Rydw i'n ymwneud, mae'r rhannu Llywodraeth yn Llywodraeth Cymru â'r cyfnod gyffinor yma gyda'r cyrraedd gwrthogau sylfaenidol yn gymhoi'r cyrraedd cyd- ymddorol. Cyrraedd cyrraedd gyfnod yn gwybod cyrraedd cyrraedd cyrraedd cyrraedd cyd- ymddorol yn ysgolwyr. Mae'r cyfrosidwys mae'n gwneud yn gyfrosidwys ar ddau llwyth ac yw'n gweithio'n cyfrosidwys ymddorol. today we bring in public space the words of those who sell by and profit from prostitution. We have a panel of frontline service providers and a prostitution survivor to discuss the reality of commercial sexual exploitation and the role played in the industry with the proliferation of pimping websites and the impact they have. We are deeply grateful to the women who gave their testimonies for us to use Ie ddaw ni'n ddwy'n ddweud i gael nodiwch yn y model a'r bwrdd gweithiau gyda llwybu yn ddau'r bwrdd gweithio. Mae'n rŵn ei bod oedd yn ymddag yn rhywbeth a'r ddweud o'i cyfrifiadau.  Y cwetau erbyn complwyr byddwyd yn ychydig i gweithio cyfryd i gweithio'r cyllidau, oedl chi wedi'i gweithio'r cyllidau yn eich bwysig, a'r ddweud wrth i'ch gweithio'r cyllidau. Felly rydyn ni'n gweithio'r cyllidau ei frefio. Ann, Jackie, Theresa a Jackie sy'n gweithio'r lluniau a'r seilers. Chris, Steve a Brian sy'n gweithio'r lluniau sy'n gweithio'r lluniau. Wrth cymdeithasol, cymdeithasol ychydig i gweithio'r cyllidau. Felly, mae'r gweithio'r gweithio i ddim yn ei wneud yn gweithio gwaith yw'r gweithwyr. I gweithio'r gweithwyr wych wedi gwybod ei wneud a wneud hynny i'r panel. Gweithio'r gweithwyr, mae'n gweithio'r gweithwyr i gweithio'r gweithwyr ac mae'n gweithwyr i'w gweithwyr ar gweithwyr. Mae gweithio, yn dweud, ac yn ddiweddolol, mae'n dweud gan gweithwyr ei gweithwyr. Ieisom oedd ygafodd numerator yn ymgyrchu oedd hynnedd ar y cyffreithio ar y cynghoryng. Felly byddai eu hyfforddiadau gennymwyr i'i tyfn yn ceg Marsol, ond y Mhleniau neu Prostuytus yn bywys iedd yn y wirfodgoio. Felly byddai ei wneud yr hoffa twf, yn ymgyrch yw'n gweithio. Ieisom yn gwneud hynny oedd, rydych chi'n cynghori, gweithio ar y copper a oedd i'r cyffreithio i gyd ar dna. Mae'r ddaeth oedd y ddaeth o'r ddwyllys gweithio'n ymddiadol i'r ddechrau profi oherwydd y dyfodol yn ei gydag i'r ddau. Os y prostytusion mae'r amgylchedd ymddangos i'r gweithio'r ddau, mae'r puntau mae'r amgylchedd ymddangos i'r gweithio'r ddau. Mae'n gweithio ymddangos i ddweithio'r gweithio? I had no money so someone I knew took me to a place where I could make money and it kind of started from there. I needed money to give to my mum for my wee one and prostitution was the easiest option. The way it was described to me it was easy easy money yeah it'd be easy and it wasn't. I wasn't prepared I had no idea what I was walking into. I was born on a farm the abuse was almost daily every conceivable type of abuse by the time I was 11 years old I tried to end my life but failed at 16 when I was legally able I left home and headed north not knowing a soul I slept with men for food and a bed any option was better than going home. I punt because I love slim pretty young girls and at my age there is no chance of meeting those types of girls in my normal life. I punt because I like young pretty girls who are young enough to be my daughter or in some cases my granddaughter. I travelled to see Sinead who wouldn't size six 18 years old. See I was a prostitute for 10 years well about that long 10 long bloody years I thought I'd be doing it for a couple of months to get us over a rough patch I lost my job see there was big layoffs and I was one of the first to go my man see he'd already got hurt at work so he was off on the sick for ages that was a bad time aye that was all tough. Some of them want to talk talk about women like they're a commodity that's true I don't think it makes any difference as long as you treat the lady well the end of the day it's just business. Women in prostitution often don't have a choice we need other options alternatives punters do have a choice no one no emergency forces them to buy us and abuse us. I'm really not sure why there's such an emphasis on respect when I visit a lady respect is just about the last thing in my mind we're to start well let's begin by reading a genuine advert discrete Glasgow escorts are you attractive intelligent and provide 100 service every time preferably students are you looking for a friendly escort part time available are you reliable and punctual part time available do you want to make money a lot of money we provide food to eat and living conditions slash bedrooms are you aged between 18 and 35 any size but not a base or overweight and take great care of your appearance contact us via phone or text it will be easy and fast. I can scan an agency website just as I do a Chinese takeaway menu and say yes I'll have that tonight. It's sex work real work if real work is having a 70 year old drunk man bargaining with your price because you won't continue without a condom that man getting aggressive and asking for his money back if work is being forced to give up 50 to 100% of your income to a pimp if work is being forced to have sex with men on the run from police for domestic abuse if work is being filmed without your consent if work is being slapped beaten told you're a worthless whore then yes it's work shouldn't be why pay for sex it should be why not pay for sex we pay for lots of things in life sex is just another commodity prostitution if it is anything is the choice between homelessness and having men we don't like do things we hate to bodies we really don't know how to love as much as I want to get out of this I can't because I can't afford to because I've got all these bills that I have to pay the reality of this is that if I don't do this work I'm going to end up homeless I'm going to end up with no money and I'm going to end up not being able to feed my kids then women are meant to choose any of these adverts are online and we'd like menu cards Asian escorts means girls are from one of the Asian countries like Japan China India Thailand Korea here's one we're proud to represent Akira one of our favorite escorts services she is providing girlfriend experience oral without condom french kiss water sports common mouth 69 massage of course the adverts all say these very young women are independent I visited Japanese girl she's not quite right something during a visit she just showed me a piece of paper with I have no choice written several times on it question is is she free or is she held unable to get away by criminals who are using her first time I felt bad about the whole punting experience very much the dark side of punting as it sometimes described in the papers not recommended unless you want to ask some real hard questions about yourself afterwards he still used her the entrance door to the flat was double locked and a minder the pimp kept the key definitely a fire hazard and a maid would be preferable I would only return for a different girl and preferably without the muscle the door locks are dangerous and illegal the final nail in the coffin of this visit was to find the security guard standing outside the bedroom door waiting for me when I left he's still used her tiny singaporean turned out to be the most unresponsive girl I've ever punted with she didn't so much recoil from my touches freeze rooted to the spot so I just let her play one with the sex which I paid I thought doggie would be the way to go the addy bonus being that I didn't have to look at a sort of talky expression that way she really hates this job and she's happy to tell you John's don't give a fuck if you're over 18 or not in fact many prefer if you're not and give a fuck if you were trafficked or if you were tricked or groomed into the industry or if it was your own idea or whether you put on an optimistic pair of rose tinted glasses they treat us all the same like we're nothing like they own us like we exist to serve them like we exist as receptacles for their bodies and their perversions like we exist as punching bags a safe target for them to take out all their aggression and problems on because we are nothing because we can't do nothing and because often no one else gives a shit about us either cold clinical unfriendly and to be avoided I hope they send her back to Romania well I asked for a bit of participation on her part she said my legs are open isn't that enough it's common for people to think that men who buy sex can't get it at home I have a good sex life at home so I only pump for variety sometimes I want something quick and sleazy in a pile I get in a hand job or a blood job while the wife's shopping and you have a few minutes to spare before you meet up and say karm a man often married with children can rent out a woman have no concern or interest in why she's having to have sex for money or where she comes from he can be capable of obtaining sexual gratification knowing the extremely high likelihood that she's only getting through it or even suffering through it and then go home and pretend as though it never happened men go to prostitutes to cheat without getting caught the johns were everyday men they almost never looked like crazy men or stereotypical pedophiles they worked normal jobs they were perfectly normal it still shocks me how well adjusted these men were these men who paid to have sex with a child they didn't look like pedophiles except when they were with me when they entered the room or wherever I was they took off their masks and when they were finished raping me they put on the mask again they didn't walk out as the pedophile rapists that they were but as businessman janitors fathers churchgoers husbands or whoever they were by that day I can remember the last time I had sex with my wife it was over a year ago using sports sessions and outings with friends as false alibis I've attempted to keep my trips to the brothel a secret from her although I am paranoid that she has her suspicions is my greatest fear that she would find out for certain it's a bit of a myth when you think about it that those who sell sex can spot a bad punter from a good one he was rough too rough and didn't care that I said I didn't do certain services he wouldn't stop he didn't stop I always thought I would fight back everything stood still and I couldn't move he left when he was finished walked out and left me there he left money though I saw the other two bookings that night after him I didn't know I don't know how I did it but I did I went home and I cried all night I still do sometimes I haven't talked about it much to anyone no one really I told the agency the next day about what he'd done they pretended to be concerned but they didn't really care they got their money and they said he'd be on a blacklist he didn't I heard later about other girls he did that too as well I was out and a young boy approached me he was about 19 or 20 he never had a car so we went to a place that he'd picked I was feeling that he was wasting my time as I went to leave he offered me money for my bra now I know that might seem quite strange but it's not an uncommon thing to happen I gave him my bra and he gave me money from that second he just turned on me putting the bra around my neck and really viciously beating me and strangling me I was fighting for my life with him really fighting for my life another advert a man hires an escort he wants to have some amazing sex and there ends the matter but the escort makes him feel every penny is worth it