Salam from the People's Dispatch studios here in New Delhi. I'm Siddhanthani and you're watching Daily Debrief. It's a packed show today and on the show we're talking about who gains from sabotaging gas pipelines between Russia and Europe, why the Israeli police provide cover for extremist intrusions into the Al Aqsa Mosque complex, and why the United States of America is unable to meet its own targets for admitting refugees. In a dramatic escalation, seismologists reported explosions around the two parallel Nord Stream pipelines that European leaders including the head of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen and the Danish and Swedish governments have said sabotage is the likely cause for. Russia says it's not ruling out any of the options either. Nord Stream 1 suffered two leaks, the northeast of the Danish island of Bornholm, while Nord Stream 2 was damaged south of Tverode, a beach located on the island's southernmost tip. The energy aspect of the Russia-Ukraine war is increasingly important as both a negotiating tool and even a potential means to an end to the conflict, given that Ukraine's military is functioning largely on European and of course American money. The question that naturally arises is if these two pipelines are rendered nothing more than scrap metal at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, who stands to benefit, and who of course will face the most serious impact. I spoke to news click editor-in-chief Pribir Bukhaisa to figure that part out. Pribir, first up, the leaders of the EU as well as the prime ministers or the heads of government of Denmark and Sweden are calling these acts of sabotage. So who in this case would be the saboteurs and how are you viewing what is going on exactly under the sea? Well, since neither they nor we have any evidence who are the saboteurs, we are only getting into conjectures who benefits as the argument would be who benefits most from the crime. Now, if you take the obvious issue that the two countries which have the most to benefit from the crime would be United States, because they have been asking for a complete embargo on all Russian gas to be used by the EU and of course Ukraine who also would like the gas to be stopped completely. Of course, nothing was flowing to Nord Stream 1 or 2 at the moment. Nord Stream 1 was essentially something which the Germans were willing to buy from, but Russia had actually stopped it saying that the turbines are not working, maintenance problems are there, sanctions are there for the siemens to really service those turbines and so on. So Nord Stream 1 was in that way in a bit of a suit right now, but Russia had also said Nord Stream 2 they could supply it anytime they want and all that Germany has to say is yes. It's also true the pressure has been building up in Germany. In fact, the vice president of the parliament had also said that we should not wait for winter in our economy to collapse. We should already start Nord Stream 2 so that we can get adequate gas and that was Russia's offer that yes, Nord Stream 2 was in trouble technically, but Nord Stream 1 is in trouble. Nord Stream 2 we have the ability there are no sanctions because they're all Russian turbines and compressors so we can supply to Nord Stream 2 and it's a fully pressurized pipe. So therefore it does appear that it is completely counter-intuitive to argue that is Russia who sabotaged the pipeline because that is their only source of pressure right now. On European Union and particularly in the general, which is the linchpin of the European Union sanctions at the moment and then lose that leverage for no particular reason. I've heard conspiracy theories that somehow Putin did not want to get deposed. Therefore he calls the sabotage. These are actually very very panciful. So I would go by the old fashioned principle who benefits. And in this case obviously the US was most interested in continuing EU sanctions, particularly German sanctions are not buying gas from Russia. And of course Ukraine is involved but there's also another interesting sideline which somebody has written about. Aaron Johnson, he again is someone who's been writing on this issue. He said that the Polish Baltic pipeline just started on the same day. So his argument is of course Poland could also be a part of it. Again amount of gas flowing into Poland from the pipeline that started is only a small amount compared to what Nord Stream 1 and 2 can do. So I don't see that as a major issue really. It's not a competition to Nord Stream 1 or 2 in terms of capacity. It's just about supplies Poland Polish needs. So I still would find it difficult to understand who would be involved in the in the summertime except it does seem the US, the UK of course also has the capability. These are two parties who don't need your gas from Russia. So they could have an interest in it. I don't really see anybody else who has a stake in some of the pipeline, but if we look at the sequence of events, that's not an interesting part. One explosion takes place at 2am or so but thereabouts in the morning. Other one takes in the evening at about 8pm or so. So it is not something which is therefore unplanned. It seems to have been planned and it seems that the same set of some of the years could be involved moving from one side to the other. That's what the logical interpretation would be and the Nord Stream 1 of course does not contain much gas. The pressure is low but Nord Stream 2 is a pressurized pipeline with a lot of gas. And of course that once these pipelines have been sabotaged at the level that they have, it's really virtually at the bottom of the sea. Of course the shallow sea, so it's not a deep ocean or sea. But it's still, it's the repair is not going to be something that's easy, even if there is no more. Europe's energy supplies and security as well as of course the impact that it's having on consumers and people who are facing a massive cost of living crisis is going to worsen before it gets better. That much is clear. But it's also probably going to be a decisive factor in that war that you were mentioning and how long it continues. What's the larger picture on that front? Again the question of war really depends on both the sides having the will to fight. And as of now NATO is willing to pump weapons into Ukraine, is willing to support its falling economy and Russia is willing to fight and Ukraine is also willing to fight. So I don't see any massive change in the scenario. In fact, what could have happened is if the winter really comes where the heating needs go up of the people and they run out of stored gas, which is the argument is they have about two to half months of stored gas, after which they have to face winter without stored gas. And the regular supply of LNG is not going to be enough to keep Germany and other European countries war. So given that there was to the pressure and maximum pressure to be faced by Germany, cold and also dependent on Russian gas. So the fact that they are going to be under pressure means the economy is also going to be under pressure because the German industry would also come to a halt. High prices of gas and high prices of electricity, which have discussed earlier. So Germany was the one which could break ranks and that was the fear which was there. It is true during this winter, we are going to see large scale problems for Western Europe and also for the United Kingdom because of the price of electricity, we have discussed it earlier why this to some extent it's an artificial prices, but nevertheless, given the way the grid behaves, the bulk of the responsibility for paying the high cost of gas and the high cost of electricity, which is not why it should have been like that because after all gas only supplies about 10-12% of German electricity. But the way the grid is structured, the high price gets fixed to the price of gas. Given that the European people are going to face, particularly Germany are going to face a difficult winter. And the industry is going to face a very difficult scenario and a lot of them have stopped working already because the cost of electricity is too high particularly for industries which need a lot of electricity. So given that the pressure that is going to mount on the German economy, other European countries, I don't see a way out at the moment for them. And it does seem there is going to be to some extent the de-industrialization over the same Western Europe. How the people will react? What are the long term political implications? We don't know. But sabotaging a pipeline is a escalation of the war. And we should not only think of the economic implications because if you are physically willing to up the ante and that's what a sabotage of the gas pipeline means, that is really a physical act of war. And this is a physical act of war against Russian asset, which is the two pipelines. So this is a very dangerous point because if Russia also escalates, what is escalation going to be, response is going to be, is a difficult question to answer. But it's very unlikely that they will have no response. So because after all, if you allow your assets to be attacked like this, and you see common assets for everybody are at risk because after all pipelines do go over oceans, transatlantic cables go over oceans, then till date the argument is we don't touch it even during war because both are vulnerable. But if you break the taboo, then it's all very dangerous escalation. All right. Thank you very much for your time today, Prabir. Ultra nationalist Israeli settlers on Tuesday for the third day running entered the Al Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. They were backed by Israeli police and other government forces and performed prayers inside the mosque compound. Several Palestinians have been injured during these intrusions and many more arrested. While access to the complex was largely blocked off to Palestinians. The mosque is a powerful symbol of the Palestinian resistance and as the Jewish New Year passes and Yom Kippur approaches, those on the ground fear more such violent incursions will follow. Abdul Rehman has all the details. Abdul at a time that is a time of celebration, I guess a time of some prayer and I suppose doing things with your closest and your dearest. Instead this group of ultra nationalists is choosing a very sort of violent and aggressive approach to things and it's not something new either. We've seen this becoming almost a serial sort of practice now. What is the latest you're hearing and how are you, what are the reports coming in from the ground? As for the reports from the ground, the Israeli security forces were basically attacking