Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I will try to live up to the rock star one day. One day, not yet, but one day. It's a great player. It's truly a great player. And it's an honor to be here with you. I've learned much already all day. My name isn't supposed to be that funny, but thank you. I've already learned a lot. And I can promise you that this will be different from the rest. I'm not only not going to be traveling at ground level. I'm not even going to do $30,000. I'm trying to go to outer space, kind of literally, as you will see. But since I have a lot of things to say, let me get right into it after thanking all of you for this. Any questions? Now, I wanted to start by posing three questions. These are questions for you to think about as I talk. I promise you. I will not answer any of them. Because if I did, we'll have nothing to talk about. But these are contextual questions that I hope you can think about. One is, I want you to think about what global means. We keep talking about global as if it's something real. Global climate change, globalization, global finance, lacuna matada. What would it really mean in terms of these things if we were to think globally? That's question one. Question two, what does it mean to live in what I call the age of adaptation? And that's really the first of what I will be talking about. The claim that we are already living in the age of adaptation. And in the age of adaptation, you become the front line much more like than people like myself who've been working on climate change. We live in the age of adaptation. Because essentially, those of us working on climate change failed. We failed miserably. We were never supposed to be in the age of adaptation. But there we are. And that is why we need you. And that leads to the third question I want you to think about. What does it mean to live in the age of adaptation for those of you in the humanitarian space? And I hope we can have a conversation on that. So those are the three big contextual questions. Professors are, it's OK for professors to be silly. I hope it's also OK for MSF to have speakers who are a little silly allow me to be silly so that we are after lunch. And then that's a good time to be silly. Imagine for a moment, a thought exercise, that you are not in London. Imagine for a moment that you're not in the UK. Imagine for a moment you're not in Europe. Imagine you're not even on this planet. Imagine you're on some other planet. Choose your planet. Anyone? There used to be nine. Now they say there are eight. At least one of them is not doing very well. And from that perch, imagine you are looking down on this thing called Earth. And you have been asked by the World Bank equivalent of that planet to write in two pages or less, 12 point times Roman. No footnotes. A country report on the planet Earth. What would someone see if they saw this planet as if it was a country? Most of you work internationally and we see these reports all the time. What would it look like? If you were in my class, you would actually have to submit it. No, they do really. So here we are. Let me give you a brief synopsis. This is one version. There's also a different version. I'll give you only one version. I would wager that you will come to the conclusion very quickly that you live on a planet that is a very poor country. But every measure of the term, a billion people living on less than $1 a day, two billion people living on less than $2.5 a day. It used to be $2, but the dollar ain't what it used to be. So you would come to the conclusion as a planet. It's a fairly poor country. That's not a surprise. You would come to the conclusion it's not just poor. It's a divided country. That famous champagne glass, 80% of the wealth, with now actually less than 10% of its people. You would want the planet to be more like a Burma, an Austrian one, not a German one, but that's what it is. And by divided, I don't mean rich country, poor country. I mean rich person, poor person. I live in Boston. I work in Boston. I work in the first world part of Boston. Three miles away from where I work is Roxbury, which is the third world part of Boston. Some years ago I went back and I worked back in Pakistan as the vice chancellor of the university. I worked in Lahore in defense, which was the first world part of defense. Three miles from where I lived was a place called Bhattachok, the third world part. And that's what I mean by you would come to the conclusion it's a poor planet. It's a divided planet. You will come to the conclusion that it is an insecure planet by every measure of the term. Not just useless war, but climate insecurity, and food insecurity, and water insecurity, and just human insecurity. So you'll come to the conclusion it's an insecure planet. You'll come to the conclusion that it is a degraded planet. Its water isn't clean. Its seas are rising. Its forests are denuded. Its land is degraded. So by all those terms of things that all of you know, none of this is new. You would say the planet as a whole has you and me, people who are doing fairly well. But if it were a country, that is how you would be describing it. You would describe it as a poorly governed planet. I come from Pakistan. I know what poor governance looks like. And even Pakistan looks, if you think about how we do global governance, how we do the UN, even Pakistan looks well-governed sometimes. Not all of this. And you would come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, an unsafe planet. If the US State Department of State had to travel advisory for the planet, it would be to catch the first rocket ship out of here. By the actual means that they actually make those travel advisories. The problem is we don't know where we would go. So I apologize for being so depressing right after lunch. And that's really not my point. My point is that if, in fact, you were to think of the planet as if it was a country, you would come to the conclusion, and I don't usually like this term, that it is what we call or some people call a third world country. And what that means is that we keep trying to manage it, including on climate change, as if it was Sweden. We keep trying to make policies that might work in a different place, but do not work on a third world planet. And that is the global space that all of you, much more than me, but need to, work with. So I want you to keep that context. And in that third world planet, we now are living in what I call the age of adaptation. The age of adaptation, everyone, I hope knows mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation essentially is things you can do to keep climate change from happening. Reduce your carbon. Don't drive and all that stuff. If you reduce your carbon, climate change may not happen. Well, that stage is passed. Adaptation essentially means when it happens, how do you adapt to its impact? And the major point I want to make is we have been talking for about my entire working life, as if adaptation was something that was going to be needed in the future. And I am here, unfortunately, with the tough task of letting you know, as if you don't already, that we have to adapt now. In fact, we are doing it right now. I'll give you just one little factoid. I come from Pakistan in Karachi over the last three days. Three days, Karachi, Pakistan, fairly well in place anyhow. More people have died of heat than have died in Pakistan of terrorism this entire year. Is that because of climate or not? I don't know, and you will never know. What climate does is it exacerbates the threats. What I do know is it's the fourth consecutive year of a heat wave. What I do know is this is the 11th consecutive year of floods in Pakistan and the eighth consecutive year of drought, all at the same time. That is what the age of adaptation means. So if you live in Pakistan or any of the countries that you work in, people are coping with this thing without us being able to name it, pin it, or fingerprint it. Let me tell you very quickly how we came to you, and I'll really rush through this because I want to get to the last part, which is my important part, five tragedies, five pictures. How did we get here? First and foremost, it is, in fact, a great human failure of wisdom. This, to me, is the single most important, interesting graph in all of human history, at least in my field. It is an amazing graph. And they updated, this is an older one, between 1991 and 2012, 13,950 peer-reviewed papers are published in climate change, of which only 24 reject the idea that it's human-induced. I do not know of any other scientific issue, maybe not even gravity, that has the type of consensus that we have on this. And yet, particularly in the country I now live in, the United States, a debate keeps going on needlessly based on this notion that every idea should have two views. Every idea has two sides. No, I'm sorry, some ideas don't have two sides. There's just one side. It's called the right side. And we miss that vote. We got here as a failure, not just a wisdom, but a failure of negotiation. This is the world that I really live in every day. But essentially, the negotiation machine became a negotiation machine where the idea was to keep negotiating. And Paris, while I celebrated because it's there, is also there is not that much in it to celebrate. So for 25 years, we keep negotiating one agreement after the agreement. And the most important aspect of each agreement is we'll meet again in a year to negotiate more. I'm sorry for being cynical. There is much depth in that, but I won't go into it because I'm rushing through that. The more important part is it has been a failure of vulnerability. I think this is where you come in. This is where you come in. In the age of adaptation, we move to where the impacts are. And the impacts aren't necessarily where the emissions are. This is an amazing graph. The first one tells you who is being impacted by climate change. And the second one tells you who, me, is emitting the carbon. And as soon as you see that, that becomes a question of justice because they're nearly the reverse opposite of each other. And therefore, the failure is not just a vulnerability failure. It is a moral failure because climate is, has been, but has not been seen as an issue of justice. So you look at that map, and that map is actually from all places, it's from Standard and Poor, of where the climate vulnerabilities are. But now superimpose that map on where you think the emissions are coming from. And even within those countries, it is the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, the poorest on whom the impacts come. You all know this. I don't need to tell this to this crowd. It's like earthquakes. When earthquakes happen, more poor people die than rich people because the poor do inherit the earth, literally in this case.   