the same cannot be said about a girlfriend and even after spending hours with her lying naked in the bed one might get lucky if they get a blowjob a demeanor and a service was just too shoddy gave me a thoroughly uninterested blowjob every now and then she'd come up for air and moved her jaw from side to side rubbing her face and scowling I asked if she licked balls whereby she reacted as if to fame being sick and said no by this point her obvious desire to end the encounter had pissed me off totally she proceeded to tell me an extremely sad personal tale she looked like she was going to cry but sold it on I felt like crap she looked as if I was abusing the poor girl I came momentarily she let some emotion pass over her face and then returned to her scowl I got dressed and left thoroughly upset and feeling cheated a bastard and the lowest of the low girls like this should not be working this is precisely why the industry needs regulating and some sort of customer protection needs to be introduced I'm also thoroughly annoyed I needed cheering up because my life has taken a real crap dive of late but heaven only succeeded in making me feel worse she was about 26 maybe only 19 but the tough life aged her prematurely and once her clothes were off it went downhill saggy tits due to a child painfully thin with bruises used her it's just a business transaction to me I don't worry about how the checkout girl in Tesco's got to be in that job couldn't care less the same goes for girls that I see in parlers are on the streets so on holiday they're selling a service and I'm buying and that's it small anorexic looking drugged up blonde no tits at all and a tall skinny drugged up brunet both hideous and spaced out he's still used them if women didn't want to do it anymore they can leave surely there are so many barriers to leaving and staying out a lot of the time it's like to do what I'm stuck between a rock in a hard place and I can't get out of this since leaving prostitution I've struggled with chronic depression flashbacks anorexia and self-harm I haven't been off psychiatric medication or out of therapy I've never been able to enjoy sex in a loving relationship the sex industry has robbed me of all these things there were a few slips back into it as it wasn't easy to leave and to get used to it I've been away from it now since 2002 so all prostitutes reading this I know it's hard but it can be done I still consider myself a recovering prostitute I can't deny my past as the lessons of it have made me who I am I do feel guilty about doing it I just feel it's bad emotionally for women I mean she doesn't seem depressed but I don't know maybe it's an act I mean I sometimes think it's just one more person at the end of the day and I do treat esgo it's better than a lot of other customers do we're coming to the end of that short presentation there are so many stories and each one involves a person a human caught up in some sort of crisis I'm going to give our last voice the the final say and I think this is the right place to hear her in the building of our Scottish Parliament we've just heard the voices of those most affected by prostitution the women themselves and we've also heard the voices of a group nearly always absent in these discussions the men who buy them and create the demand it is right these voices are heard and it is right these voices are heard here a place of power a place where truth once known must result in action action to help those exploited and to hold those causing harm to account I am honoured to add my real voice in person here with you today as a survivor of prostitution and trafficking what you've just heard is not easy to hear and it's natural for us to want to turn away I appreciate so much that you have chosen to come here today and turn toward the realities of prostitution here in Scotland I look forward to joining our panel and sharing with you some of my lived experience thank you I'd like to join me in thanking our volunteers there just going to take a couple of minutes and give you the opportunity to jot down any thoughts or questions that you have in the cards and then line at the back if you hold it up we'll collect them in just a couple of minutes before we start our our panel discussion okay I think what we'll do is make a start on the next section if you have your card Lynn will keep an eye out and if you if you give her a wave she'll she'll collect it and we'll we'll pick it up as I said when we started we have a panel discussion now and I'm pleased to introduce our first speaker Linda Thompson coordinates the national network for services supporting those in the sex industry and sits on national working groups including child and adult sexual exploitation she's managed award-winning multidisciplinary sexual health team and led national hiv programmes with gay men developing new approaches to education very pleased to have her with us today Linda thanks Ruth for that introduction and thanks for the cross party group for organising today and for inviting me to be part of the panel thanks to the organizers the festival of politics it's all been incredibly smooth so far I hope it continues that way as Diane said thanks to you as audience members for coming today but most of all I want my thanks to be given to the women whose voices were used today I've been with the women's support project for 14 years and during that time I have managed the CSA where practitioner network I've also been linked with and coordinated the encompass network that brings together a network of frontline services across Scotland I've managed the click project developed resources like money and power but most of all and the most important part of my work I would say is the participation work I've led on directly with women and some of those women's voices were included today and you will have heard them in some of those speeches and I led on the inside outside project and it was very emotional for me actually to hear some of the women that I worked with and worked very closely over the years hearing their voices here in the Scottish Parliament today I led on the inside outside project and the outside project to give a safe space for women who were involved to tell their stories where they didn't have to out themselves they didn't have to place an identity on themselves but it was this opportunity in a safe way to have those conversations to articulate their realities they were an incredible bunch of women and I am certainly not suggesting that any of those women are weak that they're victims that they're hapless that they don't have skills in their life because the women I have worked with over the past 14 years have been some of the most incredible women I have ever met the strongest most determined resilient resourceful women yes they were women who had violence enacted on them but I wanted to be really clear in our thoughts as we start today that we are not presenting these women as victims hapless victims with no skills and qualities they are strong women as the other women were included so we have heard from the women we've heard from the men and what I want to focus on in my input is actually focusing on the industry the sex industry in Scotland and to set a spotlight on it and put it into the wider context and the wider debates in our society and our culture and I think it's fair and fit and proper that the sex industry comes under scrutiny but I've only got about 10 minutes and I know that Ruth Maguire is keeping a BDI on me in case I go over time so I can't hope to cover it all today but what I do want to say is that the sex industry is founded on a variety of inequalities and it is reliant on exploitation of vulnerabilities and it has an impact not just on those involved but on our wider culture and that's what I want to highlight today we know that the sex industry relies on a number of factors to be successful it needs sellers it needs the demand and buyers and it needs a culture in which there's an attitude that is accepting of the existence of the sex industry and as in gender our leading gender equality organisation said in 2015 various parts of the system of prostitution and the sex industry relies on a cultural acceptance and a centrality focusing at the centre that men's desires and expectations are at the fore and it also relies on a relative impunity in which all forms of violence against women can be enacted and where men currently are not held accountable we know that domestic abuse rates are rocketing we know that levels of sexual violence are rocketing and not all men are held accountable so as in gender says prostitution and the sex industry is at absolutely at the nexus of inequality if we're thinking about the sex industry we have heard about the sellers but I want to make an important point to the stages today we are not saying that the voices you have heard are all of the voices in the sex industry far from it but we have to recognise the inequality in how those voices are heard restory a survivor of prostitution said that we have to acknowledge that traumatised marginalized women who are being sold on Viva Street and Gumtree and middle class white escorts that they have equally the same potential for their stories to be heard however the reality is that the opportunities for those voices to be heard by the public those opportunities for those voices to be foregrounded and have a balanced equal representation in the media and the social media and the infrastructure that basically entitles and privileges powerful voices within the sex industry it's incredibly naive to think that these two voices get an equal place we've done a short scoping in 2017 of the media over 10 years and what we found is the voices of women who have been abused and been exploited in the sex industry were basically about 10% of the media coverage in Scotland 90% was given over to other voices so we have to acknowledge where public opinion is formed is not always based on the reality of all of the women and we need to think about who the sellers are and acknowledge the vast majority of sellers are women and girls that is the reality and to deny that denies the actual underpinning gender inequality in this industry we know there's an overrepresentation of marginalized groups an overrepresentation across the world of indigenous women migrant women women who have no recourse to public funds women for ethnic minorities trans women women in poverty women in domestic abuse homeless women women with substance misuse problems women with mental health problems that's the overrepresentation within this industry that is based on inequality it needs inequality in order to have the supply absolutely there is some women who will sell sex who will say that it's pleasurable and lucrative career that it's a therapeutic vocation known is denying that reality but there's also women who are trafficked who are forced who are co-opted who are basically forced to be into this industry absolutely but what about the substantial proportion in the middle marianne hester done research in 2019 and it's this bell jar in the middle of women and where are they where are they placed where's their realities coming free why do they need to sell sex the substantial proportion of them are there because of finances and why because of finances well it's based on wider gender inequality and gendered structural inequalities that put constraints in women's lives and reduce their options the