fitted that description, but just how often have we stopped to think about the person that we are being difficult with? A person who may have their own problems, health relationships and money, yet they are expected to stand and accept everything, not just for that one difficult customer, but possibly for many day-in, day-out. Why should shop workers and other service economy workers put up with this? Sarcasm, rudeness and inappropriate comments? Some people will never be happy, but who would not dream of being so rude to workers in other sectors? Often the lack of respect can be aimed at those. Both workers and owners in small enterprises such as businesses that are open all hours providing a vital community service. I daresay a particular obnoxious customer has been told not to come back by the owner of one business, but the vast majority of businesses' workers do not have that luxury and have to bite their tongue and suffer in silence, often in the belief in the maxim that the customer is always right. Employers are slowly changing. I see more and more signs indicating abuse of staff in any form will not be tolerated, but we need more than signs. There remains far too many situations that staff feel that it is a waste of time complaining about a customer's treatment, as an employer may believe that it was a staff member's attitude that caused the customer reaction. We all know the value of well-trained, motivated staff, but many employers need to do more to give support to their staff, not only because it is the right thing to do, but it is also the economically sensible thing to do. Staff feeling that they are valued and who have the support of their employers in dealing with their workplace needs, freedom from abuse will certainly repay that support. I congratulate Daniel Johnson for bringing forward this debate. Thank you, Mr Halcro Johnston. I now call Neil Findlay, last speaker in the open debate. Mr Findlay, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I thank Daniel Johnson for bringing us a very important debate to the chamber today. I also thank the trade union, USDOF, for its dogged campaigning on the issue. I also thank other trade unions such as United Nations, UNISON and GMB, and the rail unions for all the work that they have done highlighting the issue of violence, abuse, intimidation and threats against shop staff, delivery staff, transport workers, banking and finance workers, and all the other workers who day-in, day-out serve us in shops, public counters, buses, trains, planes and other places where business and business transactions take place. My sister works as a stewardess with British Airways, and I regularly hear stories of how customers of the airline deal with staff, and it is absolutely horrifying what sometimes they have to go through. Retail is, of course, a big employer in my region, and it is an area of work that is often a gateway into the world of work, particularly for young people who can all too often be on zero hours or very low hours contracts that are subject to exploitative workplace practices, and in living wage week are often on very low pay. Increasingly, many of them are put in dangerous situations, whether that be in fast food outlets, late at night, bookie shops or delivery drivers, bar workers or corner shops. Those types of places leave people really vulnerable, and small local shops are particularly vulnerable. My own local shopkeeper, a friend of mine, Mr Acbar Alley, became a YouTube sensation two years ago, fighting off a knife-wielding man who tried to steal his till. He fought him off with a plastic chair. While Mr Alley totally against his character came to national prominence in the media, he could easily have ended up dead a victim of knife crime. No worker, whether they be a police officer, a firefighter, a prisoner officer, a fast food worker, a delivery driver, working at a call centre or the local corner shop, should be expected to go out to work and face violence, abuse, intimidation or attack. No worker irrespective of their job should expect that. That is the reason why we have to continue campaigning, like we are doing today. As I say, I thank Daniel Johnson and Usdorff for bringing again the freedom of fear campaign to the Parliament. I urge all the trade unions to continue their campaign on these very important issues. However, the only satisfaction that we have is that we do not have to bring the debate every single year to Parliament, because that is when we will know that we have made some progress on the issue. Thank you, Mr Finlay. I call on Jamie Hepburn to close the debate for the Government. Minister, seven minutes are there abouts, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I join with others in thanking Daniel Johnson for bringing this debate to Parliament. I suppose that I would also like to join. I had not seen the article that Stuart Stevenson highlighted in today's metro newspaper, but I am sure that we would all join him in wishing the person that he highlighted in the article the very best. I agree with the sentiments that everyone has expressed in this debate, Presiding Officer, that it is important that we mark respect for shop workers. We all have constituents who work in this sector. That week takes place next week, and as Mr Finlay pointed out, this week is living wage. It is important that we reflect on that perhaps only in passing in the context of the debate. A fundamental part of respecting our shop workers is ensuring that they are adequately remunerated for work a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. In that regard, I was very delighted to visit a shop a while ago. An employer that I know, Mr Johnson, is well aware of, to see Paper Tiger, who is one of the 1,000 accredited living wage employers that we have across the country. Neil Findlay? Thank you very much. I wrote to all the major employers at the Livingston shopping centre in the run-up to the living wage week asking to encourage them to pay the living wage. I was very pleased to see just yesterday that, as that and Marston Spencer's were the first ones who wrote back to me confirming that they do indeed pay the living wage, which I think we would all welcome. What surprised me was that both of them said that they are not seeking accreditation. That was a disappointment. I wonder whether the minister has had discussions with both companies or whether he could shed some light on why companies that pay their living wage do not want to be accredited as payment. I can't comment specifically on why they might be motivated by not wanting to pay the living wage. What I can say in terms of the Scottish living wage accreditation initiative is that they would not be eligible to be accredited in terms of the living wage foundation that has been set out, because it has to be, in the case of paper tiger for example, a Scottish-specific employer. I do not want to