And if you're poor, you're more likely to have a roof that will fall on your head. Well, climate is the same.  And that's the moral argument. I know this argument is lost and described because you know it, my people, the climate people don't always, that's why it is there.   And while our honorable president is in the front line of that failure, I'm sorry to say he's not the only one. He's not the only one. And again, I don't have time to rush through that. I just wanted to give that as context. What I do want as my time runs out to put to you, and this really is the crux of where I think you meet climate change, is this idea that what are the new front line issues in climate change in the age of adaptation? That climate has, in fact, in the age of adaptation, climate becomes a development issue. And climate becomes essentially a humanitarian issue. Carbon counters, like myself, have much less to do with it. When the flood comes, my knowledge of how carbon works in the outer atmosphere has very little to do with what can happen to the life of the family whose house is going to be washed away. That's where you come in. So seven issues, if I will, very, very quickly on how adaptation hits us. And the first of them is nature. And some of you might be thinking, why doesn't he have the cute polar bear? I love polar bears. Nothing against polar bears. But I think that picture is misused, because it pulls at your heart's neck. I think it comes from developing people, because they're asking for checks and stuff. But I really love polar bears. But it gives you that picture of the polar bear on the ice in the middle of the ocean. Essentially, what it says is the polar bear is waiting for MSF to come and help it. That nature is out there, helpless, waiting for us. I am not sure that is how nature is responding. I think there's going to be a viciousness. And that viciousness is going to come in disease vectors. That's going to come in dengue.  And when you mess up the balance, the dengue mosquito, because the mosquito is smarter than man, starts moving northwards. There are many other reasons. This is not the only one. People travel, they take them with them, and so on and so forth. But the response of nature is not simply of us going and assisting it. Nature is going to create dynamics, which in your world, I think, the most important aspect, and many in the environment world think are in disease vectors and so on and so forth. Again, I'm in the headline mode here. The big one is water. The biggest difference in the age of adaptation was in the age of mitigation, climate is essentially one box in the periodic table, carbon. Climate is essentially carbon management. Carbon management is essentially energy management. As soon as you come to the age of mitigation, it gets a lot more wet. It's a lot of H, and it's a lot of OH2O. And here is what I mean. Think about the major impact. Not all, but the major impacts of climate. What does climate do? Water rises, sea level rise. Water melts, glaciers. Water disappears, drought. Water falls from the sky like no one's business. Extreme events. The most frontline issue in climate adaptation, impacts, is going to be water.  I put this, again for my environment crowd, you've probably seen this, that blue dot to scale is all the fresh water in the world. All the fresh water in the world, in to scale, is that blue dot. That doesn't mean actually we have a third of water. There's actually, we have water. It's nearly always or mostly an issue of access or increased use. But what it means, and I'm embarrassed to put this because there are people I'm sure in this room who know this better, but for those who don't know Pakistan, in 2010 we had a major flood. And I put this by way of explaining to those who haven't worked in floods that it's not just a question of water. It's a question of space. So that's Pakistan. The blue area is the one that was covered by the flood. So keep that squiggly, the blue squiggly, in your mind. And so you say, OK, that's a lot of Pakistan underwater. But here is how much it is. I took that squiggly to scale and I put it on a map of the United States. And that squiggly fits from up there in Vermont to down to Florida. I put the same squiggly on a map of Japan. It covers the whole country. I put the same squiggly, the same sort of area covered by it, on Europe, from up there in Denmark to down in France. The point is that when these disasters happen, managing carbon doesn't do anything. It increases the intensity of what you guys are doing and so on and so forth. If it is about water, then it's immediately about food. Because what is food except nature's way of packaging water? Not really. But water immediately triggers the food security questions. And again, I can give you the numbers, but I'll hold them to later. I won't spend this one even though it's one of my favorite ones. A lot of it is about mobility. But it's not about Teslas. No amount of Teslas can do it because the mobility problem is not just emission. The mobility problem is a lot of people not being able to go to a lot of places. And it's going to be solved in very, very different ways. This is what less to do with disasters and humanitarianism and much more to do with how we need to rethink technology and technological inputs into the age of adaptation. But the one I wanted to come to, and I've only got two more and then I end, well, no, actually three, I'm sorry. Infrastructure is similar. You guys know this. I'll rush through it. But infrastructure becomes when you're dealing with this infrastructure and when you have a heat wave. If you thought Paris was difficult, if anyone is following South Asia, because it's not just Pakistan. And then you're seeing this consistently. Part of it is coming from climate, part of coming from just weather, part of it is coming from the way we've expanded infrastructure. All of it adds and superimposes on each other. But the real sort of thing that I wanted to talk about in some ways was to highlight because this is your world is disasters. And when you get the frequency of these disasters, even the minor disasters, just expanding in a place, in number. It not only stresses your resources, it stresses every resource in the country. And one of the things that is more interesting that my current work is on is that climate migration. Migration because of climate disasters is different from a lot of other disaster migration. A lot of disaster migration is there's an earthquake. I lose my house. You set up a camp. I go there. You come and help. That's not how climate migration happens. Climate migration is slow, like torture. One person leaves at a time. And it's usually the youngest, the smartest, the ablest. And communities hollow out because essentially livelihoods are going. My best example is the shrimp in the Sundarbans. Micro millimeter change in salt water, freshwater mix. Changes where the shrimp go. And when the shrimp are not there, the shrimp farmer can't survive. So one by one from the Sundarbans, they go into Chittagong. From Chittagong maybe to Delhi. From Delhi to maybe London. But it's the hollowing out of communities. And it is the vulnerability of communities. That's the way migration, for example, works. And all of this brings us to this last point, which is about insecurity. Therefore, climate change in the age of adaptation is a new layer of insecurities that takes old insecurities and multiplies them. It's a threat multiplier. And this is the other part of my current research. I'll just put it two by two just to prove that I am a professor. And I just don't do only pictures. And then I will leave. In our current work in the book, I had written we tried to think about insecurity. Because security doesn't matter. What matters is insecurity. The only time you talk about security is when you don't have it all across the world. And if you think about insecurity in this fashion, at one end you always talk about the source of insecurity. One is violence. I come and hit you. The other is I don't hit you, but I do something that makes your social disruption, that makes your life more insecure. And the other is whether it's state or society. Again, I'm rushing through this because I'm enjoying myself too much. But here is the simple two by two. When you're talking state insecurity because of violence, you are clearly talking about war. War is certainly about insecurity. And for God's sake, we have too much of it anyhow. But much more than that, more people still die because of violence at the society level than the state level, civil strife. That's also clearly insecurity. But when you're talking about social disruption at the state level, insecurity very often comes, we argue, from institutional failure. In a Western context, you would say the financial crisis, at least in the US, creates insecurity because suddenly lots of people lose livelihoods, load shedding in many countries. And climate exacerbates those institutional failures in ways that we can talk about. And the fourth and most important one to me is that when social disruption at the societal level causes insecurity, the face of that insecurity is human insecurity. It's about those things that I talked about, about water, about food, about livelihoods. My point is not that one of these insecurities is more important than the other. My point is that all of them are equally important. Let me leave you with this one story that some of you have heard, at least online before. This book we did on insecurity, one of the numbers in South Asia. One of the things we found was, and listen to this carefully, it is not a political statement. I will end with this. At that time, 60 years of constant conflict between India and Pakistan, 60 years. The number of Indians, the total number of Indians killed by the Pakistan side in 60 years of constant violence is less than the number of children only who will die in one year only, in New Delhi only, because of dirty water only. The exact same number is true on the Pakistan side for Karachi. Here is my challenge.  And yet, as scholars, as journalists, as humanitarians, as people, we talk about one death as if it is a national tragedy and the other as if it's just a development statistic. Here's my problem. For a quarter century of teaching international affairs, I have no idea what to do about the gun. I know exactly what to do about the tap. At that time, $8.80, the cost of saving one life because of water. I apologize for taking too long. Thank you very much.


