Okay, everybody, welcome to the last event in the plenary room. It's my delight to introduce this last session, as was mentioned this morning, and as I expect you all know, there is fantastic and historical great news coming out of UNESCO around the adoption now, the formal adoption of the OER recommendation. And we have with us today, and it's fantastic they're able to be with us. Thanks so much, Zana, for coming from Paris today. We have three people who are keen to share with you a bit more about the UNESCO OER recommendation, including the kind of process it's taken to get to this particular historical milestone and some sense of what the recommendation says and what will happen next. So we have Micha, Zainab and Gasper, and each of them are going to take a bit of time to share with you some of the developments over time and how we got here. So over to you. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. My name is Zainab Varoglu, and I am the program specialist for ICT in education in the communication and information sector of UNESCO and headquarters in Paris. So I'm going to just go through, just open this up, and I'm going to just go through how we got here and some ideas for next steps. So I will start with what is UNESCO? It's this, the headquarters looks like that. It's a traditional 1950s building in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. It's a UN agency responsible for international cooperation in education, science, communication and information, and it was set up right after the First World War, the Second World War, I'm sorry, and it just celebrated a birthday. It has 193 member states, 11 associate member states. These are countries as it's stated on the slide. These are territories which are not responsible for conducting international relations directly, and a network of national commissions which Gasper will introduce in his speech, links to NGOs, non-governmental organizations. It has field offices in over 50 countries covering all world regions, and as you will see, it has offices everywhere except in Antarctica. We do not cover Antarctica. So until we set up that office in Antarctica, this is the way it is, but we do have coverage worldwide. This is where we work, and the basis of what we do in education, science, and education and communication and information at least, is linked to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19, which was written right after the Second World War, but is still very relevant today, and it states that all persons have rights and fundamental freedoms to receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. This is way before open educational resources was part of any vocabulary. Article 26, of course, is the right to education. UNESCO's constitution echoes these UN commitments, which is the free exchange of ideas and knowledge supporting the sharing of knowledge using technologies. Again, this is from 1945. So the basis was very far sighted at the time, and today these words have still continued to echo. So as you may have heard, on Monday afternoon, the UNESCO Member States adopted the UNESCO Open Educational Resources recommendation. So what is a recommendation? A recommendation is exactly semantically what it means. It's a recommendation. It's an encouragement to member states to undertake a series of actions. In terms of UNESCO's mandate, we're not like the European Commission. We do not have the mandate to give directives. UNESCO does not have the mandate to impose or enforce anything to its member states, but it has levels of standard setting. One of them is a convention, which is the highest level that we have operationally. And the second level is a recommendation. A recommendation is much more fluid, if you like. It's easier to adapt, and it's a bit easier to adopt also. A convention, just as an aside, UNESCO also adopted a very important convention during the last general conference, which means last week, which is a global convention on the recognition of qualifications for students and learners. And that's another topic, but I'm very proud also of this achievement of UNESCO. So just to explain to you a recommendation is a suggestion. As you can see, there's a slide you can't read, and it's on purpose. All those lines represent all the recommendations that UNESCO has adopted since 1989. It's 30 years. There's only about 15 lines on that slide. There's one more line now since Monday, and it's on the OER recommendation. Recommendations are not very common practice, and they're not adopted, and they're not developed very, very often. And just to let you know, there are about two or three of those lines are actually revisions of earlier recommendations. So it is really a very, very historic event. The process to getting to this recommendation has been long, it's been really, really long. It started, the impetus came from Slovenia, and I think my colleagues will speak more to that. They proposed in 2016 that to the UNESCO governing bodies that a recommendation be done. In 2016, there was a study to show if this might perhaps be a good idea. And the response was yes, perhaps it's a good idea. And then there was the Second World OER Congress, which some of you I think were there. And after that, the member states all of them, all 109 at the time, 95 of them, agreed that we could develop a text for a recommendation. So the text that was used for this recommendation is one that many of you have already seen in some form or the other. It's built on the Ljubljana OER Action Plan, which in itself was one of the most consulted documents I have seen in my over 20 year career at UNESCO. It was consulted more than anything I've ever known to be consulted on, and it was consulted even further between last November and today. And we went through a number of different steps, and we had a huge meeting in May, which again some of you were present, and some of you provided inputs to this meeting. And the text was agreed upon by our member states. The member states were all invited to come in their capacity as representatives of their governments. And that is quite something which means that when a member state spoke, they spoke in the name of their country. And so it was a diplomatic conference, and we invited the OER community to come to this event also. We could not invite them as participants, because it was according to the rules and regulations. It's the countries that decide on the recommendation, which is related to what they would be asked to do. But the OER community was there, and they did provide inputs, and the text was therefore adopted. At UNESCO, we try not to vote on things. We tried to get things done by consensus, which means that everybody has to agree, everyone, absolutely. And we managed. The text that has been adopted was agreed by consensus, so it means everyone, by member states. And this was presented last week twice to the member states, first in a small commission, which adopted it, and then it was adopted by the entire, all UNESCO member states. So it is official. It's real. It's there. The inside of the recommendation looks like that. I think some of you have seen it. It, again, it takes from the Lugliana OER action plan, and it addresses the five issues that have been recognized as needed in order to mainstream open educational resources into the educational community worldwide. The first one is building capacity to create access, use, adapt, and redistribute OER. The basis here is many people say OER is a great idea. Who can say no, but it's very difficult to have the skills and know how to find it, use it, reuse it, mix, remix, share, et cetera. The next point is about inclusive equitable access to quality OER. We are talking here about inclusive to vulnerable communities, including persons with disabilities and those that are marginalized in society. Equitable, again, is the same principle. And quality, I'm sure there's a lot of people here from the higher education community, so we're talking about the famous words quality assurance and all that comes with it. The fourth one is developing sustainability models, and here I think we have to give a special thank you to Paul Stacey, because much of the Ljubljana OER action plan part on this was built on a work that he did in 2016 on sustainability models, and it's about how you make sure that OER is sustainable. One of the areas that's very loosely said is that everybody thinks it's a wonderful idea, but people need to find a way to be able to do it economically because we live in the real world and things have to be sustainable. The next one is, of course, on supportive policy, which is where should the policy be? Should it be institutional? Should it be national? Should it be part of another policy? How should this work? What is the way forward in this area? And the fifth one is on facilitating international cooperation. How can everyone work together in order to move forward in these areas? This is the only UNESCO standard-setting instrument in the area of ICT and education, the only one. Now, I think some of you knew Indrajit. I'm going to talk about the next steps, which is a dynamic coalition about the implementation of the OER recommendation. Indrajit was the director for the Knowledge Society's division in the communication and information sector. He passed away, unfortunately, in January 2019, and he came up with this idea while he was speaking with our colleagues in Slovenia, with Mitja and Gaspir. And he was, those of you who knew him, no, he was brilliant. And he was very, very far-seeking. He thought of things, and he was very, he was very, what's the word? He had good intentions and intelligent intentions. And I think this dynamic coalition was one of these examples. And therefore, I think it would, and he had this idea in February in 2017. And from there, it was referenced in the ministerial statement of the second World OER Congress, which was held in Ljubljana, the documents available online. And it was also part of the preliminary report of the UNESCO OER recommendation, which was adopted as part of the meeting held with the member states, which I told you of earlier in May 2019. And it supports the 0.5 of the recommendation, which was adopted today, which is on promoting and reinforcing international cooperation. Can you see it? Yes, you can. Okay. So in Ljubljana, we had 14 ministers. That's a lot of ministers to have at an expert meeting, actually, expert level meeting. They were from the countries that are up there. And they had, they had a round table and they made a statement. And they called on educational stakeholders to implement recommendations of the Ljubljana OER Action Plan to increase international collaboration in the area of OER through a dynamic coalition to expand and consolidate commitments to action strategies and legislation in this area.  