I remind members of the Covid-related measures that are in place and that face covering should be borne when moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. The first item of business is health and social care portfolio questions. Of course, in order to get in as many people as possible, I would prefer short and succinct questions and answers too much. If a member wishes to request a supplementary question, they should press their request-to-speak button or indicate so in the chat function by entering the letter R during the relevant question. Question 1, Alexander Stewart. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the number of referrals to child and adolescent mental health services that are declined. Minister Kevin Stewart. Referals that are not accepted for treatment are described as rejected or not accepted, not as declined, as in many cases that involve signposting or redirecting to a more appropriate service. The last available published statistics covering quarter ending 30 June show that 2,263, that is 22.2 per cent of referrals to CAMHS, were not accepted. The next published statistics will be available on 7 December. I thank the minister for that response. In 2018 Audit Scotland threw the report on children and young people's mental health warned that the scrutiny of CAMHS focused on inputs and outputs rather than outcomes. Since then, what action has the Scottish Government taken to shift the focus of outcomes and how will it measure service quality to seek to increase pathways for the mental health of our children? There has been significant progress made to improve CAMHS services and implement the recommendations of the children and young people's mental health and wellbeing task force. Most notably, in February 2020, the Scottish Government published a national CAMHS service specification that includes nationally agreed referral criteria, a first engagement appointment for all those who meet the criteria and personalised and meaningful signposting for all those who do not require treatment in CAMHS. There is also a duty for all CAMHS teams to provide a contact for referals to discuss referrals with them. We are continuing to work on data in all of that. We have in place the CAMHS and psychological therapies national dataset, which was commissioned to collect data about why people are not accepted. CAPTND was first published as an appendix in June 2021, and we will continue to work on that and improve as we move forward. It was reported by Public Health Scotland that at the end of June 2021, the number of children and young people who had been waiting over a year for mental health services had doubled from the end of June 2020. Can the minister actually advise Parliament what examples of alternative support that the Government has in place for those children on very long waiting lists, or indeed who may have been rejected by the service? As Ms Malkin knows, we have invested quite heavily from our recovery and renewal fund into CAMHS to bring waiting times down. It is essential that we do so. We also need to invest in other services, particularly community-based services, so that folks do not have to be referred to acute services in the first place. That is an absolutely essential move in moving away from acute to prevention. I am sure that that is something that Ms Malkin will welcome along with everyone else in the chamber, but we are working hard, along with health boards, to get those waiting lists and waiting times down. To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made on the impact of the closure of Eddington cottage hospital. East Lothian health and social care partnership has taken the difficult decision to temporarily relocate the bed capacity—that is six beds—and staff from Eddington hospital to East Lothian community hospital to maintain safe staffing levels and provide safe and functional care for patients. The health and social care partnership will review that decision on 10 December as part of an agreed quarterly review of the situation. I am very grateful for that answer. I ask Sir Cees in his place, the cabinet secretary, whether he would meet with the steering group ahead of the discussions that will lead to the decision on 10 December to help to support NHS Lothian in reopening the Scottish hospital. I know for a fact that the cabinet secretary has already met with the local constituency member Paul MacLennan on that issue. As always, the Government will continue to speak to those that are in the know, including local members, on those matters. The Eddington hospital was closed with no community consultation whatsoever. Even in a pandemic, is that an acceptable way for the NHS to operate? What I would say to Mr Hoy is that we are in a pandemic and there are staff shortages. The reason why East Lothian health and social care partnership took the decision that it did was to ensure that there were safe levels of staffing for patients. Safety should always come first. That is what East Lothian health and social care partnership has done. To ask the Scottish Government what measures NHS Lothian and East Lothian health and social care partnership are undertaking in regard to recruiting additional staff in East Lothian. Decisions on local staffing requirements and recruitment are the responsibility of individual NHS boards. However, Scottish Government officials are continually engaging with boards to identify particular areas of concern. As well as officials, the cabinet secretary and I have been talking to health boards, health and social care partnerships and local authorities on a regular basis about those issues. NHS Lothian advised through on-going capacity reporting to the Scottish Government that measures to deploy staff flexibly and recruit additional staff are currently in progress. The member can be assured that we will continue to monitor that progress. To ask the Scottish Government how its winter care plan will ensure that adults in care homes will have continued and frequent access indoors to family and friends. The adult social care winter preparedness plan 2021-22 sets out the measures to protect the sector ahead of winter and outlines how we will support those who use services, the workforce and unpaid carers. The plan recognises the considerable progress that has been made by care homes in supporting people to see their family and friends through the implementation of the Scottish Government's open with care visiting guidance. It outlines our commitment to building that progress, working with partners, including the care inspectorate and local oversight teams, to ensure that care homes continue to be supported to normalise visiting opportunities. I remain committed to developing legislation in support of Anne's law so that those who live in adult homes have rights to see and spend time with the people that are important to them. We have sought views through a public consultation following the commitment that was made in our programme for government to deliver Anne's law, and we will consider those views carefully and publish the responses as soon as possible. Anne's law is named after Anne Duke, who sadly died last week. My thoughts and condolences are with Anne's husband and family, and we will be doing everything possible to honour Anne's legacy by getting Anne's law right. During the pandemic, there has been a high turnaround of care home staff, and the importance of caring roles has been reinforced by the difficulties of the past year. Can the minister advise to what extent Brexit has had an impact on staff vacancies in care, and can the Scottish Government forecast that care homes will have enough staff to meet caring needs over the winter period? Brexit has had a major impact on staffing in the social care and other sectors. One organisation that I spoke to a few weeks back had lost 40 per cent—40 per cent—of their staff in one service because folks had returned to their home countries because they did not feel as welcome as they should be here because of the hostile environment policies. Excuse me, minister, could we have less commentary from sedentary positions, please? From a sedentary position, folks are murmuring, but those are the realities. 40 per cent of staff in one service is gone. That has a profound impact on the delivery of services in many parts of our country. The Scottish Government has continued to speak to the UK Government on that issue. Colleagues and I spoke with UK ministers just the other week on the difficulties that Brexit is causing in terms of our social care services. I have to say that we were not really listened to, and that does not mean to say that we will not continue to pursue the UK Government on those issues. Beyond that, we have recently written to the Migration Advisory Committee to outline the difficulties that we face and the difficulties that have been highlighted by Scottish Care and Dr Donald MacAskill. We will do everything possible to aid recruitment and retention in social care over the course of this winter. I urge all members who may have constituents who are seeking careers in social care to advise them to look at myjobscotland.com to see the range of posts that are currently available. I support Anne's law, but I am concerned that we wait for that legislation before the rights of families and friends are secured. I am sure that the minister will agree with me that quality of life is incredibly important. What can the minister say to me to reassure families that we will not end up with a repeat of what we had during the pandemic, or where, months on end, families were excluded from seeing their loved ones? I agree with Willie Rennie that folk are deserving of quality visits with family and friends. That is extremely important. That is why we have put in place the open with care policy. It is one that I take a careful view on, and we monitor very carefully indeed. I also monitor all of the correspondence that comes into government, where families are having difficulty in accessing care homes. I have to say that there has been no correspondence in the past two weeks about that. I also have regular discussions with the care inspectorate, who is also monitoring that. I am due to meet with them again this afternoon. It is vital that care homes follow the open with care policy. If any member finds that that is not the case in their constituency or region, I will be happy to hear from them and deal with that accordingly. I will make a plea again for succinct answers. Otherwise, not all members will have the opportunity to pose the question that they have been preparing to pose. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to tackle the reported backlog of colorectal cancer screening. Since the Baal screening programme resumed in October 2020, invitations to participate in screening have been issuing at the same rate as they were before the pandemic. However, invitations to existing participants are issuing seven months later than they would have without the pause in March 2020. Anyone who turns 50 after the programme resumed will receive a kit shortly after their birthday as normal. Any patient referred with an urgent suspicion of cancer after screening, including those from the Baal screening programme, have and will remain a priority in accessing diagnostic tests. Hopefully, roll cancer out to ensure that, in this way, we have invested in four additional mobile units to support scope-based diagnostics, one of which is stationed at our national hospital at the Golden Jubilee. We will also shortly publish the endoscopy and urology recovery and renewal plan, which will embed further improvements and ultimately work towards reducing waiting times and providing equitable access. I thank the minister for that answer, but constituency reported to me that Angus residents, as far north as Edzel, must travel to Dundee and Perth to receive endoscopy and colonoscopy services. After mental health and stroke care were centralised away from Strachathro, the suggestion is that cancer screening and detection have gone the same way. Does the minister accept that it is long past time for the NHS winter plan and beyond to recognise that the withdrawal of local healthcare such as in Angus is storing up bigger problems in things like screening for the future? In response to that particular point, I would say that many boards are working really hard to take the pressure off their central units to ensure that they are using all the facilities right out in the community and working closely with primary care. Boards are working tirelessly to see patients in as timely a way as possible based on their clinical need. There are two mobile endoscopy units, one of which operates on NHS Tayside and a further two are borough to be brought in stream in the next couple of months. That additional two mobile endoscopy units will provide four rooms, so by January 2022 there will be six mobile endoscopy rooms in total across Scotland, which will increase the number of patients who can be seen and in turn reduce waiting times for endoscopy. To ask the Scottish Government what impact air pollution has on mortality and morbidity. The relationship between air quality and health is extremely complex. It is generally difficult to say with certainty what impact air pollution has on specific individuals. However, we do know that the very young, the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of poor air quality. The Scottish Government recognises that the air that we breathe is fundamental to our health and compared to the rest of the UK and other parts of Europe, Scotland enjoys a high level of air quality. At the time, evidence continues to grow on the impacts of poor air quality, expanding our understanding of how air pollution is harmful to public health and to the environment. In July this year, we published a new air quality strategy to set out the Scottish Government's policy framework for the next five years and a series of actions to deliver further air quality improvement. I thank the minister for that response. I asked my UK and the British Lung Foundation research found that 81 per cent of births in Scotland last year were on local authorities with unsafe levels of air pollution exceeding world health organisation guidelines for fine particulate matter. Meanwhile, six roads, including the A737, which runs through my constituency, still exceed the legal limit for nitrogen oxide. Can the minister advise as to when low-emissions zones will be extended from the four main cities, which will include Edinburgh from next year, to other cities in large towns and the health benefits that that will bring? Beyond the four cities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, local authorities with air quality management areas, such as our AQMAs, are required to undertake a national low-emissions framework assessment to determine the suitability of a local emissions zone and LEZ for the air quality issues that they might be experiencing. To date, no other Scottish local authorities have determined that an LEZ is appropriate. However, all local authorities with AQMAs must produce an action plan detailing how air quality will be improved. The worst cases of morbidity due to pollution and emissions are in our urban areas. Can I ask what discussions the minister has had with other portfolios to encourage the use of low-emissions vehicles in cities to the health benefit of those who live there? The member asks an excellent question. Human health improvements are not related solely to direct reduction in air pollution. The policies that can improve air quality can potentially have multiple co-benefits for population health. They also address inequality and for mitigating and adapting to climate change. A prime example is the policy to promote active travel, which I know the member is passionate about. Walking, wheeling, cycling can increase physical activity. Significantly reduced cardiovascular incidents and mortality have been shown to reduce all-cause mortality, even after controlling other physical activities. That is a particular priority for the Government at the moment. You can see very clearly how we are working cross-portfolio to deliver on that particular benefit for the citizens of Scotland. To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to address the reported backlog in at-home Covid-19 booster and flu vaccine appointments in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health ward area. That cohort is appointed locally. We are working closely with all health boards, including NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, to ensure that people are prioritised according to risk. Following JCVI advice, health boards prioritised administering boosters to highest priority groups. I make the point that I know has been made by other colleagues and myself previously that the moment we received that advice, there was already a backlog, which of course Greater Glasgow and Clyde are working through. Greater Glasgow and Clyde, like all health boards, is accelerating its vaccination programme to ensure that as many eligible people are protected as possible ahead of the festive season. Figures from the UK dashboard show that we have administered boosters or third doses to a greater proportion of the population than any other UK nation. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer, but the reality of this backlog for vulnerable people is quite stark. In one of my constituents' cases, she was 83 years of age and had to wait over a month for home vaccine appointments. When I made representations on our behalf to the health board in Glasgow, I was told that the vaccination team was simply too busy to provide her with an appointment date, which left her in the situation where she had to put herself at risk and attend a drop-in clinic to receive her vaccination. That means that vulnerable people, who are not normally well enough to attend the vaccination centres, have been left behind and stuck at home when they are up to Christmas. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what assessment is the Government making of the number of people in that situation, where they are waiting for at-home appointments and are forced into that position of having to potentially go in person to a facility and put them at risk? Will the Government commit to date ensuring that every one of them is vaccinated at home in time for Christmas? I thank Paul Suny for the question. He is right to raise it. That, to me, is an unacceptable lay-long wait for somebody who is vulnerable. To make the obvious point—I know that Paul Suny is aware of this—that home appointments take longer, not only will health boards have to travel to those individuals. There is that 15-minute recovery period thereafter, but nonetheless, those people who are housebound may well have vulnerabilities. They often have vulnerabilities hence why they cannot travel to a vaccination centre. My expectation would be that they would be prioritised. I am happy to give Paul Suny a breakdown of the progress that Greater Glasgow and Clyde has made in the vaccination programme. It is good progress, but I have asked Greater Glasgow and Clyde, as well as all health boards right across the country, to give me plans for acceleration in the lead-up to the end of the year. Can the cabinet secretary please tell me the date that Covid booster will appear on the Scottish Covid app? To do that, but we hope to be able to do that early next month. In a previous answer at First Minister's questions, the First Minister said that elderly constituents having to wait outside of vaccination centres for hours should not happen. Indeed, the cabinet secretary was meeting with boards to discuss that. Can he tell me exactly why constituents who are elderly are still having to wait outside in winter weather for their vaccine and what action has been taken to increase waiting facilities available at vaccination centres? A couple of points I would make. First and foremost, where people have to queue up and where they are having to queue up outside, I would expect local health boards to ensure that they take care of the welfare of those individuals, whether that is by, indeed, some health boards have put up marquise, gazebos, they have got heating in place, they have offered water, chairs, etc. I would expect the welfare to be taken care of. Of course, my preference would be that there should be no queueing where possible, but we are accelerating our vaccination programme. Almost 500,000 flu and booster vaccines were administered last week, and that will mean that some people will have to queue up. Thankfully, we have made excellent progress through the older-age cohorts. We are starting to make progress through those not-so-older cohorts, but where there are particular concerns of particular health boards and particular vaccination centres with that is still happening. I am more than happy to hear from members across the chamber, and I will raise it with the health board in question. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the measures that it has been taking part as part of the women's health plan to improve access for women to appropriate support, speedy diagnosis and best treatment for endometriosis. We have developed a national referral pathway that will improve earlier intervention and support in primary care for women with endometriosis, as well as streamlining referrals to secondary and tertiary care for those who need it. To raise awareness of menstrual wellbeing, we are developing new information for NHS inform, and we funded endometriosis UK to produce information reflux that healthcare professionals can sign posts to if endometriosis is suspected. That will support women to be better informed and empowered to make choices about their treatment. All of that will launch in spring 2022. I have recently represented women suffering from endometriosis in my constituency, who have had the truly harrowing experiences in relation to the length of time that is taken for them to reach that all-important diagnosis and treatment plan stage. Does the minister agree with me that any improvements that can be made with reducing weight in times for diagnosing endometriosis and the work based on lived experiences to address inequalities in all aspects of women's health in Scotland are to be welcomed and expedited? Yes, I do agree. I, too, have spoken to women with endometriosis and have been moved by the difficulties that many of them face in receiving a diagnosis. Indeed, in being heard, our women's health plan, which was published in August, includes a number of actions to improve access to appropriate support, best treatment and speedy diagnosis for endometriosis. Because knowledge is power, the work that we are doing to improve the information on NHS inform and the patient information leaflet to support the referral pathway are both really important parts of the package. Empowering women and helping them to understand what is normal, when to ask for help and what options they have is a really important first step. As I outlined in my previous answer, we have already taken action to reduce the time when women with endometriosis have to wait to achieve a diagnosis and access appropriate care. Furthermore, as we implement these actions, we will work with people with lived experience, endometriosis UK, Public Health Scotland, as well to identify realistic targets to measure improvement of services and to care for women with endometriosis. I will be able to squeeze in question number eight if I could have brief questions and brief answers. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with NHS Orkney regarding the Covid-19 booster vaccination programme. Cabinet Secretary, I will be regularly with all health boards, including with NHS Orkney, met with them on Monday, or they were part of a call I was on on Monday, where we discussed the autumn-winter vaccination programme. Liam McArthur. I thank the cabinet secretary. Over recent weeks, Orkney has experienced Scotland's highest rate of Covid cases, at the same time booster vaccinations have not kept pace with the roll-out elsewhere in the country, leading to understandable concern. Thankfully, Covid numbers are declining, the booster vaccination is picking up pace, but what assurances can the cabinet secretary provide that all health boards will get the support that they need to ensure that any future booster programmes are rolled out as quickly as possible? I thank Liam McArthur for raising an important issue. The two issues that he raises are interlinked because of the high case rates. There were outbreaks in a number of care homes, and vaccination teams had to wait before they could go safely to vaccinate those individuals. To give some assurance, as he asks for, there is now a timetable that is published by NHS Orkney in relation to how they intend to get through the priority groups before Christmas. I am sure that he has a copy of that. I hope that that gives reassurance to members, but, of course, if NHS Orkney requires any additional resource whatsoever in relation to the vaccination programme and accelerating it, I would look at that extremely sympathetically. We will move on to the next portfolio of questions, which is social justice, housing and local government. I will allow a brief pause to allow front-benchers to change positions safely. Although we are just completing that move, I remind members that, if they wish to request a supplementary question, they should press the request-to-speak button or indicate so in the chat function by entering the letter R during the relevant question. I call question number one, Beatrice Wishart. To ask the Scottish Government how its housing strategy supports social landlords to ensure ageing properties meet current energy-efficient standards. The Scottish Government is committed to a just transition to net zero. Our heat and building strategy sets out how we will accelerate the decarbonisation of heating together with energy efficiency improvements in Scotland's homes. The Scottish Government's social housing net zero heat fund provides financial assistance to social landlords to retrofit their housing stock to meet the energy efficiency standard for social housing, and the fund will make available £200 million over the next five years to support social landlords across Scotland in installing zero emissions heating systems and energy efficiency measures. Social landlords such as housing associations work hard to provide decent housing, and today's ageing properties require extensive upgrades to meet modern energy-efficient standards at great costs. Given the answer that the minister has provided, will the Scottish Government ensure that there is enough investment to provide for modernisation and future proof of those upgrades too, as well as ensure that areas with high levels of fuel poverty such as those in the highlands and islands receive higher levels of resource to address the inequality caused by fuel poverty? I am grateful for the level of interest that members from a number of political parties, including Beatrice Wishart, have shown in the issue. The Scottish Government has been clear that, while we are committed to investing at least £1.8 billion in the agenda across the built environment more generally, we recognise that much more will be needed. That is why we are establishing a green heat finance task force to look at ways that the public sector, the third sector and the private sector can invest collectively to help landlords, including social landlords and tenants, to overcome the investment costs and decarbonise our buildings. I hope that Beatrice Wishart is also aware that the fuel poverty definition now takes account of the additional costs associated with living in remote and rural communities. We are committed to spending more per head on energy efficiency in remote and rural areas, where we have no installation and labour costs are higher. What response have ministers made to concerns on the installation of unproven heating under the energy efficiency standard for social housing, EESSH, resulting in reduced thermal comfort for tenants, but significantly increased costs? We are working actively with the social housing sector on not just the energy efficiency standard for social housing, but also on their own work on the Zest report. We are committed to continuing to work collaboratively with the sector and we will listen to any concerns that they have and, if Miles Briggs wants to write to me with any specifics, I will certainly take that seriously. Can I ask the minister to elaborate on how Scotland's ambitious housing to 2040 vision is strengthened by complementary strategies such as the heat and building strategy and the draft national planning framework 4? Collette Stevenson is right that there is a great deal of work happening. I am really pleased that we have a long-term vision for Scotland's housing landscape to 2040. That kind of long-term vision is often requested not just by social housing providers but by the private rented sector and by those representing the interests of tenants. We have that long-term vision now. It is associated with the fuel poverty strategy, the heat and building strategy and, as the member mentioned, the draft national planning framework 4, which sets out a vision for how our places will change and bring together a wide range of policies, programmes and action, including transport, energy, environment and housing. The 18 national developments in that framework will support the delivery of a spatial strategy, which has a crucial role to play in supporting our transition to net zero. Ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to help to tackle the reported affordable housing crisis in Edinburgh. The Government has delivered more than 103,000 affordable homes since 2007. We are committed to delivering a further 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, 70 per cent of which will be available for social rent. During that same period, Edinburgh received £558 million in grant support, which helped to contribute to the completion of over 13,000 affordable homes. In this Parliament, Edinburgh will further benefit from the affordable housing supply programme investment of £233.8 million towards the delivery of even more good-quality affordable homes, an increase of £32.4 million or 16 per cent on the previous five years. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. As you stated, the Scottish Government is now allocating resource planning assumptions to all local authorities areas for the years 2021-22 to support the delivery of more social and affordable homes. Each month there are over 4,400 households living in temporary accommodation in our capital. Given that Edinburgh is home to about 9.7 per cent of the population of Scotland, but Edinburgh is only being allocated 7.3 per cent of that total budget, does the cabinet secretary agree that Edinburgh is not getting its fair share considering the number of people in temporary accommodation and the scale of our homelessness crisis? No, I do not agree with that. Although I fully understand the challenges in Edinburgh, I have had discussions with Councillor Kate Campbell, the convener, for that reason. We continue to discuss with Edinburgh how we can help them to overcome some of the issues that Sue Webber referred to. The issue of temporary accommodation has obviously been exacerbated by Covid, and we need to support councils to work through that. In terms of the investment this year, £52.4 million will mean an estimated £865 million. Affordable homes will start on site and a further £828 million homes are expected to be completed, the majority of which will be for social rent. We are looking at options to accelerate affordable housing expenditure in Edinburgh this year in conjunction with officials at the council, who have so far confirmed the capacity for a further £1 million of support, so we will continue to support Edinburgh to make sure that it can deliver on its affordable housing programme. Can I refer members to my register of interest? Minister, the citizens assembly asked for a right of affordable housing for young people. Will the Scottish Government agree to that? As an Edinburgh, for example, in the past decade, private rents have rocketed with a 40 per cent increase for one-bedroom properties, meaning that young people just cannot afford to live on their own or even share a flat, given that four-bed flats in the private sector are now around £1,900 a month? Can the minister talk about the affordable housing access issue but also give us a timescale on Scottish Government action on private rents? Obviously, we are well aware that many private rented tenants have been struggling and that some people, particularly young people, as Sarah Boyack pointed out, struggle with the rent levels. Of course, for those who are struggling in tenancies at the moment, we have provided £39 million to support them at this time, and we are also committed to tackling high rents by implementing an effective national system of rent controls by the end of 2025, which, of course, my colleague Patrick Harvie will be taking forward. We will be publishing a draft rented sector strategy for consultation in the next few weeks, and that will seek views on changes to tenancy arrangements, as well as taking forward a consensus on improving information about rent levels, leading to options for rent controls and better regulation. I would encourage Sarah Boyack to contribute to that consultation. Would the cabinet secretary agree with me that Edinburgh Council's consultation on short-term rent control areas, which closed earlier this month and has currently been reviewed in the city chambers, is proof that local authorities have been empowered under the Scottish Government to find terrible solutions to their own housing challenges? I agree with David Torrance. We know that in certain areas, particularly tourist hot spots such as Edinburgh, there are high numbers of short-term lets that can cause problems for neighbours and make it harder for people to find homes to live in. The powers that have been given to local authorities to designate control areas combined with those in the licensing scheme are sufficient to manage high concentrations of short-term lets where that is an issue. The regulation of short-term lets is vital to balancing the needs and concerns that communities have raised with wider economic and tourism interests. I look forward to hearing about Edinburgh Council's plans following consideration of the recent consultation by its planning committee. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the impact of the open market shared equity scheme in Argyll and Bute. Over the past five years, 11 properties have been purchased in Argyll and Bute with support from the open market shared equity scheme. In addition, 80 properties were purchased with support from the First Home Fund last financial year. The Scottish Government currently offers a range of schemes to assist first-time buyers and priority groups to access affordable home ownership. The first-time buyer relief for land and buildings transaction tax means that an estimated 8 out of 10 first-time buyers continue to pay no tax at all. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Due to the Covid pandemic, it appears that the pressure on housing stock in many rural and island areas, such as Argyll and Bute, is increasing property prices. Last week on Mull, I met Mull and Iona community trusts to express concern about the lack of support available for local people who wish to use the scheme. Would the cabinet secretary provide an update on whether the thresholds in the scheme will be reviewed to take account of inflated property prices in communities like Mull? The short answer is yes. The annual review of the open market shared equity scheme threshold prices is currently under way, and we expect to publish new threshold prices by the end of the year. Those will be reflective of the latest house price data available to the Scottish Government. Early indications are that a high number of threshold prices will see an increase. Although we are keen to see more people access support, the open market shared equity scheme is an affordable housing scheme, and the threshold prices reflect that. That is why we ask applicants who are offered a passport letter to be as flexible as possible about the areas and properties that they will consider purchasing. To ask the Scottish Government how many people have received the low-income pandemic payment. By the end of October 2021, around 500,000 households had received our £130 low-income pandemic payment. Those households received council tax reduction or households not liable for council tax, for example those in homeless accommodation. The investment of up to £65 million was part of a range of actions that we took to support low-income households during the pandemic and provide direct financial support during that difficult time. Local authorities have worked hard to deliver the vital payment for us and will provide full details of the final number of payments shortly. I warmly welcome the low-income pandemic payment. We know that many people are struggling as a result of the pandemic and the increase in living costs, so that will have a huge difference. What more is the Scottish Government doing with those powers that it has to support low-income families over the winter period? What more could the Scottish Government do if it had full powers? In addition, we are putting over £130 million in the pockets of families this year through our Scottish child payment and bridgwick payments. We also continue to provide support through our Scottish welfare fund and discretionary housing payments, together with more than £100 million this year. We have recently announced a £41 million winter support fund to support people struggling financially this winter. Of course, with full powers, we could do more. For example, we could support families by delivering a social security system that provides better support across all benefit areas. If we had powers over employment law, we could ensure fair, flexible work and mandatory payment of the real living wage. To ask the Scottish Government how to ensure that local authorities are compliant with best practice in building standards. Scottish Government monitors the performance of all building standard services within local authorities through quarterly performance returns. They adhere to a performance framework that sets out the importance of sharing best practice. Officials also offer where it is needed tailored support to local authorities and facilitate sharing best practice through a national engagement programme. Since 2017, overall performance levels for local authority building standard services have improved across Scotland, and I expect that to continue. Michael Marra I thank the minister for that answer. He may be aware that the SNP administration in Dundee has been forced to spend over £4 million to replace roof tiles due to the original installations also under the same administration, not meeting safety regulations. This, of course, diverts resources from other services in an already crippling financial environment. Does the minister agree that the savage cuts that have been made to local government over the lifetime of this Government has made such unexpected spending much harder for councils to absorb? Well, I am aware that this is a situation that a number of members for Dundee and the wider region of many different political parties have expressed serious concern about. It arises as Michael Marra will know not from building standards but from a change to the British safety standard, a different regulatory regime and a failure on the part of the local authority to pick up a change to that British safety standard, for which the local authority has apologised and, on a cross-party basis, agreement has been reached to hold an independent inquiry into that. I think that we should all have confidence in the ability of the local authority to conduct that inquiry and, hopefully, to take its recommendations extremely seriously, as indeed we would expect all local authorities to do. On safety concerns, over four years have passed since the Grenfell tragedy in 2017, yet the Government has only just confirmed consultation on whether it will ban combustible materials at high-rise buildings. Can I therefore ask the minister when we will see action taken on this issue and can the minister confirm that any future ban on combustible materials will be truly comprehensive? We have an active review of building standards and consultation of building standards. I would encourage the member to contribute to that consultation if he wishes. If he wishes to write to us on the specific issues relating to the Grenfell inquiry, colleagues will reply to that letter. I understand that a significant number of my constituents are affected by the serious issue raised by Mr Marra, and they will be understandably concerned. They will be hugely disappointed by the politicisation of the issue by Mr Marra, and we will welcome the commitment by Dundee City Council for a full independent external review. Will the minister use his position to seek assurances from the council that it will rectify the issues as quickly as possible and with as little disruption to those affected? I would certainly support that call. I hope that everybody, regardless of party politics, supports that kind of quick resolution with as little disruption as possible that Joe Fitzpatrick is calling for. I welcome the fact once again that Dundee City Council have apologised for the quality of the work and for not picking up on the change to the British safety standard and have approved the review that will take place. I would appeal to all members across the political spectrum to support any local authority that picks up on an issue like that to resolve it, to get a solution for the people affected rather than turning it into a political football. To ask the Scottish Government how its housing strategy will support the retrofitting of homes to improve energy efficiency and to tackle fuel poverty. Housing to 2040, as well as the fuel poverty strategy and the heat and building strategy, together set out our approach to decarbonising heat and eradicating fuel poverty. We have run a number of advice and funding schemes with increased investment to £268 million in this year and we have committed to invest at least £1.8 billion during this Parliament to kickstart market growth and to support those that are least able to pay. As I mentioned earlier in relation to Beatrice Wishart's question, we are establishing a green heat finance task force to recommend ways that the public sector, communities and private investors can collaborate to scale up investment and help households overcome the upfront investment costs. Dean Lockhart I thank the minister for his response. He mentioned the heat and building strategy, which estimates that it will cost £33 billion to retrofit Scotland's housing stock. Can the minister clarify how this funding will be divided between public sector funding and private sector funding? There is also a lot of confusion over how much funding will be available for individual households to help them to replace existing fossil fuel boilers. Can the minister undertake to clarify what financial assistance will be available to individual households to replace their boilers? On the latter point, I can certainly say that the level of support to individual households in Scotland is higher than that provided by the UK scheme. The UK Government's boiler upgrade scheme, for example, is set to offer grants of £5,000 to £6,000 for renewable heat systems, but the Home Energy Scotland scheme that the Scottish Government funds gives interest-free loans for homeowners with cashback grants of up to £7,500 for zero-emission heating plus up to £6,000 for energy efficiency measures. I hope that the Government has the support of members across the chamber in providing that support to householders, but on the first point that Dean Lockhart raised, I am sure that he understands that the answer is no. I cannot pin down right now, and no Government would be able to pin down right now exactly what the share of costs will be right through to 2045. That is why we are looking to create a green heat finance task force to cast the net wide for a very wide range of measures to ensure that the investment that is necessary is available. The only alternative would be for Mr Lockhart to come forward with a £33 billion tax rise to suggest to us if he wants the public sector to pay for the lot. I am not sure if the microphone is on, Ms Brown. Maybe I should try to re-insert the card? Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would like to declare an interest as I am still a sitting councillor at South Asia Council. What action is it taking to ensure that construction firms adhere to the highest building standards? The Scottish Government established a ministerial working group that considered building standards, compliance and enforcement immediately after the tragic events at Grenfell Tower in 2017. The recommendations have been taken forward under the building standards futures board. The compliance plan that the futures board is leading seeks to improve levels of compliance through greater checking and evidence gathering as well as creating a new compliance plan manager for high-risk buildings. A consultation is currently under way on the compliance plan manager role and strengthening enforcement. I have a constituent who has been in touch who bought a new build flat several years ago where the Habitation certificate had been granted. It later transpired that the flat had very little sound or fireproofing and that, after a multitude of surveys at the cost to the residents, it has been deemed that the health and safety standards of the building are inadequate. The builder went into liquidation shortly after the sale of the flats. I ask the Scottish Government what procedures are in place to protect people who buy properties in good faith and then builders go into liquidation and are not accountable for their development. I suspect that everybody across the chamber will want to say, along with Siobhan Brown and myself, that this kind of situation is not acceptable. People have a right to security in their home. That is part of the Scottish Government's approach to a fundamental understanding of adequate housing as a human right. We would all have a great deal of concern about people who have been placed in that kind of situation. In relation to the expected levels of quality of a new-build house, we want to see the system strengthened so that buyers can purchase a new-build home with confidence and have access to efficient and effective remediation if things go wrong. We have a number of measures that we are currently consulting on to do so. The UK Government introduced the building safety bill this year. That includes provision for a new homes ombudsman scheme and a requirement that developers of new-build housing belong to that scheme. We are working with the UK Government as the bill moves through the UK Parliament to try to achieve a UK-wide scheme that works for Scotland while still respecting the devolution settlement. In the meantime, a homeowner should contact the home warranty provider to establish the extent of the warranty, and they should consider taking independent legal advice from a solicitor or advice agency to establish if they have options available to them to pursue. I can squeeze in question 8. If I could please have succinct questions and answers. Question 8, Neil Gray. I thank the Scottish Government for providing an update on the roll-out of the new Scottish child disability payment. I am delighted and very proud to say that, on Monday, we successfully launched child disability payment nationally. That is a significant milestone in the development and delivery of social security in Scotland. I want to take this opportunity to record my thanks to all the civil servants involved and others in this achievement. Following our successful pilot, families of children and young people with a disability who are not already in receipt of DLA, child can now apply for this benefit. For the 52,000 people already getting DLA child, we have successfully started the safe and secure transfer of cases from the DWP, and that will be complete by spring 2023. It has gone successfully well. There is a lot more that I could say if I had more time, Presiding Officer, but I will conclude there. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank the minister for that answer and also welcome the new payment. I can ask the minister to expand on how he will make sure that people are aware of the changes and also how they can apply. Social Security Scotland has a multi-channel approach to raising awareness in place, including targeted social media advertising, press releases and a radio campaign. In advance of introduction, officials engaged with over 2,000 stakeholders via virtual roadshows and provided resources to help them to promote the new payment and case transfer process. In addition, the chief executive of Social Security Scotland and I have written to all MSPs, MPs and local authority leaders, seeking their support in raising awareness. We have also ensured that everyone can apply by whatever channel suits them best, whether that is by paper, phone, online or face-to-face. Just a number of weeks ago, we debated the issue of promoting benefits here in Scotland in this chamber. I was also asked about it in committee. I was therefore disappointed and somewhat dispirited that I did not see more uptake from colleagues, particularly on the Opposition Benches promoting the launch of the CDP on Monday. I asked them, in the interests of their constituents, to please be part of that shared responsibility and endeavour to raise awareness that child disability payment is now available to families across Scotland. In part of my question 2 in the social justice and housing, I should have declared an interest as an existing councillor in Edinburgh. That concludes portfolio questions and will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business.


So severely that there was, well, yeah. Anyway, welcome to episode number 26 of the Marty and Michael podcast. It's fully actual. Matt. Three. He's back, Jack. And what the fuck?  The hair is going over my eye. Yeah, just look, you just do this.   It's it's an eyebrow hair. Yeah, I'll do it to your eyebrow to wipe it a bit. I've done that. Rearrange it. It's been I've been doing. I've been ripping him out and spurting him out. Or to go get the razor. You're meant to go. Hey, sorry, I'm confused.    It's not your eyelash.  I think we have a chance to win at you. Brown, I didn't think about that. Let's see.  I think he thinks. No, no, no, it's still there. Something's going on. But maybe you're just going a little bit blind. Oh, maybe he's a small amount of blindness in his eye from all the years. Is it a bit of a blur maybe?  A hairline blimp, they call it in the medical terms.  I've never heard of that. Yeah, it's new. It's a new thing, man. Just read about it the other day.  No, no, you're sweet, bro. It's probably just a hair. Anyway, what happened last week? The fuck? Oh, well, I'm I'm getting settled. What do you think of the place? What are your opinions? No, it's it's there's definitely a step up from I think this is the best place I've ever seen you in. Yeah, well, I've gone from sheds to a shaft to this, but like. Yeah, no, it's definitely. Yeah, I've like actually tried to put effort into it. I bought like fake plants, a rug. Yeah, rad art. Yeah, the artworks looking awesome. I think shout out again to Greg Shelton. We'll do we'll do a house tour for our website. Members, guys, by the way, this podcast sponsored by Michael University of Michael. If you want to support this podcast, go sign up to our website. It's a cup of a coffee a month, a cup of a coffee a month. And it's yeah, it's five bucks, five bucks a month. And two new videos a week on it. That's what we're pumping out on there a lot at the moment. It's fucked. Anyway, on with the house. Yeah, it's fucking. I'm going up, man.  I've started reading.   And he's put his crowns. I'm not that I know that in the open anymore, his crowns.  And he's bought a storage unit. Look, look, I put our camera on there. He's fucking, what are you down to? Three, three nappies a week now? I haven't even opened my latest pack. I like, yeah, I mean, so much better. Seriously, thought about it the other night when I was like, fuck, on the weekend.  Had a few beers. I should put a nappy on. Yeah.  And that risk paid off, eh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it did, because I didn't piss. I fell asleep in your room once at one of your old houses. And I was just really tired and I fell asleep. And I remember waking up and I thought, I thought I was like in a rubbish dump. Mm-hmm.  In one of my actual rooms. In one of your rooms. No, not being me, not being me, but this is true. No, dude, I really thought I woke up in a rubbish dump. And I thought, I was like, am I drunk? And then my thought was, no, they drugged me. They've drugged me. And then I came to and then I realized Boz was like in the doorway. And I was like, oh, hang on. I'm at Michael's house. I'm at Michael and Marty's. Yeah, remember our room when we first kicked off?  You couldn't see the floor. It was the bed. Well, it was just a mattress.  A wall around it of clothes. And then you'd have to go over the wall of clothes to get into the bed. It was so weird.  I do remember this. You guys asked me to help you move to the next place. And when I rolled up with my ute, you came out with a mattress we put in the back. And then you both threw bags of clothes and it said, that's it. I was like, are you sure? We had no furniture. And you were like, no, we're leaving everything else there.  And like, if you have too many things, I don't know, it crowds your mind and your style.  And now it's like, fuck, I can't imagine having to go, especially with this helping. Like, it's just too hard. You sort of live the fight club life where what's they're saying, the more you buy possessions, the more possessions own you. The more you own possessions.   Do you remember the homeless man in Tawong and his name was Ziggy? Yeah, we drove past him today. We drove past, yeah, today. They thought he was quite rich. I'm not sure. I'd love to know. If anyone knows. If anyone knows, comment. A law student or something as well. And he just preferred to live on the street and just with nothing because it was easier. Because my brother said it was his studying law and said that law students would go to him and ask for advice with assignments. They tried to get rid of him and he took them to court and won.   He can smell a rat. He can smell a rat. Yeah. He, yeah. And he, he, well, he can smell. Sorry. Think about it.  With smell a rat. Oh, that's a good joke at least. And make me lose your thought, hey? He can smell a rat. Boy, that's a saying. That's a saying you should do for your video. He can smell a rat.  Smell a rat. I don't have my gun. I've only got a hammer. Cut that corner. Why? That was good.  Oh, I liked it. Wasn't that funny? It sounded like the whole buildup was so that you could make that joke. Cut that corner.  All right. Guys, guess what? Matt's been around. He's been rustling his feathers and papers flying around in a calculator like this. I saw for a little bit he was doing that.  I don't know what he's found. I don't know what he's found here, but it's crazy. It's on this day. She's been to college. She's been to college. She's been to college. I have no knowledge. It's on this day. He's got four on this day. Three. Oh, it sounded like one of those toys. What are they called? Oh, if anyone knows the name of those toys, can you comment, please? Yeah. Thank you. Three. Three. Three. OK. On this day. Better. On this very day, whatever date it is, whatever date you're listening to this on, this happened. On this day in 1988, Russell Crow used infants as bait when fishing for shark. He would snatch infants from prams and claim that he never realized that infants were actually small humans. He was just thought infants were some sort of sick dying animal due to their lack of strength and soft squishy bodies, similar to how food goes soft and squishy when it's rotting. Anyway, after finding an infant, he would thread the hook through its top and bottom lip and cast his line with great force, sometimes casting well over 50 meters. Although he managed to catch multiple sharks with the infants, to his credit, Russell did stop fishing with babies when he was told that infants were actually small humans. So he did stop. Wow, what a like horrific mistake to make. Imagine not knowing what a baby is. Like, it's crazy. He must have just never grown up around any babies. Yeah, well, gladiated, dude. They didn't have them back then. Yeah, so true. I didn't think of anything like that before. Next one. On this day in 1982, Tom Cruise nibbled his way out of the cocoon he had grown up in. Tom isn't sure how many years he spent in his cocoon, but remembers making the cocoon back when he was still in the larvae worm phase of his life in the early 1920s. Tom is currently in the pupar life cycle and still has one step of his life cycle to evolve into. The final life cycle involves Tom finding a body of fresh water consuming large quantities of fish and then dissolving into a foam and floating on top of the water. From here, he will prepare to be fertilized by another one of his kind, which starts the process all over again. Oh, Scientology. Scientology, yeah. 100%. Wow, is that what they do?  That's what Scientology is. What I just said. Is there any Jetri Epstein stuff this week? Could be. I guess we'll have to read on. On this day, we should just scatter that throughout our podcast. Just say it, just whisper things in. Bed of Art. Bill Clinton. Biomarch. Unsolved murders. On this day in 1999, Ronald McDonald was arrested for the first time for drug possession. This event sparked a huge downhill spiral for Ronald. Over the coming years, he was charged with sexually assaulting the Hamburglar, possession of an illegal firearm, and multiple drug charges. His lowest point came in 2005 when his home address was raided by police, where they discovered the body of Grimace. His three-week-old corpse had flesh torn from it, and they found over three liters of Ronald's ejaculate, circulating Grimace's digestive system. Donald was admitted for psychiatric evaluation was diagnosed with severe bipolar and depression, as well as addictions to cocaine, heroin, and meth. The original Ronald McDonald is still in maximum security prison today, and is said to be released in 2034.  Did you know what Grimace was meant to be? Yeah, no.  What? He's a chicken nugget.  What?  That doesn't make sense to me. I know, it doesn't make sense to color.  Grimace is meant to be a chicken nugget. That doesn't make sense. Well, it works. It's pretty cute, though.   I'd go there, I wouldn't ever even like the food. I'd be like, oh, I could always beg mom and dad to take me out.  Dude, I think about it now. And the McDonald, when you have your birthdays here, I had one when I was, I can't remember, some young. They're marketing amazing. And they walk you through the place and they lock you in the freezer. And I thought that was the best thing ever.  