Good morning from Colorado Custom Coachworks. I don't really know what I'm doing today. Is it Sunday today, Eric? I believe it's Sunday today. Well, Sunday is a great day to give thanks to the gods of van life and bus life by doing some service and making a prayer that we get some straight lines out of this thing. So, tell us what you're doing today, Eric. Well, we're starting to lay out everything for the bathroom and for the closet and where the beds are going to line up and get everything all squared up and properly aligned and get our rest of our framing, rough framing finished up to. Excellent, excellent. And would you tell us about your channel a little bit so anyone who's watching can check you out and see what you're up to? I would love that. Yeah, my name is Van Der Boom, so our page is called Wander Boom. My wife and I had just started full-time in about a month ago in our converted shuttle bus from Wisconsin and decided to swing by and help Jack out here for a couple of weeks and do some framing to use some of my skills. Cool. Well, along with Justin, who you guys met, Eric is up for some work on the road. So if anybody's watching this and has a little project, get a hold of Wander Boom. We're on Instagram, WanderBooming. That's right. And he's got years of experience. And you guys will see throughout this build, his skills will speak for himself, just like mine will. Speaking of my skills, I don't know where I put that thing. It's far for the course. That one thing. That one thing. I'm going to cut some holes in the bus. So this bus is going to be a little bit different from the last bus. I'm going to have city water and a gravity water fill. That just means hookups for all you guys who are familiar. I'm sure most of you guys are familiar. I'm the one who's not familiar. I'm also going to have a 30 amp service. Again, hookup. On the other side, I got to drill some more holes. So I guess this video today is drilling holes, you know? Drill baby drill on the side of the bus. Also, I get this repeated question. How do I survive on the road? All that. Excuse the air compressor. I did an article with Project Van Life. I think it was called 21 Nomads, how they make money on the road. If you're curious, you can check that out. Just a brief background in case you guys are just tuning in. I have a background in travel hosting. So I've gotten paid to travel and do web series type shows and things like that. Also, previous to that, I was slaving away in this terrible bar. So, without further ado, let's get to work. Alright guys, I think we just figured out how to properly square up. Now we're going from the floor and Eric came up with this amazing idea. Now he's going to, we were reversed before, right? Yeah, this is the first... I was holding and he was up here, but basically just hold that flush to the other square. See that? Look at that. And then your line is on that side right where that little pencil mark is. And then we just turned it 90 degrees. You got that one? Yup, I got this one. So then we just turned it 90 degrees. I think this is the best way I've seen so far. Because we are squaring it. We are not leveling it. And then you just take that one. He holds it flush like so. And then boom. And then you just cross the line. Excellent way to do that, man. We were just talking about how people are off with their, you know, they try to level it. You squared it to the floor and has a very precise measurement. And again with the curved ceiling and everything else, I mean how do you do that? You really got to just transfer your points using what you got. Yup, exactly. I got it marked. That's where my water fill is going. Hopefully it works out. Two by four should be on the other side, on the inside of it. This is the cutout part. There is a little bump here. No big deal. I can put some butyl tape or silicone and that should be just fine. It looks like a good fit there. Might have to shave down a little bit. But let's see how much spray foam insulation I got. This isn't throughout but I got, you know, that's like almost three. But yeah, I got quite a bit of spray foam here as you guys can see. Yeah, almost three inches right there. So got a good deal. 700 bucks. Now like I said, I took wood shop in middle school. That's it. I took auto shop in high school. You know how much construction experience I have? Zero. So for those people giving me a hard time, just remember that. Now, I did figure out something smart. You guys probably already know this. You guys are handyman construction guys. People like Steve or Mike. I was like, how am I going to cut a nice little, you know, rectangle when I put the wood on the other side? You know what I figured out? Well, just feast your eyes on this. This is like breaking news for me but you know, comment that for you. Pretty smart, right? All right, here we go. Here's the hole. All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is a sneak peek of what we're dealing with here. This is going to become the wall and also the bed frame. That's, you know, we already talked about that. That's a self-explaner. If you don't know what that is, you haven't been watching enough of my videos. But this will be, yeah, this will be mattress. But it's fun because I just made this little hole for the water inlet while Eric's been inside doing what he does best. And this is quickly coming along. I mean, framed all this out, added some wood there.  