In this regard, in terms of international cooperation, you have on, from the recommendation, you have the points A to F. So it outlines the areas which the collaboration would take place. It's about consolidating OER commitments to actions, to strategies, to reinforce the different activities. And to have everyone working together and contributing worldwide to the implementation of this document. This gentleman is Mr. Moiz Shakshuk. He's the Assistant Director General for Communication and Information at UNESCO. And when the document was adopted during the general conference, he announced that UNESCO will launch a dynamic coalition to effectively support these expansion of commitments and consolidation of commitments and strategies. The objective is that now that this document is adopted, we look forward to working together with the entire world. And the OER networks throughout this planet in implementing this forward. We are looking forward to having a first meeting during Mobile Learning Week, which takes place the first week of March at UNESCO. And we hope that you will be able to join us and that there will be a huge movement that includes all our stakeholders on all the continents to move forward to implement this recommendation. There has been a lot of work and a lot of commitment to make it happen. And we look forward to even more work and more commitment to making it implemented. Thank you. So now the story is about behind the scenes. So how we saw this. We went through this process. So we started in 2013 thinking about this issue. And we have been involved in anything. So internationally, nationally, personally as well. And it's not about the, now it's time to celebrate, actually. Because it's a, at the beginning, nobody actually believed that we would succeed, that we would come to the end. And there are two persons that cannot celebrate with us today. The ones who actually have been very strongly involved. One was the one of the first OER chair, Fred Mulder, professor from the Netherlands, Open University Netherlands. And Indrajit, and so now what should I say is that minute of silence and all these things and, but these are not the people that would like that. So what about that we have a minute of applause to them? What do you think? Thank you. So that was one slide I took because there is Rory. There's another, the original UNESCO OER chair sitting there. And it's about that UNESCO had quite a lot of work already before we started to work on the recommendation in 2012. And then this is what you've seen, this is what you've heard. I will pass this through. And here I will start with. So we had just, it was before this was named Open Education Consortium. It was named Open Coursware Consortium. That was the conference in Bali that actually everything started because Rory came across, sorry, Fred Mulder came across saying that look, but since you are so progressive in Slovenia, why don't we think about something which would be a global impact for our country? And we said, hey, why don't we just try it? And we were, in that time, we were young already. And then we said, okay, let's make the next conference in Gubliana. And we sat down like this and we discussed about what would that actually mean? And we haven't had an idea. So this is what then UNESCO sent us. And she said, well, you know, this is a timeline. If you wanted to go for this, this is a timeline. This is what we, those are the obstacles. We have to jump through all these obstacles to come to the end, which is 2019. And we said, well, that would be fun. Let's try it, let's try it. We will learn quite a lot. We will see what will happen out of it. And then we started. So first a lot of studies. We did a lot of studies. What's there, what's the status, what is needed, what should be the structure, whatever, then quite a lot of lobbying. And here, usually when you start to work with this, then you end up with several ministries, we end up with several entities inside UNESCO that usually don't really collaborate to each other. But here, somehow they feel that that should be something to work on. So Slovenian government did quite an excellent work on that. So the Ministry of Education from Gaspard and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There was quite a lot of structured, well-organized lobbying. And the meetings and everything. And you find out there is Asha from Commitment of Learning as well. And then we had the Liban Action Plan set up and before that six regional consultations so we can see how many countries have been involved, how many participants have been involved in discussing about what are the needs of all particular countries across the globe. And the outcome was a study, guidelines, tech steps. And this is how it looks like. So people came from all these countries talk about and start to talk about what they really need, what countries really need and how the OER can actually help them to stay in whatever they do. And there's another one, and there's another one, and there's another one. So a lot of people involved already even before we get to the point that there will be a recommendation. And then we had the OER World Congress, an excellent event. We actually sat down at the plant and then wrote down the action plan. This was the crowd, the ministers, decision makers from countries across the globe. 102 countries were there present. And then we started to develop the main, so based on the main strategic development lines. We developed the OER action plan, the mysterious statement you've seen. The statement about the dynamic coalition, global infrastructure for OER. And of course, the VNL Open Educational Resources case. And this is how the drafting was done. In the evening, late in the evening, people sitting behind the same table and drafting the text. And lobbying, quite a lot of lobbying again. So outside, inside UNESCO as well, because you have two entities which are involved. And then we had this proposal to executive board saying that maybe now, because we know that there is a need, maybe there is an interest for the community to set up the something which would be a recommendation. So what happened was that when Gashberg came into the executive board of 25 52 members, 33 of those signed officially the draft document in advance. So we officially know in advance that 32 countries, after those were 12 EU states as well, actually said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are signing, we go for it, we want to do that. So we said, okay, so that makes sense. Let's be a little bit more courageous, let's go, let's see what will happen. And we prepared the first OER recommendation draft. And then I will show you later on how this looks like. So first expert meeting, so we sit down, we went through, we schedule, we schedule completely everything. We had a second draft to open presentation and then you see how many entities, inputs we've got on the first draft. And then, so I did the editing all the time. The third draft with the expert group, and then we had the fourth draft and the second expert meeting, and we had replies from 31 countries. And you have the names there and EU commission as well. And then there was a lot of lobbying again.  And then you have to somehow find out what this guy was actually answering to another guy about the text which is there crossed. So yeah, it's an interesting work.  And then the last mile, so the sixth draft came out. And then there was this shift of the definition, the OER formal definition. And I will show you later on what happened. So we submitted this to the executive board in April 2019. And then there was intergovernmental special committee meeting where some of you have been present, which was for me the first time I've seen, I was part of the Slovenian delegation. And then you have this Slovenian tablet. And then if you put it like this, then you can speak. So it's like this old 70s hippie style of whatever communication. And then, so we went through, and some of you have been present, we went through world by world. So today's 100 people sitting in the room. And there was a text and editing. And then we came to the end. There were several issues in between, of course, because one country wanted to have something else than the others. So how it works in UNESCO is that you will suggest them. So don't interfere with the meeting. Just you two go outside in this special room and come back with some, you know, proposal. Or, you know, we finished meeting now because there is a dinner afterwards. So let's have a special, small special group and discuss this issue. Because we are hungry. And then we got this text. And this text went then to the final cleaning with UNESCO. And that was then proposed to the final conference. So at the final conference, and this is the only recording that's exist in the globe, since there is a rule in UNESCO. So the seating order. I haven't know that, so the Dutch folks explained to me. So they always vote a letter. And in that particular moment, S was voted as the first letter. So that would mean that Slovenia was sitting in the first row. So I was actually sitting in the first row, having a telephone and recording this. And before everything is started, it was discussion about Indigenous people document as well. So this Indian was actually praying that they, for the West, East, North, South, gods to help us to be wise, to accept the two documents. Now, this is actually a recording. So the word, you know, it's on the headphones. But you see two DGs, two A-DGs. The president's saying right now, so are there any other objections? And these two were a little bit worried still. Because, you know, it might happen that somewhere there, some country will say, I have an objection. And now, that's it. So we worked for six years to get to this point. Some numbers. So more than 1,000 individuals being involved throughout the process. More than 1,000. Four years of work, which goes now into the yesterday's talk, Economic, Cultural, Political. This is my email box. And I was not really answering all the emails. So more than 101 meetings from member states, organized by Slovenia, you have here many