stay too far from the terms of my knowledge of what the UK-wide initiative would be. I think that they would have to seek accreditation directly with the living wage foundation in London. I am unclear why Mr Findlay is concerned by my answer. I am making, as I agree with him, absolutely that it is incumbent on all of us in that place to encourage people to seek living wage accreditation, be that through the Scottish living wage initiative, or indeed the UK initiative. Of course, I give way to Mr Findlay again. Mr Findlay. I am not raising any contention with what you were saying. What I am saying is that it appears that they are not seeking accreditation at all from anyone. I wonder if there are any discussions that the Scottish Government could have with such big employers to encourage them to get accredited. Mr Findlay. I will be clear. I will always be very willing to engage in either my ministerial capacity or my capacity as an accredited living wage employer in my roles as a member of the Scottish Parliament to engage in dialogue and discussion with an employer of any size, be they eligible for accreditation through the Scottish specific scheme or the UK-wide scheme. I fear that I have probably strayed a little far from the terms of the debate. It was an important intervention. In fairness, Mr Johnson, I would like you to raise the issues that he has raised. I would like to as well, but I was trying to place in the context that an important part of respect for shop workers is ensuring that they are properly paid. We have rightly heard that violence against shop workers is never acceptable. We should be sending out the strongest possible signal from this place that as a society we will not tolerate such behaviour. That is why it is important that we have this debate. Our police courts and prosecutors already have a range of extensive powers to protect workers to deter individuals from carrying out or perpetrating any criminal behaviour against anyone who is working in the retail sector. For one, we all have this protection on the common law of assault, which provides legal protection to all in our society as they go about their daily lives, including in the workplace. What was a telling point, and I wonder whether that is reflected in the seeming disconnect between them, because we know that the official figures in terms of including the retail sector, the long-term trend, have been a downward trajectory in recorded crime. However, I recognise that, in the survey that Mr Johnson has outlined, which is a UK-wide survey and, indeed, the Scottish Grocer's Federation—I think that Ms Bailey said the retail crime survey, but I think that she meant the Grocer's Federation, which is a Scottish-specific, similar findings, which are, indeed, very concerning. I wonder whether there is a bit of a disconnect there, because we see the problem that Mr Johnson has rightly identified, that a number of those who have crimes perpetrated against them are reluctant to report them. Again, it is very important that we send out a message here that anyone who ever has a crime perpetrated against them, including in the workplace, should report that to the police for investigation, and ultimately, we hope, for prosecution. Daniel Johnson makes a very fair point. There is clearly something that we need to investigate there—a disconnect between reported, recorded crime and the experience to report through other surveys. However, he will also know that the Scottish Government will not stop recording retail crime figures, which are specifically separate to other crime back in 2008. Will he consider reinstating those statistics? That is a useful intervention. That is something that we are, in fact, doing. Questions are being included in the Scottish Crime and Justice survey. They have been included since 2016-17 to provide updated statistics on the subject. Those results for 2016-17 will be published early next year. I agree that it is important that we ask for that type of information, so that is why we are doing it, which I hope reassures Mr Johnson in that regard. On the specific issue of challenge 25 that was raised, I do not think that I detected any sense from anyone that the challenge 25 is in of itself the wrong thing to do. I think that we all agree that it is an effective mechanism by which we can tackle underage drinking, particularly because we know that a lot of violence is not all violence. Mr Stewart was quite right to place that in the record, but a significant proportion of violence is caused by drink-fuelled behaviour. It is an effective mechanism and it is right that we have that in law. The first thing that I would point out is that we should have the legal framework in place already. No-one should be impeded about going their legal responsibilities in any regard by any individual, including in relation to that particular initiative. We do have the mechanisms in place already. That said, I am interested to see—I am not interested to learn as such, because we had already had it flagged by Mr Johnson that intended to bring forward a member's bill. We will look at that in close detail. I think that the request that we, as a Government, can do more is one that is well-made. We will always be willing to do more. We will need to assess the efficacy of the proposition. I suppose that the point that I would make is that our perspective is that the legal framework is already in place. However, if there is more that can be done in relation to the law, we will look at that as we go forward. Let me close, Presiding Officer, by saying that respect for shopkeepers in terms of the context of this particular debate is of the utmost importance to us. No individual in Scottish society should have to face abuse or violence in any context, least of all in the workplace. We will always be willing to do what we can to respond to such. We should send out a clearest possible, the strongest message, not just from the Government collectively, as a Parliament that Scotland will not tolerate such behaviour. I close this meeting of Parliament.


Hi, my name is Marcelo van der Waals and I'm in my fourth year of the PSD at the laboratory of microbiology at Wageningen University and Deltares, a water-related institute in the Netherlands. I'm 27 years old, living in Utrecht together with my boyfriend, and love to go outside for hiking, cycling and playing field hockey. I studied earth sciences and specialized in environmental hydrogeology during my master's at the Utrecht University. But I shifted more towards the microbes and microbiology during my PSD. In this lab, I'm doing most of my experiments, so here you can see all our continuous cultures degrading many different compounds. Once every two weeks, I'm working at Wageningen University to perform part of my experiments and to stay in touch with many other students, PSDs, postdocs and professors. Thank you for watching.