So no more magical treasures inside the treasure chest. Great news. I did not burn out the pump motor. It was actually due for a new filter. So for those of people asking, oh my gosh, you're running veggie oil, you're going to go through so many filters. To fill up this 120 gallon tank, so far I have used three filters. Three. At about $8 each, $10 each, $12 each, I forget. So somewhere around $30 in filter for 120 gallons. So I paid $30 to go 1,000 miles. I think that's even better than a Tesla. Do you guys ever get a little scatterbrain when you're working on a project? There's like 10 million things to do and you, I don't know, never finish any of them, but then you start a bunch of them. Anyways, speaking of another project to start, this is a new seat. That's the old seat. Long story short, that's 11 inches. That's 11 inches. I'm a tall dude. I might take this mounting plate and put it on that and add an extra three inches to it. I don't know. That's what I'm thinking right now. Sounds like a good idea. Also, this seat, I would like to replace the upholstery for it. I'm definitely not going to take this off and put it on there. That belongs in the trash. The only thing wrong with this one is the armrest thing isn't intact 100%. Not really sure. I took it off, tried to fix it, didn't work out. An advantage of having this one on here besides the other height is that I could put another self-powered sub under the seat, I think. I'd have to double check the dimensions, but it is a possibility. If not, a little extra headroom. It's not a bad thing. Interior, while I'm playing around outside. This looks like it's coming together. We just had a nice little conversation before. I just want to share my gratitude with everyone watching this video.  Thank you so much for coming by. It means a lot to me. No problem. I enjoyed it. It was fun. More fun as we go? We're getting right into the fun stuff, guys. This is the part where it drastically changes right into an adventure mobile before your very own eyes. Now, I'm out here, said I was playing around, but I'm doing some pretty serious work. This is some pretty, like, you know, safe stuff I'm doing here. So, I took off the base plate of that. I took off the base plate of that. I'm going to bump it up three inches, and what I'm going to do is weld these holes shut. The reason being the new holes are going to be close by, and I don't really feel like being ejected, having an ejection seat in the front, God forbid something happens. So, I'm going to make it nice and safe, weld it all, cut new holes, all that fun stuff. We'll bump it up and then I'm moving back a little bit because I'm tall and I've got long legs. I'm just going to clean this off because what I learned was you have to weld with a clean piece of metal there. Also, I don't think I've ever done a tiny house tour, but there are some fellow travelers who have actually been traveling a year longer than I have. It's starting to rain right now. Tiny house expedition, Christian and Alexis, so we're going to talk to these guys about some traveling stuff. Not so much a tour because you guys probably have what, two dozen tours online at least. Cool. Hey guys. Pretty good. I'm just working away inside, just trying to keep busy. We get it. Yeah, so... Our tiny house is partially in travel mode right now. Awesome. I just want to let everyone know that. And would you guys introduce yourselves and what you're doing, especially like the documentary stuff, whatever you can kind of say about that and channel and everything? Absolutely. So, I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. We call ourselves Tiny House Expedition.  We do documentary filmmaking and community education about all aspects of tiny living, including communities, legal obstacles and solutions.  Yeah, we do. We just did an event. So, we're traveling through. So, this thought we stopped by and say hello. Cool. And as I pointed out, we're in travel mode because maximum cuteness is not achieved at the moment. And on the note of traveling, you guys are now the most traveled tiny house, right? Yeah, how many miles have you put on? So far, it's just over 50,000. We just hit 50,000 when we got to Leadville, Colorado. Cool. You guys are a good 20 more than me. And I know the pace I've put on over two years and 30 something thousand miles, maybe even 35 at this point, including this bus. It's a lot of money and fuel. It's a lot of where do I park and things like that. So, how do you guys deal with a full-time traveling schedule? Because that's an insane amount of miles. It's true. It's like, sometimes we travel a lot. We stay between a week and two months at different places. If we're staying in a place less than a week and we do that multiple times, we start to feel a little crazy. So, trying to find a balance with travel where you're not running yourself ragged is really important. We've gotten better at that for sure. So, we park in a lot of driveways and backyards. Networking's awesome. I know you can relate. And then sometimes campgrounds. We hope to do some more boondocking in the future. We're going to get a little solar. We see a tiny-ass community sometimes. So, yes, that's a big thing. Yeah, it is tough sometimes to balance making money, having some downtime and then doing the film work. It could be pretty crazy. So, we just have, I think, perfected our workflow over time. Yeah. It does mean arguing sometimes. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Now, how do you guys roll into... Well, you said you plan in advance some places where you go. I kind of was like a tumbleweed, honestly. Do you guys ever just kind of, they're like, let's go this way today and then you just find somewhere to park? Like, pulling a trailer being so long. How does that work? Yeah, usually what happens, well, you know, Alexis usually puts the schedule together for the most part. And so she has ideas of where we want to be and some of the people that we want to interview. So, what happens is that I sometimes knock stuff off the schedule because it's either, you know, the timing's not going to work out just right or it's going to take us a day longer to get somewhere than I actually thought, you know. So, it's sometimes things like that happen. So, the schedule does change. It's just adding, we try to add a little flexibility so that if something comes up, like some friends are coming through town. Right. And this always happens, yeah. Yeah. So, it's, we try to, I make a like a six month schedule and then about a month out is when I firm up and then within that, there's like a solid week of wiggle room that it might totally change or we might just decide to go to the National Park for a couple days or something. And could you tell us a little bit about the documentary that you guys are doing or documentary series, I should say? Yeah. We have two series. One is Living Tiny with Legally, which is illegal obstacles and solutions, particularly zoning for tiny houses on wheels. And that's on our YouTube channel. And then the other one is about the people, culture and community experience of the movement. And what we want to do is kind of show how tiny living is revolutionizing American housing. So the backdrop of what's happening in our economy and insane housing markets. It's almost making it affordable again. Make America affordable again? Something like that, right? I want that on a hat. Yes, seriously. Because it's so expensive. I mean, and you know, I look back and I just wish I would have lived in a van or something in Venice Beach and would have saved $1,200 a month on rent. So, yeah, it's tough. Totally. There's no time like the present to go tiny. Yeah, cool. Well, thanks guys. Appreciate the time. And great hanging out past 24 hours and all that stuff. So, yeah, I hope to see you guys on the road. Yeah, see you here. Cool. Right, so I'm ready to weld. I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but luckily we got JT over here to make sure I don't burn the whole building down or kill myself. Would you give me a quick demonstration or a quick explanation of how to weld for a beginner? Yeah, so something like this. Honestly, it's probably best to get a backing plate. Okay. That way you can kind of just fill up the hole. Yep. If you get something that's real thick, it won't stick to it. You can just knock it right off. Don't grind it or anything so it won't stick. Cool. The main thing is as you start welding with this, you just want to be sure that you're getting enough wire because that's a pretty big hole to fill up. So if you feel like you need more wire speed, just crank it up a little bit. But yeah, like I said, it's best to just back it so you can sit there and just fill it up and kind of trade real nice. Cool. So that's the grounding cable if I remember correctly, right? Yep. And a welder uses electricity. I thought I welded before with a flame torch. I think I was totally wrong. Yeah, that's a cutting torch. Okay. You can sometimes bond things together with a cutting torch. You know what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. So different welders have different dials. I think there is one for the feed of the cable. It's pretty much always the same wire speed and voltage. Okay. And then of course when you have a gas setup, it's always going to be better than using pork score. Yeah. So the gas is so it doesn't splatter as much and it looks a little bit cleaner. That's right. Correctly. Cool. Sweet. All right. Guys, I'm going to try this.  All right. So along with being able to DIY your own rig, these guys will point you in the right direction here. So I'm getting some help from a seasoned veteran here. And we're basically putting a little backing so the weld doesn't fall through. So it can pull up like you said. And then just, you know, clamped in there. Yep. Cool. You're going to just move whole. All right. Perfect.  We can see a little progression here. That was my first weld. That's but ugly. The second weld is all right, but I missed the outside corner.  All right. Let me try that last one. I think I can nail it here. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.  They didn't adhere at all. So all right. Cool.


