Hello and welcome to this session entitled bring your own infrastructure or who needs to run a control plane anyhow. As you can see, I have a Halloween oriented theme. My name is Bruce Basil Matthews. I'm a senior solutions architect for Mirantis USA. And I've been doing this since before there was computers when we used abacus's and slide rules. I have with me today my good friend count smash to talk about these things because he is the premier authority on service meshes and I think there's some applicability to this which you like to introduce yourself count. Hello, my name is count smash and I'm doing this for Bruce as a fever. I had to get out of my coffin I hope I can get back in before the sun comes up. Thank you, count smash. I know that your full name is count service mesh but they call you smash, just to make it easy. Hopefully you'll be around at the end of this to answer some questions. So today let's talk about what we're actually going to be talking about where we are where we were where we were where we are and where we will be. We'll start with where we've been and writing the applications we talk a little bit about microservices and service decomposition, which I think is very important. We'll do some comparisons of bare metal virtual machines and containers, and a category I call who cares, which I think I'll unveil to you as we are presenting more information. We'll do the case for each ad service services and some more services down the road, and then we'll talk about some of the mechanics of the who cares category, which I think is an interesting side route to us. So let's start with where we were are and will be started out doing things with punch cards and paper tape finally the green screen became a really fantastic advancement in computing history. When you then had to wait for a card stack to process versus a mini computer proc processor to run it. It was a huge advancement when it got there and when you could set up prawn jobs so you didn't have to sit there and watch it to start it off and finish it. That was even better and debuggers have gone through a tremendous amount of improvement at this point in time they wouldn't even stop at the line that failed you had to figure that out yourself. And that when it no longer matter where you had to run something that we would have reached Nirvana. Writing applications on bare metal was kind of a more straightforward chore. You had application programs that you that dealt with your business logic and had nothing to do with how the computer ran. And because computing resources were finite, they were like gold, you had to make sure you only used as little as possible to get your process done. You had to write special drivers and for things like printers and storage and all of that kind of stuff and they had to be initialized in your environment when you were running something and you had to run code through hundreds of cycles of testing to make sure it wasn't going to fail once it was executed in production and if it did fail it was always the hardware's fault. Once we got to virtual machines that was a lot more computing resources available so people didn't get to be so picky about code size and as a result we started writing bloated software, and then we started sticking them in libraries so we could move them from one place to another. Debuggers actually did improve to the point where they were pointing at lines and telling you an idea of what you may need to fix. But because there were different flavors of Unix and none of the Unix providers had come together and decided on a single set of libraries. We compiled it for each one as one for HP UX, one for AIX, one for Sonos, one for Solaris because they had two flavors. And the idea of recoverability came into play and you needed to deal with that. But if code failed, it was because of the hardware, definitely. The containerization started to come in in the last two to three years and we're going to talk a little bit about the microservices and the microservices architecture and the containers themselves and their, their configuration. And we'll point out some of the differences between containers and virtual machines. A little bit about service decomposition because that's my favorite perspective on the thing. And recoverability was more my job now as the application developer on containers. But we had some shift left, self healing rules to rely on. And we would use those to be to fill that void. Since I don't have the an understanding of where the actual container may be running what physical hardware or anything I can't really blame it on the hardware anymore. Okay, so let's talk about microservices and microservices architecture a little bit. And microservices architecture itself is a set of services that communicate either synchronously or asynchronously to maintain their connectivity to each other in a stable way. Data consistency is passed from one datagram in a container to the next datagram in a container and so on. And microservices then can be developed independently of each other so your, your coders can be hundreds of miles away, and thousands of miles away and never actually deal with each other, only because the, the schemas might be well known at that point for different containers. The persistent storage comes with each container so it's self contained and you can decouple it easily and move it to another service set. And consistency is event driven, and we'll talk about event driven in a bit. Generally speaking, it's up to me to ensure that the data consistency across services exists and that's part of the developers responsibility now. Okay, so let's talk about the event driven architecture for a cloud native environments such as Kubernetes. Events occur, they are captured in cues, they are passed off to a mediator or mediators. Those mediators have channels registered with them requested by the consumers. And each event consumer takes a look at the data that's being passed to them in the event. And if it's applicable to them, they process it. In that process, they don't change the data set that's the end of the event queue for that particular event. If there is a change in the data set as a result of being processed by the event consumer, yet that event comes back to the front it goes through the queue the mediator, and back to all the consumers again so you get the idea this is kind of how this event driven stuff works. But the real important part of that is the ability to do decomposition. You have to start here whether you're moving from bare metal or you know mainframe to virtual machine to container and and to beyond to the serverless world and and beyond that. So here's some guidelines for it. And you do it at all of those levels regardless of what you had done before, you take a look at it to see what can be decomposed into microservices. And you look at it from you can look at it from a business capability standpoint. You can look at it from a design subdomain standpoint so that there would be a higher of them. It's easier to find things that way. You can also do it by taking the actions that are in the coding that you're decomposing and and isolating each one of them as a micro service, or nouns. There are several resources in a grouping, and those resources can then be identified in a catalog service catalog and things of that nature. I like to use the verb and noun cases for doing this because then I can write code that emulates the human language to accomplish it. Very quickly. When you've done this effectively everybody's got a single responsibility principle much like the grip of utilities in the old Unix world. They do one thing they do it very well. They're very loosely coupled because they have their own isolated persistent data sets. Each one of them publishes an event in its data chain when it changes the data and that event gets processed as we talked about other services that can then consume that event and process them in an event driven architecture. Our microservices the way to go for everything. The best answer I can give you is it depends. I mean if you have achieved everything that you intend to achieve in terms of being able to flexibly change the code and reduce upgrades and updates rapidly and all of those things with simple decomposition you can stop there. Because every layer that you're going to do thereafter from the containerization becomes a layer of complexity and expertise that needs to be acquired by your organization. Additionally, the networking would require some additional layers of complexity in terms of it. So I'm always asking myself if the value add of containerization and microservice generation is greater than the complexity that it introduces is probably a good idea to put it into a microservice.  Okay, let's talk about the actual platforms themselves and we're moving along really quickly because I need to get to this done. They told me pretty rapidly. All right, in the bare metal world host operating system sitting on top of their infrastructure apps run on top of that using the host operating systems libraries and binaries and all of that kind of stuff. In the virtual machine driven world they've introduced a hypervisor in between hyper V KVM Citrix take your pick and sitting on top of that are complete guest operating systems of different flavors so you can have windows and Lenox and different flavors of Lenox and each one of the apps use the isolated binaries and libraries presented by that guest host versus the host operating system that's supporting the hypervisor. In the containerized world they put together the same level of infrastructure, using a single operating system, and have introduced some kind of container engine in this case the Docker engine is depicted. And each one of the containers themselves have their own binaries and libraries built into them, running different applications in each containerized microservice. They're relying on that single operating system to to run with within the container engine. Okay. Bare metal has a lot of benefits. The workload demand requires it and application has some special need for a GPU or an SRI of the smart card for networking. Noisy neighbors fewer moving parts and the network has less complexity if I plugged in the, the Nick and it works I'm good. On the virtual machine world. Now, it helps you to do that decomposition by allowing you to utilize more of a physical host to host separate application services within different operating systems. Since it runs on top of the physical servers, the hardware is emulating the physical hardware and virtualizing everything. The hypervisor lets you monitor and create and run virtual machines. And they act as a layer between the operating system and the virtual machine kind of isolating them. Each virtual machine has its own unique operating system so you don't have to worry about crossed off between them and virtual machines different operating systems can run so windows and Linux and the same host physical host running a Linux flavor or whatever. There's a case for microserve microservices and containers, which enables a much higher level