UNESCO internal coordination meetings. I haven't asked Zeynep how many are there. So to set up internal UNESCO issues, 122 member states comment and participate in the inputs. So if you are the UNESCO representative, then you get, you cannot just as UNESCO representative for National Commission just express your own ideas. You have to translate something that government is telling you to tell at the meeting. So this is governments telling, governments giving input to the document. And then all 194 member states confirmed the document. What was interesting was that before this clap was done, officially how it looks like inside UNESCO is that this guy, the president of the chairman was actually reading the document, reading just the input into the document. And then the question is, are there any comments? And then the countries are putting their flags like this. And then it was quite a lot of countries putting flags like this. So we said to God, Jesus. Now then unopened, I have a beautiful prepared Excel sheet which says country X said this and God is out. Everything prepared and Zeynep was prepared and everybody behind was prepared. Everybody were really prepared about now we have to fight. And then it started. And there were all countries except one who didn't really understand what he's talking about. All countries were expressing, really, they were expressing their gratitude, their interest and the willingness to really follow the document. So there is an interest and need for countries to do something on this idea. And we were sitting there waiting and then there was this final question and clap and that was it, more or less. So what now? Ah, this is what I wanted to show you. So this was a proposal of an OER definition that we as an experts proposed in the process. The other thing there came from the two entities which are quite influential. So if you read those two documents and if you put that to all the member states in the globe I was afraid about the definition. And in that particular time we did this trick about you guys go outside, talk, come back with something which would be a new definition of OER. So there is no other way. Otherwise it will be dead in this particular moment. Further steps? So we need to, we as a community now and Gaspard as a representative for national commissions and Zaneb as a lady who is now very influential inside UNESCO. We need to take care that this would not be just another document. So let's use this document. Let's try to change things really globally. You've heard about the dynamic coalition. You've heard about it, we are talking about how we can create something which would be a supportive mechanism for this dynamic coalition. And there are many regional initiatives. So there is one from Kohl, there is another one from the Ministry of Slovenia. So there are many regional initiatives as well for regional collaboration. And what these people need is actually, they need the support of experts, the need of support of the community which we are. And we have three layers. So what we find out is that if you use the mechanisms that we set up in this process, which is if there is a, for example, if there is a problem in country X and you minister will not listen to you with your ideas, you can always come to Slovenia or to other countries as well and we can, you know, talk to our minister that he will talk to your minister and that is completely different story then. This is how you open the doors. Because otherwise you end up in some ceiling and that's it. So let's try to use these three layers of mechanisms. So our energy, our know-how, expertise, community that we have, we know everything about sharing. We do things, we share things, we want to be open, transparent.  They work to each other already. For years they know each other. They go to drink beer together afterwards. So this is what they do, only drink beer. So why? Because they need something to work on. So let's use this layer because if they propose something to UNESCO as a new program, as a new line, as a new activity, UNESCO will consider that as an important input. And then we use UNESCO because UNESCO can, you know, certainly show a little bit completely different view on international collaboration. So, and yeah, so we had a discussion already about the OER Observatory which will show then with metrics and indicators, not just what is happening across the globe on OER implementation, but also where you as a country is actually staying right now, how you do against your neighbouring. So we know that this shame and fame principle works pretty much pretty well, you know, if there will be, for example, in Slovenia, and for Slovenia there will be Italian government better than Slovenian government, or Croatian, then all the neighbours, we want to be better than our neighbours and our neighbours want to be better than us. So, you know, we can use these principles a little bit because then when these guys will appear and report to the UNESCO what they did on OER recommendation and there will be a minister saying, hmm, we didn't done anything. And then the neighbouring can say, we did this and this and that, we implemented blah blah blah policies. Then this will work. But they cannot do it by themselves. If you are a politician today, you don't know who actually is doing anything on the operational level. So, this is why we need to be, we need to be proactive, we need to come to talk to them, we need to start talking in the sense of look, we are here to help you. Not because of you, but because we need to do things, we need to change things. So, the end, it was fun, it's still fun and now it became a real chance to do things differently. That's it. So, thank you Zainab, thank you Mitya. I will be brief, I have no presentation to make but I am standing here. Mitya took over one of my two points that I would like to bring to you, to your attention now. First of all, I would like to remind of another person, important person in this overall process, not only because I'm coming from Slovenia, but on the photo from before, we have seen the former Slovenian minister of education, science and sport. And she was one of the really leading and forcing politicians in this process because she confirmed that Slovenia will host the second world OER Congress. She was attending an expert meeting in Paris itself, what is not usual for politicians. She was also attending one of the regional consultations for the Congress. So, she cannot celebrate, but she celebrates because she knows, of course, about the decision last Monday and she is happy to. Not only because of this achievement by her and by us, of course, but she was named and confirmed as one of 12 people, 12, they call it wise people, who are now members of a so-called high-level reflection group to the director general of UNESCO, who will personally advise her and the team at the secretariat how to transform and how to modernize the organization of UNESCO itself. So, that's my first point. The second point, Mitya has already taken it over, but I'm representing the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO and I said from the beginning when we started to collaborate, when I get to know Mitya and his colleagues with the overall process, but then with the establishment of the OER chair and the overall process during the next four years then and I see many faces, of course, from Rory, Nicole, Christian, Igor, Paul, of course, many of you were practically and actively involved in this process and from the beginning when I was, for example, approached by representatives of the OER community or OE community because then I got somehow a focal point for the organization of the Congress and they were asking how can I contact, for example, my government or do we have in my country also a commission for UNESCO? And I said, yes, most of the member states are usually it's really like this that every member states after the statute of UNESCO has to have a national commission for UNESCO, but it's always different, of course. It depends always what kind of structure the government has, how much funds they are available for that, et cetera, et cetera. In 90% of the cases, national commissions are part of the government itself, so they are being seated in one of the ministries of the government, like in Slovenia, for example, but in stronger countries, national commissions are also independent bodies when the funds are available, okay, usually also given by the government itself, but they are playing an independent role, like in Canada, for example, or Germany or Korea, South Korea. But it always depends, so I was approached, for example, by a colleague from Brazil, how can I talk to my national commission? And as Mitya said, we are a network of national commissions, of course, I do not know every national commission in this world, but throughout the years that I'm working for our national commissions, of course, we have contacts all over the globe, and I said, look, okay, I will write to them, I will connect you, and in Slovenia, it's easy. We are a small country, we can knock at the door of my minister at his office, or I can call the foreign minister, for example. That's not possible in a country like Italy, for example, or Canada, but it's probably easier for the colleagues from the national commission. There's a lack of coalition of member states or a coalition of bodies in the field that will take care of the implementation of the recommendation. There will be given structures that can be used, but there are already existing structures, like, for example, national commissions or other bodies that are in charge and that can be contacted by each of you to make this process somehow rolling. So I'm just, I can confirm what ZANEP and Meteor have already presented. It was a tough process, but it was especially much fun, and in the end, it was a big success because I can also compare this recommendation to other recommendation texts, and although I'm not an expert, but this text is good and it has really points that could be now the action plan for the further steps. So I thank you for your attention. Some of the people at the regional consultations they know because they said always this is the OER phase because always when I was concluding my little speeches at the regional consultations I said, remember this phase because you will see it again. So I think you will see it also again. Thank you very much. So Paul, we conclude or we conclude? Or? Thank you. Thank you.