Hello, today's sections we wanted to introduce to you guys how to discover of fresh set for a high performance storage pool and My name is Marco Marco horn and I'm the technical lead for the software defined storage and open stack and Hi everyone. Good morning. My name is to shower go hard. I I'm a cloud software architect at Intel So let me quickly go over the agenda real quick here. So You know that the emerging theme for For the software different storage with Seth is all flash back ends so we we're actually gonna go through a quick journey of You know our experiments with all flash stuff some tuning outcomes from a from a cluster that we set up and Some architecture discussion as to how how do you go about? Designing a self-node for best performance for outflash On this on these slides. I want to talk to you what We are and what we do and you know you guys know about the QCT QCT is the global data center providers and The quanta you you guys may know already is the Howard manufacturer company and QCT is the soul the subsidiary of the quanta and we also Deliver a total solution the turnkey solution for the customer and As a technology partners we work very closely with the Intel to deliver the software defined solution and the The the platform optimizations So before we talk about today's topic I just wanted to get a quick show of hands You know how many of you are familiar with Seth or have worked with Seth? That's awesome. And Have you I mean how many of you have played with all flash stuff like all SSD back in for Seth Okay, and and one last question how many of you are familiar with nvm express as a storage interface Super so this is gonna go go smoothly today. So You know the a lot of you may have seen seen this slide, you know The emerging theme is is the media transition from your spinning hard drive based media to to all flash You know as as this slide points out, you know by 2020 we do see the The media costs, you know the dollar per gigabyte for all, you know The solid-state media coming in parity with the with the hard drive media So that's why this this becomes an important theme to discuss, you know how does Seth do today with all flash or all solid-state storage and Where do we go from here? So so if you look at the spectrum of use cases For for Seth today, I mean Seth remains to be the the block storage of choice for for most open stack deployments With RBD and in terms of the workloads, this is a this is a chart that shows you the spectrum Across the on the y-axis the performance scale and and the x-axis the capacity scale As as you can see the you know, you're you're more capacity oriented use cases still still tend to be on the more Generic hard drive kind of media for for dense capacity nodes Whereas the the non-volatile memory of the solid-state focus is is is basically the other bubbles which are mainly block workloads so in this exercise that we did jointly with QCT We we focused on databases as as a workload. So that's what this The slide set is gonna walk you through so on these slides we actually we build Cluster based on the the finals or NVM is safe cluster and that you can see the spec is with the Intel 2699 v4 and 88 core the virtual core after hyper-straining and With based on the rail 7.3 red headsafes to the one store, which is your version and Yeah, of course is the fire store base is not blue store and The very far left side that's we we pair with the 20 piece of the terabyte Intel P35 20 3D name technologies and the so with the two times locations and The total the full level capacity is 82% So under a very far right hand side a button is we can do with the 10 clients with 100 RPD volumes and So you can see that's the that's an architecture. We design in the QCT lab So by the way, we have the 20 piece We populate all the NVM device into a five of the five of the QCT D 51 BP servers So that's the testing result we want to share with you it's 4k random rate So on the left hand side of the blue linear That's the the default configurations So we don't that in that scenario. We don't do any optimization on the self comf and it neither on the The operation system level always level so on the orange long deniers We do a lot of tuning on the self comf and as well as on the operating system Like the kernel and the the TCP window size all those kind of stuff so you can see that's the the big jump between the default value and the the tuning about the The tuning after the tuning we see the performance like a top of this top of the performance Yeah, before we go on to the next slide. Just wanted to point out real quick So so the optimizations that Marco described going from going from the Going from the default to the, you know, which is the blue blue line chart to the orange Which is the tune line chart, right those involved the very well documented Tunings on self comm such performance so far we you know together as Intel and QCT We have contributed quite a few of those tunings at the BIOS OS as well as Ceph level So so so this result was only with Software-based tunings only at the OS level This is this actually on their aspect that that comes into picture like when you when you go beyond the just the software aspect Right, so when you when you look at a standard high volume server today It's it's pretty much analogous to a dual socket You know Xeon class server, right where you know instead of using a single memory pool You you have a concept of local and remote memory Which which is basically the the non-uniform memory access where your latency goes up as if you as you go over this bus card QPI bus Over to the other socket and that that affects your performance, right? So so basically by by simply Core pinning or socket pinning the Ceph OSDs has to has been the traditional way But what we're trying to say here is that you know There is actually more to be had by paying attention to your node design from a new one point of view if you were able to basically isolate your your storage and networking Affine to your Ceph OSDs on the same socket you you actually could get Quite a bit of performance benefit and and here is a proof point that we're gonna show here. So So these are some some guidelines that are you know traditionally Been been documented talked about at several open stack summits But what we wanted to add was basically the the point number one Which is no balance network and storage devices across CPU sockets, right and and what what this does for you So so this this diagram quickly shows You know kind of a before before scenario where we had all of the NVMe drives as you can see you know to to on CPU zero which are marked by the by these in blue and that all networking on the other socket, right and when we go from this picture to a More well-balanced picture where when you have NVMe's and and next Evenly split across across the CPUs where you know your OSDs don't have to cross the sockets, right to To do their IO or networking, right? This is this is what you get so so again the the orange line is basically the the Only software tuned line where we we only relied on OS BIOS and CEF tunings The the right line is basically where we we actually split the the storage and networking across sockets As you can see, you know, you we actually were able to get even at q-depth 8 You're able to get 40% better IOPS and This is actually, you know, the latency Portion is what I wanted to draw your focus on the average latency was almost hundred percent better and Yeah, and there was a big improvement in the 99% latency as well, so okay, so That's the the server we are using and for these Architectures and on the right-hand side is to NVMe devices. We are applied to these architectures, so We are on the VCF enabled high performance workloads if you are IO IOPS intensive You better looking at the at the right servers with the right hard disk So you can have to your maximum performance on your clusters and So here we not only dedicate or for IOPS optimized solutions We QCT only to do also deliver the throughput and the capacity optimized SKU for your reference So so if you are interested in about a solution QCT you like to deliver So please welcome to the booth at B5 and I will be on the booth and to answer all the question you guys have


from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering Oracle's modern marketing experience. Brought to you by Oracle. Now, your host, John Furrier. Hey, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for Oracle's modern marketing experience 2016. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's flagship program where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the host of theCUBE. Our next guest is David Skinner, Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships at Merkle and James Hilarney, who's the Vice President at Oracle Partnerships. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you so much, John. Thanks for having me. So, big announcement. Merkle, huge deal with Oracle. Very successful modern agency. That's kind of how I see it. You guys are doing some pretty cutting edge work, not only pioneering, plowing the fields, but delivering great value because Oracle normally owns a database market. They're in a ton of enterprises, IT. But now as Martek and Marketing Cloud moves into the CMO digital stack, the agency equation changes. So, share your thoughts at Merkle. You've been super successful. What's been your secret formula? What's the secret Coke recipe? What's the formula? Right, so, Merkle's always been about driving marketing from the perspective of real people. And it used to be that real people were reached via direct mail. They'd send a piece of mail to your mailbox and manage large databases for companies that did that. And the digital economy and digital advertising has now evolved from targeting cookies and targeting devices, which is where digital was for the last 20 years when the ad service launched to, in the last three or so years, were able to actually target real people in digital. And that's really where Merkle's taken our historic strength around managing large advertisers, customer databases, having our hands on their transaction data to the benefit of their campaigns. And that's a role that the traditional broadcast agency hasn't had. If you're an agency of record, you're probably not gonna have customer data for your advertisers. But being a database provider, Merkle has sat there and we've now taken that strength and data management applied that to digital. And they've had a lot of experience and strength working with platforms like Oracle to take that data for our customers, activate that out in execution channels via the Oracle Marketing Cloud, then being able to close the loop and bring that back and actually measure the results. So as a performance marketing agency, we tie all this back to ROI and performance. We only get paid if that performs. So that's really the formula we're taking. That's a premise to you guys, performance-based. So you've kind of moved upstream, if you will, from technology platform up to agency-like stuff versus agencies today going, hey, I'm your ad people, we don't measure anything, it's all, it feels good, down to platform.  So you have to kind of dance on that line of where you're creative or you guys have a creative component? We do, yeah, we do creative. Originally we started creative in Direct Mail and email, but we have a full creative shop, over 500 people now developing. Again, more performance-based creatives where we came from. So we have 200 rules on things that drive performance in response within the email or within a piece of display. We've now extended that and we're doing video creative. So that's a piece of it. So it's really both the build, we talk about build and run. So build being the onboarding setup of things like the Oracle Marketing Cloud and then run is the services that make that sing and dance and perform. So we know when you say performance-based, when you go back to the search days, you've cost per acquisition, you have to be in that game, right? There's always that whole business, really that search engine marketing, but now as you come into this new generation of real-time data, multiple data sources, pressure at the cloud with unlimited compute potential, the value is shifting to the data, you have a heritage in data. Tell us what you see there. I mean, what's some of the state-of-the-art things you're doing for customers? Where is the areas that are still hot spots that you're still kind of getting the scar tissue on and where is it matured? Can you add some color to that? Sure, yeah. A general rule of thumb from a data side is that if someone's raised their hand, that they want to be reached by a campaign and they're two times more likely to respond to that campaign. So another day, Merkel's in the business of finding those handraisers, finding those responders, and if we can effectively find them, we're going to drive a much more effective campaign.  