of performance of your application development teams and your developers can really start running these things predictably on different environments, regardless of where they're hosted. It provides an isolated way to run all of these systems on a single host. Sitting on top of the physical host OS, as I said, there's a container engine running shares the kernel and usually the binaries and libraries from the OS kernel, plus those that have been compiled in the microservice itself. But from the result of microservices they're extremely lightweight so they start up instantaneously as opposed to a virtual machine which takes a long time to boot up before it's useful. Okay, we've done that whole thing of re working from bare metal to virtualized applications. And we decomposed everything. And they're all in containers. Now what do you do. Well, just think if you had a secured registry so that only your groups and organizations could access it and you know to rise those containers and place them in there. And that if an application actually needed encoding, for example, the container that provided that service would simply be in the catalog and show up and start up and do the processing necessary for encoding. You have to make sure that there's a server available or scalability or or networking or or anything else before starting it up, because the infrastructures are all running continually. And we'll say, Oh, let's serverless computing but not exactly serverless computing really ties you down to the provider. So, AWS, Google, Microsoft, each have their own library of serverless calls. And each one of them is different because they won't standardize why because they want to lock you in. They want to avoid this and here's how. What if instead of relying on their infrastructure only to do the orchestration and cataloging we all standardized on Kubernetes, everybody's running Kubernetes it's the same kind of Kubernetes straight across the board. All of their serverless calls in custom resource definitions that they could share between clusters. This would take advantage of people skill sets that already exist in the marketplace and only make them better. And multi cluster applications are all of a sudden of wallah because everybody's running the same basic orchestration. And some resources can be shared into the private domain and the public domain for this application development to occur, which means that the developer is completely flexible as to how to do it. If you engage something like service mesh count smash comes into play here and using something like Istio you could manage the set and segment the networks out for traffic that was only dedicated to your clusters versus everybody else's clusters, and you could ensure both quality of service and security. Okay, let's take it one step further. What if sitting in that service mesh that is connecting all of your clusters across public and private providers of resources. It is providing both a neural version of the network and machine learning algorithms that could predict in advance, which containers were needed at any given point in time in a service being executed, and simply bring them up when needed. And that way you could scale the containers when you need to for that particular event. And then remove them and bring them back down. And you could scale it across multiple infrastructures. This would be fascinating. So this would also minimize the cost of maintaining the infrastructure because you only got less of it being used at any given point in time. And the biggest thing we could do is base all of that on the context of trusted computing so that that container knows it can run on these trusted computers, because they are in the service catalog that's associated to the discovery mechanism within the service mesh. And it imagines that there are stored in the trusted registry, these instantiations of servers and devices and containers to be able to be applied to your application services. The technology would make it really distributed computing as we envisioned it when we drew it up on whiteboards, 10 years ago maybe. And it mitigates the security risks because of the integration of the trusted platform modules. To do this we're going to need to standardize the security models will have to be all the same authority models so that people recognize your authority with the certificate. That's trusted by you to that computer, and all of those kind of things to live harmoniously across all of the flavors of infrastructure. We're going to be dealing with, and that allows us to do it for containers virtual machines and bare metal, which I think is a feat. Okay shameless self promotion in the last few minutes I have here. This is a log that goes into the details of the neural network and applying service decomposition to that network in order to be able to distribute computing. And then one because I developed myself and I've used the tool, but is now owned by my company. And this is a developers tool to be able to access and, you know, deploy to multiple flavors of both Kubernetes and the Kubernetes framework, so that you could have instances that we're sitting in AWS and instances that we're sitting in private cloud, or even on bare metal that we're being accessed and code was being written to. Anyway, take a look. Hope you enjoy that. Now, we're going to leave the last three or so minutes of this presentation for questions and answers. And hopefully, I've given you some at least food for thought, if not something that you can go out and get excited about. Thank you very much. Have a great day.


So, talking of young leaders, of course, we'll think entrepreneurs, so we will comply with the entrepreneurship side of it. We, our two next presenters are entrepreneurs. We will start with Liang Wu, who is the co-founder and chief information officer of GreenCitySolutions in Germany, and that is focused on air depollution.  Take this one. Thank you. I'll stand on the left side. So, can you imagine that 90% of all people are breathing polluted air every day? And did you know that this causes more than 7 million premature deaths annually? Right? You didn't know that. I bet you didn't know that. And for every breath of polluted air that you or your family are taking, it means that your life's expectancy is shortened. So for my family in China, that probably means that their life expectancy was shortened by more than 10 years already. And most people talking about air pollution, they still have pictures of Asia in mind or of Africa in mind. But the annual economic damage due to air pollution in Europe alone amounts to 1.48 billion euros every year, okay? And the problem of air pollution is it's invisible to the human eye. And it's also directly related to climate change. And with this picture, which is not perfect, I agree, I wanted to show you that we young people, we are not only marching on the streets, right? We're still young. We're multitasking capable. So apart from marching on the streets, which we did actually three weeks ago, we're also working on a solution. But with this picture, I also want to show you that we cannot do it alone. It's the diversity that makes it happen. So different nationalities, different ages, different genders. That's what makes up my team and what drives innovation in this case. When we started four years ago, we were four co-founders and four dudes. We covered the fields of architecture, mechanical engineering, horticulture biology. And me personally, I have an IT background. And one of our professors told us that plants are actually capable of cleaning the air. So we did some research and we have discovered that there is a technology millions of years old capable of solving the problem partially. So we have discovered special moss cultures, which we patented in our own system, which are literally able to eat up the air pollution and convert it into biomass. So those moss cultures, they have probabilities. They have an static charge, which attracts the opposite charged pollution particles. They have an increased leaf surface, which means they are capable of capturing more pollution than any other plant. And they are also capable of evaporating water on the leaf surface and creating a cooling effect. So this is a climate mitigation tool that we're talking about. So the solution has to be found, right? Moss can clean up pollution more than 80% of it in our system. That's it? No. So we combine this natural solution with our own IoT technology. And this IoT technology consists of sensors, which measure the pollution levels, which measure the humidity in the plants and also the water conditions. And this augments the system to be capable of filtering the 80% I just told you about. But our approach is not only building a product. It's a holistic approach. So with the sensors, we collect the data. We analyze the conditions in the street canyons, in the cities. We analyze where pollution is coming from. We do research on biology itself, on the plants itself. And only with the help of all this different department, institutions, corporates, we're able to come up with this. And it's called the city tree. The name might still change, but it's the product that counts. So five years of experience have gone into this development. And originally I wanted to talk more about this, but this isn't supposed to be a product pitch. So I just shortened it to the version where we can adapt that moss to any infrastructure. We can adapt it to the building facades. We can even make it portable. We can build a smaller version for indoors to put in people's homes. But our originally approach was that we wanted to provide a solution to the people in the city which cannot afford to have an isolated space. The elderly and the young people who suffer most from air pollution. And we are not profitable yet, I have to be honest with you. We are not able to grow as a young company in such a fast pace. And maybe Peter, you can help me out on that later on. And big support was also coming from the European Union. And I wanted to highlight one of their funding programs, which is called Horizon 2020. And with their help and their funding, we will be able to create the first hyper-local clean air zone in Berlin next year. And this is also an invitation to all of you. As we are at Green City Solutions, we do not only grow clean and fresh air, but we also engage global leaders. And this is why I'm really happy that I was invited to speak here and for this opportunity. Thank you, Patrick. And as you can see, I'm still missing on those pictures. So if anybody of you has time, come visit us in Berlin. I'm more than willing to show you what young people are willing and capable of doing. And maybe a picture of you and me showing the city tree will be replaced next year. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Jung, for covering many aspects and showing how almost holistic is the view. Because it's not only about you want to develop a sustainable solution. And I think it's a very important part of the young generation. It's not just the climate. It has to work and it has to be sustainable.