the Palestinians again yesterday night. That is the latest we know about and they have barricaded as it is already reported the different parts of the old Jerusalem. And they are not they were not allowing the Palestinians to move to go to Al Aqsa and pray there. Only the people who were above Koti that some reports argue that only they were allowed to go. Some of them are saying that even they were not allowed to go and pray. Meanwhile, the ultra nationalist settlers primarily who have been campaigning for a very long time to basically something against the Al Aqsa mosque. They have questioned the religious sanctity of the mosque itself. And basically moving inside the compound freely. Descorating the religious symbols and religious sanctity of the compound dancing provocative provocative way. And all those things are already have there were happening until very recently. Apart from that there are also reports of kind of these settlers also attacking the Palestinians who have been allowed to go in and pray on some occasions. We saw the video from Monday in which one of the elder elder elderly Palestinian worshipper was pushed by a crowd which basically consists of Israeli security forces and these settlers. We have also seen visuals from the mosque compound in which we see Israeli security forces provocatively pushing and asking the people who are already inside Palestinians who are already inside to locate the premises. So all these things are happening and this is nothing new we have seen it happening many times in the past. Particularly it reminds what happened last year during the month of Ramadan when hundreds of Palestinians were injured and arrested during similar attacks by the Israeli security forces and the extremist, internationalist Jewish settlers. Given sort of the kind of backing that these extremists have it's very clear that they have I mean state sanctions so it's not can't be regarded as the actions of just a small fringe. It's very much sort of and again the number of occasions on which these incidents are taking place. It is sort of almost seeming like it's part of the policy. It is if you see, see at this moment we can say that there is an election coming and the right government in Israel do not want to antagonize these their potential voters. So of course that that thinking is still there the unfortunately Israelis in election for last for last two and a half years. This is an election coming. So, so the incidents, which times of Israel also reports have increased the repeated attacks on us. Alexa has increased tremendously in last few years. One of the reasons of course is the popular need of allowing such extremists to kind of garner votes. So Israeli state in general is not expected to allow such movements of extremist Jews, allowing them to train site to do all kinds of rituals inside that is not allowed at all. As per the 1967 68 agreement with Jordanian, the Jews are only allowed to visit them to the mosque as a tourist. They can pray but pray outside the mosque compound. So it is allowed primarily because of course there's an element of appeasement, which is there. But apart from that, I think this will be very, it will be a simplification to see only as an appeasement. It is also a structural attempt to change the facts on the ground. Continuous regular allowance. This also leads to different kinds of legal cases in the Israeli codes. And we have seen that in last two, three years Israeli courts have have gone on and off on the rights of Jews to pray inside the mosque compound. So this deliberate attempt to create confusion about the status of the compound on the one side and allowing physical influence inside the compound on the other side should be seen together as a base as an attempt to change the facts on the ground to basically gradually kind of create grounds for expropriation of the Palestinian land. But it will not be easy of course we have seen that this is also today by the way is the 22nd anniversary of the second Intifada when Israel tried to do similar provocation in 2000 visited the mosque compound which led to a mass uprising all across the Palestine. Hamas and other Arab countries, including the Arab League have warned of similar consequences if Israel continues to try this attempted change of the status quo. So I think there is also kind of we can see what is happening in Al-Aqsa as a case study of what has happened to the Palestinians since 1967. Gradual attempt to expropriate and a fierce resistance from the Palestinians. Thanks for putting that in a very clear picture and perspective Abdul. And finally the US government's budget year comes to a close at the end of this week and President Joe Biden has said his administration will keep the target for admitting refugees into the country at 125,000 per year. Activists and advocates for refugees have been clamoring for an increase and demanding the US do much more particularly given its role in conflicts and other conditions leading to mass displacement around the world. The other interesting part of the story is that the government has failed to come anywhere close to meeting this target. Only about 20% of that 125,000 number were admitted in the 11 months leading up to the end of August this year. Anish Tadakrishan covers the region for People Dispatch and joins us for more. Anish, why is the Joe Biden administration finding it so difficult to meet its own targets for the number of refugees it allows to admit or it admits into the US? Well, part of that and what the White House often gives as a reason for the low intake of refugees is the fact that the refugee resettlement system, the entire machinery was essentially dismantled under the Trump administration. To the point where more than a third of these refugee centers were closed down, many of the workers were let go because there were not many people to take in because a large part of the efforts were put under the Trump administration were put to detain and deport the asylum seekers rather than take them in. Now, the thing is that while the Biden administration did hike the refugee cap, it didn't barely anything to actually make it easier for that many refugees to enter. So it's pretty much staying at the same level that the Trump administration basically it's about 20, 25,000 per annum. And that's the cap that that is pretty much where the levels of refugee admission is happening right now in the United States. On top of that, there was also the whole thing about the US focusing a large part of its efforts to rehabilitate political refugees in focusing more specifically on Ukraine and Afghanistan, because obviously it has been supposed to make in those countries. And so it pretty much focused much of its efforts and resources into rehabilitating refugees from those countries, rather than a large number of refugees that do come from across the border, or even in from other parts of the world. So it's pretty much 100 and the figures estimate something around 180,000 people were put under what is called as humanitarian parole and that itself shows that the US is definitely capable of making things happen and making admissions. Not quickly as well. Exactly, exactly. It happened in a span of a very short period of time, with at least 100,000 of these being just from Ukraine. And that shows that the capability exists, but it's just that the US, the Biden administration has done very, very little, almost nothing in many ways to actually make sure that the refugee admission system is rebuilt or at least brought to working capacity. So clearly I reach the capabilities there, but the political will is lacking. And now with global numbers of those displaced for various reasons, a conflict being of course the prime among them, having reached over 90 million, and the US being the richest country in the world and able to deploy the kind of resources that it can. I guess the question is, shouldn't they be doing more even this gap that the Biden administration calls ambitious is only 125,000 is a very small fraction of the global number of people looking for refuge. Yes, definitely. I mean, one part of one way to look at it is the fact that a large number of these conflicts that we're talking about that is displaced millions, tens of millions of people around the world has more or less something to do with the United States to begin with. So there is definitely a greater responsibility on the part of the United States to actually make sure that it's refugee admission system work, but that is not happening. We very recently talked about this whole Republican Democrat conflict over refugee admissions and my immigrant entry in Texas and the whole bus thing that were where you had migrants being busted to New York City and DC, but if you look at the very nuances of things. The differences between the two factions is very, very little, to the point that it's very difficult to actually pinpoint that it's just the part, it's just the rhetoric part that they are, that any kind of distinction. And it shows that any effort because Biden administration has been criticized time and again for falling short in making any efforts to deliver on whole host of campaign promises that it had brought up before coming to power. And this refugee admission is just one of them, even the 125,000 which is freed from era kind of refugee admission numbers at the time when global displacement at refugee numbers were also low, much lower than what we have today. It's trying to call, as you said, trying to call it ambitious even though there are actual social workers on the ground who say that this is really not enough and this needs to be amended to actually cater to the real needs where large number of refugees are trying to resettle and find refuge in the United States. And this, again, this is all part of the very lack of political will or any kind of will to begin with are the part of the Biden administration to actually make efforts to make things smoother and, you know, workable rather than actual lack of resources or, you know, machinery. Right. So as things stand, the can is just kicked down to the next financial year and we'll see what efforts may or may not be made, but indicators are that pretty much very little focus, yeah, there. All right. Thanks very much, Anish, for that update. That brings this episode of Daily Debrief to a close. As always, thank you very much for watching. For more details on these stories and all of the other work we do, head over to our website peoplesdispatch.org and don't forget to follow us on the social media platform of your choice. Thanks again for watching. We'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.