Right, exactly. If someone either comes to a website and opts in or if someone responds to a campaign and says, I want to learn more, those are all signs that they're in market and those are going to be the people that perform best. In terms of real examples, we've seen great examples where the Omni Channel has been a buzzword now for the last couple years in our industry, but we've seen some excellent examples where, for example, for a hotel company, we ran a test and control where we had multiple channels going on as part of that campaign. We had search, as far as that campaign, we had display and we had email and we were able to demonstrate that if a control group was exposed just to search, they were less likely to respond and convert than a separate group that was both reached by an email, also searched and came to the website. So real examples of up to 50% lift in conversion by reaching folks who are in market across multiple channels. Because another one of my favorite stats is that over 60% of online transactions now start in one channel and complete in the other. So we'll search on our phone, we'll find out about a product, we'll research that shirt we're thinking about or that car we're thinking about and then purchase another channel. And again, being able to connect the dots between those two around this data around real people is where we've had a lot of success. That's the nonlinear progression you're seeing on digital. There's different engagement points and you have to keep that active data around to support kind of figuring out who the hand razor is and kind of where they are in that discovery phase. Yeah, we talk about how the idea of the purchase funnel is dead and it's really a purchase cycle. So you see people rapidly cycling through different parts from awareness through consideration, through intent and often in particular to digital, someone can be fairly far along in that cycle and jump out to a competitor. If Peter Burris was here, he'd be a loavers. This is one of the things he's working on was research and love to get your car to follow up with them. Because that's something that we would let them kind of drill down on our research and share some of that. James, talk about the fit with Oracle. So how does this all fit with you guys? So obviously they got some serious market power. You had mentioned 500 data scientists on staff or statisticians, basically data people. Data science analysts all kind of blending together these days with the visualization tools and technology out there. How does it fit with Oracle? Because you guys are enabling them to be successful. I'm assuming with Oracle and among your 900 integrated partners, how does it all fit in? Merkel is a very special outfit. Obviously they grew out of the more tech world and grown into the ad tech world. Third biggest person of Google AdWords, et cetera. So they're very exciting from that perspective. They have huge scale, global reach. They've made a lot of very interesting acquisitions over the past year or so. In addition, they're what we call a full stack shop. They are capable across the very beginning of the marketing automation, ad tech, life cycle, from the audience building with a DMP to the different types of channel orchestration, marketing automation. All the way back to things like optimization on the backside with maximizers. So they have full capability to roll out multiple products from multiple customers globally all at the same time. And as the Oracle marketing cloud evolves, we need partners that can be versed in multiple products and have global reach to support the type of global brands we support. So are they using Oracle technology and go to market or both, or how does it fit in? Both, both. So we are selling and servicing Oracle technology, the Oracle marketing cloud in particular as well as the Oracle data cloud. And similarly, we're going to market together where being large organizations who both serve enterprise customers, we're finding we have a lot of joint customers where we can kind of join arms and work together as well as new logo where we're identifying opportunities and going to market with the Oracle sales team. So in some cases you join sales calls together or you guys just lead it together, pass it through and direct to Oracle? Right, yeah, kind of. Because you're full service. All the above, yeah. Okay, so I got to ask David, so what's the biggest revelation that's now becoming more mainstream in terms of the agency's future? I mean, I'm in the media business so that data doesn't go by where media's not dead and video's not going to save the media, all these things going around the industry around the media business. And I always say it's the same game, just different formula, data's driven up, data's a big part of it. But the agencies themselves are being disrupted. What's your take on this landscape because this is now a huge dollar on the table for media spend that could be reallocated to digital, other digital new business models. What's your take on the industry? Yeah, I mean, well first, one of my favorite stats in the industry is that marketing over time is a percentage of GDP. Advertising is a percentage of GDP. It's been remarkably consistent over time. So advertising globally is about 3% of GDP and it tracks GDP almost exactly over the last like 80 years. So any changes we see, any growth we see is really a share shift between channels. And I think the biggest shift we've seen is digital has had so much attention rightfully so over the last 20 years, it's really been a share shift from print to digital. So a lot of advertising dollars have fled print and moved to digital and that's really where the action's been. In terms of I think the major change in the agency business model is really around what we like to talk about at Merkle is people-based marketing. And what we mean by that is again, taking the concepts of direct marketing one-to-one messaging and doing that at broad scale across multiple channels. And we're starting to see that agencies are looking to invest in people-based data. Agencies are renting US household databases from companies like Merkle who have that data and starting to move from panel-based planning to people-based planning. So historically, agencies plan with the panel with the ability to now target real people in channels like Facebook and Twitter and Google and all the major media companies are shifting to, hey, you don't want to get a bike from a cookie, what you want to do is get a purchase from a person and these digital media channels can prove the end-to-end ability to do that and agencies now are catching up to ensure that their planning and their execution can happen at that people basis. And that's really the holy grail but you got to know what you're looking for, right? So if you don't know there's been a cookie-like in a person buying, that's the transactional life cycle, right? I mean, it's the progression.  Do people know what they're looking for? And this is, everything's measurable now. But I think we're getting there. I think, if you look at where the industry was a few years ago versus I think where it is today and where it's going, in particular around the data team. So we were talking earlier around how data is really the oil of the information economy. It's the key ingredient that the companies who figure that out are most successful. And Oracle's really built their marketing cloud with a data-first theme. Acquisitions around data logics and blue-kai and similar. Is that the main reason for the partnership? It's, I think it's the fundamental reason why our companies align so well is that it's shared DNA for both of us. So when you look at the data evolution we've progressed from 10 years ago, the only data in marketing was used offline by direct mail lists and send people mail in their mailbox. In the last five years, this whole cookie-based economy of online data came up. Companies like Blue-kai associating in-market behavior like someone who's in market for travel or went to an auto website and they're in market for auto and associating that with a cookie. And we've built this fabulous targetable universe online using very true data signals, cookie-based data. Then where I think we're now seeing what the industry evolved to is real anonymized and privacy-safe, but true people-based data for digital targeting. What is Oracle's differentiators? What's your take on Oracle? Why are they different in this marketing cloud era? The themes Oracle uses to talk about the marketing cloud really resonate for me and that's that Oracle is buying and acquiring and has built this cloud by acquiring the one or two ranked leader in each of these verticals. So, starting with the DMP, they acquired a leading DMP, going over to the multi-channel campaign management, two great platforms and all of the responses and a similar maximizer. So, by having best of breed in each channel, it's a great place to start. And now we're at a point where, and I think we're seeing this in the industry as the larger marketing clouds are really emerging and separating from more of the venture-backed point solutions, the connected to you. Yeah, it's a platform. Right, and the connective tissue between those solutions is now being built to the point to pay off on that multi-channel story. Well, they can enable these venture-backed chains. Let me talk about a lot of mintegos here. They're venture-backed. They're going to come on and see some people from even Salesforce's ecosystems starting to come into the fold. Is that the trend we're seeing? Well, what's very interesting about this world is you don't necessarily have to be very big to have a big influence. So, we've got some, you know, Merkel's a very big operation, but some partners can be very nimble and really influence how our customers can change. You can go as deep as you want. I mean, if you have a full global scale like Merkel, they've got the whole portfolio to work with, obviously tightly integrated with you guys at the partnership level. But you have some other channel partner come in, stand up and do a point solution and really kick butt at it. Well, even that, we even have smaller partners, a fraction of the size of Merkel that can also work across the full stack for customers. But what's really interesting about Merkel, kind of like an agency of the future is the fact that they're performance-based. So, how they get paid is a function of how well the technology performs and for them to actually build a lot of stuff around our technology is a stamp of approval around our technology. So, we want to make sure they have everything they need around enablement and performance to make sure that their customers do well. David, final question for you. What's the big, uh-huh, in terms of what's happening in the market? What's the one thing that people should pay attention that they might not be hearing about or reading about or seeing in the news and or in the industry trade that they need to pay attention to? You could highlight one or two handful of things saying, hey, these are areas you cannot miss the boat on. Right, right. One interesting one for me is that lots of companies are becoming media companies. So, companies that you'd historically think of as airlines or retailers are now tapping into their customer data assets, which is the most valuable asset that a lot of companies have, and using that in a way to actually drive media and drive their audiences back to their own properties and create this virtuous cycle of, hey, we do business together, and I want to talk to you not just on my own website if I'm a retailer, for example, but I want to be able to bring you back with film and customers, it's a new loop. That they're controlling the distribution and you want to have that resident on their critical infrastructure on property. That's where they can manage some of the IDs and data. Exactly, so if you look at retailers. First of being parasitic to Facebook or Google, that they can own it. So if you look at large retailers, the largest, Amazon, Walmart, these businesses are now some of the largest media business as well, where if I'm Pampers and I want to reach my customer, I may not just be going to my traditional website to media properties like New York Times, or I might be going to Walmart and Amazon as advertising properties, so we see that as a really interesting trend and we're actually helping enable some of those. And they're not usually exclusive either, right? You can continue to wander around the web, but if the advertiser, the brand spending the money to reach the customer, they're activating the interaction. Why don't they own the data? I think that's what you're kind of getting at, right? Absolutely, and they're taking advantage of the fact that they do have that closed loop data. Oracle could be the ID system, that's a different conversation. We'll talk to Mark, heard about that and Dave Donatelli and Larry Ellison, we get them on theCUBE at Oracle Local World this year, so. That's all about the data at the end of the day. We'll get Larry Ellison on, I promise. Herd's been on. Okay guys, thanks so much, really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing the insight. Congratulations on your partnership, global scale, from small, medium-sized enterprises all over the global scale. Agencies are changing, and Oracle, modern agency here on theCUBE, we'll be right back after this short break. Awesome, thanks John. Thanks.