The next item of business is a debate on motion 8, 5, 9, 6 in the name of Tom Arthur on the final stage of the Edinburgh Bakers Widows Fund Bill. Before the debate begins, the Presiding Officer is required understanding orders to decide whether or not, in his view, any provision of the bill relates to a protected subject matter. Put briefly, that is whether it modifies the electoral system and franchise for Scottish parliamentary elections. If it does, the motion to pass the bill will require support from a supermajority of members. That is a two-thirds majority of all members, which is 86. In the case of this bill, the Presiding Officer has decided that, in his view, no provision of the Edinburgh Bakers Widows Fund Bill relates to a protected subject matter. Therefore, the bill does not require a supermajority to be passed at stage 3. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons. I call on Tom Arthur to speak to and move the motion up to five minutes, please, Mr Arthur. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to open the final stage proceedings on the Edinburgh Bakers Widows Fund Bill. I would again like to thank my fellow committee members, Mary Fee and Alison Harris, for their contributions in progressing the bill to this stage. I would also like to put on record the committee's gratitude to the clerks for all of their support. As there are currently three private bill committees on the go, all with the same membership, we are being seen quite a bit of each other. The chamber will be delighted to learn that it can also expect to see more of us in this capacity as the other two private bills progress. The preliminary stage debate on the power of enchafric emission drainage bill took place last week. A latest to the Signance, Dependence and Newity Fund amendment bill the previous week, members will no doubt recall the preliminary stage debate on the Edinburgh Bakers Widows Fund Bill 2, which took place back in September. To recap briefly, the Edinburgh Bakers Widows Fund Bill is a private bill introduced on 20 March 2017 and is being promoted by the trustees of the widow scheme. The overall objective of the bill is to transfer the property and assets of the widow's fund to a new charitable trust. The incorporation of bakers of the city of Edinburgh was set up in medieval times to regulate the trade. The fund was established in the 19th century to provide financial support to the widows of the contributing members. However, an act of the 1813 limited membership of the scheme to men only under the age of 45. As I explained in my speech at the preliminary stage, in recent time members of incorporation have tended to be women or older men, nearer category of which, under the terms of the 1813 act, it is eligible to contribute to the scheme. The last contribution to the fund was made in 1981 and the last annuity that was paid under the scheme was in 1997. Since then, there have been no qualifying beneficiaries. In 2013, the trustees decided that the scheme should not continue to operate in its current form and formally close the scheme to new members. It felt that there was a need for change given the restrictions on the ability of the trustees to apply the assets of the fund as imposed by the provisions of the 1813 act. The fund is not a modern financial vehicle and with a finite number of potential beneficiaries, the trustees found themselves unable to apply the fund assets in accordance with the spirit of the fund. In place of the fund, the trustees intend to set up a new charitable trust that will have the purposes of the advancement of education by supporting education and training opportunities in baking and the advancement of the arts, heritage, culture or science by providing public information and promoting an appreciation of local baking and the history of the baking trade, particularly in Edinburgh. The new trust, the incorporation of bakers of Edinburgh charitable trust, has been approved by the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator. At preliminary stage, the committee was pleased to recommend to the Parliament that the general principles of the bill be agreed to and that the bill should proceed as a private bill. At consideration stage, private bill committees are required to consider any objections to the bill and also to consider any amendments. In that case, there are no objections, as was expected, and no amendments were lodged. Consideration stage consisted of a very short meeting of the committee. At the final stage of the bill's parliamentary passage, I reiterate that the committee supports the aim of the promoter to establish the new charitable trust, to enable the trustees to make capital payments to the potential beneficiaries, to dissolve the fund and repeal the 1813 act. I am therefore pleased to move motion S5M-08596, that the Parliament agrees that the Edinburgh Bakers Widows Fund bill be passed. I now call Alison Harris up to three minutes, please, Ms Harris. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. As Tom Arthur has outlined, the money raised by the Edinburgh Bakers Widows scheme was used to pay annuities to widows of contributors to the fund. In certain circumstances, provision could also be made for elderly members or orphans of members who were considered to be in need. As we have heard, the promoters considered that there was a need for change, given the restrictions of the 1813 act. With a finite number of potential beneficiaries, the trustees found themselves unable to apply the fund's assets in accordance with the spirit of the fund. If nothing was done, the fund assets could potentially become frozen and the trustees would be powerless to make any changes. The last annuity that was paid under the scheme was in 1997. Since then, there have been no qualifying members to the fund who could apply in the future for annuities if they were widowed. However, there were two wives of contributing members who could qualify in the future for annuities if they were widowed and, as such, they had a contingent interest in the fund. As well as the best means of creating the charitable trust, the trustees of the fund also considered how the interests of those individuals were dealt with and the committee was keen to ensure that they were treated fairly. In the promoters' memorandum, it was explained that, prior to transferring the fund assets into the charitable trust, the trustees would make a single capital payment to each of the two wives of the contributing members. The agreed capital payments had been ring-fenced from the fund's assets. The bill gives authority to the trustees to make a single payment to each of the wives who were not and potentially may never become widows. The intention was that the payments could be made to the wives prior to the dissolution of the fund. The committee was satisfied with the promoters' accounts of the steps that had been taken to ensure that the wives in question received equitable payments. We were told that an actuary had calculated capital payments on which the wives had been consulted. The wives had agreed to accept the capital payments in lieu of potential future annuities to which they might have been entitled as widows in terms of the 1813 act. The committee was content that, firstly, the interests of the only two individuals who might in the future have been affected by the dissolution of the fund have been addressed. Secondly, the establishment of the charitable trust will provide an appropriate means by which the proceeds that are contained in the fund can be used to further the purposes of the incorporation to the benefit of the public. I thank the convener, Tom Arthur, for moving the motion and Alison Harris for her contribution to the debate today. I also take this opportunity to thank the committee for their help and support during our preliminary stages. Thanks must also go to the witnesses who presented evidence. The helpful and cooperative approach that they took in presenting their evidence made our job as committee members much easier. Excuse me, Ms Fee, could we have a bit of quiet, please? I'm finding it difficult to hear, Ms Fee, which is unusual. Given the current interest in the art of baking, and I cite the very popular, the Great British Bake Off, which I have to say I've never watched, as evidence of the trend, it seems of particular relevance that the purposes of the new trust are to encourage and support training and education in baking. To provide training opportunities in baking and to promote the appreciation of local baking and the history of baking. In that context, I was interested to explore in a bit more detail the history of the fund. The incorporation of the bakers or backsters of the city of Edinburgh is one of the ancient trade incorporations or guilds set up in medieval times to regulate trade in many of the cities of northern Europe. It was granted a seal of cause in March 1522. Under the terms of the seal, members of the incorporation controlled admission to the craft of baking and to the supply of bread in Edinburgh. It was subject to penalties for poor quality. The incorporation prospered over the following years and acquired flour mills by the Water of Leith. However, with the advent of steam power, the water power mills became obsolete and had to be sold off at a loss. The Barra Trading Act of 1846 abolished the exclusive trading privileges of the incorporations, which generally declined thereafter. As explained by the promoters in evidence to the committee, the trading act came along in 1846 and the trades could no longer be the closed shop that they had been and they had to change their business. The committee was interested to learn that there is now a renewal of the trades and a revival of interest in Edinburgh, with people not only joining the bakers but the bonnet makers, the goldsmiths, the candle makers, and so on. We were also very encouraged to learn that if the bill was passed and the new trust created, the incorporation would be in a position to increase its membership and increase grant applications. That should also benefit the wider community. For example, the trust might be able to offer a baking course in a primary school or a prison perhaps. Under the new scheme, the benefits to the community would be much wider than it would be under the scheme, as set out under the 1813 act. Presiding Officer, I am pleased to endorse the motion that the bill be passed and I hope that all of the chamber can support that tonight at 5 o'clock. Thank you very much. That concludes the final stage debate on the Edinburgh Bakers Widows Fund Bill. We now move to the next item of business, which is consideration of business motion 9046, in the name of Josephus Patrick, on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out a revised business programme for tomorrow. I would ask any member who wishes to speak against the motion to press their request-to-speak button now, and I call on Josephus Patrick to move motion 9046. Formally moved. Thank you very much. No member has asked to speak against the motion. The question, therefore, is that motion 9046 be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. Thank you very much. We move now to decision time. The first question is that amendment 9000.2, in the name of Annie Wells, who seeks to amend motion 9000, in the name of Maureen Watt, on suicide prevention in Scotland, be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are agreed. The next question is that 9000.3, in the name of Monica Lennon, who seeks to amend motion 9000, in the name of Maureen Watt be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. No, we are not agreed. We will move to a division and members may cast their votes now. As a result of the vote in amendment 9000.3, in the name of Monica Lennon is yes, 77, no, 27, there were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore agreed. The next question is that motion 9000, in the name of Maureen Watt, as amended, on suicide prevention in Scotland, be agreed. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are not agreed. We will move to a division and members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion 9000, in the name of Maureen Watt, as amended, is yes, 77, no, 0, there were 27 abstentions, the motion as amended, is therefore agreed. The final question is that motion 8596, in the name of Tom Arthur, on the final stage of the Edinburgh Bakers-Widdows fund bill be agreed. We need to hold a division on this vote, so members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion 8596, in the name of Tom Arthur, is yes, 102, no, 0, no abstentions, the motion is therefore agreed and the Edinburgh Bakers-Widdows fund bill is passed. That concludes decision time. We will now move on to members' business, in the name of Claire Adamson. We will just take a few moments for members to change seats.