The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 138, in the name of Monica Lennon, on historical forced adoption. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Would those members who wish to speak in the debate please press their request to speak buttons? I call on Monica Lennon to open the debate. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'm grateful to members for supporting the motion and for taking part in the debate tonight. Historic forced adoption was most common in the 1950s to the 1970s, but for the victims the pain continues to this day. What happened was beyond cruel. Women were shamed for being pregnant outside of marriage. State sanctioned abuse made them believe that they were unfit to be mothers. It can never ever be justified. The practice of separating unmarried mothers from their babies and removing them for adoption was of course not unique to Scotland and the UK. In other countries, notably Australia, Canada and Ireland, Governments have apologised on behalf of the state for the injustice that changed the course of the victims' lives forever. For the 60,000 women in Scotland who were the victims of forced adoption, there has been no inquiry and no apology. Many women have already gone to their graves believing that they were bad mothers. Dr Cynthia McVeigh has spent decades supporting the victims of forced adoption. She says that without an apology from the Scottish Government, many of those women will never be able to forgive themselves. I cannot think of one single good reason to delay or deny them a formal apology. Evelyn Robinson was a victim of forced adoption in Edinburgh at 19. Her journey took her to Australia, where she became part of the Australian Apology, issued by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on behalf of the Australian Government in 2013. It shows us what is possible. That landmark apology continues to give women in Scotland hope. Gillard's opening words were that, today, this Parliament, on behalf of the Australian people, takes responsibility and apologises for the policies and practices that force the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering. If Australia can acknowledge the profound effect of those policies, why can't Scotland? For eight years, campaigners in Scotland have been waiting to hear those words from the Scottish Government. The act of forced adoption is the historic injustice that we are debating in the chamber tonight, but the lack of an apology is today's injustice. Award-winning journalist Marion Scott has supported campaigners for over a decade, giving them a platform and forcing us, the politicians, to listen. Marion is a fierce advocate for women and I hope her persistence pays off. For the women that Marion is supporting, time is running out. Two weeks ago, my colleague Neil Bibby spoke powerfully at First Minister's Questions on behalf of his constituent, Mary McMillan, a victim of forced adoption, who continues to campaign for an apology despite being terminally ill. I will now read a statement from Mary McMillan, whose son was taken for adoption from a mother and baby home in 1967. Marion says, I sincerely hope that Scotland will finally take the opportunity to make an official apology to the 60,000 vulnerable mothers who had their babies taken from them simply because they were not married. What happened to all of us was a dreadful abuse of our human rights and set in motion lifelong pain and psychological damage to the women and the children. Mothers spent their life searching for the babies that they were forced to hand over. I remember crying and telling the authorities that my baby already had a mummy, but they simply took my son from my arms and left me weeping. Our children suffered too. They also had no choice in what happened to them. Many were left deeply scarred, told their mother that they did not want them or that their mother was dead. Those policies condemned many to a lifetime searching for who they really are and looking for their parents within a system that put up many barriers in the way of any reunion. In 2015, I met Government ministers to ask if Scotland would take the step taken by Australia—an official apology is something that would acknowledge the wrong that was done to all of us. It is sadden me greatly that the opportunity was not taken then. However, I hope that the Government will listen carefully now to the personal stories of those affected and finally take the step of apologising for what was done. Those simple three words, we are sorry, seem to have been the hardest of all and we cannot understand why. Scotland still has the opportunity to lead the way in the UK by doing that. I hope that the support from all political parties will show that the time is right for us to do the right thing. It is clear that Mary Macmillan is not giving up. That is despite the bombshell revelation reported in the ferret today that ahead of that ministerial meeting in 2015, Scottish Government officials warned ministers not to apologise and to avoid the issue when meeting Marian and campaigners. Documents that were released to the ferret published today confirmed that. I have that briefing to SNP ministers in my hand, which warned that a commitment to replicate the public apology made by Australia and forced adoptions should be resisted. Officials also contacted the UK Government to ask for a steer on the issue to which the Department for Education confirmed our lines also resist calls for a public apology. Although it is welcome that the joint committee on human rights in Westminster, chaired by Harriet Harman MP, will be investigating historical forced adoption, we simply cannot wait for the UK Government to act. I know that the minister is due to meet her UK Government counterpart, but it is time for the Scottish Government to act. In 2015, an Edinburgh University report warned Scottish ministers that as many as one in three mothers with experience of forced adoption may suffer from severe mental health issues. Researchers concluded that tens of thousands of birth mothers in Scotland would benefit from acknowledgement of their experiences and an offer of help in dealing with the lifelong consequences of adoption. In conclusion, I appeal to the minister and to Nicola Sturgeon not to wait for the UK Government to act, ditch the bad advice and find the compassion and the courage to do the right thing, deliver this long overdue apology and finally give the women and all the families affected the recognition and the support that they deserve. I call Rona Mackay to be followed by Megan Gallacher. I am pleased to be speaking in this very important debate, and I thank Monica Lennon for bringing it to the chamber and for submitting her motion. This is a story that has to be told. It is a terrible indictment in our society that, not so long ago in my lifetime, an estimated 60,000 women had their child forcibly removed after birth simply because they were not married. The cruelty and inhumanity of this beggars belief. As a mother, I cannot imagine the horror of that. I am personally aware of women who have suffered this trauma of women who were told that their grandmother was their mother, although their mum was actually the woman who had thought of all their life as their sister. Despite that being utterly wrong and against all the rights of the biological mother, at least those women grew up with that child in their life. So many women, such as Marion McMillan, whom Monica Lennon spoke of, featured in the excellent report by Marion Scott in the Sunday Post, did not even have that. Women not just in Scotland or the UK, but throughout the world. In 1967, Marion was a single teenage mum from Strunrar, when she was forced to hand her baby over at a Salvation Army mother and baby home. She begged to keep him, but he was given to a married couple and Marion didn't see him again for almost 40 years. Ironically unaware that, while she was searching for him, he spent years searching for her. Speaking to the Sunday Post, Marion said, "...we were vulnerable young women who were bullied and told if we loved our babies, we'd give them up so they could have a mummy and daddy." I remember crying and telling them, but I miss mummy and begging them not to take my son. I was told, don't be silly, I'd get over it and I could always have other babies when I married. Incredibly, despite her lifelong trauma, Marion found the strength to reunite hundreds of mums and their children and gave testimony to a studio to secure an official apology there in 2013. She's also spearheading a campaign to get an official apology for mothers across Scotland and Monica Lennon calls for this in her motion. I personally wholeheartedly support this and I'm pleased that the First Minister expressed her support for this too in the chamber just a few weeks ago. Marion said, "...I can't express how important an official apology is. It's unimaginable something that this could happen in Scotland, but it did and the legacy of pain devastated many lives, especially those who'd never found each other. There are thousands of silent, traumatised women in Scotland who will relate to this. Their pain and anguish held within them for years. An apology will not write the wrong stunt to them, but if it gives them some comfort, then it should happen." What happened to those women was unforgivable and thankfully wouldn't happen today, but it serves as a reminder that we must always be aware that equality and women's rights must never be rolled back. I'm talking about women's health, LGBTI equality, misogyny, violence against women, reproduction rights, pension rights and much more. We must never allow those who would push their own agenda of judgment and moral high ground to impede the advances that we've made in equality. What has happened to 60,000 women in Scotland should serve as a reminder that human rights and democracy can be fragile. I want the women who have suffered this in humanity to achieve not just an apology but a promise from us as legislators in this Parliament that we will protect future generations, their children and grandchildren, from ever having to face the horror that they've had to endure throughout their lives. I commend Monica Lennon for securing and bringing this important issue to the Parliament this afternoon. Every member in this chamber today recognises the pain and suffering that the historical practice of forced adoption has caused to many women and children throughout Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. I wish to add my voice to those of my colleagues and express my deepest sympathy to every person impacted by these events and the anguish that they have felt. Behind each figure mentioned in the motion was a young woman. A young woman who found herself unexpectedly pregnant was hidden away from society and was told to give up her child because she was unmarried. The women behind those figures were told this by organisations whom they trusted. Some were told that it was for the best, some were berated and it was even suggested that they were unsuitable mothers. Others were told that it was for their own self-respect that they should hand their newborn over to another married couple who could look after their child better as they had stability. There was no support and very little sympathy. It was either adopt your child or find a way to fend for yourself. In preparation for today's debate, I read stories about women who had their child taken from them. I could not believe the stories I read. Women pretending to be married to