Thank you everybody for joining us for another all things data open shift commons briefing today. We're very excited to have a net clue it. And Kyle Bader, as well as Chris Bloom answering questions in the chat. From our storage group and with 4, 3 coming out of open shift container storage, they're here to give us a deeper dive into different new features. So, please, Kyle, take it away. Thanks. So, the, the major themes of this release of OCS is to provide more flexibility in terms of deployment, be able to add more flexibility in terms of the types of devices you can use underneath OCS. And to add a new platform, add the ability to support bare metal. Now, a few of these things are, are coming into 4.3 in our tech preview. And we'll, you know, go GA later, but we're going to go into a little bit more detail here. And then a net will provide a nice demo. So the status quo, you know, before 4.3 and and what continues to be an option in 4.3 is the is to use a dynamic provisioner for 4.2. We targeted 2 platforms. We targeted vSphere and we targeted EC2, Amazon EC2. And in both cases, we use kind of an infrastructure dynamic provisioner that would get deployed into the open shift automatically. And then we would consume volumes or PVs from those provisioners and then build kind of a build OCS on top of that. Now, there's, you know, there's a lot of advantages that you get from that, that I have detailed on the slide here. We have the ability to move that PV from node to node. So if you have a node that fails or if you, you know, otherwise need to, you know, move one of those, one of those OSDs to a different node, you can do so without having to basically recover the data. It can just detach and attach to another node. That's kind of a nice convenience type thing. And there are some limitations on this. If you're, if you're using EBS, then, you know, the EBS PV can only move within the same availability zone. So it's not, it's not perfect. Right. But, but it is kind of a nice thing to not have to necessarily recover data if of your OCS nodes go down. The other nice thing about the dynamic or the using a dynamic provisioner is the sizing is dynamic. Right. So, because the PVC is created to satisfy that particular PVC, see, it can be made to the exact size of the request.  Then you get a two terabyte PV. Most of the volumes that you would get through these provisioners are generally higher meantime between failure. Right. So if you're using an EBS volume is generally more resilient than a disc or a V-Sphere volume PV that's coming from, you know, V-San or some sort of sand usually has a higher meantime between failure than, you know, just a local device. That's what I say generally speaking, it really depends on what you have underneath your volume. But for the most part, the kind of other side of the, the, the sort there is that oftentimes, you know, the, the, the additional services, whether it's the case of EBS or the hardware and licensing costs in the case of V-Sphere volume can be a lot higher than you otherwise might have with local devices. And because you might be stacking, you know, EBS or V-San or their own kind of, you know, software defined storage systems. So if you were to put OCS on top of that, you know, that's, that's not, you know, while flexible and easy to get in the door, it's not the most efficient approach to doing storage. So, you know, knowing, knowing these shortfalls, we wanted to have options, right? We wanted to increase the flexibility. If the pros of using the dynamic provisioner approach were less interesting to a particular customer than, and maybe, you know, solving some of the cons, we wanted to have an option. So that's, the 4.3, we're adding the ability to do the local storage provisioner. But before I get to that, we also introduced the ability to do more flexible OSD sizing. In 4.2, we had a fixed size for the OSDs. It was always two terabyte. And so if you needed to add additional storage, you added it basically. It was scaled in multiples of three. And if you needed, you know, eight usable, usable terabytes, you would have, you know, a set of 12 two terabyte OSDs that would be able to satisfy that with 4.3, we've introduced the ability. So when you dynamically provision, or when you, when you set up a new cluster, you can, you can choose like a T-shirt size for the OSD. So you can either do 500, which is kind of for a really, you know, a more, so we can have a more minimal size cluster, or you can have the kind of the two terabyte, which was what we had in 4.2, or you can have a larger four terabyte OSD sizing. So that, that's another way to get to a larger maximum scale, or to get to a smaller minimum footprint. So this was, this was some flexibility requested by customers. And so we've introduced it in 4.3. And this is, is generally available. The local storage that I was alluding to earlier is the ability to consume storage directly from, from like locally in the system, right? So in the case of VMware, that would be where you have hypervisor nodes that have some sort of locally attached media.  Or in the case of SATA or SAS drives, there's also, in vSphere, this idea of doing RDM or raw device mappings that basically, you know, like map those devices directly into the guest that would correspond with your OCP node. And then finally, there's a direct path approach for NVMe that's, that's like effectively like a PCI pass through, which is only for NVMe drives, right? Because that's a PCI eBase protocol. And you need something a little bit more direct for NVMe to have it be efficient. For EC2, we have the instance store, right? So there are a number of instance types. The predominant ones would be I3EN or I3 that have locally attached SSDs that you can now consume and use for OCS.  And so you'll want to create like IAM role or prevent that from happening. And then finally, local SSD or NVMe and bare metal hosts. And this is all kind of organized by the local storage operator ahead of time. You give it a custom resource and it will, you know, create the, the PVs and then OCS will consume them. And that's what, that's what Annette's demo is going to show you here today. So in order to give her maximum amount of time, I'll hand it off to her. Okay. So taking off from where Kyle landed, good explanation and a good sort of difference with OCS 4.3 that we want to go through here. So dynamic provisioning, as Kyle said, was the feature in OCS 4.2. And for using dynamic provisioning, the new sort of addition is the, as he said, the shirt size selection. That is not using local storage, that is dynamic provisioning. So what we're going to take a look at here is using the local storage method. And in particular, we're going to do it with VMware. So starting from my VMware client, I want to just show you what I have here. I've got OpenShift installed on six worker nodes and three control plane nodes or masters. What I did to create the local storage is I added a, what you call in the vSphere client a hard disk. So I added one of these. You also see a raw device mapping here, but I added a hard disk. And the size is 100 gigabytes. I already did that. So I'm not going to go over that again. So I did that to the first three compute nodes.  If we now go back to the operator hub, we see that we have a new version here. 4.3.0, 4.3.0 actually just released today. And before I deploy that, I want to discuss how we are creating the local storage. So if we take a look at the devices we have available here, and this is actually the output here is created using a utility that one of our own essays created, Daniel Moser and Chris Bloom who's on the call here. But what I did when I created those hard disks, I essentially created this additional device. And this is the device that we're going to use for the storage. And you can find this utility. I'll just put it into the chat. You can find this utility here. And I definitely encourage you to check it out. If we go back to the CLI here, we'll go ahead and get rid of that now. So I'll do an OC get nodes. And I'm just connected to the same cluster that we just looked at in vSphere. So there's our nodes. And I'm in right now, the local storage project. So I have already deployed the local storage operator. And that would be found in operator hub. If I type here, right, you see it's already installed. So if I do it OC get pods and PV here, you'll see that I have some pods that are in the local storage project. I also have some persistent volumes. Persistent volumes as you see there happen to be exactly equal to what I had in the vSphere client. And the way that I created that was to create a FAML file for a local volume CR storage. And I used the by ID values that we saw that I got from using that utility. I used those. I could have just done device path SDB, because SDB is the same on every one of them of the three nodes I'm going to use. But this is a better way to do it. And in the future, this actual ID will be discovered via the local storage operator. But right now I had to go use the utility and put it here. The other thing I'm using to decide that a PV should be created for the local storage device is I'm using the key of this label. This label is the label that should be added to any OpenShift nodes that are going to be running OCS. I've already added the label and I've already created the CR. So that's why if we look at the last view, that's why the PVs are already created. And you'll see that they have an available status. So all of this was done using the local storage operator and the local volume custom resource that I just showed you. So now we're ready to install OpenShift container storage. Just a note, this happens to be VMware using VMDKs. This could as well be on AWS using I3 or I3N instances. It could also be bare metal using local disk in a server. So it's really the same process to get to this point. You need to have the disks need to be available as PVs. So going back to here, let me go ahead and refine. So here's my OpenShift container storage. I do need to create it in a particular namespace, OpenShift-storage, which I already created that namespace. I'm going to hit install. And I'm going to go ahead and search for that namespace, which is here. We see that we're on stable 4.3, which we should be. We'll hit subscription. So as this subscription or the cluster service version is coming up, we can do a look at what's happening here. We also currently make use of the CRDs in the lib bucket provisioner. You see the provided APIs to the right there. And the next version, OCS 4.4, we will still use the CRDs, but you will not see the operator visible, the lib bucket provisioner operator. So let's take a look here and just see that our CSVs are succeeding. Right, project. So we still have the 4.3.0 installing. We do need to wait until that's finished installing. And then we can proceed to create the storage cluster. So let's do an OC get pods where we proceed here. And what we should see is our four operators. So we're going to see the OCS operator. That's the meta operator for the OCS service. We see the Rixsef operator, the new operator, and the lib bucket operator. So now we're ready to create our storage cluster. So in this case, because we're doing local storage, we're not going to use the UI as you did in dynamic provisioning. In dynamic provisioning, you would go to storage cluster and you would go create storage cluster. But for local storage, we need to be able to give it different information. And we need to be able to give it sort of the storage for the months and the storage for the states. So when we created the local volume CR using those 3 by ID disk IDs, we also got a local block storage class. And that local block storage class is how we're going to claim and create PVCs from those available 100 gigabyte PVs. This is the actual storage cluster CR that is used when over here you hit create OCS cluster. It's not exactly this one, but this is how it looks. So we need to have mon storage. In this case, because I do have the thin storage class available here, I'm going to use it to create the mon storage. I could also use, I could have created a 10 gigabyte VMDK and create another local volume CR and I could have claimed the storage that way. But in this case, I'm just going to use it because I have it available for dynamic provisioning. And then for my OSD storage, I'm going to use this new local block storage class that is going to be able to claim those 100 gigabyte PVs. So just one more look at our PVs. Before we do this, we see they're available. Okay, so let me go ahead now and I'm just going to create that storage cluster. And as I do that, we'll start to see some pods come up. And this is again in the OpenShift dash storage namespace. So