I'm absolutely stunned and thrilled, stunned with just how beautiful the whole building is and the warm feeling within the building and the natural light everywhere. The views of course around here, the best views on campus as far as I can see, but most importantly I think it's got a very homely feel to it. One of the first things we wanted to do was recreate as faithfully as possible the dining hall. You know it's a modern interpretation on it but I think as people walk into it they can recognise hey this is definitely Bruce Hall. We spent a lot of time with the architects very early on saying what was the original hall like, let's get the timbers, the light and everything replicated as much as we can within the new design of the building. We're involved in the early discussions and designs with the architects so we've seen the architects drawings all the way along but nothing quite prepares you for the size, the massive impression. I was keen to use wood as much wood as possible because I think it's a real softener and that adds a lot to the homely feel. Soft furnishings, all those things add up I think to make it work. I look around here and I think these kids are so lucky. It's just the accommodation and then I go to the dining hall and I think my goodness I would stay in here all day.


So, today we're here with Akala, Polymath, Poet, Rapper, Orpher, because then it will be lulling you into a full sense of security to make the so excited about your book, Natives.  Yeah, but it was fantastic and if you haven't copied it, you really ought to. I guess the first question that I have for you is we're facing a really uncertain future. Climate catastrophe, Brexit, increase in conflict as we move towards a more multi-polar world system. So why does it feel so timely for you to take this step back and look to the past of empire? Because a lot of Britain's challenges are rooted in a failure to reconcile with, confront, educate about the history of empire, the recent windrush, so-called windrush scandal was an example of just this. The vast majority of the country aren't aware that caribbeans and South Asians arrived in this country as British citizens, many of them war veterans, in the case of Jamaica, from a territory that had been governed by Britain since before the act of union with Scotland, so sorry, governed by England before there was a Britain, as a political entity, that's how long England and Jamaica's relationship is. And so the idea that we are immigrants, those of us who came from Commonwealth countries, but the hundreds of thousands, in fact, 1.6 million people that came from Ireland and Europe after the war, a part of the white working class, is one of these deliberate outcomes of actual ruling class policy. And I'm not saying it to be hyperbolic, I'm saying it because I've looked at the documents and that was part of the program. They felt they could make proper brits of the people that came from Europe, even though they did not treat them very, very well, but were very nervous, even at least Labour government, very, very nervous about British citizens of the wrong colour. So they called, at least government referred to the citizens on the Windrush, the literal passengers of the Windrush as an incursion. These were fee paying British citizens, many of them war veterans, many of them skilled workers. And so this failure to reconcile with all of this history, to understand what Britain's role in the world has been and how the rest of the world perceives that role, and what America's role since World War II has been and our role in that, and how that is going to affect our lives going forward as the world adjusts to the rise of China, to the return of India as a global power, to the shift of the world economy towards Asia. All of those things are going to have real world effects for individuals living in the UK. I mean, you mentioned Clement Atley just now, and it's something which appears early on in the book, which is you say that to understand the management of race to this day, whether it's the overstaffed mental hospitals, the severe incarceration rates, exclusion rates, et cetera, you have to understand how it is we came to be here. And it's interesting to me that the Atley government is something which is really held up and valorized by this iteration of Corbyn's Labour Party. Does that fill you with a sense of mistrust or concern? I think people just have to own their class interest, and we have different class interests, even those of us who came from working class backgrounds based on our relationship to the British state historically. So I completely understand why if you are part of what calls itself the white working class, you can romanticize Atley's government and see only the good things they've done, the building of the NHS, the building of the welfare state, et cetera. If you're a Malaysian who was bombed by Atley's government, your opinion there might be slightly different. If you're a Caribbean who was referred to as an incursion, despite paying for yourself to come to your own country, and that government and setting process, the mechanisms by which eventually Caribbean's and Asians would be stripped of their British citizenship, then of course your attitude towards that government is going to be quite different.  