industry relies on it so we have to focus in this group in the middle and we have to take a step back and we have to look at the bigger factors the structural factors the socio-economic factors that push women into it and we have to critique this industry it is only right and proper that we critique this industry and the place in which it has in our culture and it move we have to move beyond individual choice we have to move on beyond that because we have to consider how choices are narrowed or have no choice at all for women we have to look at the bigger picture and as engender said that we can acknowledge the agency of individual women but we also can critique the industry and critique the gendered structures that underpin it and the impact it has on our culture women's aid acknowledges in scotland how entry into the sex industry is grounded in inequality and exploitation and how their entry is inexplicably linked to poverty discrimination and disadvantage and the persistence of these inequalities mean that any concept of free and consensual choice must be balanced within that wider culture and the inequalities and the constraints put on women and if we think about this industry and an exploiting vulnerability well what are the other vulnerabilities apart from the systemic inequality that women live with we know that women within this industry come from poverty women who have had verse experiences in the childhood backgrounds of abuse mental health issues and addiction and to deny that is to deny the reality of the vast majority of this industry and we have to think about the vulnerabilities in the current context we know that covid had a huge impact on women who were involved in selling their exchange insect it was devastating for them they had no social supports they did not have money they had to make incredibly difficult choices in order to survive and men and the industry was well aware of this we done a scope and we found 1600 adverts for men placed during covid that were absolutely able to exploit and vulnerability any single moms out there struggling with lockdown and coronavirus i've got 500 pounds any desperate and cheap women in adverts placed condom free sex is preferred by me students and single moms welcome if you fancy getting pregnant that's an added bonus if you're already pregnant that's cool with me too so the cynical exploit exploitation of vulnerability that arose during covid post covid we still are dealing with the impacts that are pushing women we have rising unemployment that creates vulnerability we have women in poverty what is the estimate that 40 percent of our children are going to be in poverty within the next four or five years 40 percent of children that means that we have women in poverty we know that women have massive debts we know that women are having to turn to loan sharks in fact a piece of research was done with people who had entered into contracts with loan sharks 10 percent of the women were forced to sign a contract that said that they would sell sex if they defaulted on their loan repayment the equivalent did not happen to any men women are living with rising pressures from living costs let's not even get into the energy crisis and what that is going to mean over this winter next winter and the following winter all of these create vulnerabilities and we need to look at the vulnerabilities for the high percentage of migrant women that are involved in the sex industry are pushed into the sex industry through things like no recourse to public funds we have all seen the attention in the media about the vulnerability of Ukrainian women being trafficked on route or ending up in the sex industry that is the reality this industry relies on vulnerability it has changed over time primarily driven by the explosion of the internet it is now a highly globalized and highly industrialized industry and to deny it and say that the industry is made up of independent women denies the reality of the vast majority in the middle in 2012 foundation sales she sales estimated that we had around 40 to 42 million people women worldwide who were involved in prostitution highly globalized and industrialized phenomenon there's estimates that prostitution brings in 186 billion pounds per year globally in fact in 2014 the office of national statistics estimated that in britain united kingdom was 5.6 billion so it's highly industrialized highly profitable government themselves benefit from them 1 billion euros per year is taken in by the dutch government in taxes in thailand the gross domestic product 14% is based on the exploitation of women and children it is industrialized it is accepted it is normalized in our culture if we think within scotland who benefits sauna owners escort managers the respectable face of the sex industry the license promises promises that operate in our capital city margaret paterson a very well known escort manager she was found to have four almost half a million pounds worth of designer goods in her house in her bank account she had over half a million she had 200 000 pounds sitting in cash i know the women who worked with margaret they had nothing that reflected that so there's a huge amount of profit to be made and where there's a huge amount of profit to be made then you will have people who will enter into and start controlling this industry and again to deny it denies reality we know there is links with the sex industry and organized crime organized crime that frequently trafficked women into prostitution but also provides the support the protection the liaison and services to pimps brothel owners and other groups and their involvement of organized crime is essential to this industry and to deny it in scotland is to deny the women's realities in germany under a regulated system durgan rudehoff who was known as a brothel king has been criminalized and convicted for five years for why because he was involved in human trafficking that is within the regulated industry it is still underpinned by human trafficking and links to organized crime in new zealand that has a decriminalized system research has shown that there's still extensive links between organized crime in the sex industry the two go hand in hand in the united kingdom the all party parliamentary group in prostitution and its inquiry found that sexual exploitation was involved with organized crime so if we think about this industry we have to think of the connections with it and in scotland our serious and organized crime strategy recognizes the links in this country drugs primarily is the most profitable form for organized crime however they've diversified into prostitution and as detective superintendent phil capaldi said whenever there's money to be made they will diversify and what have they diversified into the selling and exchange of women within this industry and women i've worked with know well the links with organized crime the women in this bell jar in the middle they know them barbie that i worked with she talked about being organized and being involved with gangsters and organized crime and how they were pushing independent women out of the industry to take them over netasha who was trafficked into this country i spoke to her about legislative models and about removing decriminalizing brothel keeping pimping and she said oh my god really who who asks for that pimping to be legal oh my god i think if that happens you will see an explosion of the industry like every other house will be an escort house that's going to bring many more pimps to scotland it won't be safe for all the independent girls because they won't allow them to sell sex without them and being involved if there's too many girls in the city the pimps will take them home and the independent girls those that the pimps can't control they'll be made to leave do these people understand who they are involved with that's the reality of the sex industry in scotland deamne in another context has clearly made the links and talked about the links between organized crime at traffic and and these commercial websites the industrial the acceptable face of the sex industry we know that there's a huge growth in human trafficking and excuse me we know that there's been an exponential increase in the adverts online so we have to start confront this industry police scotland identified the links between human trafficking exploitation and online websites phil capaldi again but he said that organized crime isn't hidden hidden and it's not underground through the sex industry they're there in plain sight and we have to start to challenge it we have to take a step back and we have to look at the role and the impact of the sex industry in our popular culture liz kelly marie coy i'm sure many of you will be aware of them they talk about the creation of a conducive culture a conducive culture for violence against women and we have to start thinking about what is the role of this industry in creating that conducive culture violence against women has been connected with beliefs and attitudes that men are entitled to sexual access to women that they are superior and somehow they're entitled to be sexual aggressors we have to look at the role of the sex industry in dehumanizing and objectifying women where they're made a thing for others use and like it or not having a market of women whether they're selling sex or being commodified in whatever way it does objectify and it does dehumanize women and it affects all women in terms of how they're perceived we've seen a rising collector culture with men and young men excuse me looking not just for images of women in the sex industry but women in their own community in order to create their own albums and these albums in a way that can be shared with other men we have to look at how prostitution creates the environment and we have to ask simple and difficult questions one survivor said women shouldn't have to have sex with men that they don't want to have sex with what happened to all the work that we do on consent a survivor that i have worked with said the bottom line is Linda we're never going to get gender equality whilst men can buy women so what's to be done we have to draw a line in the sand and we have to look to change men's attitudes we have to look to disrupt this industry and we have to place accountability for the cost and the harm that is caused with those who do it women's rights to safety must always take presidents over men's rights to consume so what are we going to do well i don't agree with our former justice secretary Kenny mcaskill when he said when he was asked what was to be done he said well what's to be done maybe look sometimes look in the other way as the best option laws can't provide answers to deep rooted social problems i agree legislation is not the only aspect that we need in our arsenal and our toolkit to address this but i would reaffirm and i would agree with Audrey Morrison a survivor of trafficking who set up an organisation and supports many other women involved in trafficking and what she has said is that well we can't turn a blind eye to the kids and vulnerable adults who are chewed up and spit out by this industry that's who i fight for and that's who i also fight for thank you very much thank you linda that was wonderful um our next speaker is michael connoi michael founded men at work a community interest company delivering training for professionals for supporting the personal development of boys and young men challenging