And where are those kids now that have grown up? But like, once you realize, like, how good is it when you actually cook a meal? Yeah, I know, yeah.   But like, too much. I can't imagine eating McDonald's. Yeah, yeah.  I feel, it'd be like, it's like, remember when you have hangover food like KFC, you feel like you're gonna vomit?  We haven't had it in time. It makes you feel sick. But fuck, we used to eat it a lot because we had to, because it's cheap and convenient. Yeah, I know.  Five dollars a pizza, that's what we used to have. As much as we sort of harass you, or slightly promote you. That's a Uber driver's dinner.  We helped you. So yeah, we helped you financially, back in the day and we also helped you. And now we're taking care of marketing signs of things. Yes. How about a thank you? Behind the scenes, behind the scenes.  So I used to love, I loved my chicken nuggets. But oh, he loves his chicken.  Oh yeah, he got very say to clap hands. Chicken nuggets, he said like that.  So you're not only just eating like, their breasts. Yeah, they emulsify everything.  Yeah, they use emulsifiers. And if you're eating food, look at the back, and look at the very list of ingredients.   Oh! I feel, I can't do McDonald's anymore. I remember the first time I was with Michael when he ordered just chicken nuggets. And we went out, it might have been KFC, but anyway, and we walked up to the counter and Michael goes, can I get 20 chicken nuggets? That's it.  Can they be fresh please? Oh! Oh, I did! I did! I would always get it fresh. If it was stale, I can't do it.  But it was a real nugget connoisseur Michael was back in the day. He nibbled on them. Yes, very good. It's too dry. Nah, it's too dry.  Because I don't know, it just takes, like, think about pasta. Think about pasta, right? You have pasta the next day. It's not what it's like fresh. Sometimes it's better because it's marinating in it. Yeah, I know. Everyone says that. Okay, well, I wouldn't go with a microwave. I'd go more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're like, oh! Yeah, you could do that too. It's so easy. It's an OCD thing. But I reckon you'll grow out of that too. You can definitely tell.   It's not as good. On this day in 2017, Ellen DeGeneres was recorded doing that dance that she does in a car park. After threatening a few passers-by who made eye contact with her, police were called. The police called for backup and that's when Ellen became uncooperative and violent. She was tased by three separate police but still managed to skull a leader of petrol. It took six police officers to restrain her and she spent two weeks in jail.  Then she spat at a puppy. She spat at a puppy. Wow. How do you spit when you spit? At puppies, it's different at puppies. It's more of a mist. I spread it out a bit more but if it's a full grown animal, I really try and concentrate it and blow it out as hard and fast as I can. How about yourself, mate? I like, I did it the other day. I went for it. You were in here, right? Yeah, I wanted to get more God-like. Have you guys been keeping up to date with Ellen's stuff? I think she came out and apologized for her staffing bullying.  Dude, apparently a lot of people in Hollywood are bitches slash pedophiles. You wouldn't think Ellen, though, like the way she brands herself, that she's like, unbelievable. Well, I heard different. I heard it was their producers that were the mean ones. Oh, really? But you never know. Yeah, exactly. You never know. I guess you got a way up when you're on one of those shows that are so big like that.  It happens. That's work. That's a workplace.  I'm not condoning it. Let's think about it. I'm not condoning it, though.   Oh, yeah. I feel sick. Cut that corner, I think. No. No. Think about what I was doing there. But yeah, dude. Like, that motion, that over and over and back and forth is so fucked. And then that's all she does. Next segment. And that's the name of the next segment, isn't it, Matt? Yes. She renamed it.  Next question is from one underscore, zinna underscore one.  And that guy sounds interesting. Yeah, I might go and see what he's about. And you want to see what his life is like? That's his username, if you want to do that. Anyway, let's see what he said, hey.   But I would ride that cock. I would stand and twist. Stand and twist? No, yeah, I don't know.  Because it's actually, because actually you'd probably go the dildo because that way there's no chance of getting diseases.    Yeah, it might not even be hard.  If you're gonna swallow it, yeah.  It'd just be a little bit of a clear.  Boiler on my sausage. Boiler. Boiler with tea.   That's how they eat cocks. Oh, truce, truce. All right, next question is from Michael Cox.  All right, let's see what he said, eh? Podcast question.  How aware of this are you and how does this make you guys feel to make such a difference this way? Sorry, it's a bit of a deep one, but very important. Ah, cheers, dude.   Like, because that's, you know, especially if it's a well-liked video.  And it makes your heart feel like it's there. Mm, it's nice to feel. Yeah. No, it's just knowing you're just making people happy. Yeah, and we just, which is nice. We wanna do good and we're glad that we help people that like it. So, yeah, it's sort of the reason why we started it, really. The reason why we get up in the morning.  So, no, we sort of do realize but sometimes we don't. Sometimes we forget. We get a bit cheeky, don't we, Matthew Brown? Don't we do that? You see when we forget, don't you, Matt? I'm your memory. Yeah, he literally is a little memory bank. All right. Fuck! Now I'm down. I wanna piece on my new house. I'm gonna piece on my new house. We can start whispering random words because I think he's gonna add something. All right, next question is from Masimus Deneen or Semus the Shrimp. Surely you're getting Julian Woods back on the potty. One of your best potties was with him.   Also, cheers for using my question in the potty a while back on my own.  Well, we wanna get a few other people we haven't had on before, like Hens, Charmie, Jaden and the guys, but we also wanna, why not get fucking? I want Matt Brown to come back on. Yeah, well, he refuses.   You look so good with a beanie. What do you want? I just want you on my lap. I've said it for weeks now and you've done nothing. It would be good if you- I can't start it. Think about it. If you talk it in turns. Look at yourself, mate.  I can't start moving. Oh, there I am. Yeah. Oh, there. Yeah, there. I want the camera to see you.   That's my mate. I need him by my side. He's always there. It would be nice if you would sit- I'm gonna miss you, man.  I want you back. I want you back. I like being like the- I'm kind of like the backup singer.  Our next question from Carl James Manahan or manahan.cj18. Hello, guys. I have a question for your next podcast. If you're all to go back in time, which civilization slash human era would you visit? Guys, visit and impart the knowledge that you guys have now since you're really good scientists. And a good question. Because you don't want to go back too far because the further back you go, you can't really relate to anyone. You can't talk. I want to go back to how the pyramids were getting built. Oh, yeah. That would actually be- That is something that would get me off.  Joe Rogan's posted the New York Times post about the fucking- they've admitted to having alien craft or something out of this world.  Bob Lazar is cool.  You guys are rad. We need you. Thank you. I'm obsessed with it. I can't stop. I can't sleep anymore.  I'm depressed. Did you guys see the post about Elon Musk? And I think he said something about the pyramids maybe being built by aliens. And so Egypt invited him to come inspect the pyramids or something along. I think it's along those lines. It was more of a like, well, if you think they're my violence, please come and inspect them. Yeah. I thought it was pretty cool. That is cool. Yeah, dude. That's- Yeah, so maybe the Big Bang, you go back to the Big Bang and see what happens.   I had a really good theory once about the Big Bang. It's actually Earth, but like millions of years ago, we actually built nuclear weapons and they sent them into space to try and get rid of them. And the explosion was the actual Big Bang. Ooh. Matthew Brown. There you go. Matthew Brown. Brown my mind, man. Gregify it. Next question is from mech69696969 or i underscore am underscore sped underscore Kerchow. And he or she has asked, are oranges named orange because it's orange or is orange named orange because it looks orange? And oranges are orange because they are just, they're orange. Next question. What are you making?  Think about it, honestly. Oranges. Why are lemons not called yellow? Are they? I'm pretty sure. Are they? No, no, they're not. I just checked. Are lemons yellow and limes green? Why aren't mandarins called little oranges? Yeah. Why aren't grapes called, or potatoes, like just call them hot chips because that's what they're turning into. Wow.  Well, mandarin and tangerine are two words for the same thing, technically citrus. They're called mandarins because they were thought to be a native to China. Why isn't rice called white ants? Well, I guess because it's such a thing as white ants, also it will be confusing. The termites, remember? Oh yeah. Remember the termites? Yeah, dude, the shed days I do. What are the animals? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. What a moment there.  We're talking about fruit.  Oh, yeah, a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Oh, man, not very cool. So the reason it is, yeah. Well, what we just said. All right, Rachel Dunaway or RA underscore Dunaway has said, G'day, my favorite cunts. If you were arrested with no explanation, what would your friends and family assume you had done?  Same with me, to a degree. We would have broken something in destruction.   Whatever charge comes with that. Sexual harassment. Nudity! But yeah, like, I guess it's not to children or women in a sexual way, it's trying to show your mate.      I can't.  Yeah!  Marty will be arrested for not sitting down during a movie in the cinemas. During a stampede? Just kept dancing in the cinemas when he's meant to be seated. I don't know what, yeah, these days, you're pretty, you fucking, you're all right.   Change heaps. Yeah, we're somewhere you should be. But, yeah, what else? Fuck, I don't know. Kidnapping might be a kidnapping charge in there. Yeah, that was a couple years ago. I found Marty's decisions are very loose when I first met him. Now they're a little bit more thought through. Like, when I first met him, we were all, well, first properly had a conversation with him. We were at a hotel down south, and he walked up to me. He used to love coming up to me and saying, kiss me. And he whispered in your ear. And one time he did that and I said, no.  He didn't even look where and like there was cars and cars and stuff below. But, you know, just a bit of loose. Just loose. Yeah, he doesn't think before he tries. Yeah. Because he's nothing to lose. Well, you just have nothing to lose back then. So you don't need to think about the consequences. But now he would.  So we have plans in a pram. But now he would look to an aim and then throw it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.  Yeah. And make sure something filmed it too. Next question from Sean Cloonan. Sean underscore Cloonan. Let's see, I'll triple O. I'll ball on it. Yeah, that's three. N-A-N. And he has asked, just watched it. Love it. Thanks, brothers. Can you use this for the podcast if you like, but I'm just genuinely curious. What breezes Bosley? He has human-like eyes and it freaks me out. It's good, though. I'll take a Bosley clone.   Huge, humongous, monstrous thing. And Bosley's father was a box across a massive.  