keep their child, women trying to hide their baby, others seeking refuge with a charity before their child was taken from them. That really was a horrific policy and I can only imagine how they must have felt losing the child that they loved. Since 1975, many brave women have put their head above the parapet to talk about their experience and how they lost their child, not due to an illness or a sad circumstance, but simply because they had fallen pregnant at a young age. One of the many stories that I read was of Marion McMillan. Marion is rightly campaigning for the Government to investigate historical force adoption in Scotland and for them to issue a formal apology. It is disappointing though that, after six years of hard working efforts, Marion and others are still waiting on her apology. Although we can all accept that society has come a long way since then and attitudes towards younger parents have changed, for the women who were told to give up their child, the pain and suffering lives on, many women affected are now in their 70s or 80s and time is of the essence. As Monica Lennon said, some women have sadly passed away without hearing this apology. We know that an apology will not rectify the life-changing events experienced by young mothers, but it could go some way to acknowledging the wrongdoing and how they were failed by organisations, Governments and society. The devastating consequences for the mothers and for their adopted children are clear to see. Mothers often talk about how they feel guilty, how they are ashamed and how they grieve, as many do not know if their child is still alive. Adopted children also suffer. For those who are reunited with their mothers, they feel rejected, struggle to reconnect and bond as they spent the majority of their life living with an adopted family and not their biological parent. Those people were severely let down by society. That is why the Scottish Conservatives agree that an inquiry should take place regarding the practice of adoption in Scotland and a formal apology should be issued to acknowledge any wrongdoing as soon as possible. I also strongly agree with the wording of Monica Lennon's motion in relation to the support that must be offered to families impacted by historical forced adoption. As I mentioned earlier, women have been campaigning for an apology for over six years. In 2013, Australia became the first country in the world to apologise for its history of forced adoptions. We can no longer drag our heels over this important issue. We now need to follow in Australia's example and make sure that we provide women and children impacted with a heartfelt and appropriate apology. To conclude, I support the motion that was brought before Parliament today. It is a duty for MSPs to start this inquiry soon, to ensure that those who are impacted receive the outcome and justice that they deserve. Thank you very much indeed. I now call on Neil Bibby, who will be followed by Christine Graham. Neil Bibby, around four minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Forced adoptions were women were made or coerced by those more powerful than them to give up their babies as many young Scottish women were forced to do so in the 50s, 60s and even in the 70s were perhaps amongst the most heinous of injustices our society inflicted on women a tragedy for all involved. A tragedy for the babies taken from their mother's arms and forced to live with no knowledge of their birth parents or wider family. A tragedy for families whose relationships were often broken beyond repair. A tragedy for the women shamed and shunned by society. We should never forget or ignore the appalling cruelties inflicted on those young women, some of whom we will now perceive as children themselves and the lack of power and agency they then had. I therefore congratulate my colleague Monica Lennon for facilitating this debate. Forced adoption is one of the greatest hidden untold scandals of the 20th century. The scale outlined by Monica Lennon and others is truly staggering. It's nearly five years since SDV screened a documentary on this subject, exposing the injustice of forced adoption on national television, and yet women and their children are still waiting for the Scottish Government to issue an apology on behalf of the entire nation. The Sunday Post have drawn attention to the tragedy and hurt inflicted on my constituent Mary McMillan and her son, as well as Mary's long campaign for Scottish ministers to say sorry. Mary, originally from Stranraer, who now lives in Paisley, was 17 when she was sent to a Salvation Army mother and baby home. There, her son was taken from her, even though she begged for him to stay. Mary speaks movingly about hearing her baby crying in a nearby room and having to sneak in to cover for him because contact was forbidden, punished with extra chores. Newspapers have printed one of the only photographs of a young Marion with her baby son, taking with a camera that mothers had to hide so that he could have a permanent reminder of the short precious time they would have together with their babies. Marion's baby was eventually adopted and she was told she could be jailed if she ever attempted to find him. Despite both searching for each other, it was 40 years before Marion and her son would meet again. Through its credit, the Salvation Army has apologised to Marion, something that many others involved in the cruelty of forced adoption have yet to do. For years, Marion worked to support women from around the world who experienced this injustice. She helped to reunite families. She gave evidence alongside Evelyn Robinson and many others in support of a national apology in Australia. Australia went on to become the first country in the world to issue a formal apology for what happened. Marion now, as Monica Lennon said, has terminal cancer and is dying wishes that the Scottish Government will follow where Australia led and issue a formal apology to the women and to the children here who suffered as she did for so many years. The women affected are largely now in their 70s and 80s. As others have said, many are no longer with us sadly, but it is vitally important that what they went through is acknowledged and remembered for generations to come. Let there be a permanent record of Marion's own words in this Parliament. We were told that we were unfit and inadequate and that our babies would suffer if we denied them the chance to have two parents to love and look after them. We were told that if we really loved them, we would let them go to a good home and they would be selfish not to sign the papers. Our only sin was to fall in love in a different era and an official apology would mend some of the pain. Presiding Officer, this has been a shameful chapter in Scotland's history. It is time for the Scottish Government to acknowledge that and to assure apology that Marion and many others have waited on so long. Marion deserves her titan wish to be granted. Thank you very much. I now call on Christine Grahame, who will be followed by Miles Briggs. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First, let me congratulate Monica Lennon on securing this debate on an extremely important, sensitive indeed, heartbreaking issue. I wanted to come into the debate as one of the few female members of the Parliament who was around as a teenager and indeed as a young woman in the years of the 60s and 70s, and I want to put the context of it then. Contraception was top secret and young men would go to the barbers we offered quotes something for the weekend. Contraception for women was not publicised or available unless in marriage and even then difficult to access.  There was no sex education in my day at school. You had to pick up bits of information from magazines and science textbooks and friends, often much from the friends simply wrong. Good girls, in quotes, did not have sex out of wedlock, but for boys it could be put down to, in quotes, sewing their wild oats. Terms much in currency but then but how odd they sound now. The consequences for an unmarried girl becoming pregnant were drastic, in particular in those who where there was adoption under duress, of which I knew nothing then.  These are not terms I endorse, but were common and accepted parlance at the time. Her options were in most cases, the boy was not usually held to blame, if family were supportive and somewhere a shotgun wedding to the father, usually young himself, or the child once born was presented, as others have said, as the child of the grandmother and the child's own mother as a sibling. Adoption known to be often under family pressure or later known institutional duress and, of course, illegal abortions and all the ensuing dangers. That was the culture of the day to which I, like my peers, subscribed. The contraceptive that was used by most girls and young women then was fear of pregnancy and that alone. It was only with introduction of the contraceptive pill that women were able to take control of their sex lives and relationships when and if they had children. It had a huge liberating impact on them. As I look back on those days and say now through the prism of retrospect, it was so wrong and so unfair to women who often paid a huge price, as I say, sometimes entering too young into unhappy marriages for both parties, mascarading as a sister, abortion, forced adoption. That is more controversial. Do I think that current governments should apologise? There were wrongs not against the pervading culture but in tune with it. In general terms, the question is, is it relevant to ask those today in power to apologise for historic actions that society willingly accepted at that time? That is why I hesitate to support what are known as official apologies. I recognise why women see it but I sometimes wonder of the value of that in real terms. Yes, certainly. Monica Lennon. I think that we were all proud in this Parliament when the First Minister gave an apology to men who had sex with men, gay men who were criminalised because of who they loved. That was the right thing to do. It had huge value. Do not these women deserve just the same? I tell you that controversialness is a personal view, not to do with the Government. Even for that, I thought, what is this thing about an official apology? What we need is writing wrongs of today. We cannot, in my view, go back through history. Where do you stop? What things do you officially apologise for and which ones do not you apologise for? Do not think for one minute that I am diminishing the position of these women. Just let me continue and I am happy to do it. You would be a difficult one but I felt it necessary to say it because sometimes we use it as if that is the solution and it is not really. I want to go on a bit more and say, and I come to you a bit about homosexuals. Just as homosexuals once pilloried, even criminalised, the blame is not on those today or even those in the past, not if society willingly accepted those moral rules. Wrong and cruel, as we now correctly say they are. We cannot apologise for everything in the past, which today quite rightly is seen as wrong. It was very, very wrong. Each generation must be responsible for the more it mollies by which it lives and regulates its citizens if that is by consent of the citizens. However, where historic actions breach the laws and morals of that society, then there must be accountability. Forced adoption by its very terms was morally and legally wrong. That is why I support a UK-wide inquiry into who, which institutions are responsible for