sexism and fostering violence free relationships michael's spoken at national education conferences and in the Westminster parliament and designed and co-sponsored a global conference on porn versus effective sex education michael you're very welcome thanks very much thank you for inviting me i'm very honoured and surprised to be here and very nervous following linda so luckily i'm not going to cover much of the same topic because you just delivered that with such lucidity i would have nothing to add and luckily the little bit that i'm going to be talking about and please do tell me when it's time to stop is about um we've heard from men's voices the punters the johns whatever you want to call um them um but what about boys this is the question that i just want to pose a really simple question but sometimes with simple questions they're really difficult they're really difficult and what i'd like to do is give you 30 seconds at least of this eight or nine minutes so ponder this question you've got a room full of 14 year old 15 year old boys they're on the verge of manhood they are dipping into the social currents and scripts they may have been exposed to them to various degrees around what are women for what are girls for what are men what are we supposed to be how are we supposed to act you've got a room full you might be talking to them for an hour what would you say to them about buying access to women's bodies don't need a quick answer just need 30 seconds maybe to consider the discomfort of that thought and the fact that nobody is doing that work almost nobody is doing that work it's just let flow they will find what they want or they will find what it's given to them they will believe what they're being told i've worked with i've worked for several years many years in fact with teenage boys in england who believe that all women on only fans get about 10 grand a week and that some of them are multimillionaires within a month because they've read an article about it and it got shared they believe it but it's weird what we believe in it because we believe things that somehow don't cause us this comfort we believe things that are comforting and that's the really interesting thing to do is to talk to boys and young men about what they are choosing to believe and therefore what they're choosing to ignore because soon there will be adult men 14 15 16 big bodies adult bodies with money believing scripts what is the script for being a man hundreds and hundreds of lads that i've worked with be tough be dominant get the last word have money power have a load of sex tell people about the sex you're having otherwise people will think you're a virgin that's shameful not having sex shameful they might think you're gay shameful this script of misogynistic homophobia spiralling around everywhere they look online unfiltered making billions for someone there's always money always follow the money where does it go very rarely in the pockets of individuals the role of organized crime your prostitution you know way better than i do but to think that it is not why wouldn't why wouldn't you there's so much easy money to make for the pimps i was thinking about this weather this extraordinary weather i've never i've only been to adding for three times that he pissed down every time i slept rough one on a golf course and i thought it doesn't matter it's edinburgh it's great i'll have a few beers so this is the first time i've come and it's been sunny and i'm just stunned by it it's so gorgeous but i'm thinking who makes who makes profit from beautiful weather pubs ice cream sellers uh people sell his suntan cream suntan hearts campsites all of that and i'm thinking poverty is pimp weather poverty is the great weather for pimps they make hay while the sun shines or in terms of poverty while it shates or people are desperate as you were talking about Ukraine we're talking about old war zones old war zones or everywhere you know whether there is disaster where there's a lack of genuine agency where there is terror where is where am i going to sleep tonight what am i going to eat what am i going to feed my kids there are always vultures pimps this is pimp weather poverty and as you say the coming winters what are they going to bring certainly not altruism from some quarters just more and more need more and more desperation more and more 14 15 year old boys choosing to believe because it's easy to believe and that they're encouraged to believe that if you did if she didn't enjoy it she wouldn't do it because apparently everything we really know about the manufacturer of consent very good book by the way by norm chomsky recommend a bit of a read the manufacturer of consent where we feel that we're doing just what we want and there were being wonderful kind of post modern choosers and pickers of everything we do it's absolute nonsense we're subject to massive deeply entrenched structural forces we live in a capitalistic society drenched with all kinds of hangovers from religions patriarchal religions we're living in a patriarchy we don't talk about that to boys we should do not to shame them because they're absolutely useless to shame anybody we need to empower them give them information give them critical thinking skills but fundamentally we need to create space to develop empathy for their sisters and i don't really think i've got a great deal else to say apart from that really because you've said and will say so much better than i will poverty is pink weather and i don't think any of us want them to profit from it but boy they sell themselves well because there are hundreds of thousands of young men in scotland and england and wales northern island everywhere going on like when look at that she made 10 grand a week because of course it will the whole industry the nexus the the interconnected nature that it pushes that myth do we not live in a world where industries push their own myths petrol industry mining cotton back in the day sugar of course they do tobacco of course they do they tell us stuff which is totally false but they tell it as well and they find people who will enact their voice who seem credible well let me just go back to that question you're in a room with 13 14 15 year old boys what do we say to them who was it was talking about be a good punter be polite be nicer than the others is that it is that the best we can do no i don't believe it is thank you michael um our final speaker um before we move to questions is dianne martin dianne spent over 25 years supporting women to exit prostitution she's worked with government and local authority partnerships to develop and improve strategy policy frontline services and exiting options dianne is a survivor of prostitution and trafficking and was awarded a cbe for services to vulnerable women in prostitution dianne we're so glad you're with us thank you thank you i hope you don't mind that i'm going to stay sitting down i was going to stand up but my legs are like wobbling and shaking my hand is as well um it's not that i don't feel that anxious i think it's just that this is just it's just so important to me it means so much to me that we're having an event like this and that you've you've come today to listen and to engage and i hope you're still with it i know it's a lot to hear we've heard some difficult things but um i really think that it's fantastic that we're hearing about some of the realities in prostitution in our parliament building here in scotland and we don't often hear what's like and believe me that was completely toned down but you know we didn't want to have you all carried off an ambulance at the end so we've tried to kind of get get a balance in terms of what we're wanting to get across um i'm just going to check the timing okay okay thank you um to my fellow panellists totally blown away i like when we don't know what each other is going to say i like when we all have the freedom to say what we want and that often results in that we'll maybe say the same things i'll probably say things that linda's already said but i don't think there's any harm in re-emphasizing some of these points um thank you to the organisers of this event um to jackie stoyle and to our volunteers that read those words no easy thing especially not especially but for the men to actually come up and read those words um you know i think um you know i'm just really proud of all of them and obviously to you for coming here today because of where we are right now here in our parliament i do want to start by acknowledging that our government's policy rightly recognises prostitution is violence against women and girls and their manifesto pledges a commitment to address demand and i do i wasn't going to say this but i do want to point out the necklace that i've got made for today i thought i needed some glittery gold armour it says in demand um and you've just heard the voices of the very men who fuel that demand but we need that recognition by government you know it's been around for a while uh to be translated into action in order to improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable and at risk in our society um in my late teens i was exploited through prostitution in london and later trafficked your prostitution ring in the middle east ridiculously described as high class i was sent out by what was described then as the safest agency in london there is nothing high class about being raped bitten or asked at gunpoint if you want to see your mum again the venues sorry miss my mum the venues for me were luxury hotels apartments and diplomatic accommodation the punt is highly educated and in positions of power trafficked overseas the venues were royal palaces and homes of government ministers it has been the privilege of my life to have spent over 25 years supporting other women to get out too i founded a support service for women in street based prostitution and brothels um in london and i mentor women who were trafficked i have never met one woman who didn't want to leave and yeah i've had the honour and privilege of sitting across from hundreds and hundreds of women um what i have learnt from these two vantage points of personal and professional experience is that in my view it is all the same thing a bruise or a threat feels the same whether you're in a five star hotel or lent up against a car park wall whether wearing prada or a prime arc the fear the violence and the hopelessness feels the same as does the desire for safety and a life free of violence recognizing prostitution in different locations as expressions of the same form of abuse is key to dismantling the suppressive and harmful system i'm 58 years old my combined 39 years of personal and professional experience has led me to an unwavering position of campaigning for an end demand approach to prostitution policy and agree with linda that legislation can't be our you know our only tool but i think you know that it could do um it could improve things vastly i currently chair the a model for scotland campaign an alliance of survivors and organizations working to combat commercial sexual exploitation here in scotland we are calling for progressive legal framework that will criminalize all forms of sex purchase make online pimping a crime decriminalize victims of sexual exploitation and expunge any prostitution related offences from their records and provide well resourced long term support and exiting services so prostitution sometimes referred to certainly