first off, we see creating because our operators are already created, but we see our container storage interface pods coming up. This is the new API via Kubernetes for all storage to be created. So OCS makes use of the CSI API. And the first thing we need to do is we need to land some pods on each one of the devices, excuse me, each one of the OpenShift nodes. Now this would be on OpenShift nodes that allow scheduling of application pods. So we're not going to see that on the master nodes, because currently the master nodes have a no schedule tank. But in any worker node or any info node that could host applications will have both the CFFS and a RBD plugin so that volumes can be created and deleted. So those will continue to come up. If we go back to our UI here, we can see, let me just go back here, if we go back to the storage cluster, we can see now that compared to when I first looked at this, we have a storage cluster being created. It's version 4.3.0 and it's in a progressing. The other thing that happened when I created the storage cluster is I got two new dashboards that are completely integrated into OpenShift. And right now they're not populating because the storage cluster is creating. But again, these are completely integrated because OpenShift container storages is a Red Hat offering. And so, you know, there was a lot of work to integrate it into OpenShift. The other thing if we have time is there's a lot of alerting and metrics that are specific to OCS and specific to CEPH that are also integrated in. So you get very good alerting in these dashboards if there's a problem. Let's go back to looking here. Looks like we're starting to bring up the mons. Let me just get out of here for a minute and I'll just show you the PVCs that are coming up. But we've already created the storage for our monitors. Our monitors require a small amount of storage, relative 10 gigabytes. So in this case, because I had the thin storage class available, I used it in a storage cluster CR and you can see that they got created. If I do a watch on the PVCs, I should start to see in a short time here that we're going to see 100 gigabyte PVCs. And let's just do this. Just need to make sure that they're coming up. So we'll go back and look at the pods. So the monitors are not quite up. You see here we have monitor A, B, and C. These are the self monitors. There needs to be three of them. And what will happen is they also need to be on a unique node. So each one of them will be on a different node. And if we did and looked at that node, we would see that they have been placed on unique nodes. So they're on compute 1, 2, and 0. So let's take another look at our PVCs. Okay. This is what I wanted to show you is remember that these are our PVCs. And if you do OC get PV, we will see now that these 100 gig PVCs are now bound. So before they were available, now they're used. And I think we're almost to the end of the deployment here. So once the PV, so yeah, we're at the very end here. We've already, we've got our three monns here. We've got our three OSDs here. These are our storage devices that are mounting that 100 gigabytes and creating the self cluster. And we're in process of the last bit here of creating the new BOPODs that are going to be used for the buckets to create buckets for objects. So if we take a look here, let's just take one more look and see if we finished. Well, I'll show you how we know that we have finished the deployment just from looking at this view. There's a lot of different ways to validate the deployment. But we are still creating here. So you notice the OCS operator here is is running but not ready, which is evidenced by zero slash one. So this operator will stay in the state until the deployment is completely finished. So if you see this, if you're, you know, watching the CLI doing a deployment, don't be concerned about this until you know the deployment is completely finished. If it stays this way, then something did not go right with the deployment. So one more look and then let's go back to the UI. Given the amount of time we have right now, it does take a few minutes for the dashboards to populate. All the pods are done now. And we could just do a watch on this pod. But it probably is already done. We'll just sit here and watch it and wait for it to get done. In the meantime, let's go back to the dashboards. We now, even though the OCS operator doesn't show quite done yet, we can see that our dashboard has populated. It tells us that I use 300 gigabyte VMDKs. So I've got almost 300 gigabytes of storage. Effective storage, of course, is just one third that because of replica three. And our object dashboard usually takes a little bit longer to come up because you notice Nuba was at the end. So I think that is the end of my demo. So a successful deployment of OCS 4.3 that released today. That was fantastic. Thank you, Annette. And thank you, Kyle. It's so nice to see 4.3 out and what a great demo. And next week we'll have another deep dive into 4.3. So please join us next week. And thank you, everybody, for another great All Things Data OpenShift Commons briefing. You can find this on the OpenShift Commons YouTube channel. Thank you, everyone.


n the UK is positive. What we need is a bit more drilling down whether there is any differential in terms of what level of earnings people have. We will keep that very much under review and we look forward to HMRC publishing. As you said, it is independent analysis whether it is HMRC or SFC, but does the Scottish Government ever pose questions to them? Do you ever know that HMRC is about to undertake ex-exercise? Does the Government ever say that we would particularly value having why point of data is that it is something that you are going to collect and analyse? Both of the studies that the DFM referred to were initiated by the Scottish Government in consultation with others. They are overseen by HMRC, the OBR, the SFC, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Fraser of Allender Institute. It is a collective that is ensuring technical rigor, but the work was paid for by the Scottish Government. That is useful. Thanks for our agenda. Deputy First Minister, you said in your budget speech on 19 December that you have reiterated again that this was a budget for growth. When it comes to growth in terms of improving skills and addressing economic activity, which your predecessor John Swinney had said at one time was one of the biggest challenges, why have you made substantial cuts to every area of the budget that would help improving skills and economic activity? You have cut the Scottish funding council budget, you have cut the employability budget, you have cut the enterprise budget, you have cut the SNIB budget and you have increased tax on those whose high-level skills we desperately need in Scotland. Leading people like Sandy Begby to say, and I quote, it is likely to inhibit the ability of our sector to create jobs and retain and attract the talent we need. Very similar comments from Tracy Black of the CBI, Sarah Theam from Prosper, David Ovens from Archangel Group, Alexandra Docherty and Johnston Carmichael, David Lonsdale. They are all saying the same things that this budget will not do anything to improve the situation with skills. David Bell told us last week that it is not really a budget as far as opportunity is concerned. He is right, cabinet secretary, isn't he? I think that this budget in very, very difficult circumstances is trying to invest in as many areas as possible to deliver on the Government's objectives. However, there is less money to be invested, so if we were to have increased all of the areas that you have referred to, that would have meant reductions in budgets elsewhere. When you have to make choices to deliver a balanced budget, those choices are not easy, but, in consultation with Neil Gray and other ministers, what we will do is to make sure that, for example, our enterprise agencies are focused on the key things that absolutely matter, that the skills review that Wither's has delivered challenge to us, or that it is to make sure that our skills delivery landscape, which has a huge multibillion investment, delivers better impact for the economy, that our apprenticeships, for example, and Graham Day has taken forward some very important work to make sure that our apprenticeship system and what it delivers and through to our college offerings as well is more aligned to what businesses actually say they need in terms of the skills gap that they have within their sectors. Taken, of course, with some of the strategic investments that we are making in green energy and renewables, we have tried to align a declining amount of resources, particularly on the capital side, to the best impact that we can. Those decisions are not easy, and, if you are asking me, I would have preferred not to have had to make them. Of course, that would be my conclusion as well, but in the light of falling budgets, we have had to be clear and are being clear with our agencies of what the focus needs to be on delivery. The response from the business community is very damming. In fact, it is excoriating in some of its comments. The particular focus is on skills and trying to address the economic inactivity issue. I cannot understand why, if that is seen as the major priority for the Government, you would seek to put pressure on colleges who do so much work to try not just to ensure that students have the right skills but they are actually involved in retraining, which is just as important in terms of the employment in the economy. Cutting things like employability and enterprise are absolutely critical, surely, to the success of the economy. What I find difficult to understand is that Neil Gray has been very upfront by saying that there is a new deal between the Scottish Government and business, and that there will be no surprises when it comes to that new deal. That is not the view of the business community, is it? First of all, the issue of employability. Since 2018, the devolved employability services have reached over 100,000 people. They continue to do some very important work. There is a move towards a system that is trying to make it easier for users to navigate and focus and more focused. Local employability partnerships are being given responsibility to deliver services in their areas that meet the needs of their users and local labour markets, so that is where the focus of employability services will be. However, there is no doubt that, whether it is the in-year savings this year or last year, where employability funding was reduced, that has been an unfortunate consequence of the pressure on Scottish Government budgets. Had we made decisions elsewhere and not in employability, I am sure that those issues would be being raised with me today in terms of the position of business. On NDR, for example, I know that businesses that are in those sectors would have preferred the Scottish Government to have passed on the NDR business tax cuts. Had we done that, there would have been substantially less funding for the NHS and public services. Those ultimately come down to choices that we have had to make that have been difficult, but I could not in all conscience cut business taxes at the expense of investment in the NHS. When you are sitting with the choices in front of us of having to balance a budget and having to make those decisions around business tax cuts or NHS funding, then I have been really clear that there was only ever going to be one answer to that question and it had to be prioritising the investment in the NHS over business tax cuts at this time anyway. Would one of the choices then have been to scrap the national care service situation that money could be deployed elsewhere? The national care service is going to be an important reform that will lead to more consistency and improvement in the quality of care services. Having worked in the sector for many years, I can tell Liz Smith and others that that consistency and the requirement for consistent quality is something that users of services will tell you is a priority. Users of services are very keen that we may progress with the national care service. The building blocks and infrastructure for the national care service are being put in place. We are working with local government to make the progress that needs to be made. It is going to take longer to establish, but it is a very important reform that in the longer term will deliver huge benefits for those who receive care services. The investment in the team that is supporting the delivery of this is a fraction of the cost of the delivery of social care. If we were not investing in a team to deliver it, questions would be asked around whether we were