those actions, it is they who should be held to account and from whom apologies are at the very least due. I am talking about continuing institutions. I think that it is a very considered point in terms of the individual responsibility around that. In my view, as a Parliament, we do something to embody the nation and the spirit of the nation and the population as a whole. If we can, as a community, apologise to people against who have been so grievously wronged, then our Parliament performs that in some respects higher role in our country. Would we consider that to be a worthwhile thing to do? I think that it is a very interesting debating point, but you then have to recognise how far back you go and what particular wrongs that we now recognise. Do we then apologise for? Do we rank them? There is a really big philosophical debate here. I just felt that I had to say that because I have always had issues with us taking this route without considering further. I am getting a bit of a... Who are you taking intervention from? I have no idea, but I think that it is my colleague. Just to say that if an apology gives the women comfort, should that not be the reason why we should do it? If it gives them comfort, surely it is the right thing to do. As I said in general terms, I want us to examine how far back you go and who else comes along, and by no means am I diminishing what happened to those women? I want to separate the pain that anguish and the wrongs that are done by institutions and individuals from the general question of official apologies. Where are we going with them? What does it mean? How far back do we go? Which cases are there and so on? That is an important matter to explore. I thread it into this because that is why I have a certain discomfort with just saying that we will badge everything with an official apology. I do think that it is worth a discussion, but I want to go on and say apologies from those who were to blame and apologies from the institutions to blame. But thankfully today, my goodness, we have different values. Women and their rights have come a long way, though there is still much to do. Adoption laws, and I remember this taking place as a lawyer, have moved on so that the biological parents in an adoption can retain rights of contact to their child. It used to be wiped off the face, and that was bad. What we must do is recognise the awful pain and even guilt these mothers, often young, endured then and to this day. As a mother of two, I cannot begin to understand how awful it must feel for them and help them to reconnect if they wish. If appropriate, through the various agencies with their children now grown-ups, that is what Governments today should do while recognising so much that was wrong those decades ago by initiating an inquiry and supporting and helping these mothers when it is needed and requested and calling to account in my view those to blame. Thank you, Ms Graham. I noticed that Ms Graham is impervious to the waving of the Christine Graham pen, but I now call Miles Briggs, who will be followed by Paul O'Kane around four minutes. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and can I take this opportunity to welcome you to your position in Parliament as well and congratulate Monica Lennon on bringing forward this important motion for debate, and I was pleased to give it my full support. Also to congratulate my friend and colleague Megan Gallagher on the excellent speech that she made and welcome her to Parliament. Christine Graham set an important historical context in her contribution this evening. I do not necessarily agree with the conclusion that she reaches on a national apology, but I think that it is important in listening to the first part of her speech, I think that she set that context, which many of us find completely alien and is what shocked us today. It is debates like this debate this evening, which I think really makes me desperately want to see the day return when Parliament can actually open our doors and let the public back in, because I think that tonight, the member's debate, we would have seen a completely full public gallery and I have no doubt that people watching this debate really want to see their voices heard in this Parliament. Deputy Presiding Officer, the forced adoption scandal has clearly directly affected mothers and we have this evening heard from many members in harrowing terms that unimaginable impact it has had and is having every waking moment of their lives today and for those who are still alive. We must also consider the impact it has had on children and indeed fathers. I wanted to use the time that I have this evening to speak about my constituent, Marjorie White, who is 70. A former nursery teacher, Marjorie believes that she will be one of the oldest forced adoption babies in Scotland today. Marjorie spent 30 years searching for her father, Peter McAllister, only for him to sadly die before they could meet in person. She says that frustration and sadness of never being able to hug her own dad and only to have a few short conversations on the phone was truly devastating and traumatic to both her and to him. Marjorie was deeply affected by the sheer waste of it all and has spoken out now because she believes the children of forced adoption were never given a choice but many of them are equally suffering today. She believes that Scotland needs to find a way to make the records more accessible for individuals who are alive today when they are trying to trace their parentage. It is something that we have not really touched upon in this debate, but she has spent her whole adult life searching for her father. She has been able to discover, after searching for him, that link. For many people, the current systems in place do not allow them, in fact, to put in place barriers to them to find out about their past. It is important to consider that, as we see advances with modern medicine, people want to know and investigate if they may have risks of genetic diseases, cancers and other illnesses that might be passed through generations. That is part of this debate, which is important, I believe, as well. That can only be done if we have a way of people being able to access family medical records. That will be a debate for another day, but it is one that we should also look at people who are asking for that and asking for this Parliament to start considering that. Individuals knowing that they are at a genetic risk of disease is increasingly important and, arguably, today a basic human right. I would welcome, in response to the minister or maybe in writing, how this aspect of this debate can also be considered. The true extent of the scandal when mothers were forced to give their babies up for adoption between the 1950s and 80s, because they were not married, is only now truly being understood and realised. I would like to thank, like others have, the Sunday Post newspaper and, most important, the campaigning journalist, Marion Scott, for the relentless campaign that they have run and led on this over a number of years now to uncover the personal stories and also to look towards how difficult it is for people to tell those stories. For many women, this period of our history destroyed their right to a family life, but for many they have had to live with this in secret. Many will today be starting to read the stories or to watch the TV interviews that are now being shared on national television or even watching this debate potentially. That will be re-traumatising, but in many cases it is also very difficult, if not impossible, to tell their partners, their children and their grandchildren about that period in their own personal history. However, we need to therefore make sure that consideration is given to what support must be made available for women coming forward, and I hope that ministers will also look at starting those discussions as soon as possible. Like Monica Lennon, I would like to particularly attribute to Marion Macmillan a truly remarkable lady. She has driven this campaign forward and she should be incredibly proud of what she has achieved for so many women. So many people owe her a great deal for her strength. It is down to really the bravery of Marion telling her own heartbreaking story that many people would have never known about this dreadful human rights scandal happening in Scotland with 60,000 mums each of them having their babies taken away and families torn apart. The damage done was incalculable, but we only now today know how many people are actually impacted and maybe only really starting to scratch the surface of this scandal. I welcome the First Minister's commitment to looking at ways in which this national apology can indeed be taken place. To give Marion and many other women the never closure but opportunity to know that the nation acknowledges the pain that they went through. I hope that Scottish ministers will take care as they look at doing this and make sure that the Scottish Government actually works to get this right. I have been concerned with other scandals that we have seen, like the mesh scandal for example, that this has sat on ministers' deaths for far too long, so I hope that we will see action. In fact, the pressure that campaigners have delivered has seen other countries, and I think that it is important that we now act as a nation. Presiding Officer, to conclude, no one is pretending that an apology can right the wrongs done to them, but I hope that a national apology will give many who are today aging and in many cases suffering ill health some comfort. We cannot right the wrongs of the past, but we can say sorry and support everyone as they move forward with their lives, and to acknowledge how negatively so many of our fellow Scots have been impacted. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I welcome you to your place. Can I begin by thanking my colleague Monica Lennon for securing this important debate this evening? I know Monica's motion and, indeed, her work on the issue over many years has enabled us all to give voice tonight to the painful experiences of our recent past here in Scotland. I also want to take the opportunity to highlight the work of my West Scotland colleague Neil Bibby, and what he has done, along with Paisley resident Marion McMillan, whose story we have heard articulated once again in this chamber tonight and so powerfully. Neil's work on the issue over many years with Marion is to be commended. I think that the emotion in speeches tonight has shown how deeply personally everyone has been affected and impacted by those stories. We are here because of Marion and so many like her who have bravely told those stories, and have tenaciously argued on behalf of some 60,000 women who were unfairly coerced resulting in their newborn babies being taken away simply because they were unmarried. Much of what we have heard tonight is hard for us to imagine in today's context, but it is a heartbreaking truth and a dark moment in our history. It is a time that must be confronted and from which there must be truth and the opening of doors to closure, reconciliation and on-going support. Instead of trying to support women in society shun them, instead of trying to understand communities' judgments, and instead of offering the care that they needed, people in positions of trust and in organisations where charity and compassion were supposed to be at the heart took their children away, telling them that it was for the best. Many women were told that if they truly loved their child, they would give them up. It