not by me as sex work language is important and we know that when we change a language that we use to describe things it changes how we perceive them it is the same with prostitution the narrative of sex work and a job like any other does exactly that yes sex acts are involved but it is as we've heard unwanted sex which means it's exploitative money can't buy consent and we can't consent to our own exploitation as for work for those and we've heard very eloquently from both linda and michael for those with a vested interest in it it's often presented as being about labour rights if we could just get that right then all would be well but no we see that in countries who've tried to achieve this that it has been an utter failure with a very real and unacceptable human cost what are the jobs involved sexual harassment and violence in the workplace rape physical emotional and psychological harm on a daily basis and a much higher than average mortality rate pushing the agenda of legalization or full decriminalization seeks to reframe the sex industry that linda was talking about where people where women are just service providers punters are clients and pimps and traffickers become managers and facilitators and if it is accepted as a job like any other and policy and legislation is subsequently based on this assertion then why would we need the support systems and xing services that we know are needed to help women to leave and recover jewellty bindle the journalist and women's rights campaigner rightly states in my view that the inside of a women's body is not a workplace and Dana Levy and Israeli survivor of prostitution makes the point that in areas of legitimate and what we internationally and legally describe as decent work expertise is valued and the experienced worker can generally expect higher wages she highlights that this is not the case in prostitution where she says experience has no value and a lack of experience brings in more profit for pimps and traffickers where the common request from punters is about who is the youngest on offer who is the youngest on offer and if they have new girls I remember all too well being asked by punters at age 19 to pretend and say out loud to them that I was 16 years old um Levy also exposes a reality that even if there is a certain amount of labour and actual service it's not a prerequisite for the deal the minimum condition is only that you have body temperature you could be drugged or drunk to the point of unconsciousness and you can still be sold you might participate but you don't have to your body can be used for sexual acts even without your cooperation and if this supposed work is so empowering and lucrative as Michael was talking about you know the perception of only fans we would expect to see men and women from all walks of life education and tax brackets curing up for their liberation and path to riches and independence but no we all know the reality is that you cannot reframe and sanitize abuse and exploitation and we all already know that nobody including those who espouse the sex workers work mantra wants their daughter subjected to this supposed work it is exploitation it cannot be made safe health and safety cannot be applied and where this has been attempted it has failed miserably and Linda mentioned Germany and we've only to look at Germany known as the brothel of Europe where there are over a million sex purchases every day and we're nearly all the women being sold have been trafficked from other countries currently in Scotland we are not a hostile environment for traffickers and the legislative process that outlined earlier many countries have taken on board and it's interesting because as the united kingdom we are kind of sandwiched between Ireland who have changed laws both in northern Ireland and in the republic of Ireland and also France has the legislation described it looks like Spain is about to implement it so we are you know well we are in Ireland but we're in Ireland where it's not a hostile environment for traffickers and we know because of work that particularly the Swedish police have done because they're allowed to intercept phone calls we're not allowed to do that I don't think but they are and they've heard traffickers you know say oh we're going to pull out of Sweden we're going to move you know somewhere else. Prostitution is not about labour rights but it is about human rights and to me the right not to be for sale it is also highly gendered as Linda so eloquently presented to us where the overwhelming majority forced, recruited, groomed or trapped there by others or by desperate circumstances are women and children overwhelmingly poor and from already disadvantaged and marginalised groups and where is the class analysis of the unequal power imbalance between the men paying for sex and the women being paid for. Prostitution relies on the acceptance of believing that a subset of women and girls work in class, poor and in crisis being for sale seen as objects and treated like a commodity to be consumed and discarded and the demand consistently requires a continual stream of new products. In prostitution they are nearly always underlying issues that create those conditions of vulnerability most women and girls roots into prostitution have been paved with these issues including poverty, childhood sexual abuse, neglect, addiction or coercive and controlling relationships this is why we must rid ourselves of the false dichotomy we're so often presented with that of course sex trafficking is bad but prostitution is a choice and a job that's a choice of no choice both rely on gender inequality and vulnerability and both are inherently harmful sex buyers create this demand for a subset of women to be exploited and it's entitled men of every social class education and economic status if there were no demand there would be no supply it's all about profit and financial gain but not for those subjected to it. Punters continue to line the profits the pockets of pimps traffickers and organised crime groups who are raking in billions off the literal backs of women and children in Scotland the overwhelming majority in my opinion would say and actually would say this across the UK are of women in prostitution are from poorer countries or there are UK girls and women who start in life has been made up of multiple disadvantages then preyed on and exploited we heard earlier real comments made by real men and although we heard their words they are not here but if they were here this is what I would say to them to those who thought your money paid for consent we did not want you touching us that made our skin crawl we did not want to touch your body we were either faking it or past being able to fake it and you did not care whether you deluded yourself by a fake smiles or hollow sounds of pretend pleasure or whether you saw our distress ignored it or was sexually gratified by it and did what you wanted anyway know that our thoughts were about wondering if we would get out in one piece and as soon as we could we tried to scrub off all traces of you if only we could wash off the memories just as easily some of us spent years trying to do just that in conclusion you'll be glad to hear look we're actually having a mini heat wave michael's michael's you know being really excited to to actually see that we have sunshine in scotland i'm from dandy which is the sunniest city in scotland um you could be basking in the sun with a pint or laughing your socks off at um an edinburgh festival event but you've chosen to come here to listen to these challenging truths as a survivor prostitution that greatly encourages me the festival of politics exists to encourage dialogue participation and action and this is the best kind of politics we're working to address exploitation is cross party work so what kind of a scotland do we want to see surely a progressive scotland there's nothing progressive about prostitution we need a vision for scotland that becomes a reality we can be proud of and that rejects the idea that a person can be for sale everyone can get involved and everyone is needed i'm going to plug our website now please check out our website www.amodelforscotland.org for information on the campaign including how you can get involved receive newsletters and resources and see past webinars the more we understand the realities of prostitution together the more we can work together for change and we will be a better society for it because we will never have real equality between women and men while women can be for sale thank you for listening and i'll hand back to Ruth thank you Diane that was great i'm just trying to make eye contact with Lynn to get some of these in um we've got some questions from earlier if you want to um if the discussions have prompted anymore and you want to um hand them in if you wave your card at Lynn she will bring them what i'm going to do is look for questions rather than thoughts at the moment here we go okay um i should say as well we probably won't we've got 15 minutes we won't get through all of them but what we will do is put them all up on um the website so that your questions and your thoughts and and the responses from panel members or or the group are there so what is happening in scotland to work with men who buy sex to help them understand the harm they're causing Linda i'm going to thank you Ruth for that and me yeah so what work is happening with men i suppose we would and what the Scottish Government would say is that there's prevention work happening with young men um through schools where we have um sessions lesson plans programs of work happening through the curriculum that's looking at issues around consent certainly in the latter years there'll be um aspects around pornography and some aspects around prostitution and i would say that's pretty much it we do have obviously a campaign um called white ribbon in scotland which asks men not to commit um collude or condone acts of violence and they are engaged in some work preventative work with younger men but i would say in terms directly with work with men around prostitution consumer buying consent being involved in the sex industry it's minimal direct work thank you i think that follows on to the next question so i'm just going to get through as many of these as i can how do we encourage more men and boys to be involved in the discussion and take responsibility for their role michael i'm going to give that one to you um that's a really good question because we're it we're basically at the starting point we're basically at zero for that in terms of a holistic kind of national whether it's you know uk wide scotland wide england wide whatever it is there are small amounts of programmes that are often uh shy of prostitution they don't want to talk about it they don't want to talk about porn but they're happy to get people to sign get men to stand up and sign public pledges so i will not hit my wife or girlfriend it's not enough it's it's a thousand miles from enough which is why i i've reject that kind of public pledge making i believe the best thing to do is to give people who work with boys and young men whether they're youth workers social workers family support early help teachers uh sports coaches or whether they may be a solid toolkit that they can rely on and have ongoing conversations with boys and young men that don't come at it from an immediately judgmental accusatory position which just brings down