So this is a kind of long question but I'll try to summarize it here. She's asking, with factory farming and even with pets that are getting depression medication at homes, can you speak to the effect of not eating halal or daib and the effect that has what having depressed animals and that then being them being slaughtered in ways that are not daib and then the effect that has on our bodies as a result? Definitely, I mean this is like I mentioned a very very important factor when we are choosing halal and daib right? That is why Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and his wisdom right? I mean whatever word is mentioned in the Quran every single word is mentioned with his divine guidance. So if he had wished he could have just said eat the halal foods but why did he mention halal and daib? That is because how an animal is raised is definitely has a lot of effect on us. So when an animal is stressed out right the cortisol level increases in the animals and this is then present in the meat and the blood and you know the milk and everything in the body right? And then when we eat this, this in turn affects us right? So this definitely has an effect on us and that is the reason why we need to make sure that the animal is also daib. So how do we do this? First is by asking the grocery stores right? So if you never ask your local you know your butcher market or you know where you buy meat is this you know how is this animal grown? What they will know what they will say okay I'm giving you halal food people are buying it quietly so why should I also make any effort? Because growing an animal in a daib way is more expensive right? You are giving them more space you're giving them more like fresh food. For example modern you know unfortunately the modern farming they did not have this connection so what did they do? They started saying okay the cows are there why do we take them to the grass and why do we need to feed them? It's fine you know we'll just give them whatever food they want because at the end of the day we're just slaughtering the meat. So they started giving them you know all the genetically modified foods and corn and soy and then they went one step further and they started giving them these you know the feed that is made up of other dead animals other like the roadkill other you know the dead parts of the animals they started doing all that and they said we don't care because at the end of the day you know we're just eating the meat and that is when you know the diseases like the mad cow disease started coming up right because this the the microbes from this uh dead animals that they were eating went we're going into the cows and then we passed on to the humans as well. So this was like a very very clear example of how what they eat was affecting us so that is why then they stopped doing that then they started giving them antibiotics and hormones because they said we just want more milk and we don't want them to fall sick they would cut their beaks right so that they don't peck each other and this caused so much pain to them then the cortisol levels would shoot up and then again you know we would have like the sick and the disease chickens right so it is our duty as a muslim that we find out was this animal injured what where the beaks removed where the claws cut off where they you know where they tied up where you know you have these chickens that are you know in such cramped areas that they are not able to move so a chicken usually you know typically takes around four months three to four months to grow but nowadays the modern practices you can have a chicken within like you know a fully grown chicken in 60 days right so you need to you know make sure that where you're getting from you need to ask them so if you ask your butcher your grocery store that i want thaiyeb food they will make sure that they ask their source from where they're getting from that oh like where are you getting it from is this halal is this thaiyeb and you know like i mentioned yes you may have to pay more for that but then that is how we are also advised to eat right we know from asuna that red we are asked to reduce our red meat consumption we know that the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam ate more of you know like the vegetarian food right so if we know this we'll understand you know when we were like you know during the olden times when they used to actually cut their own chicken right they would take one chicken and they would cut it and then they would use every part of it like or one cow or one sheep right and they would use every part of it for days but what do we do now we have like keema roti for breakfast and then we have like you know like a chicken fry for lunch and then we have like you know like you know like nihari or something for dinner can you imagine how many animals we have just slaughtered right like so when we think of it in just in terms of pounds we don't realize it but when you think in terms of animals you'll realize how many we are eating so in that way inshallah once we slow down on that everything else you know we'll follow inshallah


цветa f stacked ychydig hefyd, the next item of business is First Minister's questions. At question number one, I call Douglas Ross. The SNP Government have ordered an urgent review on how double rapist Ila Bryson, formerly Adam Graham was allowed into a Woman's Prison. The review was due to be delivered to prysen chiefs on Friday, but we've heard nothing further about it. The case of this double rapist has been a huge scandal, but the public are in the dark about exactly what happened and who was involved. Will the First Minister publish the urgent review in full today? Before I turn to answer Douglas Ross's question, can I take the opportunity to express my sympathy with the people of Turkey and Syria following the devastating earthquake earlier this week? The suffering and loss of life will be felt for generations. We are committed to doing all we can to help members of our emergency services. We have already been deployed to help the search and rescue operation on the ground. Just today, we confirmed a £500,000 contribution to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal. I know that all parties will help to promote that appeal following First Minister's questions and anybody who wishes and is able to do so can do so at www.dec.org.uk. On the review that has been referred to, the SPS provided a final report to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice on 8 February. The chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service met the justice secretary in the course of a regular meeting schedule yesterday to discuss that. The cabinet secretary has already confirmed that he will update the criminal justice committee this week. Both the cabinet secretary and the SPS chief executive are due to attend the justice committee later in February, when members of this Parliament will be able to ask questions. There will be full transparency about the findings of that review, as is right and proper. Douglas Ross. I associate myself with the remarks of the First Minister and she is correct. All party leaders and MSPs will join in solidarity after FMQs to support the Dec Scotland appeal. I welcome the funding provided by the Scottish Government and I believe the significant match funding by the UK Government on all donations received to help and support those who have been terribly affected in Turkey and Syria. Sorry, we are in this situation. I ask the First Minister a very direct question and I don't get an answer. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice had this report yesterday. The First Minister spoke about further discussions with the justice committee but failed to commit to publishing the report in full. Will she now do that? Will the First Minister confirm that her Government will publish the report in full? It is on the justice secretary's desk. I assume that she has seen it. The public deserve to see it because there are still so many unanswered questions. At the last count, the First Minister had refused 12 times to say if Isla Bryson is a man or a woman. It is important because that affects how public bodies treat criminals when they are released from jail. The First Minister says that she does not have enough information to decide if this double rapist is a man. He is a rapist. He has a penis. What further information can the First Minister possibly need? When this monster comes out of jail, will Nicola Sturgeon—I am sorry, if SNP members are grumbling at me calling a double rapist a monster, you should look at yourselves—when he comes out of jail, will Nicola Sturgeon and her Government consider him a man or a woman? On the report, I think that Douglas Ross is clutching straws in his follow-up question. I made very clear that the findings of the report will be published. The cabinet secretary confirmed—I believe that he confirmed in this chamber—that he will update the criminal justice committee this week. Parliament rises today, of course, for this week. Both the cabinet secretary and the chief executive of the Scottish prison service, Theresa Medhurst, will attend the justice committee on 22 February following the week's recess of Parliament. Members of that committee will be able to ask questions about that review. I am not sure how anybody can suggest that there is not going to be full transparency around that review, but I am grateful for the opportunity to set that out again for Mr Ross. On the subsequent part of his question, the individual that we are talking about here identifies as a woman. However, it is really important to very calmly set out that any rights associated with that are not a result of any legislation passed by this Parliament and indeed would not be the result of that legislation, even if it were enforced. It is a result of the Equality Act passed by the UK Parliament, reserved to the UK Parliament in 2004, which is effectively—and always has effectively been based on self-identification. However, what it does not do is give any individual an automatic right to be treated in a certain way in the prison estate. Actually, this case demonstrates that because the individual is in a male prison. What is relevant here and why I have focused on this is the crime and the nature of the risk posed. In this case, the individual is a double rapist, and in terms of decisions about how they are dealt with in the prison estate, that is the relevant factor.  In no other circumstances do we accept the stigmatisation and the denial of rights to the whole group, and we should not do that here either. The First Minister claims that I am clutching its straws on this. It seems that she is clutching on to this report because she is not willing to issue it in full today. The report findings, we are told, will be published at some point. Why not today? Why not publish the findings and the full report that your Justice Secretary has had for over 24 hours? For the 13th time now, Nicola Sturgeon has been unable to say if Isla Bryson is a man or a woman. She says that it does not matter because it is how they are dealt with on the prison estate. My question was very specifically about how they are dealt with when they leave prison. The First Minister has tied herself up in knots over this issue and is unable to answer that basic question because she cannot admit the truth. Her Government is going to consider this double rapist a woman. Nicola Sturgeon has brought in a policy that states that everybody who claims to be a woman must be considered a woman, even if they are a dishonest sex offender with a history of violence. Isla Bryson will be considered a woman by this Government, and that is why the First Minister is refusing cancer questions about this double rapist. Let me ask her about another offender, serving time right now. Not a rapist but a dangerous criminal with a history of brutal violence. Tiffany Scott, formerly known as Andrew Burns, claims to be a woman. Does the First Minister believe that this criminal is a woman? Douglas Ross is demonstrating a lack of understanding in the law. Any rights that any individual identifying as a woman has flow not from any decisions of this Government or any decisions of this Parliament. They flow from the protected characteristic provisions in the 2004 Equality Act 2020, which is UK-wide legislation and has always been based on self-identification. A gender recognition certificate—and, of course, the law passed by this Parliament is not yet enforced—simply enables somebody to change their birth certificate. It does not give trans people any additional rights, and that is important. In terms of how individuals are