is hard to comprehend that level of emotional abuse and bullying. Those scars run deep. Indeed, constituents have contacted me, as I am sure they have many other members, to share their stories and to make the case for an apology. People like General Farmer from Bearsden who told me about a lifelong shame and the grief that she has experienced and the huge impact that the removal of a child has not only on their own life but on the life of the loved ones around them. Given that Australia, Canada and the Republic of Ireland have made apologies at a state and national level, it is time for both the UK and Scottish Governments to make such an apology. I commend the efforts of campaigners across the UK and of Labour colleagues such as Harriet Harman, who are working to secure such an apology in the House of Commons, but as Monica Lennon has said, we should not wait, we should act here in Scotland. In my remaining times, I want to turn to the importance of apology, but also the work that is required to underpin it. Trauma that is not transformed is transferred. The lack of closure, the lack of a healing process leaves a huge void in the life of so many, with pain relived every single day. An apology in itself cannot take the pain away, but I can acknowledge it and begin a process of reconciliation that I believe can lead to better long-term support for those living with trauma. An apology must be accompanied by an inquiry, leading to better supports such as access to bespoke therapies, counselling services and sustainable funding for organisations that provide those services. It cannot be acceptable, for example, that the only option when seeking counselling support for many women is that it is offered in settings where the walls are covered and posters promoting the positive experiences of adoption. Bespoke services are needed, designed in line with experience and needs of those that we have spoken about this evening. Indeed, I urge the chamber and the minister to look at the outcome of the Australian Parliament apology and inquiry, and indeed the Victorian state inquiry, which is due to report in August of this year. It has already included strong evidence from organisations calling for the provision of free specialist counselling and psychological services and a framework so that those services can be delivered independently. I think that there will be much in that report that we can learn from here in Scotland. To conclude, saying sorry has power. This Parliament, this place has power. In my first speech in this Parliament, I spoke about the power of Parliament to make things right. That is the place where an apology should happen. That is the place that Scotland looks to in times of joy and sorrow, in times of crisis and confidence. We have the power to say sorry for the actions of the past, but we also have the power to take action to improve the present and the future, and it is well past time that this happened. Thank you. I thank Monica Lennon for bringing forward this debate, and I welcome the opportunity to make some closing remarks. Like others that we have heard from during the debate, I am deeply saddened that in the past women were felt forced to give their children up for adoption due to the prevailing moral and social norms of the time. For the women, their children and wider families who have been affected by this issue, their lives have been profoundly changed by the experience, and I would like to offer my sincere sympathies for what they have endured. I would like to thank the women for their commitment, their courage and their determination to come forward and have their voices heard. I do not for one minute underestimate how harrowing it is for them to revisit their experiences, which I am sure will have sadly added to their pain. It is a complex issue and was influenced by many facets of society at that time. Those of us who have heard first-hand accounts or red research will have been moved, if not shocked, by the often heart-breaking experiences such as mothers being prevented from seeing their babies during birth and birth mothers feeling pressurised into giving up their child. The accounts shared today have again reiterated the terrible harm and long-lasting impact, and the practices may well be historical, however the effect that is had on these women is very real today. We sadly know from the numerous accounts of birth mothers' experiences that they suffered widespread social censure, condemnation, prejudice and stigma. Thankfully, those practices and morals have no place in our society today. Two weeks ago, the First Minister agreed to look at this matter properly, fully and quickly, and I am equally committed, having reached out to the movement for an adoption apology, and I am delighted that they have accepted my invitation to meet next week. I am actively working to establish future meetings with others affected by those historical practices. No voice speaks louder than the voice of lived experience in any issue, and the opportunity to discuss this directly with women who have suffered the trauma of separation and its lifelong effects is of paramount importance to me. As the chamber will know, I am fairly new to the role of children and young people's ministerial role. However, I understand that the movement for an adoption apology has campaigned for many years on this issue and is also called on the UK Government to issue an apology. I am also acutely aware that the group also recently reported that the adoption apology made by the Republic of Ireland Government earlier this year had, quote, not been well received and had been described as political waffle. That is why it is so important to me to have direct discussion with those with lived experience of adoption under those circumstances. It is right that we look at the issue properly, and for me that means listening to the voices of women, children and wider families whose lives have been profoundly changed by the experience. By doing that, we can work in partnership on the next steps. I am grateful to the minister for taking the intervention. I welcome those discussions and meetings that she is about to embark on, but women like Mary McMillan had those meetings in 2015 and told her story. We are telling it again tonight. Can I get a commitment that the First Minister will attend those meetings also? As we have heard tonight, the women and the families do not have time, and it is traumatising to tell your story over and over again. As a mental health professional, the minister knows that. Can we get a commitment that we can speed that up? We have paper work from the FOIs that shows that, in 2015, ministers were told what to say before the women had even opened their mouths. Let's get a commitment tonight from the minister that that will not happen again. We can move forward towards meaningful apology and the support that the women and the families need. I can certainly make a commitment that I will speak to everyone who wants to raise their voice. We are looking at ways in which we can ensure that we have the widest range of voices to inform us of what the women and their children need and what they want. We know that the Adoption and Children's Scotland Act 2007 requires local authorities to provide those affected by adoption with the support that they require. There are adoption support services available across the country, including in certain areas specialist agencies such as the Scottish Adoption Advice Service run by Bernados and Scottish Adoption. Those specialist agencies run extensive and well-established information, intermediary and counselling services, with provision available to local authorities. The Scottish Government funds and works closely with the organisation Birthlink, which also provides services to individuals and families separated by adoption, which includes maintaining the adoption contact register for Scotland. If any women, adoptees or others affected by those issues need support, their first step should be to contact their local authority adoption agency, who are ready and willing to support anyone affected by those issues. Despite those supports being in place, I recognise that they may not provide everything that those campaigning on those issues feel that they need. That is why it is critical for me to understand what really matters to those women and how they feel that they can be best supported moving forward, ensuring that they are treated with the sensitivity and the respect that they richly deserve. I thank the minister for taking the intervention. I accept that it is not the minister that was responsible for those horrific actions. I accept that it was not this First Minister, this Government or this Parliament that was responsible for those tragic circumstances. However, does she accept the principle that the Parliament is representative of the nation, and if the nation is going to accept the wrongs that we made as a nation, that means that this Parliament should speak with a united voice, meaning that its Government speaks with a united voice, to make these public apologies, to provide closure for those women and then to give the adequate support the follow-up. Does she accept the principle of that role and the role of this Parliament? What I do accept is that I am going to work really hard with those women and their families to find out exactly what it is that they want, because there is no one voice in this. We have one shot at getting this right, and I want to get it right. I give that commitment to Mr Sarwar that I will do my level best to try and assist in making this Parliament's voice heard. I am also mindful, though, that this issue has had a huge impact on the children. I think that Miles Briggs mentioned this. The children who were separated from their mothers all those years ago, and it is equally important that their voices and experiences are heard too. Given the importance of this issue, I have written to the UK Government in order to discuss historical adoption practices, as I know that it is a matter that is being discussed south of the border, as has been referenced by members in their speeches. Major shifts have occurred in adoption practice, as well as across society as a whole, and we are not complacent, though, and know that more can be done. That is why this year the First Minister committed to implementing the findings of the independent care review's promise. The promise recommends keeping families together where it is safe to do so, and that families must be given support together to overcome challenges experienced in their lives. Where it is not possible for the child to remain with her birth family, it is crucial that all parties are given the appropriate support, including therapeutic support, advocacy and engagement. I think that we have heard from some very powerful speakers this evening, and I would not want to single out any one of them, because I thought that people spoke very eloquently about the experience that their constituents have brought to them. I say to every member who has participated in this debate that I have certainly heard the words that you have said, and I will take your considerations on board. I would like to conclude by once again reiterating my deepest sympathies to all those who have been affected by historical adoption practices in Scotland. I made reference earlier to the bravery of the women who have made their voices heard, and I am committed to listening to those women, to their children and to others affected to work in partnership with them to explore our next steps.