Hi, I'm Joe Buffoni, the Chief Officer of the Country Fire Authority. CFA is an amazing organisation and we achieve amazing things together. So all of us should stand proud in what you achieve and I'm asking you to support me to continue to be proud and to serve the community. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your efforts and your support and the terrific work that you've done over the last five weeks. We've had an incredibly busy time with some really complex and long duration jobs. Some of the examples are the Portland Ship Fire, which was 15 days duration. We had the Strathdowny Pete Fire, which was 40 days duration. We had the Summerton Tip Fire, which was 10 days in duration. And then we had the South Australia Deployment, where we had 200 personnel go over to support our neighbours in a time of need. That is a massive effort on behalf of CFA and we've worked very, very closely with our other emergency management partners. So I wanted to say, in particular to our frontline firefighters, to all of our frontline firefighters, thank you for your work and thank you for your efforts. It's really appreciated. I also wanted to acknowledge our support personnel. You play a critical role in supporting operations and I know that you actually give up your expertise, your time and I appreciate the flexibility, the expertise that you bring to those roles. And I encourage you to continue to do that but also say thanks. I'm also asking the managers of CFA to support the release of our support staff into those roles. They play a critical role in supporting our operations and I understand that you have business continuity that must continue but your support is really appreciated. All the indicators are showing us that we've got a tough summer ahead. El Nino is very, is positive. We have a strong Indian Ocean Dipole. Our underpinning dryness is similar to those of the mid-2000s and the fire behaviour that we've seen recently is without a doubt quite significant and we're just starting summer. So I'm asking you all to be focused on the summer ahead. I'm asking you to be focused on our priorities of issuing warnings and information to the community of first attack being aggressive and protecting life and property with determination but I'm also asking you to make sure that you're absolutely safe in doing that. So again to all of you, thank you for your support. Be safe and I'm wishing you all a safe and merry Christmas.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. On March 10th, an Ethiopian Airlines flight carrying 157 people crashed six minutes after it took off from Addis Ababa Airport. The reason for the crash was a faulty sensor which triggered the manoeuvrability characteristics augmentation system, a feature of the newly launched Boeing 737 MAX. In the past couple of days, a number of new reports have emerged which have exposed the extent to which Boeing has not properly advised pilots regarding these new features. To talk more about this, we have with us Praveer Prakarisa. Hello Praveer. Praveer, could you just first detail what have been the recent reports and how they put Boeing in the dock regarding the advice it gave to pilots? Well that advice was also something which the regulatory agencies also shared. So we should put the blame only on Boeing in this case. I think if the Federal Aviation Authority also has a lot of share in this blame. The major issue that has come up is we have recovered the flight data recorders. With the flight data recorders, we now know that the characteristic of the path of the aircraft was very similar to the Lion's Air crash which we now know was an MCAS issue and which was, you know, the pilots were really fighting against the MCAS. So one thing that comes out very clearly is that what was issued as the directive after the accident which should have then been able to prevent a repeat of this accident that this was not enough. Now is that true or not? Was it because of as it has been earlier argued that it was essentially well third world pilots, lack of experience of the co-pilot, all of this. So now it's very clear that there are conditions under which actually manual trim, which is what was advised, switch off electrical trim, manually trim it, manual trimming actually means rather anti-deluven system which you crank a wheel and the flap cups up and down and therefore you are able to restore or fight what the MCAS has done, restore the stability of the flight and you are okay. So that, this seems that this is not really possible because under certain conditions the basically the flap would essentially freeze and you would not be able to shall we say assert enough force with the cranking system that you had, manual cranking to be able to overcome that and therefore this recovery mode that was suggested was at best insufficient if not really useless. Now there have been simulated tests done to test this out and the simulated tests also show that if you have this MCAS runaway, but basically a runway stabilizing problem, then there is very little that the pilots could do. In this particular case the pilots restored what is called electrical trim because the manually they could not maneuver further, the flap which is supposed to go up and down did not behave, they forced that they were manually applying was not going to be enough, it has been shown why and then what happened was when electrical trim was they had to put an electrical trim to really be able to electrically move the flaps, then the MCAS again cut in and interestingly enough now we know again the MCAS amount it cut in was more than what the pilot could provide and therefore it completely over what he was doing and put the nose down further and leading to the unrecoverable irrecoverable crash. So this raises a very key question that in the aftermath of the accident if a simulated test was done and this was clearly proved, how is it that some of these tests were not done ahead of the release of this flight and this new technology? Well you know this has been the fundamental question that has been raised that why was the MCAS system developed, why were the pilots not informed and was it tested thoroughly and who did the FAA, Federation Aviation Authority, who did the certification essentially rely on what Boeing said instead of testing out all the things themselves. If we come to the first main question why was an MCAS system there at all? MCAS system was there to basically make the pilots feel that the new plane that was being given to them was very close to the original old Boeing 737 while we know that it was a much more powerful engine therefore that to shift the location of the engine, change the center of gravity of the aircraft all of this meant it might have behaved differently and therefore the pilots may have felt that they need more training or the retraining on the new system so to cut out that it appears that MCAS system was put not because of stability of the aircraft but for the pilots to feel it's like an old aircraft and therefore obviate the need for training the simulator training simulator programs all of that which is really which costs money takes time for the new planes to be inducted so that's a cost that Boeing was trying to save because it was really in a strong contest with Airbus 320 already in service they wanted to therefore catch up and therefore the need for speed so that was the MCAS issue if that was the idea that it's not really for stability primarily though that's been argued it was also for stability but essentially if the certain avoiding certification avoiding pilot training was the issue then the second major issue came up that therefore they hid this from the pilot now normally and I since I have dealt with control systems so much longer than I've dealt with shall be say news now normally a control system does not keep the operator in the dark in this case the pilot in the dark what what is behavior is if its behavior is not known then the system as a whole including the control system behavior is also unpredictable for the operator in this case the pilot therefore he doesn't really know what he can do so he's fighting something he doesn't know the cause if he knows the cause that's much easier for him to actually handle it well it still might fail but there is a much better possibility so you normally you do not cardinal principle of any control system is you do not keep the operator in the dark even if fly by wire lot of this control system you let the control system actually lead because without that very difficult manually to control certain systems so I can understand the need for that but keeping the operator in the dark is certainly not something you do as a consequence they did not want to put in they had two sensors they did not connect it to the system they did not show a light with the scent is only an extra you have to pay more for it which would show the two sensors do not agree with each other so all of these which appear incomprehensible otherwise seems to make sense if you see the Boeing did not want to disclose the MCAS system and what it did do to the aircraft and that part of it is something which they also partially hit from the aviation authority FAA in this case when they did not tell them there is the point eight degree per MCAS shall we see intervention it actually had been increased to 2.5 apparently even this 2.5 degrees even this was not in the documentation that submitted to FAA so all of this would indicate the Boeing more than anything else was interested in selling the aircraft fast enough to counteract the AB Airbus 320 competition in the process not only cut short a lot of the shall we say necessary steps both in terms of design and in terms of certification but also hid what they were doing from the pilot and the shall we say the people who are buying the aircraft and as a consequence when something went wrong the pilot had no way of knowing what to do neither did even subsequently the system have gave enough information for them to do that tragedy of it is that if Boeing had disclosed the extent of the problem Ethiopian Airlines crash should not have taken place and let's face it Ethiopian Airlines safety record is pretty good so that's that's the unfortunate part of it that this was a second I can understand the first being an accident I can understand okay we mean Boeing did make mistakes but okay mistakes happen but the second is really I would say a criminal act and it really deserves a much stronger shall we say response from the aviation authorities that a knuckle wrap a knuckle and even even as it's trying to rectify this flaw there have been reports of some more software errors emerging so this seems actually a part of a pattern too you know it's a one of the problems of life that you start having a problem the problem seemed to multiply because they come not from what is called a error an error as it were but a design hole which you have not thought through fully in computer terms somebody use the word bugs like to be together so it doesn't come from there really being a single error that you have made but some conceptual a black hole you have created your design where a number of things then are there which create the problem so in this case as they try to rectify something as a new problem seems to have come up we don't know what the details of it are but one thing is very clear forget this issue of the second bug the issue is that this now has to go through the following MCAS system has to be fully tested at all conditions we have to clearly have the two sensors linked to it we also need to know that can we recover from an MCAS system which has this strong ability to trim create such strong movements of the flap which changes the nose height of the angle of the aircraft is it possible then to do it with just some shall be super visual fixes all it it will need really a much deeper understanding of what went wrong and how to fix it under such conditions and finally it will be training of the operators and simulated training to boot because we have had people killed in large number of them to aircrafts crashing within short distances of each other and I think the most important part of it is that if the certification today has to be done again which it will be looks like the federal the federal aviation authorities FAA's credibility is at an old-time lowest taken a big hit because of this so the certifying authorities in different countries may want to look at this again so we are looking at anything between 6 to 8 months which is what is being optimistically now said to even longer it is interesting Boeing has already decided to cut the production of its aircraft it used to be 52 per month now I think is 42 per month so this is significant cutback that Boeing is doing it knows now that it is not going to be able to deliver the aircraft and there's a big possibility a lot of the aircraft those who are bought the aircraft will actually not now go ahead and cancel the orders as well as those planes have been grounded are going to ask for compensation even the families of the victims that of course is a separate issue because if it is known that Boeing knowingly hid certain problems then the punitive damages could be very high but even if I forget what is you know what's going to happen in the court case simply the commercial implications of this are enormous because I don't think Boeing is going to be able to put but put the aircraft back into there very quickly as I said 6 to 8 months seems to be a conservative figure at the moment and also you're looking at large numbers of cancellation of orders as well as those who are whose fleets have been grounded the kind of bill they're going to give Boeing. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching, yes, click.