putting in place the building blocks that were necessary to make sure that the national care service is going to be delivered. That is what we are doing in order to make sure that there is a successful delivery of the NCS. Those are questions that are already being asked by nursing unions, by local government, by many people on the front line, but no doubt we will come to that as we go to stage 1. Can I go back to seek some clarity, please, about the education situation? Again, when it comes to improving skills and addressing the economic inactivity, the education budget is crucial. Mr Marr asked you—he quoted, I think, I'm correct in saying that your budget says that additional savings are to be made in the higher education sector, including from reducing first-year university places. He asked you how many would be removed, and he offered the view that that, using the Government's own statistics, might be 3,700. Can you just clarify that that is the number that is likely to be the decision from the Government and Scottish Funding Council? No, there is no number or figure that I am aware of that relates to that figure. Is there any number at all? The only number that I am aware of is the one that I spoke about earlier on, which is the 1,200 Covid places, which are the bubble that we have sustained funding for an additional two years out of Scottish Government resources. Covid money was stopped by the UK Government that funded those places initially. Scottish Government kept those places going with Scottish Government funding for two years, but we are no longer going to be able to sustain that. Beyond that, there is no figure that has been agreed with the university sector because those discussions are on-going around what will the university sector deliver, so those discussions are not concluded. Just for clarity, have you asked the Scottish Funding Council to go back to the number of places that existed pre-Covid? Is that what you are trying to tell us? The 1,200 is the Covid and pre-Covid number. The 1,200 places can no longer be sustained. We have sustained them for two years in order to try to prevent them ending earlier than that. If we would essentially follow the UK Government Covid funding, then it would have ended two years ago because that funding ended. What I am saying to you is that we kept those extra places going for another two years, but we are not going to be able to sustain that going forward. There will be a reduction in the number of Scottish domiciled places in first year? The 1,200 will return that bubble back to the pre-bubble position. Can I ask what you expect to happen when it comes to universities offering places to foreign students? Will that increase? The position with international students is constrained by the UK Government's position on the decisions that it has made that make it more difficult for international students to come to university in the UK, particularly around the ability to bring in families. I think that that is a very short-sighted policy from the UK Government. I think that the universities are pretty clear that it will impact on the numbers of international students to the UK, not just to Scotland but elsewhere in the islands. I think that that is unfortunate and not a policy that is helpful to the university sector going forward. However, it is your understanding that, with a reduction in the number of places for domiciled Scots that will happen, there will be pressure for universities to take more foreign students as a result of that financial pressure. Is that correct? The modelling of the balance between domestic students and international students is something that they continue to develop and will continue to develop. The 1200 places that I described in terms of pre-Covid and Covid will not be a surprise to the university because those places were never going to be sustained in the long term. I think that the university should be more than aware of that. As I said, we have kept it going with Scottish Government resources beyond the time of that money being removed by the UK Government. That will return the numbers to to that pre-Covid level. The universities should have been anticipating that that would be the case going forward. The Scottish Government has always made the case that Scottish domiciled students are extremely important in university education, which I would agree with. One of the reasons that are so important is because their likelihood of staying in Scotland to work beyond when they graduate is exceptionally important. We desperately need well-qualified graduates to stay in Scotland. Is the policies that you are enacting just now not undermining our ability to keep many of our best qualified student graduates in Scotland? It is very important that we try to encourage those who come to study here or Scottish domiciled and those who come to study here to remain living and working in Scotland. We try to encourage that. If you are talking about the 1200 places specifically, had that money continued to be invested, as we called for at the time, that the Covid money should not go off a cliff, we may have been able to make different decisions, but that was never going to be a position that was going to be able to be sustained going forward, because it was a mechanism that was deployed to take account of that spike in university applicants that was due to that Covid period. It was a short-term intervention, which we have actually delivered for two years beyond which the Covid money is covered. The position with Scottish domiciled students in support is that we want to see the universities continue to provide and deliver opportunities for Scottish domiciled students, but we cannot continue to fund the Covid 1200 bubble that was funded previously. The resources are simply not there to do so. Has this made the Scottish Government think about reforming the funding process in higher education? We always keep the position under review. If you are talking about tuition fees, the importance of having free tuition is not having a barrier to those entering into higher education. We talked earlier on about those from a more deprived background going to university, that the gap has closed. There are more students from more deprived communities going to university. That is partly due to the fact that we have free tuition and people are not going to be taking on those levels of debt seen elsewhere in those islands. If you are asking me, are we reviewing the position of free tuition, then no, that is not something that we are reviewing. I was not asking about that. I was just asking about whether you are going to review the whole process of higher education funding, because I think that this budget has clarified some of the difficulties that we are facing in the future. I will finish with another point of clarification. We have had various discussions about how the Government models behavioural change when it comes to tax, which is an issue that is bothering so many people in the business community. We have discussed statistics that have come from the Fraser Valander Institute and also SPICE. The convener gave you some statistics at the beginning. The economists are saying that for incomes over the £125,000, the behavioural change might be as little as £8 million. For those incomes between £75,000 and £125,000, it would probably be about £74 million. Are those the numbers that the Scottish Government's own analysis arrived at? We base our figures on the Scottish Fiscal Commission's analysis that take into account behavioural change. We recognise that it is something that we require to have more evidence around, which is why I earlier on talked about the work that the HMRC is doing. I would say that the evidence in front of us is that there is not any widespread concern about behavioural impact. We still see net immigration, but the reason that the HMRC work is important is to be able to drill further into that in terms of whether we can establish within various income bans, whether there is any change or behavioural change that the HMRC research is going to show. That is right. Next year, when the budget is presented, it will have the benefit of the two new studies that have been completed now. That will be the point at which the Fiscal Commission reviews its judgments about the extent of behavioural change that is likely. It might take the studies and decide to increase the adjustments that it makes for behaviours, or it might leave them alone. It takes a wide range of international evidence as it forms a view, but always we have tended to follow its judgments about the extent of behavioural change and putting forward our estimates. Thank you, convener. Thank you very much, John, to be followed by Jamie. Thanks, convener. If I can maybe start just picking up one or two points that have been touched on already. I mean concerning the housing budget and the numbers of affordable houses to be built, and you said or it has been suggested that there might be more private investment coming in, would that include giving lower grants? Obviously, the Government money is housing association grant mainly. Are you thinking of reducing the level of grants so that there is more borrowing? The work that the HMRC is taking forward is looking at what the business model might be for leaving in additional investment. It might look a bit different from the traditional delivery that housing associations will continue to deliver. Of course, they raise private investment as well to deliver on their targets. I think that what we are looking at here is whether or not there is in addition to that scope to leaving in additional investment that we can underpin with the Scottish Government investment that we can help to leave it into particular delivery models, such as the mid-market rent market. The housing minister has been working on that for some time. Once that work has come to a conclusion, he will be able to set out in more detail what that might look like. It seems to me that the key difference is how much is grant and how much is other investment. That can be called private investment and so on, but it is really a loan or whether it came for a pension fund or a bank. In a sense, that does not matter because you have got to have interest and so on and that has got to be covered by the rent. I am just seeking some reassurance that there will not be a big change between the grant and borrowing. The models that are being used by the housing associations and local authorities in terms of their delivery models do not foresee much change in terms of how their business model works. What we are talking about here is in addition to that how we might be able to leave it in private investment by looking at a business model that is attractive enough and has a guaranteed revenue stream that de-risks to some extent, but we will be able to add value to the delivery of our social housing delivery partners in terms of what they will be delivering. That is what is being looked at at the moment. Michael Marr mentioned the pay policy. I just wanted to press you a little bit on the figures. The Scottish Fiscal Commission has assumed 4.5 per cent. We have already had the SPCB this morning and they are looking at a 6.7 per cent increase. Can you give us any indication of what kind of increases we are talking about for pay? I cannot give you a figure because those are the metrics that are being looked at at the moment. Trying to do that without knowing what the spring budget is going to bring is very difficult because of the potential impact that that might have on our spending assumptions. Given that pay is the large part of the spending assumptions, it is material to what can be delivered. We also need to take inflation into account. The prediction of inflation is that it will get at or below 3 per cent. We would take cognisant of those factors. I think that it is not a disputed fact that we have, through the very high inflation and cost of living pressures, supported pay deals to a larger extent than anywhere else in the islands in terms of trying to settle and avoid costly industrial action, which has come at cost to the budget in year compared to the published budget last year and the year before. It has been a substantial £900 million beyond what was budgeted for. It is a huge cost. In the year of constrained finance, getting the pay metrics right is going to be critical to the affordability of our budget. Inflation could end up higher than we were hoping if, for example, all the shipping has to go around South Africa instead of going through the Suez canal. All those external factors are concerning about where inflation ends up. We can only make the assumptions that are based on the best estimates that are made by the key organisations that are projecting where inflation will land, but it is not guaranteed and it is material to where pay ends up landing in terms of the pay metrics. Can you tell us what the aim of the council tax freeze is? Is it to help people in most poverty? There is obviously a bit of debate over the £144 million, if that is enough, but whether it is enough or not, it depletes the public purse as a whole, does it not? The council tax freeze was designed, I guess, as a lever to try and help household budgets that continue to be under pressure. It is an attempt to try to do that. I said at the outset that it was important to try to deliver a balanced budget that recognised the needs of households, the needs of public services and the needs of businesses. We have the lowest poundage in the UK again for the six-year running, so I would contend that, in difficult circumstances, we have delivered a budget that is balanced and is intent very different from the UK Government budget, which is almost exclusively in favour of tax cuts at the expense of public services. The council tax freeze is one lever where we can help to support household budgets. The figure is based on a 5 per cent increase, so looking at what the projected increases were and taking an average, it lands us in that space. It is not far off the Fraser of Allander institute analysis once you have taken out of their analysis the multiplier effect, which was about £188 million of their analysis, which we are not pursuing in the light of lack of support for it among local government, apart from anything else. Once you take that out of the figure, the figure left by Fraser of Allander Institute is not far off the £144 million, I think it was at £148 million. I am continuing to discuss with COSLA what the process will be in order for local government to access that £144 million, and we will continue to do that over the next few weeks.  