I visualize a cohesive group of people who are building on the good results that we achieved in the previous study period. One that collaborates with the BDT, one where there's synergy between the activities that the BDT is doing in the field and the experiences that our members are having, that they can validate and challenge one another so that what we come out with at the end is a really rich, accurate view of where we are and where we're going, what works and what hasn't, and that there's a story that can be shared perhaps with the rest of the world about how to go about improving broadband deployment, improving ICTs, and getting affordable services to people around the world. We have nine topics in Study Group One, and I don't think that there's anything that's not really very, very important. Of course, broadband is a very big topic. We have cloud computing, all of the applications. People are always interested in how to price things with convergence, what's happening with the economics of it all. Accessibility is extremely important. Spectrum issues are extremely important, and there's a synergy with all of them. So I just believe there's a really high interest in everything. I can't just say, oh, well, this and not that. But as I said, I really feel like that we're all going to work together, and all of those questions have a piece in that story that answers some questions about how things are done and what's working. And hopefully it will inspire other people in their countries, maybe not exactly this particular way, but something that we release and put out and discover can inspire someone else. And that's what we hope, that it's that spark that ignites interest and fruitful activity. Well, the main challenges are going to be, I believe, actualizing that collaboration, a closer collaboration with the questions themselves and with the regional activities that are going on out in the field. I don't think we've done that in the past, and so we'll have to manage that process in a way that allows people to not step on one another's toes, but to sort of get the best out of each other's work and put the best of the best together and have an even better product than either one of us would have without each other. So we haven't really tried that systematically, and so I think managing that process will be a challenge, but the outcome is worth that challenge. And my role will be to help shepherd that process and to look for ways to help bring people together and give them what they need. Watch out for where things may be stumbling and give people that assistance. Finding those, plugging up those holes, if you will, so that the rapporteurs of all the questions can really shine and people are happy when they're doing productive work. The unique makeup of the membership, and there's a lot of communication and interaction between the membership and the staff here at the ITU. I don't know if it's like that in other UN organizations, and so I would say that for me the principal contribution has been in decreasing the digital divide and in helping members and others to narrow that divide and expand this amazing sector communications. I think that its main contribution has been to help connect people to each other so that we can learn from one another and so that we can collaborate for our mutual benefit.


At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. You'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. Following the July flooding, the Pike County Health Department took a rapid needs assessment of flood survivors. Over 20% of those surveyed saw a worsening of mental health, 41.1% experienced more than one new mental health issue and the community saw a 14% increase in major depressive disorder. I think mental health is important anytime because mental health involves how we think, feel and act. Practically everything we do involves how we think, feel and act and because it's a part of our overall health in general. Mental health is important related to the flood that we experienced in July of last year because I think a lot of people don't really recognize what is quote unquote normal or abnormal following an event like that. So it's important that people can recognize what the sign, what's normal, they can, which normalizes the experience as a whole and also to know when to be able to seek help or assistance if needed. Big Sandy HealthCare has two clinics in Pike County in addition to clinics in Floyd, McGuffin and Martin counties. They also have access to telehealth services through the University of Kentucky. Pretty typical for there to be a bit of anxiety and trepidation before accessing mental health services. I think that is more prevalent for the older generation, 60 and older than it is. The younger generations are a little more accepting and have incorporated mental health as a part of health as a whole. When people come in and actually make it into their first visit, often they reference several things. They reference the fear and guilt and which comes from the stigma of I should be able to deal with this on my own and I shouldn't feel this way. Those are a lot of the things that I hear that typically point to the presence of stigma in maybe their social circles. According to the CDC, mental illnesses are among the most common health conditions in the United States with over 50% of Americans being diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lifetime. It's typical following a stressful event such as a natural disaster to experience some level of distress. Mostly everyone who experiences or is exposed to a traumatic event will experience distress of some form. Early after the trauma, or early after the stressful experience, it would be typical to experience anxiety, to have difficulty sleeping, nightmares, irritability, changes to behaviors such as eating habits or sleep patterns. But if that extends to say seven months later where we are now, then that's something that we may definitely want to talk to a mental health professional about. For more information and to schedule an appointment for mental health services, call 1-606-886-8546. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


All right, so I'm Ann-Marie Slaughter. I am the president and CEO of New America, and for those of you who are here for the first time, welcome to our new space, and we hope you'll come back often. It is, we're in for a really fascinating afternoon, and I will start by saying just how path-breaking I think this work is on digital globalization and more generally on looking at the world through the lens of connectedness. Now I will, full disclosure, it's easier to say it's path-breaking work when they're breaking the same path I'm on, and indeed in 2009, I wrote an article about how America was much more powerful in this century than most people thought because it was the most connected nation in a networked world, and that if you think about a world that is horizontal and networked and that's old news in the business literature and many other literatures, if that's the way you see the world, then the measure of power is connectedness. Now this was slightly a lonely view, and I was out actually at PIMCO giving an hour-long presentation talking about the chessboard view of the world and the web view of the world and how we really had to see the world in terms of the web and getting beaten up, and just before I went out there, there came McKinsey's first report, this is the second building on that, on the connectedness index and how to see the world in terms of networks and flows, and I have been grateful to them ever since, but I also think that they are really pioneering in quantifying and measuring something we all say at the start of every talk. We are more connected than ever, we're more interdependent than ever. They are really trying to break down what that means, and as I said, to measure it, to quantify it, and they look at the flows, the networks and flows of goods and services, of finance, of people, and of data. When I look at the world instead of breaking it out in terms of finance and services, you can also look at flows of energy and increasingly flows of climate, right, in the sense of how is climate altering the flows, I'm not just a migrant, so that's people, but thinking about desertification, thinking about water shortages, all of that, it's a very useful perspective there as well, what region is connected to what, depending on where the river source is, or how they are affected by global climate. So I wanna just start by admiring the way that I think increasingly all of us will have to think about the world. The second thing these reports do is to really highlight the ways in which the digitalization of the economy empowers small and medium enterprise and empowers small countries. And again, as a foreign policy person, Costa Rica, Singapore, Finland, many small countries can be far more powerful in the world than the traditional way of measuring power. And one of these reports looks at that that if you're a country that effectively makes yourself a platform for digital data flows, you have a kind of power, you may have a kind of vulnerability also, and I'll come to that in a moment, but you have a kind of power that traditional measures of power simply cannot capture. Singapore is small, small people, small economy relatively, but it can be much more powerful than we might think. And in the US analog is smaller cities, that similarly you could be in Chattanooga or Charleston or Austin and have much more weight in the digital economy than you might have had in the industrial economy. And there, if you read the cover of the Atlantic, this month's Atlantic, Jim Fallows talking about American cities renewing themselves, something that we're looking at at New America as well. Now, I would not be true to my New American colleagues if I didn't close by adding a cautionary note. And indeed, as someone at lunch said, these reports are very positive and connectedness is good. It is in many, many ways, but I will just offer a couple of the ways in which many of my colleagues here have questioned this completely digital economy. The possibility for price discrimination, individualized price discrimination, much, much higher when we know everything that we know about you and you can log in from a particular zip code and you can get differential pricing. Just one example of how a monopoly can be abused. The way we think about what war means and we're also war is now among us. It's not just terrorism, it's actually people who are fighting a war but fighting it from wherever they are. This kind of digital connectedness means that the cyber part of that war is also much more alarming in many ways. It will completely transform education and in ways that many of us think are great from a learning point of view, maybe less great from my former occupation as a professor and thinking about US higher education and the advantages in higher education. This levels that playing field but also it will severely change existing higher education institutions which have very high fixed costs. And also human rights and thinking about human rights in a digital economy and a digital world, our human rights are increasingly digital rights and Rebecca McKinnon who's here has an index called ranking digital rights but increasingly those rights of privacy, of security but also of discrimination. Again, one of the things about being that digitally connected you cannot escape your creditors, the government, the various other large institutional entities that can lock you into a particular status. So one of our fellows is writing a book on the digital poor house and it's much harder to escape a particular status. You can't just move, you can't start over, you are tracked and everything that you do is tracked. So I just wanted to highlight some of the downsides of being ever more connected. But with that, let me just tell you what we're gonna be doing for the rest of the afternoon. We're gonna start with James Manika, the head of McKinsey Global Institute who's gonna talk a little bit about the actual papers. And then his co-authors on this report, Susan Lund and Sri Ramaswani will give TED Talks, will then move to two panels. So we're giving you a little of everything this afternoon and have panel discussions. And then finally, we will close with a keynote from Jason Furman. So I will now turn it over to James and we'll take it from there. Thank you very much.