What's up everybody takedown here welcome back to the channel today I'm doing another unboxing video for items that I ordered from wish Let's get right into it Okay, so recently I have ordered this stuff from wish I ordered five items and the reason I'm doing this video is because recently I've seen other youtubers do it Some youtubers say wish is a really good thing other youtubers say that it is complete garbage that you get So I wanted to try it out for myself. So I ordered five items I ordered a watch a knife Fishing lures sunglasses and a ps4 fan Five items and out of those five items only three actually showed up two items the watch and the knife Never showed up. So I already got refunded for them. I already got that taken care of I'm gonna start off with the one that I think the ad was misleading in and that is This one here. It is supposed to be a complete set of 56 lures and I ordered three sets So that's a really small package to be a complete Set of 56 lures and supposed to be three complete sets. So Definitely think they're misleading with this So you get three packages like this in there and If I had to guess I'm going to say there's two or three fishing lures in there That's how you can tell they're fishing lures Let me open this one up here Definitely not 56 inside Okay, so let's count them really quick One at least they're in packaging. I will say that they're all individually packaged two three four Five so you actually get five in a pack that you order instead of the complete 56 the pictures said that they're supposed to be 56 the ad said they're supposed to be 56 in the description of the title So I'm definitely going to be asking for a refund on these because there is not 56 or not complete sets The ad was misleading. They look pretty good.  I do go fishing quite a bit The quality is there. They're all brand new. They're individually packaged But I am gonna get use out of those fishing lures because I do go fishing quite a bit And I did want new lures, but when it was supposed to be a complete 56 set So I'm gonna open up this right here This I think is gonna be my ps4 fan it is But the box is pretty freakin beat up It looks like it just got tossed around in my opinion Because of the item it should not have been put in a bag It should have been put in a box to kind of preserve the item inside So let me just open up this box and make sure that it's not broken cracked or anything it doesn't come with instructions, but To me it looks fine. It doesn't look broken. It's not cracked anywhere. It's not shipped anywhere This basically will just plug into the back of my ps4 and give it more Speed for the fans because I noticed after I cleaned mine. It's still a little bit slow and loud at times It does have an auto button Senses that it's overheating it will start up on it. It has an on button off button and a turbo button So you can really get it going the fans seem to be working. There is two big fans and then three small fans So I'm presuming this is gonna work It wasn't much cheaper than the actual item the actual item on Amazon is 1999 this one here. I got off wish for $13 so to me There's no reason to think that it's not going to work. It comes with the power cord It looks exactly like the legit item and it's not much cheaper. So I'm not gonna test it out in this video I'm gonna do an actual product review on it in a future video But I'm gonna say this one is probably the best bang for my bucket of everything I got and I have one more item to open up. So this one here is gonna get some use out of it It's actually something I needed for my ps4. So it looks legit. I'm going to say this is the best item I received so far one item left This should be my sunglasses. Let's open it up. Okay, so my opinion They should have been in a box as well not in a Bag little padded envelope. I mean to me it's common sense. They are glasses No, just to make sure that they come in all in one piece They do look they do feel cheap. I will say that It only cost about two dollars for this I think that includes shipping, but I do like that it transitions. It's lighter here and it's darker up there They look stylish They look pretty cool But I don't know I have a big head So let's see they do push back pretty far like it seems like it's cheap right here Let me just try them on really quick and see You know That's not too bad. I Do think they're pretty light. They're lightweight sunglasses They're not heavy like my other ones.  So they're a good size lens They they fit pretty nice. I have a big head like I've already said and they actually fit so I'm pretty happy with that They're broken though. I didn't notice this at first there is a piece missing in the corner So I'm going to have to these are no good to me now. They're broken And I didn't notice that at first never I was trying them on looking at them if they weren't broken There would be something I'd be able to use they look amazing They do feel like they're cheaper sunglasses, but they do look pretty nice and they actually fit, but they are Broken and I actually see the little piece right here in the bag There's little piece of the glasses that is broken Not a fan at all That is proof to me right there that the seller Doesn't really know what they're doing because normally glasses should be either in a little case or Put in a box to send to the customer.  So out of everything I got from wish today two things did not show up One of the ads was misleading and didn't send me the complete set like it was supposed to and one of the items were broken The only item that is worth anything that I still didn't get to test in this video is my ps4 fan So honestly after reviewing the items I got from wish I honestly would not Recommend wish to anybody just because you never know what you're actually going to get You don't know if you're gonna get all the items you ordered You don't know the quality of the items you ordered you don't know anything that it is So unless something's really cheap and it's worth the risk of it coming at being completely garbage I don't recommend ordering from wish, but This you got to see a review on in the future But I'm gonna leave this unboxing video right here not a fan of wish First time using it. I don't think I'm going to be back unless I see something spectacular that I want to try I don't know comment down below. What I should do should I give them another chance or should I just cut it off there? Because this stuff here was honestly garbage only one of the items was actually What it said and came? perfect conditions, so I'm not too happy, but I am gonna leave this video here. I hope you guys did enjoy I will see you guys in a future video. Please take care. Peace


Gank him again. There you go. Oh, it's a big one buddy. Just a giant buddy. Welcome back to the adventure wagon hooked up to the Silver Bullet right now. We're going on a bass fishing adventure y'all. We're about 30 minutes away from a little private lake that my best friend Craig wanted to go to with me. He's been telling me about this spot and he said, man, I've been out there a couple of times. Haven't really caught him. It's deep though. It's like a quarry. You think you can bring your bass boat out there to catch him? I was like, yeah, dude, we can go do that. But it is nasty, rainy conditions today. It is going to be a drizzly episode y'all, but I think we're going to catch a big bass today. Bucky's, to be honest with you, that house blend could use an upgrade. Hey, buddy. Hey, drop you good doos in there. All right. You feel good? Only free stall at Bucky's? Seriously? Wow. Dang, bro. Never seen that. Never seen that at Bucky's. Phenomenal. Let's go smash some Giants. You heard the man. Craig's pumps. Still get some big green ones on the line y'all. It's my best friend, Craig. From Bumbler of a Day. But I'm telling you, this is the kind of days where the Begans eat. It's like the trolls come out of their cave and they start to feed. So I've got a box full of frogs. Got a lot of grass edges here. And I've got a couple of new top waters to show you guys. Fall, a frog bite gets really good if you got grass. But if you don't have grass, you have more open clear water, a top water walking style bait, like the old spook style baits that they just bring them up. We're going to have some lightning bag conditions. We only have about a three hour window to really fish. So it's going to be fast and furious, I hope. New bait also, wake banger guys. Waking. I'm hoping to be quaking on a waking. A bone killer. It's going to be a hasty one there. Give a little field test cast here. That's going to get crushed. Shallow grass killer right there. Look at these rock piles, all right. Let's get to the grass. We can mess around with this if we don't catch anything there. I just feel like today is the day where we're going to pick some. Oh yeah. Good place for them to hunt.  