the shutters but which opens a space to have to explore the script that they're being offered over and over again and they have been offered that since they were born about what it means to be a man in this culture and i think that if we don't move to that broad position where it's part of an everyday conversation we're just not going to get anyway okay thank you and the next question is asking what alternatives are for women stuck in impossible positions and feel they have nowhere to turn there are places that women can turn off and operating on a shoestring budget uh and but but there are you know the thing that i feel really comfortable about in the in the whole of the uk and here in scotland is that there are some excellent projects that know how to work in the right way and know how to support women my own experience of running an extended project i kind of learnt you have to tackle all the areas in one go so you're having to look at health physical health mental health homelessness coercive controlling relationships and working a way that's really individually tailored to that women we're not just a homogenous group even though there's a there's a lot of obviously common threads and experiences and there are you know i know that women can exit prostitution because i've you know been able to to do that and see it and implement it and see other people doing it it is uh it's not overnight it's a long haul but it's also not rocket science and it's about helping people with the needs that they have building up their self-esteem which is usually non-existent um and but as Linda said you know amazingly strong resilient uh women that have survived what they've survived so there are some really good projects and there's some really good practice and a lot of um particularly women's projects have been doing this for you know years and years and years uh i always felt that we were about 10 years behind the kind of where we were maybe 15 years behind where we were with domestic violence but there is certainly hope um uh for women to exit and rebuild the lives that they want to choose um for themselves it's totally possible yes there's lots of um barriers to it and yes we're you know we're thinking about austerity but you know the the um the solution to poverty is not sexual exploitation and we can in projects like Linda fight and fight and advocate um for women and we do see women um getting out getting out away and away from their abusers thank you do you want to say a few words because you'll see that year yeah um i think it's important to highlight that the Scottish Government um commissioned and undertook research and some of the colleagues involved in that are sitting in the room so i don't want to speak over them but it flagged up that research about the gap in services across scotland and that there isn't the comprehensive well funded long-term support services available both harm reduction for whilst women are involved but also whenever women choose to move on that those services are available so i think it's important to flag that we have a gap but that i think what we do know and if we've listened to women themselves and the women i worked with in the outside project they clearly talked about what do they need to be put in place in order to have an alternative and very often that was a practical step and i will always think of barbie and she talked about that you need a concrete step on that ladder in order to exit but i think there's something as a little step further back on that and one thing that came out through the recent research that the Scottish Government also commissioned that looked at women's lived experience that women said that they wanted people to talk to them about this so actually if they were accessing mental health services if they were accessing housing and homelessness if they were accessing addictions whatever primary care medical care actually women do want to be asked are you involved and whenever you open that conversation then you create the space where the woman can start to look at where's her opportunities and what's her vision for her future so i think we know we have to move it's absolutely acknowledging the role of specialist services to support women to exit but i think there has to be a wider call to action that actually everybody needs to step up their game and create the spaces that women can talk about this but also create the spaces and the practical tangible steps that help them and move on as and when they want to okay this next question i know i know that some of it has been covered but i think it's maybe worth well um giving it a concise answer as well what would you what would you say to those who say sex work is work and deregulation will make it safe for some sellers you've said the word concise and looked at me um and hope right yes well and hope have hope um that they've said it i think you've covered in your presentation about other countries where there's been deregulation deregulation this questioner is asking um what do you say to those who say sex work is work and deregulation will make it safe for the sellers right it doesn't make it safe and actually some of the the criticism of the what i would like to see in place um this about is often term the Nordic model or the equality model um is just mythology they'll come up with things like saying you know if we if we criminalize sex purchase then it'll drive it underground it won't drive it underground you know the women's sex and the sex buyers have to be able to to connect and um we just we just there's just such a lot of evidence out there that shows the reality of what's happened in the countries that have adopted um an approach that sees it as exploitative and decriminalizes the women and criminalizes the men and where that hasn't happened like Linda said uh in Germany um there's not much difference between legalization and full decriminalization um it has not uh met what the proponents of it said that that it would can i pick up on that as well i think first of all the terminology sex workers work um whenever i've been doing participation work with women i've asked them how would you identify what terminology would you use in the inside outside project 16 women were involved and that one wanted to be called a sex worker so i think we need to be very careful about that terminology and not apply it to people who would not use it themselves and i mean i think it's interesting the term what does that cover sex work i certainly know in 2015 a pamphlet went out from an organization in scotland and they said that a sex worker was everybody that was involved in any element of the sex industry and that included cleaners and lap dancing clubs pornographers camera men sound men on shoots right up to women involved in escorting the street prostitution so it's a very wide term and what does that actually mean in reality whenever it becomes so broad and are we really saying within that terminology that somebody who's involved in selling images online of course they have needs absolutely have a voice but are we really saying that those needs of that woman as a sex worker are the same as the needs as a woman who's involved in street prostitution for 10 years so i think we have to unpick the terminology a little bit before we start to answer that question and it's acknowledging yes absolutely some women do identify as that however you know i think we need to look at this idea about being safer and i think we have to name who commits the violence and makes it unsafe the violence that is enacted and committed people don't tend to like to say that it is men and they don't like to tend to say that it is punters but in my experience and the experience of the encompass network and other services directly involved in women who makes it unsafe it is the men who make it unsafe and we clearly heard that through some of the accounts today and i know that from the work that i do we have to start saying who commits the acts of violence who makes it unsafe primarily it is punters some people would say that pseudo punters but it is men who feel entitled within those contexts um Hilary Connell on a really interesting piece of research who looked at the violence that men enacted as punters against the women and it primarily was down to they didn't get the service that they wanted they didn't get the kind of sex that they wanted they weren't able to have an erection and they weren't able to come so who did they take that out on the women so i think we have to start looking at the concept of being safe and what that actually means and if you're talking about deregulation absolutely in New Zealand it has been highlighted that women feel more comfortable reporting the violence and go into the police that's crucial but the violence didn't stop it didn't stop the violence and that's what we need to look to do just really shortly to stigma never left a bruise on me um mended punters did and where the stigma should be placed is um on the sex bios the pimps and the traffickers very very briefly said that um it can never be safe because the values and beliefs of the men who who go to find who go to pay for sexual access to women women's bodies are inherently unsafe that's why they do it it's an impossibility it's impossible okay and i think this will probably be our final question um after so many years of discussion what needs to happen to ensure the scotish parliament criminalizes the purchase of sex you're the ms please yeah i know happy to talk about that i just want to be in the final question let me do some talking so the the government are working towards that as has been said they've recognised for decades which is actually i feel a bit embarrassed about that you know it's been there in policy that this is violence against women it's been acknowledged but the action hasn't been taken there will be a a bill that works its way through parliament um as members of the public what you can do to help us get involved and speak to your local MSP you'll have a constituency MSP and a list MSP whenever a bill works its way through parliament it's consulted on by the government first and then by whichever committee is scrutinising it so there are two opportunities to to get involved and make your make your views known um dianne very helpfully um shared the model for scotland website um with us can you just remind me of that again is it orc dot org model for scotland orc www dot a model for scotland dot org so there there's lots of more information on that about about you know what we're we're we're proposing so i think those are the things i think when when the bill comes there are you know there's not universal acceptance that this is the best way to make women and girls safe that are those as you know we've we've heard that that believe decriminalising prostitution is the way to make women and girls safe so there will be a debate to be had as the bill works its way through so there'll be lots of opportunities for members of the public to get involved and as an msp and co-convener of the cpg i'll certainly be doing all i can to ensure that that it happens but a final point that's crucial though the the law changing in itself is not enough and it won't be enough for the women involved and we have to make sure that as the bill is making its way through parliament we do everything we can to make sure that exit services and support are properly um funded and i say i'm not a member of government but i'm a member of the party of government and i say that we need to push the scottish government on that to ensure that there's proper backing there because just to change the law and to end this won't make women's lives better we need to have that whole whole package so with two minutes left to go can i just um ask you to join me in thanking our panel members um Linda Thompson, Michael Conroy and Diane Martin very much and i thank you all for coming it is absolutely roasting in here that's amazing stamina to sit for this amount of time listening we appreciate you being here and we'll get the answers to all these questions and pop up there was some some thoughts and reflections on what was said so we'll get that up on the website as well so you can you can share them so thank you very much and thank you