The thing I like most about INCF is its educational products, if you will, that it's putting out to the research community for free. I think this is a kind of neuroscience research that is going to be our future and especially in exploring big data.


Do you feel fortunate just to walk out of here with a W?  But one thing our guys do really well is compete. And I thought they did that really well tonight in so many ways. Good at bats, I felt like up and down.  So a lot of good things, but definitely little small things that, you know, especially when it's a little bit hard right now, you got to be on top of it. Do you interpret the two base running or just a lack of concentration? No, no, not lack of concentration. On glabers, it's happened to me before where you get to the bag and you're cognizant of it.  I mean, you've got to do it. It's one of those plays that comes up every now and then that you've got to be on top of. And Gary, you know, Gary was not going anywhere. And I think ready for that throw, they had just talked about it. And I think just going back, though, you can't allow yourself to slip off the bag. You've got to keep yourself in an athletic position, even though you're not being overly aggressive there. And, you know, so that's that. And, you know, we didn't make a couple plays, but the guys were able to pick it up. Talk about the Frasier shot, how big that was. Huge, man. That's a tough customer. When you're facing Castro there, you know, he can make you look bad with his stuff. I mean, and, you know, two strikes didn't give in and got a hanger. And he showed off the power that I think you guys have all seen, he possesses. So a huge blow with two strikes against a guy that can be tough. Sanchez's focus has come up a lot the last couple of years, offensively. This is two games in a row that he's been picked off. This is becoming an issue in your mind? No. I think their teachable moments is what I think. I think he's been really hooked up as far as his prep, as far as his game calling, as far as his focus, obviously offensively. I think it's a case of getting himself in a little bit of an unathletic position where he got himself in trouble. And that's where, you know, we got to teach and clean it up and we will. You might have holders start that seven instead of getting out of it and all clean any. Is that over? Because we're staying away from Britain tonight. And I knew I may need a few more outs. So I felt OK with a holder with those guys and I really wanted Otto for the righties in the middle there. That was the matchups that kind of scared us a little bit, not scared us, but that we were most concerned about and had Otto targeted it at some point. So it felt like if I could get a couple with holder there, then I got Otto lined up to give me four, maybe five outs if necessary, and especially against, you know, when you get into Mancini and Nunez from the right side there, those are the matchups we like. So yeah, that was the thing. Something wrong with Britain? No, no, it's just, you know, three out of four into that off day, a lot of work. So, you know, just if we could just stay in away from them today, I thought it was important. That play would have been deeper into these two games. Yeah, and he will. Another positive step for him. But again, coming up into that, those righties there in the middle and where he was from a pitch count standpoint, you know, he was probably two or three hitters at the most there. So tough to take him out in that spot because, you know, he in a lot of ways earned that opportunity and a win right there, but just felt like that was a big point in the game with those two righties that have been a little bit of trouble in these first two games for him. After bird bobbles that ball, do you think he should take the out of first air? Do you think a good throw gets him? I don't have a problem with him coming at home at that point. I mean, that's decision time. And if maybe you make a perfect throw, you got a chance. It's kind of a bang, bang play anyway. So not an issue with the decision.


My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist So I took a job as a photojournalist 25 years and thousands of assignments later. It was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photographer Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures and hopes to inspire and educate This is my journey This is Brighton Yage Cascades of Oregon for my annual visit to this little lake and for the last three or four years I've come here Around the same time The first time I came I got exactly what I was looking for And ever since I have not been able to replicate that experience Looks like I'm still a Week or two too early To get here what I wanted to photograph So right now I'm working on some reflection shots with these these trees across the Across this little lake The air is real calm right now. So I'm getting some nice kind of like painterly Reflections of these white dead trees across the way That's about the best I'm gonna get here today now if I get lucky We might get a little missed on this lake I Got up at three clock this morning It's about 65 mile drive from my house and I always come here for a specific shot And even though that shot isn't gonna happen today I'm gonna make do with what I with what I got And with the conditions I have this is a good example of mosquitoes This is a good example of going to the same location over and over again in every time you come It looks different because of the lighting or the weather now a real bonus would be since it's a pretty chilly morning right now is Getting some mist coming off of this lake that's kind of it's kind of what I'm hoping for Just to get a little bit of atmosphere Make the shot just a little bit better It does look like there's something forming a little bit out there Hopefully it's worth getting up at three in the morning for photography this time of year It's a challenge The Sun sets really late and it gets up really early. I think the main reason this shot really works Is the contrast of the white trees? And the really dark water I think there's gonna it's just kind of a natural contrast in the scene That mist pops in and pops out. It's not it's not It's not really developing like I'd like to see it But it still could happen. It's it's cold and the Sun hasn't What's the Sun hits the water it might it might give us a little bit of that But even if it doesn't the reflections I think are gonna be a nice kind of abstract painterly feel image If that's a thing I don't see a lot of other shots here I've been here many times and I've taken a lot of different photos here So this video is probably just gonna have one or two shots from From this scene It's really hard to predict Where the water levels are going to be on this lake from year to year And last year I came here And it was about like this I thought well, it's probably about two weeks from The shot I want so I came back two weeks later and it was too late The year I came here and got the shot I was looking for I came two weeks in a row and it was still Doing exactly what I wanted it to do Well, I guess I better take a picture. It looks like that misses trying to Trying to form anyway the So it just you just never know how fast the lake is gonna drop I could come next week and it could still be just like this if it gets some rain or something I could come back in two weeks and it could be Almost completely gone. It's just it's just bizarre how I've had so much trouble getting the timing right And I have a photograph and I've I've talked about it in videos before What I'd like to see if I can do something a little different Shoot it just in a different way. Maybe get a longer exposure Try to improve on the shot that I have It may never happen And the shot I have may just be the shot I have I'd like to shoot it with my with a film. I like to shoot it With a different lens And maybe try a longer exposure Maybe put an ND filter on so there's a lot of different types of shots. I want to make here If I can just get the timing right. I think I'm going to take this time real quick to Do a little update for my channel And explain why you haven't seen as much content Over the last month. It's just been a really chaotic Kind of rough month Basically, I've taken work outside of photography First time I've had to do that in 27 years Sometimes just it's what you got to do And to compound the difficulties We are trying to get our house prepared to sell And we've lived in this location for 20 years So You can imagine how much work we've got to do Getting getting everything ready to sell and then get everything boxed up ready to move so Over the next month or two I probably won't be able to produce as much content as I have in the past Just because I've There's no time What comes down to it I just I'm not going to be able to get out and take photographs like I normally do so hopefully You can hang with me for A couple months So we can get through this difficult time Get everything settled down once we get moved. I should be able to get back to Getting out and taking more photographs and Producing more content for the channel. I'm to the point now where I'm only working on personal projects And photography that I'm passionate about Since I'm working outside of photography right now, I just don't have the time to do a lot of Other photography other than The photography that I find that is important to me And that's what I put in this channel anyway So that that shouldn't interfere with the content that comes out So if you can hang with me for just a little bit till we get things settled down and mosquitoes So if you can hang with me just a little bit till we get things settled down We'll get back to making some Some content I think this scene is pretty much done But it was a nice morning. It was nice to come out and take some pictures I haven't been out with the camera for for a good Three or four weeks. So it's it's been nice to uh to get out So I'm gonna end today's video right here Until next time. Thanks for coming along for the ride