treated within the prison service, as I have said, that is based on the nature of the crime and the nature of the risk posed. Both cases that Douglas Ross has cited today demonstrate that in terms of the prisons that those individuals are in. In terms of how prisoners are treated when they leave prison for sex offenders, there are well-established procedures, including the MAPA procedures. Again, they are based on an assessment of the nature of risk. Those are important issues. They are sensitive issues, not least for the trans community. As I said last week and I have said before, the overwhelming majority of whom only want to get on with living their lives and never commit any offences of any nature. I do not think that Douglas Ross does any service to anybody in the way that he approaches this. I am struck by something that his predecessor, a Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, has said. Trying to do gotcha questions about who is a woman who is a man, I am not sure who helps, particularly for people in the trans community who are looking at the way that this is reported. Perhaps Douglas Ross could take some guidance from his predecessor on this matter, and that might serve this whole debate better than the way he is doing right now. Douglas Ross, thank you. This is not a gotcha question, it is a very basic question. It is not just me, it is journalists who are asking this repeatedly to the First Minister. I would not stand up here asking these questions if at any point in the 13 previous attempts I had ever got a straight answer from Nicola Sturgeon, so maybe do not focus on the question, focus on the deficiency of the answer. The fact that Nicola Sturgeon is now on two criminals who she said I have raised two different cases, they are. They are very different cases, but the similarity is the First Minister's point-line refusal to give an answer, and I think that she has to look at that. The First Minister accused me of basic misunderstanding of legislation. I would have to say that she is guilty of either basic or deliberate misunderstanding of our own policy, because it is quite clear that Tiffany Scott, this dangerous criminal, is treated as a woman in a man's jail. We have spoken to a former prison officer who told us this. All officers dealing with this individual were ordered to refer to Tiffany Scott as she and threatened with disciplinary measures if we did not. They said that Scott, and this is quoting them, has used gender recognition as a tool to create as much chaos as possible within the prison system, and they continued, this is a classic example of devious, dangerous individuals who are exploiting this ridiculous situation, the words of a retired prison officer who has dealt with this person. We also know that female prison officers have been ordered to carry out intimate strip searches of Tiffany Scott. Reports quote officers who say that nothing else about Scott has changed physically, and the officers say that their rights have gone out of the window. Does the First Minister agree with me that this is completely unacceptable, and will she intervene today to stop women prison officers being forced to strip search the likes of Tiffany Scott? First Minister, let me take these issues in turn. Firstly, let me reiterate this. The law that this Parliament passed before Christmas by two thirds of MSPs across this chamber, including members of Douglas Ross's own party, is not yet in force. It would not have the impact, Douglas Ross says, even if it was in force, but it is not in force, so, by definition, it cannot have that impact. The policies of this Government, the policies of this Government on these issues are guided by the Equality Act 2010. I think that I said earlier on 2004 that the Equality Act 2010 is guided by the Equality Act, governed by the Equality Act, which is a UK-wide piece of legislation. The rights and protections that trans people have flow from that legislation, and that is important to set out. Those in the prison estate are dealt with depending on the nature of the crime and the nature of the risk posed. Again, it is important, I think, for reasons of public assurance to underline that as well, and that is demonstrated by the two cases that have been cited in the media in recent days and here again today. When it comes to searches in the prison estate, first of all, the Scottish Prison Service has been dealing with transgender prisoners, although they are very small in number. For many, many years now, they have been doing it safely and effectively. They are experienced in managing these situations. Of course, it is also the case that the SPS has the ability to use technology to search individuals without the need for any physical search to be conducted by officers. The SPS has a trauma-informed approach to the management of those in custody and an approach that supports staff as well as inmates in their care. The SPS is experienced in these matters. I trust their handling of these matters, and it is important that we continue to ensure that they are handled appropriately. That is what the Government, in association with the Scottish Prison Service, will continue to do. We will all be devastated by the scenes in Turkey and Syria with the horrific earthquake and a death thrown out sitting at it. We will suspend business at this point. We will resume, and I call it a question to Anna Sarwar. I would question disruption at any time, but to disrupt when we are talking about the lives lost in Turkey and Syria, I think that it is frankly disgusting. The death toll has now reached over 16,000, and like Douglas Ross and Nicola Sturgeon, I send my condolences to all those that have lost their loved one in Turkey and Syria. I think of all those families living in Scotland that have a connection with Turkey and Syria. I welcome the announcements made by both the Scottish and the UK Governments in terms of money and resources to support the relief effort. I can also appeal to people across the country. I know that times are really difficult with family budgets, but anything that you can give to support the DEC appeal will make a huge difference to families suffering in Turkey and Syria. This SNP Government is leaving councils the length and breadth of Scotland in a dire position. Despite what Nicola Sturgeon claims, independent analysis shows that the budgets councils have control over are being cut by £304 million in real terms. That means devastating consequences for vital services, so will the First Minister finally admit that she is cutting local government budgets? This Government is increasing local government budgets. The resources available to local government in terms of next year's budget, of course, if Parliament passes next year's budget, the increase will be £570 million. Of course, inflation is sky-high right now. That is not a result of policies of this Government. Of course, that is affecting the budget of this Government as well. Absolutely, it is the case that local government is struggling with these financial constraints, as all parts of the public sector and, indeed, as Anna Sarwar has just said, households are struggling as well. That is why it is important that we continue to support local government as much as we can. Obviously, the budgetary process is still under way, and we will conclude following the February recess of Parliament. We will continue to discuss with COSLA ways that we can help them to mitigate the difficult situation that they find themselves in. Last week, I invited Anna Sarwar to point to other parts of the draft budget that he thought we could take resources from if he wants us to give more money to local government. He may have sent those to my office, but I do not know in which case I will look at those, but I suspect that he has not come up with any reasonable, realistic or credible proposals to do that. First Minister knows that we have published a document showing £3 billion of waste under this SNP Government. That would be a good place to start. However, the First Minister wants to deny reality. The Fraser of Allander, the IFS, Spice, Scotland's councils, including Aron, all say that there is a real-terms cut to local government budgets, but a truth that this First Minister is not willing to accept. There is no way for councils to balance the books without further destroying local services. All of Scotland's 32 councils are united in their opposition to this Government's cuts. That is what a presentation to council leaders said last week. Cuts have already fallen disproportionately on council services, libraries, culture and leisure, sports facilities, youth work, waste, roads, parks. Those are cuts that have already happened in previous years. The presentation concludes that the Government's plans are, and I quote, increasingly unrealistic, not sustainable, risk non-delivery of other statutory duties and puts the financial viability of local government at risk. Councilers of every political party, including her own, are angry and warning her of the dire consequences, but Nicola Sturgeon is not listening. As usual, she is right and everyone else is wrong. Why can't the First Minister see the damage that her decisions are making to our communities? First, I think that Anas Sarwar demonstrated the lack of any credible proposals coming from Labour in the first part of that question. Secondly, he mentioned the IFS. It's important to underline that IFS analysis confirms that council funding has increased since 2013-14. It's gone up by £2.2 billion, which is 22.9 per cent higher in cash terms. Of course, it is the case that inflation is high. When Anas Sarwar shouts at me from a sedentary position more about real terms, inflation is high right now, and that is affecting all parts of the public sector. Of course, that is down to decisions and economic mismanagement of the Conservatives at Westminster. However, we come back to the central point. All of us can accept that these are really difficult times for local councils, and we will continue to work with local councils to support them as much as we can. However, the draft budget that is before Parliament right now has all the resources at our disposal, including the revenue from asking those who earn the most to pay a bit more in tax. All that revenue is allocated within that draft budget. Anybody who says—and I understand why they would make this argument—that we should give more money to local government has a duty and a responsibility to point in that draft budget to the lines where they think that money should come from. Is it the NHS? Is it the police budget?  Is it social security? Those are legitimate debates, but if you want to be credible in those debates, you can only argue one side of it. You have to do both of the bits. That is what governing is all about. We can only have an honest debate if we get an honest answer from the First Minister. This is a real terms cut to local government budgets. The First Minister is out of touch with reality. Let's look at what is on the table, and the options councils are being forced to consider. Aberdeen is outsourcing all social work and children's services. Falkirk is selling off more than 100 council buildings, including swimming pools and theatres. Glasgow is slashing care placements for children that officials warn will compromise children's safety and increase the risk of abuse and neglect. Enough is enough.  