So apparently we're supposed to ignore that Atley's government called our grandparents an incursion to accommodate you, because if we mentioned that, we're bringing up identity politics, even though our grandparents' citizenship was stripped of them because of their identity, we're supposed to ignore that. Similarly, if a Malaysian says, well, hold on a minute, this guy bombed Malaysia, it's trying to keep British control in that part of the world in that same period. And so I think it's just different class interests and different relationships to the British state that end up with people having different analyses. There's nothing wrong with people respecting the building of the NHS and building of the welfare state, but that does have to come in context of the history of the British Empire and in the history of where Britain was at that point. Us becoming a multi-ethnic society was not actually a legacy of the British Empire. It was an accidental legacy of World War Two. For the hundreds of years that Britain ruled the Caribbean, it never dreamed of inviting its black Caribbean slaves to live in Britain in any significant numbers. It was only because of desperation of World War Two and need in Caribbean and Asians and West Africans to fight that we came to be here. So for example, when they were recruiting in British West Africa, the local governments were very concerned about two things, actually. You see this in Frank Ferretti's book, The Silent War. They were concerned that the West Africans should not be given the impression that it was a war for democracy, lest they got the opinion that democracy applied to them after the war, which is exactly what happened. And they were very concerned not to badmouth the Germans too much in case disobedience to one branch of the white race taught them disobedience to another branch. This is, you can read, you can read Frank Ferretti's book. These are quotes directly from British colonial governors in that period of the world. So we really underestimate the massive impact World War Two had on the racial balance of world power and on the undermining of what was presumed common sense white supremacy up until 1939 really. I mean, it's a tremendous driver of the civil rights movement, which is you send over these black GIs. They spend years killing blonde-haired blue-eyed men in the fatherland. They come back and then suddenly they can't leave. They've got no rights. Exactly. And the Western governments were cognizant of that at the time. There's loads of evidence. I'm saying the danger of using colonial troops in Europe, the French got a lot of stick for this during World War One as well. What was it World War Two? Let me check that one. But anyway, the French got loads of stick for using colonial troops, Senegalese colonial troops. I think it was actually World War Two because of what they feared the racial consequences would be. They wouldn't be obedient when they came back to the colonies. It would undermine what colonial governors at the time called white prestige. The other thing they were concerned about, ironically, and this was even true of our grandparents coming here, was that we would see white people at their worst. See, in Jamaica, the only white people we knew, and by the way, at their worst is what they said. That's not what I'm saying. The only white people we knew in Jamaica, our great grandparents knew, were aristocracy.  Still, in that period, I remember my uncle saying, I'm going to come to England and I can't believe it's a white man that sweeps street. He couldn't believe that they were white street sweepers.  I mean, that was one of my favorite moments in the book, actually, is when you talk about your uncle, about five years old, straight off the boat being like, what do you mean there are poor white people here? It seemed to me like it was the opposite of that moment in Blackskins' White Mask where Fanon goes to Paris and he discovers his, you know, his blackness. And that for him is the moment where the illusionist shattered, whereas you've got this kind of photo negative moment, whereas actually upon contact with poor whites. Yeah, well, remember, a lot of those Caribbean's who could even fill in the forms. I mean, after 300 years of British rule, there was less than 20% literacy in Jamaica. That percentage of Jamaicans that were literate were middle class civil servants. So they come to a country in which the vast majority of the people are working class are poor and uneducated and find that even though they're black, they are now all of a sudden in contact with white people of whom they are better educated. They've never been in that situation before. They assume that all of the white people in the world live like the ruling class in Jamaica because that's what they'd been fed. Sounds stupid, but there was no TV and there was no internet. And so in a weird way, seeing white working class people was, had the exact effect that the ruling class didn't want it to have. The white prestige was shattered, but also they realised, raw, we've been lied to, like this is what they've done to their own people. They've been teaching us for so long, they're so civilised and everything is wonderful and it's the mother country and everybody's rich and wealthy, which is what we were being taught in the, well, what my grandparents were being taught in the Caribbean. And then they realised actually white people at home are quite oppressed, actually. I mean, you're pretty scathing in the book of an anti-racism which is based just on black bourgeois excellence and you do really interrogate that kind of way of thinking. What do you think the potential is right now for a multi-ethnic, anti-racist, class-based movement? I think it depends where in the world you are. I think it will be really arrogant of us to say to black Americans, for example, given the history of white supremacist, racist terrorism in America, lynchings, etc., from the white working class, given the history of the banning from unions, etc., for us to go and tell black Americans, you must accept our analysis. No, they must not. They've got to figure out for themselves as black Americans, based on their particular history, what to do next. But the situation for black and brown British people is quite different. We were moved into hoods