Hey everyone, welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin here with Kevin DePugh, Senior Director Future Server Architecture at HPE. Kevin, it's great to have you on the program. You're going to be breaking down everything that's exciting and compelling about Gen 11. How are you today? Thanks Lisa, and I'm doing great. Good, good, good. So let's talk about ProLiant Gen 11, the next generation of compute. I read some great stats on hpe.com. I saw that Gen 11 added 28 new world records while delivering up to 99% higher performance and 43% more energy efficiency than the previous version. That's amazing. Talk to me about Gen 11, what makes this update so compelling? Well, you talked about some of the stats regarding the performance and the power efficiency and those are excellent. We partnered with AMD. We've got excellent performance on these platforms. We have excellent power efficiency, but the advantage of this platform go beyond that. Today we're going to talk a lot about cybersecurity and we've got a lot of security capabilities in these platforms. We've built on top of the security capabilities that we've had generation over generation. We've got some new exciting capabilities we'll be talking about. So whether it's the performance, whether it's power efficient, whether it's security, all those capabilities are in this platform. Security is part of our DNA. We put it into the design from the very beginning and we've partnered with AMD to deliver what we think is a very compelling story. The security piece is absolutely critical. We could have an entire separate conversation on the cybersecurity landscape and the changes there, but one of the things I also noticed in the material on Gen 11 is that HPE says it's, quote, fundamental. What do you mean by that and what's new that makes it so fundamental? Well, by saying it's fundamental is security is a fundamental part of the platform. You need systems that are reliable. You need systems that have excellent performance. You need systems that have very good power efficiency. Those things you talked about before, those are all very important to have a good server. But security is a part that's absolutely critical as well. So security is one of the fundamental capabilities of the platform. I had mentioned we built on top of capabilities, capabilities like our Silicon root of trust, which ensures that the firmware stack on these platforms is not compromised. Those are continuing this platform that have been expanded on. We have our trusted supply chain and we've expanded on that as well. We have a lot of security capabilities, our platform certificates, our IDEV IDs. There's just a lot of security capabilities that are absolutely fundamental to these being a good solution because as we said, security is fundamental. It's an absolutely critical part of these platforms. Absolutely. For companies in every industry, I want to talk a little bit about one of the other things that HPE describes Gen 11 as is being uncompromising. And I wanted to understand what that means and what's the value add in it for customers. Yeah, well by uncompromising means we can't compromise on security. Security, to what I said before, it's fundamental. It can't be compromised. You have to have security be strong on these platforms. So one of the capabilities which we're specifically talking about when we talk about uncompromising is a capability called SPDM. We've extended our Silicon Root of Trust which is one of our key technologies we've had since our Gen 10 platforms. We've extended that through something called SPDM. We saw a problem in the industry with the ability to authenticate option cards and other devices in the system. Silicon Root of Trust verified many pieces of firmware in the platform, but one piece that it wasn't verifying was the option cards. And we knew we needed to solve this problem and we knew we couldn't do it 100% on our own because we needed to work with our partners, whether it's a storage option card, a NIC or even devices in the future. We needed to make sure that we could verify that those were what they were meant to be. They weren't compromised. They weren't maliciously compromised and that we could authenticate them. So we worked with industry standards bodies to create the SPDM specification and what that allows us to do is authenticate the option cards in the systems. So that's one of our new capabilities that we've added in these platforms. So we've gone beyond securing all of the things that Silicon Root of Trust secured in the past to extending that to the option cards and their firmware as well. So when we boot up one of these platforms, when we hand off to the OS and to the customer software solution, they can rest assured that all the things that have run, all that that platform is not compromised. A bad guy has not gone in and changed things and that includes a bad guy with physical access to the platform. So that's why we have uncompromised security in these platforms. Outstanding, that sounds like great work that's been done there and giving customers that piece of mind where security is concerned is table stakes for everybody across the organization. Kevin, you mentioned partners. I know HPE is extending protection to the partner ecosystem. I wanted to get a little bit more info on that from you. Yeah, we've worked with our option card vendors, numerous partners across the industry to support SPDM. We were the ones who kind of went to the industry standards bodies and said we need to solve this problem. And we had agreement from everybody. Everybody agrees this is a problem that had to be solved but to solve it, you've got to have a partnership. We can't just do it on our own. There's a lot of things that we HPE can solve on our own. This is not one of them. To be able to get a method that we could authenticate and trust the option cards in the system, we needed to work with our option card vendors. So that's something that we did and we use also some capabilities that we work with some of our processor vendor partners as well. So working with partners across the industry, we were able to deliver SPDM. So we know that option card, whether it's a storage card or a NIC card or GPUs in the future, those may not be there from day one, but we know that those option cards are what they intended because you could do an attack where you compromise the option card. You compromise the firmware in that option card and option cards have the ability to read and write to memory using something called DMA. And if those cards are running firmware that's been created by a bad guy, they can do a lot of very costly attacks. I mean, there's a lot of statistics that show just how costly cybersecurity attacks are. If option cards have been compromised, you can do some really bad things. So this is how we can trust those option cards. And we had to partner with those partners in the industry to both define the spec and both sides had to implement to that specification so that we could deliver the solution we're delivering. HPE such a strong partner ecosystem did a great job of articulating the value in this for customers from a security perspective. I know that you're also doing a lot of collaboration and work with AMD. Talk to me a little bit about that and the value in it for your joint customers. Yeah, absolutely. AMD is a longstanding partner. We actually started working with AMD about 20 years ago when we delivered our first AMD Opturon based platform, the HP Proline DL585. So we've got a long engineering relationship with AMD and we've been making products with AMD since they introduced their Epic Generation processor in 2017. That's when AMD really up their security game. They created capabilities with their AMD secure processor, their secure encryption virtualization, their memory encryption technologies. And we work with AMD long before platforms actually release. So they come to us with their ideas, their designs. We collaborate with them on things we think are valuable when we see areas where they can do things better, we provide feedback. So we really have a partnership to make these processors better and it's not something where we just work with them for a short amount of time and deliver a product. We're working with them for years before those products come out. So that partnership allows both parties to create better platforms because we understand what they're capable of, they understand what our needs are as a server provider. And so we help them make their processors better and they help us make our products better. And that extends in all areas, whether it's performance, power efficiency, but very importantly in what we're talking about here, security. So they've got an excellent security story with all of their technologies. Again, memory encryption, they've got some exceptional technologies there, all their secure encryption virtualization to secure virtualized environments. Those are all things that they excel at and we take advantage of those in our designs. We make sure that those work with our servers as part of a solution. Sounds like a very deeply technically integrated and longstanding relationship that's really symbiotic for both sides. I wanted to get some information from you on HPE Server Security Optimized Service. Talk to me about what that is. How does that help HPE, help its customers get around some of those supply chain challenges that are persistent? Yeah, what that is is with our previous generation of products, we announced something called our HPE trusted supply chain. And, but that was focused on the US market. With the solution for Gen 11, we've expanded that to other markets. It's available from factories other than the ones in our US. It's available for shipping products to other geographies. So what that really was is taking the HPE trusted supply chain and expanding it to additional geographies throughout the world which provides a big benefit for our non-US based customers. And what that is is we're trying to make sure that the server that we ship out of our factories is indeed exactly what that customer is getting. So try to prevent any possibility of attack in the supply chain going from our factories to the customer. And if there isn't attack, we can detect it and the customer knows about it. So they won't deploy a system that's been compromised because there have been high profile cases of supply chain attacks. We don't want to have that with our customers buying our Proline products. So we do things like enable UEFI secure boot which is an ability to authenticate the what's called a UEFI option ROM driver on option cards. That's