That fish feels like moderately chilled. That's nice. Water 66, bro. Yeah. That's freaking good. Frog city, dude. Just saw a swirly back in there, behind the grass. That guy's, he's deep in there. Oh, explosion. Oh, get it. That's a good one, Craig. Oh, around the pole. That was a good one. I saw it's back. It was like five. Yeah, dude, there's. You got to, you got to get a frog on there, buddy. You're going to bring that diesel heat on him? Got to put on a filthy. Come on, baby. Love to see it. You got him. You got him. You got a clearing. There you go. Oh, there's a tasty one. There's the old grass dweller. No, baby. Noice. That fish was hungry. Well, look at this. I, when I saw the big mouth, I was like, okay, this is going to be. Definitely had a five pounder mouth. Yeah. Five pounder mouth with a one pounder body. He needs to get on that in ploppy of schools.  Oh, yeah. Captain A had breathing in the whales, baby. They probably flipped this, huh? 40 pounds. That's not big. Yeah. Swallowed it though. Look at that. Absolutely crushed it. Nicely done. Down his mouth. Saw it's back. That looked like a nice one. Yeah. It was a, I kind of like surprised it. Oh my God. He's had it. That's why. No, get in there. No, that's yours. I really want you to. I really want you to because I'm tangled. See, there's no way I can get a fish right now. Caught myself. Absolute goog and move. You had a little poppin drop. Those little ones get in between those pads. That's better. It gives it more of a target. Just stuff right here though. I'm just, it's too good. You got 20 mile an hour winds.  Oh, I got one behind it. You see him like it? Yep. Just tucked it. You see him? Yep. What is that? Call it a topwater bite. Like that is pathetic, bro. That's probably eight pounder too. Literally just. Well, that's not even my small one. Maybe one of them.  I trimmed my tails. I gave it a haircut. You showed yourself. I don't see any big ones. These look like two pounders. They're following my spoon. They're on it. Like seven under the boat right now. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That's a toad. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Come here, baby. Get him, bud.  He's in something bad. It's not good. Get him out. It's more than grass. Oh, no. Get him out. It's a log or something. Oh, you got him. It's grass. Is he on? Oh, probably not. Look at that. That's him. I lost him. No. That was a big one, dude. That was a good one. Golly. That was a good one. I did not. I just didn't get the penetration, bro. Wasn't using the right rod today. Who's pocket I'm about to hit? You are in the juice, son. The juice. All right, guys. Just lost my biggest fish of the day. So when I was leaving this morning, I was like, I was looking at a rod. There was a muscle XL rod in my office and I was like, should I grab this? Maybe Craig needs one. Maybe throw some swim base or something like that. And I thought I had a lot of muscles in my box. I have none. I don't know where they went. Maybe last Guggen week, something happened. I don't know, but I don't have them in there. So throwing a go to with a 40 pound braid. It's not the correct setup for the giants up in the shallow grass, but we've had enough bites where it's fun to keep going at it. We've also got this deep bite going on. First thing when we got out here, I lulled over. It was just out in the middle and there's like a big rock pile, lots of stuff going on down there. It's shad or out deep. It looks like a fall, like a typical fall situation. This little lake is like 40 foot deep, surprisingly. We're going to continue doing this, hit the bank, hit the spots we haven't hit yet. It seems like they want the frog paused. They're not doing what I was expecting them to and just hammering it with these conditions, having to pause it. It's not explosive. Like I was expecting. So having to do some finagling, but we've got a lot of open water fish to be had as well. Topwater is a little tough with the wind. So I'm thinking spoon, swim baits, maybe some worms even out deep. I just haven't seen any big fish on bait yet. I've seen small fish caught, some small fish, but right now all the big ones have been shallow grass. But I know somewhere out here there's going to be a school of heads that are a little bit deeper. And we just got to find it. So we'll keep frogging for now. I mean, it's not a bad time. Frogging is not a bad time. I'll throw it all day. All right. My bestie has got a feeling about a little smaller action. And he also said popping. And I said, buddy, I got you. Many popping filthy right here. Now this one's got a white belly. You're feeling that? Yeah, because this one's white. That size is fantastic. Yeah, I think that's a little center profile. Got a little pop of action. Yeah, it's thinner though. You think you got it? Yeah. Flipping buddy. There you go. That's a good one. There she is. On the old filthy popping. There she is, dude. There she is. Second the frog, baby. On the edge? Yeah, on the edge. Came out. That's a nice one. Nice one right there. On the filthy, little filthy, baby. Right on the edge there. 15 feet out in front of us. But there was like a group of five that were out in front of the brush. Oh, he's got it. Oh, little guy. This is what you mean. This is how you find them. Otherwise, there's no way you find them. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's no way you see the grass. This is a couple of sticks. There's a lay down. I don't have a water plopper in this kind of calm stuff. What do you think? Oh, good one. Need help? I got it. Get him. Get him, son. There's that one you're waiting for. Good call switching to worm. He just had it, dude. Steady blazing. There he is.  Skinny, but he wanted it. This is a very similar solution to where I caught that other. Let's do it. Recording. That textbook should be no problem. It should be a fish. Step to the edge. Oh my gosh. Get him, Craig. Yank him again. There you go. That's a good one. Oh, it's a big one, buddy. Just a giant, buddy. I think he's got it. I think he's got it. Oh my God. Hang on, hang on. Hit that spot line real quick. It's healthy down there. Look at that filmy in there. You called it. What I just said, you want this for the filthy reel? Oh my gosh. That fish was not coming off, dude. Look at this fish, bud. How big is this? Take that. You call it. I don't mean to say skinny, but we'll put them on the scale. My boy coming out of the bullpen, throwing some heat right on the point. You nailed it, bro. Perfect casts. Awesome fish. That is what I expect today. An explosion. Explosion. Absolutely explosion. Get the fish in there. No problem. That's a fister. All right, let's get that nice, slow swim off at least. All right, you ready? Let's see what it does. Beautiful. Beautifully done. An artist. Put that on the filthy frog reel right there. Craig was right. He was like, man, I think they're feeling a little bit smaller. Maybe you want that little pop. I said, dude, I got just bait for you. I'm going to go over this side and see what's out here. Oh my God. It ate it like almost at the boat. He's going up pretty fast. Yeah, he's really into making another cast. Grabbed it. Did you see that fish grab it? No, he got it. Look at him. Look at him. There's a couple of them. What are they doing? Oh, let it fall. Let it fall. They're coming up. They're coming up. They're getting excited. Dude, there's so many fish down there. Yeah, they're just like glued on the bottom. You see where I'll trap it all? That guy freaking chased it, almost ate it. Oh, here he comes. He got it. Be a good one. Come on, baby. Oh my gosh. You worked hard for that one. Dude, but you know what? There is an eight there. There was a big one. There's an eight there. Look, he's got mud on his belly. Yeah, there's a big toe at the bottom. Oh my God. Dang, that was crazy. I've never seen a man work so hard. Absolutely slurp this freaking spoon. I might turn him on, huh? Get the two powders activated. Maybe get mama and wall. Do you see my worm? Call it out. A lot of times you'll see him come up for it and turn away. Always another one coming. He's excited. Oh, you got it. This one's better. Definitely not a two. Be a good one. Oh, come on, baby. Boon. A little boog and spoon. A big rock pylor. You got a salarie cast. You got a light way on. There's a tungsten. Salarie cast. Do you see my worm? That's like a three-sixteenths. You need a big honker on there. Dude, no. That's definitely not a three-eighths. It's down there. They kind of like that little pop up and down. Let go all the way to the bottom and then give it to the pops. Oh, I see. This is neat. See how you get addicted? This is neat. Yeah, video games.  Oh, there goes your worm. You're riding on him too.  