Other people have argued that it would have been better to use the money for the Scottish child payment to boost it further, because that would really have targeted the poorest people. I would not be right in saying that the poorest people are not really paying council tax. A lot of ordinary people have had a 5, 6, 7 per cent increase in their pension, in their wages, and they are paying that kind of increase for most things, albeit more for energy. I just did a constituent yesterday who came to my surgery and said, I am happy to pay a bit more council tax. First of all, the intention would be that the council tax freeze is a one-year intervention, so it would be difficult to make comparisons of funding something that would be an on-going cost to increase the Scottish child payment, which, given that it is increasing in line with inflation to £26.70. Of course, when you think back to where Scottish child payment started, it is considerably higher than it was and has estimated that it has a substantial impact on child poverty and reducing child poverty levels by five percentage points. Our investment in Scottish child payment is there for all to see. On the point about the impact of the council tax, those on lower incomes pay a larger percentage of their income on council tax, so you could argue that the benefit will be felt most keenly by those on lower to medium incomes because it is a higher proportion of their income, which is one of the reasons that a multiplier was mooted in the first place because of that differential in the proportion of people's income that they pay in the higher council tax bands. It has probably a larger impact on those on lower to medium incomes. On a different point, I have recently joined the social justice and social security committee, so they are delighted at the increase in spending on social security. Five billion up to six billion is quite a jump compared to other parts of the budget. Do you have any concern that this is getting a little bit out of control? We need to be cognisant of sustainability and it is an area that has seen continued growth from the inception of Social Security Scotland and the move of benefits and supports from the DWP and the development of new supports here in Scotland. It is a growing part of the budget and £1 billion of investment to £6.3 billion is substantial. It is a right investment for the right reasons, but we need to make sure that, as part of the fiscal sustainability going forward, the investment in social security is also sustainable. It is something that we are very aware of. I set out at the MTFS last year that looking at the financial sustainability that the growing share in investment in social security Scotland was a considerable element of that, so it is something that we are very cognisant of. I have a fair bit of interaction with the hospitality sector recently, and they have been going on and on about how they wanted the kind of relief that was given in England. Now, I think that England made a mistake in making it across the board, because it seems to me that some hospitality businesses are doing incredibly well. I agree with your principles that I understand of targeting some of the NDR relief at a specific sector, and you have chosen the islands. Can you just say something about why the islands and if there are any other sectors that you think need it as well? I think that it is fair to say that, had money been available in a way that did not lead to absolutely hard choices between NDR relief for funding the health service, I would have wanted to have done more for hospitality, given that there are in post-Covid environment challenges for the sector. I am not unsympathetic to that, but, as I laid out earlier on, those are stark choices that have to be made. When you put into context the out of the 310 million of consequentials for 2425, 260 million were for business tax cuts, and 10.8 was for the NHS, we could not possibly have followed through with those spending priorities, because I would be sitting here being asked about the funding for the NHS quite rightly. We looked at what we could do, and, of course, the freezing of the lowest poundage for the six-year running is not unsubstantial, the small business bonus goes further than anywhere else in the islands, so the reliefs are targeted. We are in recognition of the particular challenges that hospitality in our island communities have suffered. Some of the transport interruptions, I think, are in recognition of some of that. I think that it will give us some good evidence of what difference supports do make to the hospitality sector, because I am aware that, even with some of the reliefs that have been provided down south, we are still seeing quite a challenging environment for the hospitality sector. It is quite a mix. Some businesses are doing well, others are not so well. There will be various reasons for that. We have committed to continuing discussions with the hospitality sector about whether there is something that should resources allow that we could do that is more focused on supporting hospitality outside of the reliefs structure that exists at the moment, and we will continue to look at that. I am very sympathetic to doing more in the future should resources become available. Thank you. A different subject. Back to capital expenditure. Some of those are quite small amounts in the scheme of things, but just over the last couple of days there has been concern raised. One was SPT. You said that SPT of considerable reserves had a quick look at their accounts. I think that they have only got £12 million on what they call non-earmarked reserves, so it is not a huge amount for an organisation with a turnover of £74 million. However, there were suggestions raised that, for example, East Kilbride station might have to be delayed if they do not get SPT and do not have funding to put in. Another example, which affects my areas, is Clyde Gateway, where I think that they are losing their core capital funding of £5 million, which again could put a project at Shelfield in jeopardy. Do you think that those projects can still go ahead? I would anticipate that they can. The time frame of delivery of them might need to reflect the very challenging financial environment and the capital budget challenges, but we will continue to work with SPT and Clyde Gateway to look at how the profiling of the delivery of those projects remains important, and we want to work with them to look at how they can continue to deliver on those commitments. There have been a number of suggestions about the national outcomes and how they have informed the budget and the national performance framework, so can you clarify whether they have taken to the starting point for the budget or whether they have come in at the end? The tax advisory group, was it part of forming the budget? On the last point, the tax advisory group is more about the long-term position of our tax policies in terms of the strategic nature of them and the longer-term plan for our tax position in Scotland in looking beyond year-to-year budget horizons. It was never intended to be an input to each individual budget. Apart from anything else, the divergence of views around the table at the tax advisory group would probably not land in a space of collective agreement. That is why we have those divergent views for that rigor and challenge about the strategic position of tax policy going forward. In terms of the performance framework, it remains really important for priorities and for delivery on those priorities. I can overlay that with First Minister's key missions of honing down on what is really important and how can we focus and prioritise, given that we have less to go around? How can we prioritise and focus on the things that matter and how we constructed the budget, had that as a starting point? First Minister, can I draw members' attention to my registered interest as a partner in the farming business? As Ileons and Ileons MSP, if somebody lives in a rural community, I am going to focus my first few questions on that area. Agricultural support has been cut by £33 million. A similar amount has been cut from the forestry budget, £7 million lost from the marine budget, land reform funding by £3.5 million. It is around about £80 million in total from the rural affairs land reform and islands budget. That is a bad budget for rural Scotland. When you were considering the budget, what concerns did you have over the impact of those cuts on rural areas? Again, in a tough financial environment, we have had to look at the priorities given within the Raleigh budget. We will continue to provide farmers, crofters and land managers with the most generous package of direct support in the UK worth over £600 million in 2024-25. We will continue to support people farming and crofting in our most remote and fragile areas through £65 million for the less favoured area scheme in 2024-25. We are the only country in the UK providing that vital support, and we have committed to delivering a new round of agri-environment investment as part of the overall £30 million budget. I would contend that, in a tough financial round, we have prioritised what we are able to invest in. We have also prioritised things such as people in restoration investing £26.9 million to help to achieve the targets. We have worked with Scottish Forestry to utilise some of their reserves but to ensure that that is done in partnership with them and to ensure that they continue to deliver on their tree planting targets. It is tough budgets, but we have tried to prioritise what the priorities are in the sector. I am not sure that Scotland's farmers and crofters will feel very prioritised by a £33 million budget cut, but one of the issues that has come up and came up at last week's meeting was the lack of clarity of how decisions have made and perhaps a lack of consistency, too. I mentioned forestry and you and talked about tree planting there. The forestry budget went up £10 million for this year. It was then cut by over £30 million for next year. What is the rationale behind that? The forestry budget will look at the resources that it had, so the reserves that I mentioned earlier on, and looking at the targets that it has and how it can continue to deliver on those. However, those are difficult decisions that have had to be made. If those decisions had not been made, then the reductions in budget would need to be made elsewhere. We are going to work with whether it is forestry Scotland or any other organisation to make sure that it can deliver on the core ambitions that it has set out and that work continues. Would you accept that, for stakeholders, for those who apply for grants, for those who, obviously, forestry is vitally important, it is quite difficult to have confidence that this is a consistent and considered response