Wherever you look, this Government is losing its grip. People used to say that the First Minister was competent. Now they are saying that she is out of control, and that she is people in her own political party. After 15 years of the SNP Government, local government in crisis, teachers on strike, the NHS on its knees, so will she finally admit that this is an SNP budget for cuts, for closures and for strikes? No matter how much Anna Sarwar raises his voice in shouts, it doesn't cover up the fact that he has not brought forward a single proposal within a budget that is fully allocated for putting a single extra penny into local government budgets. That is why he shouts, because there is absolutely zero substance in anything that he is saying. All sound and fury and no substance is a good summary of Anna Sarwar, but let me take some of the points. Anna Sarwar is talking about real terms. The £570 million increase that I have spoken about is a real terms increase of £160.6 million, 1.3 per cent. Secondly, in terms of the proposals that councils are looking at, at this time every year councils look at a range of proposals. I have seen proposals from Glasgow City Council this morning and the point is made, those are options that no decisions have been taken. I remember a few years ago claims at this time of year that there were going to be 15,000 job cuts across local government since then. Jobs have actually increased by 19,000. Yes, those are difficult times for local government, but if you want to propose more money for local government within a draft budget that is fully allocated, then to have any credibility you also have to say where that resource should come from. In the absence of Anna Sarwar being clear about that, I can only assume that he wants us to take money from the national health service or from police budgets and give it to local government or social security, perhaps it is the Scottish child payment. So if Anna Sarwar wants to be taken seriously, he really has to bring some substance to what is a very difficult debate and a very difficult situation for local councils across the country. To ask the First Minister what assessment the Scottish Government has made of the potential impact on the hospitality and tourism sectors of a ban on advertising alcohol products. The consultation on alcohol advertising and promotion is on-going. It is open until 9 March, so let me be very clear that no decisions have been taken on scope or type of any restrictions that might be taken forward in future. The point of the consultation is to get a range of views on the most appropriate next steps in reducing alcohol-related harm, which I hope we can all recognise is one of the most pressing public health challenges that we face. Considering restriction in promotion of alcohol is not unique to Scotland, for example Ireland passed legislation to bring in a number of restrictions five years ago. Restrictions that were focused on reducing the exposure of children to alcohol promotion, and I think that that is key, reducing the exposure of children. Ministers have met a range of stakeholders, including representatives from the alcohol and advertising industries, during the consultation period to hear directly from them, and of course will take seriously and consider properly all representations made. I thank the First Minister for her response. She will know that the whisky tourism sector is worth some £84 million annually to the Scottish economy and supports jobs in rural and remote communities where there are a few other opportunities. Yet this sector, as its leaders have been very clear about, is concerned at the threat from a ban on all alcohol advertising. I agree with the First Minister that we need to look at sensible measures to tackle alcohol abuse, but does she agree with me that it would be absurd if whisky distilleries, which are so important to our economy, had to cover up all their signage, close their shops, stop promoting tours and the likes of the Johnny Walker experience in Edinburgh, which is a tremendous tourism draw, had to rebrand itself and board up its windows, which is what people are concerned about. I do agree with that and I will come back to that perhaps in a moment. The whisky tourism sector is extremely important to Scotland's reputation as well as to Scotland's economy. The Johnny Walker experience centre here in Edinburgh is a prime example of that. Some of the suggestions that we have heard in recent weeks, let me be clear that the target would be painted signs on distilleries or visitor centres, are not in our current thinking, and let me be very clear about that. There is also a world of difference—remember what I said in my initial answer about exposure of children to alcohol advertising? There is a world of difference between a billboard outside or in the vicinity of a school and, for example, a Johnny Walker baseball cap. We have to look pragmatically and seriously at this. I am glad that Murdo Fraser recognised that we have an issue, a problem, a public health issue with alcohol misuse. Like countries such as Ireland have done, we need to look at promotion and advertising and how we sensibly restrict that to try to deal with that problem. However, we need to do that properly and pragmatically. I hope that that answer will give some reassurance to those in the whisky tourism sector about some of the supposed things that we have heard in recent days and weeks. Is there still a live consultation on the restriction of alcohol advertising as no final proposals have been lodged? Would the First Minister agree with me that any potential harm is still hypothetical at this stage, whereas the real harms being experienced by hospitality and tourism sectors caused by Brexit are being felt right now? The Tories should be pushing their Westminster leaders to address that. Natalie Dawn is so right to talk—the Conservatives do not like it—about the difference between hypothetical harm. I understand the concerns that have been expressed. I hope that what I have said today will allay those concerns on the part of the whisky tourism sector, for example. However, there is very real harm being done today, right now, by Brexit. The loss of free movement is causing harm, for example, specifically to our hospitality and tourism sectors as well as to the wider economy. We will continue to listen to the hospitality sector, the tourism sector and the whisky tourism sector in particular in relation to the issue and take on board reasonable points that they make. If only the UK Government would adopt a similar posture when it came to these industries expressing concern about the very real impacts and the very real harm that Brexit is doing to them right now. Will the First Minister join me in congratulating East Lothian public in Patrick Kearney, who has recently stepped in to prevent two local pubs, the Preston Grange Gothenburg and Preston Pans and the Tower in a Trinent from permanent closure? However, does she also recognise that hundreds of pubs are likely to close their doors for good this winter around Scotland? To prevent last orders being called across Scotland's hospitality sector, will she remove pubs in restaurants and cafes from the chaotic DRS scheme, replicate the UK Government's 75 per cent rates relief for hospitality businesses and halt the alcohol and advertising and sponsorship review, which will inevitably put further pressure on Scotland's hard-pressed publicans? First Minister, let me echo the congratulations extended by the member in his question. Of course, pubs like many businesses are struggling with high inflation right now. High energy costs in particular will come on to a question shortly about DRS, so I will save my substantial comments on that until that question. Of course, businesses such as those will also benefit from this Government's approach to business rates. We have the most competitive business rates regime, including reliefs for businesses to business rates of any country in the UK, so we will continue to do everything we can to support businesses in these very difficult times. Much of those difficult times are down to the economic mismanagement of the Conservative Government at Westminster. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's responses to reports that 600 drinks producers are concerned about the impact on their businesses and the survival of them in relation to the deposit return scheme. First Minister, we will continue to listen to and where possible address concerns that have been raised. In direct response to industry feedback, of course, the Scottish Government has already worked with Circularity Scotland, the scheme administrator, to reduce costs to producers. That includes a reduction in producer fees of up to 40 per cent and a two thirds reduction in day one payments for producers using UK-wide barcodes. We continue to work with industry to ensure that there are pragmatic approaches to implementation and we will do so right up to the point of implementation. Many of those 600 businesses are in a state of fear and even despair. Some will close, some will fail and others will no longer sell their own produce in their own country of Scotland. Unless halted now, this scheme, which most businesses believe to be fatally flawed, will damage the reputation of Scotland as a place to do business. Will you instruct a pause of this disaster of a scheme before it becomes a catastrophe? And will you order a thorough and independent review of how better to achieve its aims and exclude glass from the scope, as the top six nations in the world on glass recycling have done? We will continue to listen to and engage with businesses, the steps that we have already taken as I sit out already demonstrate that and I think it is important to say that. In fact, Scotland Food and Drink recognised this approach when they said in recent weeks that these changes mean that some of our key respects have been accommodated, which is positive and means that our collective effort has materially improved the implications for many businesses. In terms of glass, there are 44 countries and territories operating deposit return schemes. Only four of them do not include glass. Of course, it is the case that there are strong environmental reasons for including glass, but, of course, on all those issues, we will continue to listen. One of the issues that I am particularly concerned to consider further, if there is yet more that we can do to reduce any impact on small producers, because I think that some of the concerns that are being raised there are not unreasonable. We will continue to take a responsible approach listening to the concerns of business and responding responsibly in the face of them. Drinks producers have until the end of this month to sign up for the deposit return scheme. Those who do will be financially liable for any delays, having to fork out up to £1.5 million per month. Making matters worse, they are being asked to sign up with key information still missing. However, if they do not sign up, they cannot sell their products. One leading Scottish Brewer described it as, and I quote, extortion tactics. Does the First Minister agree that the deadline for such registration should be extended until the full operational, commercial and financial implications of the scheme are provided? We announced an extension to the go live date for the scheme back in December 2021, giving industry additional time to prepare. That was criticised at the time by the Conservatives among others in the chamber. The regulations that require producers to register ahead of the launch registration are now open. However, we continue to work, and this is important with Circularity Scotland and with businesses as they finalise their operational delivery plans. This is an industry-led scheme, and the industry needs to work with the scheme administrator on a joined-up approach to delivering it. We have already made changes. I have set those out, and we will continue to engage with businesses on any further changes that can sensibly be made to take account of some of the issues that they are raising. To ask the First Minister, in light of reports of people being forced onto prepayment metres, what steps the Scottish Government is taking to support vulnerable people in Scotland with rising energy costs? First of all, the Scottish Government opposes the forced installation of prepayment metres because it is only more likely to increase debt or leave people unable to heat their homes. We continue to call on the UK Government to provide the necessary additional support for those struggling with energy bills, but also doing everything we can with the powers available to us. That includes doubling the fuel and security fund to £20 million and providing an additional £1.2 million to help advice services meet the increasing demand that they are dealing with. I chaired two energy summits last year. As a result of those, we continue to work with partners to see what more we can do by working together to support and protect Scottish consumers in those times. Oil and gas giants BP and Shell are reporting record profits on the sale of energy while millions are struggling to heat their homes. The extortion does not stop there. I have received reports from Dundee Pensioners Forum that their elderly members are receiving alarming letters demanding payment from their energy suppliers. Payments to accounts that are not only not in arrears but are actually in significant credit. When these vulnerable people are unable to pay to pay what they do not even owe, they are being threatened with forced prepayment installation. I appreciate that much of energy policy is reserved. The First Minister does meet regularly with the energy providers and she does have their ear, so will the First Minister condemn any use of such bullying and strong-arm tactics? Will she commit to ending the granting of warrants by courts in Scotland for the forced installation of prepayment metres? I have not seen the letters that