Rolling around. Dogs spoof pumped up it. Spat out Bosley. Love that. Such a mummy's boy, Bosley was. Was new Bosley, hey? His little darling. Where's my little schnook-knee-pop, hey? Where's my little darling? He looked up. Oh, dude.  Woo!  Oh, Bosley's look, then, was so cute. My little darling. Be-she-en. That's the name of the next segment. And this is a segment where we just unbox everything you guys have sent to us.  Be-she-en. That was so shitty. Oh, wait, medium, it's full. Who's it from? All right, let's have a look here. We have Patrick. Patrick, ha! It's potentially, I've gotten a DM from someone saying that they have sent a condom filled with karm.  And then what if it explodes when it opens up? We have to consume it. I'm scared, I don't know what you want. I'm going to open it just in your direction. Pispy is the full one. Just open it in your direction there. Can you see inside, Marko? All right, I've got it. Let's read it first. Let's read it. It's a picture of us, our P.A. box. And a brick in there, too. Yeah, you're getting so excited for drugs, Marko. Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been a long time. It's like a, all right, here we go. Because it's like an excuse to do it. Hey, Marty and Marko, love your content. Thanks for the call the other week.  Yeah, I can see it better. The B, the 3D print came out a bit wonky. The Rock is called Sam. He's from Sam's garden.  OK, so for those who can't see, it's like this plastic looking curved, like hard see-through thing. And that's a picture. You can see a picture of me and Michael on there, like our profile picture on Facebook. And wow, that's so special. I like that so much better than the whoopee question. No, the whoopee question was good. Yeah, sorry. Thank you very much, Patrick Hart.   Incredible. So there's a 3D print is what that is. This is this is special. I love how people send in things that we can put on the podcast. I put on the table. Like I love that. And yeah. So everyone knows I've fully got a box for everything that's been sent apart from. Yeah, we keep the herbs if we can. We've been put into our lungs, but like we I keep them all.  I say, I'm glad that chapter in my life's over with on to the next. No, no, I really love it. It's cool. And it's like a trip down memory lane. Isn't that right? Every time we do that, isn't that right, everyone? Isn't that right? So I could trip down bloody memory lane. And remember, I remember that one episode. Isn't that right? Why are you guys ignoring me, man? Yes, segment. The next segment have been renamed to like. Like probably like, I'm a really angry one like that. Yeah, that's what it's been renamed to Jamaica. And this is a segment where we do a prank call. OK, prank calls that you guys send in. You do to us, um, um. Stunt time.   All right, you're cutting the fans short.  We nearly forgot stunt time. So that segment segment name change is also the name of this segment stunt time. So yeah. And here we are for today's stunt.  Whoa, whoa, I'm on a roller coaster. I can't stop.  And this week we'll be super glowing our hands together for the rest of the episode. Oh, wait, that's so bad. I was just here, Marty and Michael, we're crazy. Whoa.  Everything will be fine. Clele, Clele, Clele. Our skin will melt together. All right, Michael's putting. Clang, leg, long, big, some, long off. Let's see what happens. I was so ready to hold your hand for those watching. Michael just poured a superglue over his hands and I closed his hand. So that's an accident. It was an accident. It was an accident. I need you to help me. It's a new table.   Clang, clang, clang, clang. Get the drops. The drill will pop in. Oh, yeah, that's shut. That's cool. Clang, clang, clang. Drops. Clang, clang, clang. Yeah, I'm hoping to hear it closer. Hey, you need to back off, man. You're coming in hot and your wheels aren't even out. They're still up. Landing gear has never been come down yet, mate. You need to back. Hey, don't want us to send you a text.  The landing gear hasn't even done come out. What are we going to do with you, sir? All right, it's special Friday today. Look at that. What? Why is it special Friday? Matt, do you think that we'd come up with a new segment that we hadn't even told him about? Special Friday. Next segment has been renamed. And this is the segment. That's the best one in a long time. And this is a segment where we just do a prank call. We prank call anyone, everyone. People throw us numbers.  Just joking. You're going to have two weeks to live. Just kidding. Have a good day. Three. Three. Three. Oh, you're broken. No, you just kept missing, mate. You ran out of quarters.  You ran out of quarters. You kept missing it. You need three more quarters to continue playing. Oh, my pants are broken. Yeah, the prank up. Here we go.  Here we go. Three. It's so good, dude. It's changed my life.  Hey, boys, can you prank call my mate, Ben? And then he's got his last name for the podcast. He's a plumber and he has been working on a lot on Saturdays lately. Whenever he works on the weekends, he tends to slack off on the safety side of things, like not wearing his orange high-viz shirt.   It sticks to you, eh? I don't know. I don't know about that, man. You've got it on. Well, that's Ben speaking. Hello, Ben, it's just Miranda here from Workplace Health and Safety. How are you today? You're not bad, mate, yourself? Yeah, not too bad. So, we've spoken with your boss, Andrew, from... And there's been reports that you've actually been not wearing your high-viz shirt on two... I've got two dates here in front of me. Is that true at all? Yeah, I probably would have been wearing a race shirt. Yeah, right. So, at the moment, they're actually really cracking down on people not wearing high-viz and there's actually infringement notices being handed out. So, unfortunately, yeah, we'll have to get you to pay the infringement notice and also, you might have to come down and just give your fingerprints because I've just got this whole new procedure and with COVID and everything. So, if you could come down and just give your fingerprints as well, that would be great. Is that a mandatory thing? Yeah, it is for everyone now, just since, I don't know, April or something this year. Yeah, it's just passed through. Yeah, right. Yeah, and the infringement notices... So, there'll be three. There's one for indecent exposure. So, it's actually deemed indecent exposure. These days, if you don't have your high-viz shirt on, even if you are wearing clothing underneath. Okay. Yeah, so that's the first one. And then the second one is, of course, the breach of safety. So, that one's up to $450 now. And again, that's just sort of gone up just because of COVID and stuff like that. Can I just mark down here? I just got to mark down. When you think you can come in to the closest office and just drop off your fingerprints and also just your... They'll have to take your mug shot and stuff as well now. Wait, when did all this happen? I've got the dates here in front of me. So, the last time you were reported to be not wearing the high-viz one second.  Let's see here. So, the first time was the 25th of July. Sorry, the last time, the 25th of July. So, what's that? That's that two. Two Saturdays ago, wasn't it? Yeah, two Saturdays ago. And then the one prior to that was on the 11th of July. So, that was then two weekends before that. And yeah, we had to speak to your boss and everything about it. You know, it's just not a good look for him and stuff like that. So, yeah. Two Saturdays ago, I wasn't even working. Well, it says here. You've been acting up on Saturday. Yeah, that's the date I've got written down here. So, whoever's put a complaint in says that you were working on the 25th. Well, I don't want to argue with you, but I've been working Saturday in about three months. Well, at the beginning of the conversation, you agreed that you haven't been wearing a high vis shirt. Okay, so please don't try and play the morally righteous card right now, okay? Because really, it's quite dangerous, to be honest. Covert to bed. No, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. It's covered around.  You never bloody know these days. Yeah, I'm not, don't get angry with me. I'm not trying to get angry with them. I'm just saying like, they aren't that bad. I have to have passion for my job. I'm just passionate about it, you know what I mean? So I just really want... Yeah, no, it's fair enough. But look, I genuinely haven't worked Saturday in about three months, like, you know, that's what I'm saying. Like, if there's a report coming through on a Saturday, well, I haven't been working, so I don't know how that's happening. Okay, well, look, you can dispute it. Okay, you can go dispute it, but you'll have to go to the magistrates court and that's quite a lengthy process. It's about six months or something. So I'm just letting you know that those complaints they have been validated, that has happened. So yeah, those infringements, they're coming. Why are you yelling? I'm just a bit worked up at all. I'm just... My grandpa. My grandpa's... Who do you work for, sorry? My grandpa's got... I actually work for a coal miner. Okay. A coal miner? Yes, okay, you got me. This is a prank haul. Oh my God, this is Marty Mock. Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! I thought you...  Yeah, dude, I thought...   Day dot.  Day dot. Oh! What were you picturing me as? Like a fucking... Honestly, I thought you were just some... Oh, you sound really gay, I'm sorry. Oh, that's funny as...   I made my day, honestly. That's been... Yeah, you made it in, dude. He fucking... He said to try and put on a new voice. Was it Josh? Let me have a look.  Make sure you change your voice as much as possible because he'll be on the... The first one is... I thought you knew as soon as we started. All right, dude. Well, thanks for being a legend and we love you, okay? No drama's made. Don't forget to wear the hives. Yeah, put your hives on Josh. You see him, mate? Yeah, I see him. That was not bad. That was very good, dude. It gave me confidence when he was like... When I knew that he still believed that I was someone else. Yeah, he was so... At the start, I was like, Why are you yelling? I mumbled a bit and like... Fucked up a bit and then... And then I was like, Surely he knows. And then... Because he's like, G'day, mate.  But then he didn't. I love when he was like... Yeah, why are you yelling? Yeah. Why are you yelling? I was so... I was a little bit worked up. I was wanting you to be like, Oh, my grandpa just passed away from COVID, so I'm a bit upset. Yeah, I don't know.  Yeah, I was gonna... Yeah, I don't know. It went weird at the end. I just came clean. Yeah, yeah. It's hard, but like, when that happens, and I know... You guys gotta realize, Matt goes to other rooms, or he's just sitting on the couch at the end cringing. Because it is cringe where you watch. Yeah, it is hard to get through. It's so hard to deal with it at the start, especially when they get real fired up. Yeah, yeah. I struggle sometimes.  It's gotta push through for the life. And then I return just as like the reveal happens. Yeah. But fuck, if you had gotten to a point where like, you made him feel sorry for like, you losing a family member of like, wherever. And like, you're really down, so you're just taking your anger out on him, and see what he said to that. Oh, damn it. It could have been so... You know what, I wish I did, was just at the end, just start screaming louder and louder, and deeper and deeper. Yeah. And just guess, until I'm just screaming really deep and loud at the very end, that would have been good.  And even if it fucks up then, it's gonna be funny. Yeah. But like, yeah, we know this.  At least we can, you'll improve for next time. Now we know for next time. We are...  Yeah! The best. The best. We're the best. There's a bottle of piss on the table. Three! Three!