where there is investment one year and then swinging cuts the following year? If you look at the funding for woodland creation, for example, which has been prioritised, then it will facilitate around 9,000 hectares of new planting and will contribute to climate change targets and net zero delivery. Scottish Forestry has a good track record of approving more new woodland applications, which is a record that they have done. The work that they will be able to do will be focused on some of the key areas of delivery. They will not be able to do everything, and it is the same with any public organisation. We expect them to prioritise the investments that they have to make. I come back to the point that I have made throughout this session. If we have less money to go around, we have had to be clear with organisations about the priorities. We cannot expect them to deliver everything if they do not have the resources to do that, so prioritisation is critical. That is what we would expect Scottish Forestry to do, along with all the other organisations that are helping to deliver in rural Scotland. I will look at two other organisations that are vitally important to rural Scotland. We have touched upon economic growth earlier. Highlands Islands Enterprise's budget has continued to fall cut by another £8 million next year. The South of Scotland Enterprise Agency will lose £7 million. You said earlier that Enterprise Agencies will be focused on key things that matter. What will those things be? What have they been doing over the past few years that have not been key things that matter? The key things that matter will be prioritised along with their partners and the Scottish Government in terms of delivery, of supporting business, of investment, of making sure that they align with the key priorities for delivery. We have recognised that sometimes we ask our Enterprise Agencies to do 101 things. We cannot ask them to do 101 things if resources are constrained. As ministers, we need to be clear about what are the key things of delivery in terms of their core functions to avoid duplication of things that perhaps other organisations are doing and to ensure that they are focused on the key interventions that their organisation can bring to the table working with others that will help to ensure that there is investment in the key sectors for growth, whether that is in Highlands and Islands or in South of Scotland, that they support business start-up and expansion in the key sectors that they are focused on. However, sometimes, as ministers, we can be guilty of asking them to do a myriad of things, and that is where we need to be really clear that the priorities that we set for our Enterprise Agencies or, indeed, any other public organisation takes account of the resources that are available at their disposal. Will you accept that you are asking them to do less and probably fewer businesses will be helped? We are asking them to focus on the key things that will make a difference, and perhaps some of the other things that we have traditionally asked them to do will need to happen in slower time. Those will be garnered in the letters that will issue to each Enterprise Agency around the key things that will be asked to deliver over 24-25, and some of the things that are not going to be key priorities will have to either not happen or happen in slower time. Economy committee, when we did an inquiry into business support, which obviously included the Enterprise bodies and business gateway, I would be interested to know what the things that they have been that have not been priorities. Just for clarification, can I touch on business gateway, because it is not mentioned in the budget at all, previously it was mentioned, although funding has been cut? Is there any government support going into business gateway for next year? I would also make the point around whether it is Enterprise Agencies or, indeed, business gateway, that when you ask businesses themselves what makes a difference and how our Enterprise Agencies can best assist, they are not always aligned to the same priorities. I think that there is a discussion to be had around what is the evidence to tell us of what has the biggest impact. In times of constrained resource, it is really important that we prioritise. In terms of the business gateway, we will have to come back to you on that, if that is okay. We will write to the committee specifically with business gateway. Just a couple of other quick areas, I wanted to have a look at. We have talked about the council tax freeze, and you said that it is looking at an average of around about 5 per cent. I take it except then that there will be winners and losers in terms of the councils, because councils like Courtney Islands Council, where I am from, are looking at a 10 per cent increase, and they will be substantially underfunded, given that if you are looking at a 5 per cent figure. There will be winners and losers. It would not have been viable to have a funding arrangement for the council tax freeze that was based on what each individual local authority said that it was going to put their council tax up. I do not think that COSLA, or indeed the 32 leaders of local authorities, would have agreed with one authority getting 10 per cent, another authority getting 3 per cent, depending on the projection. I think that there would have probably been an outcry, to be honest, if that had been the proposition. There was always going to have to be an averaging of where does that land in terms of the quantum. The quantum, as I said earlier, is not out of line with Fraser Valander's analysis. I recognise that there are some particular issues with Take Orkney, for example. I am well aware, through my discussions, with the leader of Orkney Council that there are some structural issues around their funding through SINA. In actual fact, there are some distributional issues for rural authorities more generally, but Orkney has some particular issues that we need to look to see how we can support that going forward. That will be something that you will be looking at. I understand what you are saying that COSLA would not necessarily be supported of different, differentiate deals, but each council has different circumstances. They have to deliver their public services as rural and island communities have particular challenges. I know that COSLA are looking at some work around the distributional, but may I, Ellen and I said, around the distribution of resources. It is very difficult, and I can remember the decades of COSLA trying to agree within itself distributional changes, because trying to get 32 leaders with their own particular interests from their own council's position to agree to a position that perhaps does not benefit them is incredibly difficult. However, COSLA's operation of course, in terms of its distribution, is by agreement. It makes it very difficult to make change.  You have made this commitment to the council tax freeze. Is there a responsibility for you to make it work? The issues for Orkney go well beyond the council tax freeze. It is one example of their difficulty, but the issues go well beyond that. They are involved with SENA and how the distribution more generally works or does not work for individual local authorities. We continue to discuss with Orkney how we can help to resolve some of that in the short, medium and longer term. Ellen, I do not know whether you want to come in on that specifically. On the distribution formula in relation to the local government settlement, so separate to the council tax freeze, as the Deputy First Minister has said, there is a clear mechanism and joint work that happens between the Scottish Government and local government through COSLA to keep the distribution formula under review. However, any changes to that formula require the agreement of COSLA primarily. There is a set governance procedure in place there. As the Deputy First Minister has said, there is a piece of work that COSLA has asked the improvement service and others to lean in on in relation to the islands and the particular needs of the islands as they are represented in the distribution formula. That would be at the earliest for the next budget, that that piece of work would conclude. However, there are other matters on which we have on-going discussion with individual councils as well as with COSLA as a whole in relation to distribution. However, that would be a separate matter to the council tax freeze. Just one very quick one more thing. The convener highlighted earlier and you have mentioned about reserves. Do you know how much money is held by public bodies in reserve across Scotland? Yes. I do not have that at the top of my head, but we have that information. Not all organisations are public bodies. Universities are not public bodies, so I do not have insight into what each of them has in terms of reserves. However, in terms of public bodies, yes, and local government, we know the level of reserves, which has increased. You are taking public bodies, taking universities and local councils out of it and looking at those that you have more direct control over. What are we talking about, tens, hundreds of millions? I can certainly write to the committee with that. There will be such huge differences between the level of reserves. Of course, the creative Scotland reserves have been pretty well discussed in the public domain. There will be others that have perhaps had less scrutiny around the reserves. The point that I would make is that we should not necessarily see it as a negative. It might be very pertinent to investment plans and the reforms that are going to be undertaken, but we cannot ignore it either. It has to be part of the picture of how we get through to a more sustainable position with some of the reforms that need to be made and how reserves are utilised in the short medium term. I can say that we are expecting details of that in the next week or so. It has been a bit of a marathon session. I want to thank colleagues and particularly our Deputy Deputy First Minister for your input. I will ask two or three quick questions. One is when we can expect the updated infrastructure investment plan. We will give an update on the capital delivery of the existing infrastructure at the end of January, and then the infrastructure investment plan will be in this spring. Once we know what the spring budget is delivering, which could end up impacting positively or negatively on capital, it is important to see what that looks like before we bring forward the IIP revisions. The committee recommended that the Scottish Government produce a full response to the Scottish Fiscal Commission's fiscal sustainability report, setting out the actions that it will take to start addressing the longer-term challenges ahead. We have not yet received that. When can we expect that? I would say that, after the spring budget, I am happy to furnish the committee with that longer-term plan. MTFS, in May, is going to be a key point that I wish I could set out in the light of what we do at that point. The point that you are looking at goes a bit beyond that into the longer-term. I know that that is something that the committee is taking an interest in, so I will try to furnish the committee with as much info at the earliest opportunity. Finally, with regard to non-domestic rates, £685 million of reliefs are in this budget. I certainly appreciate, as do island hospitality businesses, £110,000 limit, which has been set on rates. That has been extremely helpful at non-OP rates up to 110,000 a year. However, I am just wondering whether the Scottish Government has given the kind of disgust that we have had earlier on, if the Scottish Government has done any work looking at the economic impact of reliefs positive relative to the sector. For example, a lot of people lobbying is on that particular issue, so I want to know not necessarily now, but whether or not the Scottish Government is looking to see how effective those reliefs are in terms of the sustainability of businesses and the growth of businesses and the overall economic impact. Yeah, and that information and evidence will be important for the interventions that we are making. Obviously, reliefs are changed over time, so some cease and then new ones are introduced, and gathering an evidence base around the impact of each is important and that work is on-going. I am happy to keep the committee appraised of information that we get back in the analysis of that. Thank you very much. I realise how exhausting it must be to have to answer questions for two and a half hours. I am now going to call a break for one minute, and then we will have two minutes in a private work session only, because I realise we are well over time.