Here's that 14. He's got the choice to make now. Which one do I want? Red or blue? Are you throwing a spoon? Oh my gosh. Saw him eat it. Where's my worm? A fish has it. It's like a five-pounder. Fish has it. Is that a Junebug Monday worm? Yeah.  That's the one you reckoned you said was a big one down there? It probably was, yeah. Daddy had to show you where it was. That's a healthy one, dude. He's got mud on his belly though. No, but that's a clean. That's what we thought right there. That's a health school of those babies. I love to see it. So that fish was actually not on the screen when he casted. It came from back here. I saw it come in. It came in late to the game. I was taking notes. I was taking notes. Did you get the big camera? It's such a good hit. Yep. No, sir. Good fight. Good fight. Oh, yeah. Just weighed one four-pound six ounces. Rain coming in hot. Double up of the day. Boom. Let's go, buddy. That's fun. That's fun. We got to get a good... I just said I got to throw on a spinnerbait. I've got to buy something to have with my GoPro. We got to get a good double up. Let's get a double up pick, man. Let's do it. Put a little timer on the can. We'll set it right here. Yours was four-six. Four-six, yeah. Let's let them go. All right, ready? Just like the old times. See you, dudes. Dude, I feel that cold air. All right, no. Hey, look at the sky, man. We're about to get hammered, I think. We are. This is not a great film day. I apologize, but this is a fun fishing day. I know when my back deck chime is dingin', when it's making noise, it is really blowing outside. My gosh, what a front that came in. We got absolutely poured on after that double. It was a great way to end the day, but man, it was some nasty weather. And because that weather was coming in, I thought we were going to crush fish on topwater. I really wanted to throw our two newer topwater baits that are coming, that Wakebanger and our walking bait, you have to be named. And it was just different than what I thought it was going to be. Ended up being an okay frog bite, some fish on the edges of the grass, which are always fish that live in the grass when you have a decent grass lake. But it was unfortunate that the fish were just kind of roaming and scattered. Still an awesome day with Craig. Hadn't fished with my best buddy in a long time. And he caught a sick, good, lowered turtle. I mean, every time I start talking out here, he goes crazy. Another bait that I really thought I was going to smash him on to was stolen swim bait. And I saw one of the bass spit up like tiny shad, and then I saw the schools of shad in there. And it just, you know, I just clicked with me. I was like, yeah, they're just not going to hit that. The spoon was decent, you know, typical fall thing. But without them being really positioned on that offshore cover, it just wasn't the program. It was kind of here and there. But I'm glad we got enough time to hit those grass lines and get some great bites. And I think we had four, five, four pounders. And Craig had that one six pounder. So awesome day. Awesome day. I wish we would have had more, more time without the rain coming in, but still really fun. And as this weather starts to get colder and colder in the fall, you're going to see those shad balls start grouping up more and more and getting those creek channels. And you can really catch a lot of fish at one time when you get the right conditions. When you get a good school of fish and they're all balled up, it's one of my favorite times to fish. It's always a toss up. It's just like, oh my gosh, I want to be in the Deer Woods today, but it's going to be a good bass fishing day. And you kind of have to pick and choose, but it's an awesome time to be an outdoorsman. So hope you're out there in the great outdoors hunting or fishing. I'm going to be back in the Deer Woods very soon. I really want to get a deer out of a saddle. Let's spend one of my archery goals, secondary archery goals, after the Trad, Trad bow this year. So we're going to go after that.  So anyway, you guys stay tuned for all of that. And I will see you on the next one.


This Wednesday, all across America, we'll be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the document that has brought freedom and hope to so many millions, the United States Constitution. At 1.50 on Wednesday, I will lead a nationwide Pledge of Allegiance that will be broadcast live, giving all Americans a chance to renew our commitment to the document that's been called the Greatest Act of Political Genius in History. On Thursday, I'll be in Philadelphia, participating in the celebration organized by We the People. As we reflect on our Constitution this week, we must seek to further its purpose here at home and all across the world. The cause of freedom is America's cause, and one of the most exciting movements in this direction during the past 10 years has been in Latin America, where over 90 percent of the people are now living under democratic rule. It was my privilege earlier this week to speak with the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, on our mutual concern about peace and freedom in Latin America. And yet, for all the progress in this region, one country, Nicaragua, and its three million inhabitants have seen that dream of freedom trampled. Many Americans have learned over the last few months what has really been happening in Nicaragua, how a democratic revolution was betrayed, how a tiny elite has been creating a totalitarian Marxist-Leninist dictatorship to satisfy their own personal lust for power and to give the Soviet Union a beachhead in the mainland of this continent. Only 2,000 miles from the Texas border, a clear national security threat. Yet despite all the repression and Soviet intervention, the people of Nicaragua still cling to their dream of freedom. In the best tradition of our founding fathers, they formed a democratic resistance against tyranny, one of the largest peasant armies in the world, with more than 17,000 freedom fighters called Contras, and as the Contras have grown stronger, the communist regime has grown shakier. So under increasing pressure, the communist leader Daniel Ortega recently signed at a summit of Central American leaders a peace plan that pledged his government to democratic reform, respect for human rights, and free elections. We welcome the Guatemala plan, but it falls short of the safeguards for democracy and our national security contained in the bipartisan plan I worked out with the congressional leadership. That is why, as Secretary Schultz said earlier this week, there should be no uncertainty about our unswerving commitment to the Contras. It is their effort that has made the peace initiative possible. At the appropriate moment, I intend to put forth a $270 million request for Contra aid over eight months, 18 months, I should say. As Secretary Schultz also spelled out, the Sandinista regime has a long way to go in living up to its pledge of democratic reform. The eight days after signing the peace agreement, Sandinista police used attack dogs, nightsticks, electric cattle prods, and government-organized mobs to break up a peaceful demonstration by the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordina Dora. So too, the six independent Nicaraguan political parties have called efforts by the communist to manipulate the National Reconciliation Commission set up under the plan a Sandinista maneuver to fool the international public. They accused the Sandinistas of violating the spirit of the Guatemala agreements, and this week we learned that Daniel Ortega will be in Moscow on November 7th. The date the Central American peace plan is to go into effect, celebrating with his Soviet allies the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. What the world wants from the Sandinistas are real democratic reforms, real signs of freedom, such as reopening the newspaper La Prensa, but not censoring its copy or denying its newsprint. La Prensa and other publications must be free to report. So must the independent radio stations and TV. Freedom of religion must be respected. The Sandinistas have said they will allow three exiled priests to return. But what of the thousands of other exiles? Return is not enough. They must be free to minister, live and organize politically without intimidation. Genuine free political competition must be permitted. The secret police with their neighborhood block committees must be abolished, and all foreign advisors sent home. The Sandinistas should know that America and the world are watching. Until next week, thanks for listening and God bless you. Say hello for did it, didn't I? I was way short. You slowed up that last one. I slowed up the last one. I knew I was going to do that with you. Got it. You were about seven seconds short. Only seven seconds? Maybe eight.