Ac rwy'n cael ei gilydd o ddweud o'r pablau ymlaen i'ch bod ni'n cael y blaen o'i wneud, roedd hynny o blwyddyn o'r 70 o wfwyr o'r casodd ar gyfer hynny o'r adeiladau, ond hynny yw hynny chi'n fawr i'r casodd, roedd y gallwn ni'n cael ei gwybod ddaw ni'n cael yno? Felly mae'r gweithio'r rhai gweithio'r ddweud o'r casodd. Roedd y problem wedi rhoi ddweud y dyna hwn wedi bodi'n gweithiau ac mae gennynig yn fadr yn violol, cychwyngiad, niad, cychwyngiad, yn ymgyrch i chi'n ffyrdd y teimlo. Felly hanfodd yw'r rai gwirioneddau, esfydlio fy nhw, ac rwy'n credu bod yn digwydd fel gweld gweithio. Ond gallwch yn ddod gradd gyflym, Why might this not be a very effective way for losing weight? Why am I running for 30 minutes five times a week not really accelerate your weight loss? Anyone? What makes you hungry? So some people get very hungry when they exercise. Some people reward themselves with food after exercise or drink. Anyone done that? Played a bit of footy to have a few beers. What other things? It's not efficient. It isn't efficient. You're absolutely right. It is horrendously inefficient. Has anyone here ever exercised on a piece of equipment that counts calories?  Was it a joyful experience for you?  Just not that many. About three apples were seeing as you're eating an apple. Not a huge amount has been burned there. You're right. It's not efficient. There's another thing. That's a bit of a problem with exercise and it is this. I know we tell people that it stimulates the metabolism but actually there's very good evidence to suggest that overall exercise suppresses the metabolism. I know it sounds counterintuitive but it makes sense doesn't it? We found out that when the body has less calories going into it it puts a dent in the metabolism.  If you exercise the body more it does the same thing. It basically reduces its output because it doesn't know you're not going to exercise it to death. Here's the other two things. The calorie burn during exercise is depressingly small and people who tend to exercise more will often eat more too. Let's think about weight control in a different way. Forget about calories, forget about eating less than exercising more and start thinking about maybe doing these things. How about eating in a way that would have effects on our hormone levels in the body that would just allow us to lose weight very naturally indeed. Thank you very much. We'll look at some more detail around that in a moment. That would mean basically having lower levels of insulin. It would mean optimising our leptin functioning. It would not mean starving ourselves and going on anything that resembles a diet. And how about this? Because hunger I have to tell you is the enemy when it comes to eating healthily and weight control. I can't tell you how fundamental this fundamental thing is. It is almost impossible for people to regulate what they eat and their weight by going hungry. Let me put this another way to you. If individuals want to eat healthily, lose weight, feel better. This is a prerequisite. They really do need to be able to not struggle with hunger and feelings of deprivation in the long term. This is critically important. In fact, I sometimes say to people, say in practice or if I'm working with a corporate client, the less hungry someone is, the more weight they'll lose if they need to lose weight and the easier they will find it to maintain that weight loss. That is almost universally true. It's the exact opposite in my view of what we've basically been taught to believe. So what's satisfying? So out of carbohydrate protein and fat, one of those seems to shake the appetite more than the other two. What is it? It's protein. That's right. So relatively protein rich diets. You don't have to go mad, but some protein in it hopefully with every meal. So that could be some meat or fish or eggs, possibly some nuts if you're using nuts as a snack food would be a generally good idea.  It's why they don't get a lot of satisfaction necessarily from a chicken breast but a chicken leg or a piece of duck for some people is much more satisfying and much more sustaining. So one of the fundamental problems that we have with conventional nutritional advice in my view is that it basically pushes people towards a diet that is relatively low in fat, relatively carbohydrate rich, that is inherently unsatisfying. Now if you eat, I don't know, a bowl of cereal in the morning, you might be momentarily satisfied with that, but I can tell you time and again you'll see people in practice say, well you know what, when I eat cereal and toast in the morning by about 11 o'clock I'm starving again. So I've realised that it's better for me to eat nothing because I'm actually less hungry at 11 when I eat nothing than I am when I eat cereal or toast. So why is that? Well these foods are not inherently satisfying and also, and I'm going to build on this later, they are inherently disruptive to blood sugar in ways that can cause highs and lows of blood sugar that stimulate appetite that really shouldn't be there. It's a fundamental problem.  Now this is not just my experience in practice, okay. There are studies that show when individuals who are eating a standard western relatively low fat carbohydrate rich diet as we're encouraged to eat, move their diet away from that to more of the diet that we're looking at here, they will spontaneously eat several hundred calories less each day. That is common. Not because they're consciously restricting how much they're eating. They're not as hungry. They're not as hungry because they've stabilised their blood sugar level. Number one. And number two, they're eating much more satisfying foods. So they just naturally eat less. Now if you could get yourself to a state where you're eating healthily, eating well, enjoying what you're eating and if you wanted to lose weight and you've lost weight and there's no hunger, wouldn't that be a kind of nirvana? I always say it would. Can this be achieved? Very, very rarely does this approach not work in men. Very rarely indeed, okay. They're really in the minority. If you have a look on Amazon, so Waist Disposal, as I say it was published a couple of years ago, but it's got a hundred reviews on Amazon and most of them are five star and then a few four stars as a few lower stars as you will always get. Lots of people who haven't read the book that just says this is bunkham, that sort of stuff. Anyway, ignore all of that for a moment. Going to those positive reviews when you look at them, here's a very constant refrain, right. I lost loads of weight. I feel fantastic. This is totally sustainable, okay, because I'm enjoying what I'm eating and I'm not hungry. Why didn't someone tell me before? Trust me when I tell you, when people apply the sorts of principles that we're talking about here, usually they will get the result they're looking for very easily, which is why I said the easy way in the title slide. So here's a table of studies where they have pitted low carbohydrate diets or lower carbohydrate diets with low fat diets.  Here's the food you need to eat and they're all the sort of low fat foods, grain based foods, that sort of thing. In the low carbohydrate groups, so they have not done that.  So this really mimics in my view what real life is like for people, okay, who don't want to constantly restrict calories. And here's the results of these studies, okay. So this is a duration of the study. This is weight loss on relatively low carbohydrate diets. This is the weight loss on low calorie, low fat diets, okay, and then we've got something here called statistical significance. So statistical significance is a human generator thing. It's basically we're telling people whether or not any difference was likely to be real or due to chance, okay. Now one of the reasons that something may not be statistically significant is because there wasn't a lot of people in the study, okay. And also I have this thing about statistical significance. First of all, it's utterly arbitrary what you call significant or not, okay. But the other thing is that, you know, for example, if you know you did a study where people on a low carb diet lost an average of 15 pounds and on the low fat they lost an average of 10 pounds, okay, it doesn't really matter to people whether that is statistically significant or not. They'll take the 15 over the 10.  In the real world, it doesn't have as much validity as you might imagine. But anyway, I'll put it in here for the sake of completeness. Now look at the results of all of these studies, okay. These were not cherry picked. These were all the studies that I could find where low carb were pitted against low fat. And in every single case, the low carb wins over low fat. And remember, these people eating the lower carb diet were not restricting calories. They were not going hungry.  But if you look at the totality of the evidence, it's pretty clear that overall it wins out over low fat and is also something that I found in practice is way more, that is way more sustainable than people going hungry and counting calories. Now there's other approaches you could take to push this on a little bit, okay. And one might be something called intermittent fasting. Has anyone here heard of this, ever applied it, tried it? Okay, there's a few very health aware people, okay. So one of the concepts behind intermittent fasting is this, okay, is that we have insulin in the body and it's a good idea not to have too much insulin. Okay, because it, first of all, probably predisposes to fat deposition, but it also may predispose to problems like diabetes and heart disease. Now one way you could get insulin levels down would be not to eat foods that cause lots of insulin secretion, like those, excuse me, crappy carbohydrates. We're encouraged to base our diet on like bread, potatoes, rice, pasta and breakfast cereals. We're going to look at them in more depth later, okay. But another way to do it of course would be not to eat because if you don't eat, you don't have spikes in blood sugar that are going to cause you to secrete much insulin, right? Obviously not. So intermittent fasting is this idea of going for relatively long periods of time without eating. Two, we hope, lower insulin and get benefits from doing that, okay. Now there are some very extreme forms of intermittent fasting out there, okay. I'm not saying people shouldn't do them, but they can be a bit scary. So for example, there are some people who will not eat outside a say four to six hour window in a day. So if they start eating at noon, right, no breakfast, they start eating at noon and they're all done by four or six and they don't eat at any other time. It's fairly hardcore, okay. People do do that. Not against it necessarily, but do you need to do that? No, here's a thought. First of all, do we need to eat by the clock and three meals a day? Now up until about two years ago, and I've been at this a long time, I generally believed that people usually needed to eat three meals a day. Is that true though?  Does it make sense that we are programmed to need to eat by the clock regularly like that? Because I tell you what, if we were programmed to be like that, we probably wouldn't be here, would we? Because we wouldn't been able to go for more than a day or two without eating before we get a sort of keel over and die. It doesn't make sense that we need to eat very regularly. And it turns out that some people can be incredibly healthy and eat very irregularly. So is there anyone here who doesn't really eat breakfast and doesn't really like to eat breakfast? It's just not the, yeah, right, fine. Okay, by the way, all of you are slim. Okay, so that there's a little clue there. Okay, so here's the thing, right? Why should you eat breakfast? Because you've been told you might need to.   And the chances are you are living off your fat. Why?