Hi everyone welcome to my channel today's recipe we're making pork tacos with some broccoli slaw topped with some avocado sauce it's a cream sauce and I'll tell you it's super delicious guys and we're going to be making it in a pressure cooker now if you don't have one of those but you have an instant pot that will work just as well and if you have neither one of those you can still make this recipe in a regular stock pot the only difference being that when I cook it in a pressure cooker it's going to take about 45 minutes if you make it in a stock pot which is perfectly fine that will take you about two and a half hours so I'm rockin Robin and I'm going to show you how to do it right after this we're going to start by going over the ingredients for the roast portion of our recipe first up is we have a pork roast here this is a pork butt or shoulder and you can see there's some you know a little extra fat on there and I'm going to be trimming that up and cutting this into chunks our spices for this recipe include oregano ground coriander ground cumin ancho chili powder chipotle chili powder and some salt we have some yellow onion finely diced over here we'll also need some orange juice some chicken broth fresh lime juice we'll need some avocado oil and we'll need a little salt now for our slaw part of the recipe I have here is some broccoli slaw which is just shredded up broccoli and carrots which works great has a nice crunch to it and we're going to dress it up real simple I'm going to use a little apple cider vinegar some olive oil and some salt that's it now for our avocado sauce so of course we need a couple of avocados a little bit of mayonnaise now this is a very good mayonnaise to use because it's made with avocado oil we'll need some salt a little bit of fresh minced garlic some fresh cilantro out of my garden by the way a little bit of chipotle pepper and a little bit of fresh lime juice so here's my pressure cooker guys it's really tall difficult to get the camera inside the pot here but I'm going to do the best I can and I've got this on medium-high heat and we're going to be searing our pork in avocado oil because the smoke point is 500 degrees and you know it won't break down the oil so that's what that's a good thing so I'm going to put some oil in the bottom of the pan here let that get really nice and hot before we sear it because we just want to sear the meat on the outside get a nice little crust on it and add some flavor it's going to put some flavor onto each piece plus it's going to leave some fond in the bottom of this pan and that's where the flavor is and that's what's going to make our dish just taste amazing all right guys I think I'm ready to start here and then how do you know when your oil is hot well at first when you put the oil in it's nice and smooth and when it gets hot enough it starts to you know get these lines in the oil and that's how you know it's hot so I'm going to go ahead and start placing pieces of pork in the bottom and we want them to just sit there for you know a couple of minutes don't move them around let them get that nice crust on there I have a I have a bowl right over here behind the pot so that when they're done then I'll place them in there to keep them you know until we finish the rest of our recipe this is only going to take a couple minutes on each side you do want to flip them over and you want each piece to touch the bottom that's we're going to be doing this in batches okay some of the first pieces I laid in there they're already browning up that's what you're looking for that nice golden brown my temperature is medium-high so like I said when some of these pieces get done like this one here is done I'm just going to place it back here in the bowl I'm going to go ahead and take the rest of these out and finish up this batch and then I'm just going to go ahead and repeat this process with the rest of the pork and then after we get done with that I'll show you the next step all right we're done with that you can see that the pan is smoking I'm going to turn the pan down to low and you want to check and see well if you can see inside my pan here I hope you can I've got a lot of fawn going on in there that's the beautiful stuff and it's smoking a little bit and so if you need to add a little more oil which I think I need to add a little bit maybe a teaspoon we're gonna take our wooden spoon and our onions and we're going to drop those in you want to kind of scrape up the bottom of that pan and what it's going to do is going to help pick up a lot of that fond and put it right into those onions and make them taste wonderful I'm going to cook these onions like this for just a couple minutes you know three or four minutes something like that all right we've been cooking these about four minutes now they look beautiful I'm going to start adding the other ingredients start with our chicken broth there goes the orange juice lime juice and now I'm going to toss the meat back in then we'll take all of our spices and we're going to just sprinkle those in now you want to give this a nice stir okay so at this point now all we have to do is put the lid on pressure cooker if you're not familiar with them you know you can see here they've got a couple of like little latches you know little ridges where you I'm going to place the lid on and it secures it in place and as some of you are worried about this thing blowing up and they don't do that I've used this thing many many times screw it on that puts pressure on those these clamps here get it on nice and tight because it has a seal on the lid and you want to make sure it's tight so the pressure doesn't leak out this is the release valve once I hear that starting to make noise then I will turn it down and then we'll let this cook for about 45 minutes so while our pork is over there cooking for a 45 minutes we've got time to make our broccoli slaw so I got that in a bowl here and we're keeping this super simple I'm going to add a little bit of chopped up cilantro to that mix it up now all we're going to do here is just simply add a little bit of olive oil to it now just drizzle it depending on how much you're using give it a little drizzle you can always add more later if you don't have enough and I'm using my apple cider vinegar here and the same thing I'm just going to drizzle it in there's no real set amount here just use your best judgment we'll touch of salt and then we'll just take a fork couple of forks and just toss it and we'll place this in the fridge and keep it chilled until we're ready to serve our tacos now we're ready to work on our avocado cream sauce right everything else is ready now we'll prepare this and keep it chilled until we put this all together so we'll start with our avocados and we're going to put two here and put everything in our food processor because that will blend it up really nice so in goes the avocado there goes our mayo made with that avocado oil which is much much healthier for us to eat I'm going to toss in the cilantro now if you don't like cilantro you can always sub in some parsley here's some fresh lime juice or minced garlic here's our chipotle powder you can add as much of this as you want depending on how hot you like it and then we have to add some salt because avocado always requires some salt and then we're going to blend that up until it's nice and liquidy once you get that all blended up make sure you taste it you know because you want to make sure you have enough salt so then we'll just pour this into a bowl and we'll put it in the fridge look at how nice and creamy this is it's beautiful now we added some lime juice to this to help keep this from oxidizing and turning brown but you can also cover this with some saran wrap and push it down on top of the avocado and that way that'll keep it the air from getting to it and it won't turn brown on you either all right so while our pork is finishing up it's almost done I almost forgot to tell you about the tortillas we got to have tortillas right corn tortillas are what I'm serving with this now there's a couple of good ways to do it and I'm going to share that with you right now you can take your corn tortillas wrap them in foil pop them in your oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes and they'll be nice and soft and beautiful the next alternative which is what I'll do tonight when I serve this to my family I have these tortilla ovens that are fantastic you take your tortillas you place them right in there and you can put up to about a dozen pop it in the microwave some of you don't like to use the microwave use the other version but if you don't mind the microwave pop these in the microwave on high for like 30 seconds these will stay nice and hot and soft like for a party so you don't have to you know worry about heating more up it's great so I'll leave a link for you if you want to get one of these down below in the description of the video okay it's been 45 minutes it's time to take this out of the pot well let's show you how we do a pressure cooker take off that the steam goes up and we don't try and take the lid off until of course all that steam is gone just takes about a minute or less not even alright once you don't hear much steam coming out start loosening the the lid all the pressures out and the lid comes off alright here's our pork looks incredible looks good it's soft the meat soft falling apart so what I'm gonna do is take a couple of forks and then I'm just gonna kind of shred it up so after shredding this up a little bit what I want to do is just pour it in this bowl here so you can actually see it all right so I got some tortillas here hot out of the tortilla oven whoo nice and soft be great to have a taco bar if you had a party going on set all this up let people come and serve themselves how how great and fun would that be right now here is my sauce my cream sauce alright let's take a little taste out of this that is so delicious the pork is so tender I mean it just falls apart it's so delicious guys the sauce everything you got that the little cabbage not the cabbage the broccoli slaw that gives it a little crunch we've got the avocado sauce that just is nice and creamy and it's got a little kick at the end really delicious guys I hope you give it a try alright everybody that's my recipe for pork tacos I hope you enjoyed it if you did share it with your friends if you think they might enjoy it and leave me a comment let me know if you're gonna try it and if you do let me know how you liked it I love hearing from you if you'd like to subscribe to my channel don't forget to click that subscribe button at the end of the video it's right up over here and of course there's always that button down below the video along with the bell and you know what that bell means right if you click that you will be notified every week when my new videos come out so make sure you do that I don't want you to miss any thanks again for watching everybody we'll see you next time