enabled by default. Normally that's not enabled by default. We enable our high security mode in our ILO product. We include our intrusion detection technology option which is an optional feature but it's there standard when you buy one of the boxes with this capability is trusted supply chain capability. So there's a lot of capabilities that get enabled at the factory. We also enable server configuration lock which allows a customer to detect and get a bad guy modify anything in the platform when it transits from our factory to them. So what it allows a customer to do is get that platform and know that it is indeed what it is intended to be and that it hasn't been attacked and we've now expanded that to many geographies throughout the world. Excellent. So much more coverage across the world which is so incredibly important as cyber attacks continue to rise year over year the ransomware becomes a household word the ransoms get even more expensive especially considering the cybersecurity skills gap. I'm just wondering what are some of the ways in which everything that you've described with Gen 11 and the HPE partner ecosystem with AMD for example how does that help customers to get around that security skills gap that is present? Well, the key thing there is we care about our customer security. So as I mentioned, security is in our DNA. We do, we consider security in everything we do every update the firm where we make when we do the hardware design whatever we're doing, we're always considering what could a bad guy do? What could a bad guy take advantage of and attempt to prevent it? And AMD does the same thing. You can look at all the technologies they have in their AMD processor, they're making sure their processor is secure we're making sure our platform is secure so that the customer doesn't have to worry about it. So that's something the customer can trust us they can trust that AMD so they know that that's not the area where they have to expend their bandwidth. They can extend their bandwidth on the security on other parts of the solution versus knowing that the platform and the CPU is secure. And beyond that, we create features and capabilities that they can take advantage of. In the case of AMD, a lot of their capabilities are things that the software stack and the OS can take advantage of. We have capabilities on the client side that the software and that they can take advantage of whether it's server configuration lock or whatever we try to create features that are easy for them to use to make their environments more secure. So we're making things, they can trust the platform they can trust the processor they don't have to worry about that. And then we have features and capabilities that lets them solve some of the problems easier. So we're trying to help them with that skills gap by making certain things easier and making certain things that they don't even have to worry about. Right, it sounds like allowing them to be much more strategic about the security skills that they do have. My last question for you, Kevin is Gen 11 available now where can folks go to get their hands on it? So Gen 11 was announced earlier this month the products will actually be shipping before the end of this year, before the end of 2022. And you can go to our website and find all about our compute security. So all that information is available on our website. Awesome, Kevin, it's been a pleasure talking to you unpacking Gen 11, the value in it, why security is fundamental the uncompromising nature with which HPE and its partners have really updated the system and the rest of world coverage that you guys are enabling. We appreciate your insights and your time, Kevin. Thank you very much, Lisa. Appreciate it. We want to let you and the audience know check out hpe.com slash info slash compute for more info on Gen 11. Thanks for watching.


Welcome back. Now, economic uncertainty and geopolitical volatility top the list of worries for the year ahead among chief executives and board members of major companies around the world. That's according to the 2024 CEO and board confidence monitor, a poll of more than 3,000 CEOs and board members conducted by Hydroconstruggles, one of the world's leading executive search firms. Other concerns include recruitment and retention, shifts in market dynamics and company culture. Well, joining me now to talk about this, I'm pleased to say is Alice Breeden. She's partner in the London Office of Hydroconstruggles. Alice, welcome to you. Thank you. We've gone through the main concerns there. What I thought was most striking is that the people you spoke to felt that the only one that they have, he can get their arms around his culture. Yes. That's interesting finding too. Yeah, we were pleased with the information. We were keen as we go into 2024 to understand what's on the minds of leaders and boards as we go into this year. There are so many things going on. We were interested to see such a long list, which I suppose is to be expected, given what's going on around us. And yes, top of the list, geopolitical, macroeconomic. And yes, culture, one of the things CEOs feel most confident about, able to execute against. You found that more than half of the people you spoke to are concerned about next generation executive leadership. Why do you think that is? I think leaders today have led through such tumultuous times. We've had COVID, we've had post COVID. And now we're going to another year, which looks interesting to say the least. I think if you think about talent and retention, we have five generations in the workforce these days. It's so hard to engage and motivate that number of different type of people. We also have the hybrid working piece. So I think those concerns combined make it interesting these days to keep everyone retained. So it wasn't a question necessarily of CEOs and board members lacking confidence in the next generation of corporate leaders? No, I wouldn't say that. No, I think we asked people what they were concerned about or what they had confidence in going into this year. I think you'd expect any leader to have a long list. And that's on the list, of course, alongside many other things as you mentioned like tech and AI and climate and all the long list that we found. But on that basis, so, I mean, it's surprising that people say they do feel confident in being able to manage the culture when, as you've just said, there are now five different generations in the workforce. You cannot reconcile all of these people around one set of cultural values, or can you? Yeah, I think you can. So I think, again, if you look at the data, you know, culture is something people have confidence in compared to some of these other bigger issues. So that would be one thing. And I think if I think about my experience working with clients, with boards and chief executives over, you know, almost 30 years now, we have seen clients and companies really focus on aligning their strategy with their purpose and their culture and making the effort to do that. And I think the culture is the thing that guides decision making when everything else is uncertain. So I think culture is what people have really paid attention to and do know how to do. Do you think the current generation of CEOs are absolutely terrified by younger generations? I mean, you know, particularly Gen Z, you know, they have a very, very different attitude towards the world of work from some of their predecessors, for example. Well, certainly the data doesn't say anything about anyone being terrified. In my experience, I think leaders are trying to, you know, lead effectively through everything. And as we said, it's a long list of things. So leaders are being thoughtful, I think, about differences, being thoughtful about having different points of view. Again, if you think about our work with leadership teams and boards, we're seeing more and more diverse individuals being hired into those. And in the UK, particularly, you know, we're making great strides in terms of different genders, different types of people, different voices. We need to shift more perhaps to different generational voices. But yes, progress is being made. You mentioned climate change just now. Yeah. It was quite surprising that that didn't register particularly highly as a challenge for 2024. Why is that? We were interested in that finding, too. It could be a few things, what I'd like to believe, and also working with boards globally. We've moved on from asking about why we should focus on climate much more to the how. So it's more an execution challenge. So again, if you look at the long list of things people are worried about, I think perhaps they're less worried because they have now done their report. They've understood what it all means. They're now thinking about the how to collaborate, how to deliver it. Not to say that's easy, but perhaps it's not so much of a worry as macroeconomic trends and economic environment and so on. One thing that we talked about a lot on this programme is the turnover in the C-suite right now. Chief executives, chief financial officers. I mean, for the last couple of years, it's run at really quite elevated levels compared with history. Why do you think that is? Well, I think the reason why we're interested in this data is to understand what's on people's minds and therefore what kind of leader you need for today. And how does that change from the past? Or do you need a different leader? I think we see leaders today need to be more agile, more resilient, often more able to cope with shocks and crises. And that's very present in the work we do when we think about finding leaders for our clients. Turnover, I mean, the world seems to be moving faster every day, doesn't it? So you need to potentially shift to have the right leader in place. I just wondered whether it's because a lot of the C-suite that we saw during the pandemic years were so exhausted by having to keep the show on the road during that period that a lot of them have bowed out over the two years since. I'm not sure if that's the case or not. Certainly COVID took it out of lots of us, didn't it? It was a tough time. Yeah, I'm not sure if that's the case. So what are the sort of soft skills that you're trying to identify now then in future leaders? So we are thinking a lot about that. So we recently reworked the answer to that, if you like, in light of the global environment, which you might expect. So certainly leading across borders and boundaries. So that's thinking not just about your quarterly returns, but thinking about your stakeholders, your communities, your environments. That's something. And then for the individual leader, as I mentioned, sort of resilience, agility, adaptability, the ability to learn and pivot, given all the change, you don't know what's going to come. So as a successful leader, you need to be able to move quickly and adapt. Absolutely. Well, it's a fascinating survey and it's been great talking to you today, Alice. Thank you very much for having me. Good to see you.


The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the Italian electricity system, resulting in a decrease in electricity consumption and an increase in the share of renewables. This has led to a shift in the balance between conventional and renewable sources of electricity generation, as well as a reduction in the overall cost of electricity. This article was authored by Emilio Guiani, Marco Gallici, Mario Muridu, and others.