the member refers to, but I would condemn any behaviour that seeks to bully consumers or individuals in any way. Two issues were raised in the course of that question. Both important issues—firstly taxation of oil and gas companies and secondly energy regulation. Both of those things are reserved to the UK Government. I wish that that was not the case. I wish that we had powers here in the Scottish Parliament and perhaps the member will support our calls for such powers in future. As First Minister, I cannot instruct courts. I think that every member understands that, but we have powers available to us. On energy, as the member recognises, those powers are very limited. Of course, the Parliament and the Government will and should look to see what more we can do to help. However, as on so many other issues, if we did not always have to look to the UK Government and if we held those powers here in the Scottish Parliament, we would be able to do much more than we are right now. Fiona Hyslop. We also know from this Parliament's net zero energy and transport committee report into energy price rises that customers moving into properties with expensive prepayment meters also have to pay for the privilege of having them removed. As recommended in last summer's committee report, can the First Minister confirm if her Government has raised with the UK Government the issue of a legal right under appropriate circumstances to have a prepayment meter removed free of charge? This is an important issue that Fiona Hyslop also raises. I absolutely agree that consumers should be entitled to have a prepayment meter removed from their homes and at no cost to them. The energy secretary wrote to the UK Government last autumn on a number of issues, including protections and flexibility for consumers on prepayment meters. Given recent developments surrounding prepayment meters, I can confirm that that is one of a number of issues that we will be raising urgently with both the UK Government and the regulator. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's position is on whether oil and gas companies are investing enough of their profits to support a just transition in Scotland. I certainly think that more could be done. The energy profit levy's investment allowance doesn't do enough to future-proof energy supplies and promote green energy. Energy companies should reinvest their profits right now, their very significant profits in industries of the future. The draft energy strategy and just transition plan that was published last month sets out a clear vision to capitalise on the enormous opportunities that a net zero energy system offers. The industry, our economy and our climate highlights the importance of accelerating the transition to renewable energy sources. We have clearly and repeatedly set out the actions that the UK Government should and must now take to ensure a fair and just transition for our energy sector and what will be a decisive decade for action. Can I thank the First Minister for that response? Despite the utterly obscene profits of the oil and gas companies, investment in transition is not happening at anything like the pace needed to keep 1.5 alive. Over the last week, I've met with both Shell and ExxonMobil, who operate the Mossmorran complex in Fife, the third-largest climate polluter in Scotland. Does the First Minister agree that we cannot meet Scotland's climate targets without slashing Mossmorran's emissions? Will she call on both the operators and the UK Government to commit to investment in a just transition plan for the Mossmorran complex? Firstly, let me reiterate the Scottish Government's commitment to a just transition plan that both meet our climate targets but also supports good green jobs for our highly skilled workforce and that allows industry to retain international competitiveness. Mark Ruskell is right to say that the decarbonisation of industry plays a vitally important role in achieving all that, and operators, including those at Mossmorran, have much to gain from being at the forefront of a just transition. I would urge them to make sure that that is exactly where they are. We are currently developing a just transition plan for Scotland's largest industrial site at Grangemouth, and on completion of that, we will evaluate and consider what learnings can be replicated across other sites like Mossmorran. The draft energy strategy and just transition plan makes clear that the UK Government must also take action across a number of areas, and we continue to urge them to commit to a concrete timeline and processes to ensure that that is the case. We move to general and constituency supplementaries, I call Jackie Baillie. The First Minister has been sent a letter from the STUC in common wheel, setting out their serious concerns about the national care service bill, asking that the bill is paused. They are joined by the GMB, Unison, Unite, the Scottish pensioners forum, Who Cares Scotland, Parkinson's UK, respected professor of public policy, James Mitchell, the SNP trade union group and more besides. This follows significant criticism of the bill by no less than four committees of this Parliament, COSLA, a host of care providers and those receiving care themselves. There is nothing to stop the SNP from delivering improvements to social care now, like fair pay and ending non-residential care charges, but the sector is concerned that the SNP are not listening to their concerns and are intent on bulldozing this bill through. Will the First Minister pause the bill and take the time required to get it right? Of course, we will take the time required to get it right. There was a line in the letter that Jackie Baillie referred to that she did not read out, of course, so I will. We want to emphasise that we share the Scottish Government's desire to create a national care service. There are several committees of this Parliament scrutinising the bill at stage 1. When we have all the reports and all the feedback, we will take time to consider all the issues that have been raised. At that stage, we will set out the timescale for the rest of the legislative process. In the interim, we are taking steps to improve social care. Let us remember what a national care service is about. It is about ending the postcode lottery in care provision and it is about better rewarding those who work within the sector. In the year ahead, we are taking action to boost social care workers' pay and, of course, getting the initial organisational arrangements in place. We will continue to proceed in that responsible way. As we do so, we will listen to the views of all of the organisations that are signatories to the letter and I am sure that many others will be sited. The First Minister, along with the Minister for Public Health, convened a further summit on abortion services earlier this week, which was hugely useful in exploring further themes from my member's bill and I am very grateful for the Scottish Government's support. Could the First Minister update the chamber on next steps and what she says is the most important steps that we can take to protect and further abortion rights in Scotland? I was very pleased to convene with Marie Todd the second abortion summit on Tuesday and thank those members from across the parties who attended that. We had a very constructive discussion on the outcomes of the recent UK Supreme Court judgment on Northern Ireland's safe access zones bill and on the further issues that we must consider for Scottish legislation. The discussion underlined the continuing need for national legislation on this matter and let me reiterate the Government's commitment to that. Of course, it provided useful insights as the Government continues to work with Gillian Mackay to develop a bill that is robust and effective and I know that we want to see that introduced to the Scottish Parliament as soon as possible. In addition, we were all clear that the commitment to progressing abortion care and ensuring that women have access to high-quality abortion care in Scotland that are outlined in the women's health plan are a priority and will be taken forward. Russell Finlay. Thank you. The BBC documentary beneath the magic circle affair cast light on a very dark and distressing subject. Senior members of Scotland's legal establishment sexually abused children for decades. Susie Henderson's childhood was destroyed at the hands of her untouchable QC father and his vile associates. Yet the Government's child abuse inquiry will not hear evidence about this. Other survivors, including young footballers, have called for the inquiry to broaden its scope, so I would like to ask Nicola Sturgeon if that will happen. Firstly, the content of the BBC documentary where it was extremely distressing and disturbing and I think all of us want to ensure that these matters in the appropriate way are properly investigated. Obviously, any criminal investigations are for the crown and it would be deeply inappropriate for me or anybody else to comment on that. In terms of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, I am absolutely here at the points that the member is making, but, as he is aware under the Inquiries Act, the remit and the conduct of a public inquiry is entirely for the inquiry and for the chair of the inquiry. Ministers cannot intervene in that, but it is really important that all of the matters raised in whatever way is necessary are properly scrutinised, probed and investigated. I think that that is something that all of us want to ensure is the case. A new report from the National Institute for Economic and Social Research warns that households in my constituency and right across the UK could face a £4,000 financial crisis hit from the cost-loving crisis this year. What can the Scottish Government do to urge the UK Government to reverse its plans to allow energy bills to rise again this spring, which will only heap more misery on those already suffering? Paul McLeanon is right to raise the impact on households in his constituency and across Scotland. We have consistently called on the UK Government to provide additional support for vulnerable households with their energy costs. Prior to the introduction of the energy price guarantee last October, we called for the energy price cap to be frozen, and now we need the UK Government to urgently consider cancelling its proposed rise, along with the reduction in support for domestic consumers. We continue to take action that we can to support households, including, as I said earlier, doubling of the fuel insecurity fund. The key levers here do lie with the UK Government, and we must press them to use those levers in the interests of households and businesses across the country. The First Minister has betrayed communities in the north of Scotland with her broken promise to dual A9. It is clear that the work required to fulfil that promise has never been done. Her Government seeks to blame events that should never have impacted on the timetable. Will the First Minister now give us a date for completion of the dualling of the A9, or is she really telling us that the Greens are running her Government? First, let me be very clear that the Scottish Government is firmly committed to completing the dualling of the A9 between Perth and Cumberness. That is a £3 billion investment. There has already been over £430 million invested in it. Road users are already benefiting from some stretches that have already been dualled. On the issue that was covered in Parliament yesterday, we have carefully reviewed the submitted tender for that stretch and concluded, after a very difficult and complex procurement procedure, that award of that contract at this time would not represent best value for the taxpayer. The price of that tender was significantly higher than expected, even allowing for the impacts of inflation and a volatile economy. Had we gone ahead with that, down the line, I am sure that Opposition members would have criticised this for doing so because it was not best value for the taxpayer. As the transport secretary set out yesterday, steps will now be taken by Transport Scotland on the necessary preparatory steps for the urgent re-tendering, with the aim of achieving a contract award before the end of this year, and a new timetable will be set out as quickly as possible. It is also important to point out, finally, that design work is progressing on the rest of the programme with ministerial decisions to complete the statutory process confirmed for sieving of the remaining eight schemes. The next item of business is a member's debate in the name of Emma Roddick. There will be a short suspension now to allow those leaving the chamber and public gallery to do so.