where white people already lived. And even though there was certainly a violent, racist reaction, there's nothing that can be compared to lynching in America. And it would be disrespectful to put it in that same category. And in a way now, Broadwater Farm or Stonebridge or Toxtef, these are multi-ethnic working class neighborhoods. Whether or not that's going to translate into a multi-ethnic political struggle, I don't know because I think a lot of Marx warns against this himself. And I'm not even sure I would consider myself a Marxist. That's how I would define myself. A lot of people might be surprised by that. But Marx himself warned against it, this sort of idealization of the working class, this idea that the passions that middle-class analysts or people as intelligent as Marx himself see and have the time to sit down and write about that are felt from within that class itself. I don't think, you know, when I was growing up, most of my Braggians were not talking about seizing the means of production. That's the truth. They were talking about how can I pay my rent and keep my gas on it and how can I create a situation where my kids don't have to choose between, you know, gas and electric every winter and, you know, maybe I have some half-decent clothes. Those were the things that were concerning poor people. So I also am conscious of those of us who have become politicized have to be very careful that we don't impose our wishes onto people that are maybe growing up the way we might have grown up. Now our lives have become a little bit better. But I mean, isn't that really about respectability politics? So we can recognize, for instance, a march demanding better housing as political. Whereas we might say that a riot which involves looting is just some kind of, you know, a feral outburst. And I feel that there's a bit of an overlap with maybe some of the pop cultural analysis that you do in this book. Because you talk about how your own attitude towards making music has changed. Your attitude towards celebration of violence has changed. You said that N-word has changed. I think at one point in the book you say no truly self-loving people can celebrate their own death. Is there at times a danger of sort of lapsing into reinforcing a binary between so-called conscious and, I guess, unconscious rap and then thinking about how that mups onto politics? Yeah, I don't think, I don't, I don't see that separation. I mean, Tupac is quite possibly the greatest gangster rapper of all time and the greatest conscious rapper of all time. And I don't see this celebration of violence, let's be clear, as an innate, uniquely black negative. Korean revenge cinema is very, very violent. Korea is a very peaceful country. Anyone, I can watch every Italian mafia film, as I have done, and not come out thinking that all Italian people are in the mafia. If people listen to rap music and it drives them to believe that every young black boy sells crack and shoots people, that's their own stupidity. That's not rapper's fault. And I think we're even seeing now with Creptin Conan opening that ice cream shop, with gigs on his Instagram, spending more time on his Instagram posing with his daughter than anything else, right? We're seeing that what happens when young black men from the hood get some money, naturally it changes them and not even in a negative way. When your material, so just in case it's not clear when I was talking about my friends wanting to improve their material life, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's perfectly legitimate desire in life. I suppose what I am saying, that doesn't mean that all poor people are Marxists is what is what is the point I was trying to make. Not that it's wrong for poor people to want the norms of middle-class life. Who doesn't want to have a comfortable life? Who wants to spend 12 hours a day working and have nothing to show for it at the end of 50 years in the factory or wherever it may be? But yeah, I definitely think another thing that's changed is as I've got older, I've felt that a lot of middle-class black outrage at the so-called gangster rap, for example, is more about middle-class black people wanting to look respectable because every other culture celebrates violence. And if you're arguing that it's going to make us look bad, what you're doing is you're normalizing the white gaze. You're saying it's going to make us look bad? To who? Middle-class white people don't say, oh, Danny Dyer makes us look bad, right? Do you know what I mean?  They're not part of the underclass for a reason. But it's also a case of 10 years later, 15 years later, things get, I guess, defund. So what's interesting to me is that people who would have been terrified of NWA when they first came out are now praising NWA as a culture shock. Similarly, with gigs, I was reading this terrible article in the Telegraph about drill. And suddenly, gigs was being held up as this elder, sensible statesman, as if he hadn't called what one... But even with me, I think, for a lot of middle-class... This doesn't happen with young black boys. One of the reasons I'm respected, whether people like it or not, is everyone knows how I grew up and what I was on and what my friends were on. I'm not as different from gigs as some people would like to believe. Difference is gigs went prison as a teenager and I didn't. I carried a knife as a teenager. My best friend used to steal his dad's gun from under the mattress and we was on the road. I'm not who they might want to... It's one of the reasons I confessed to a lot of this stuff in the book. A lot of stuff my mum did not know. And there's some stuff that we left out because we had to. But it's because I don't want people to put me on this pedestal as the unique Negro. Look at him. Why can't you all be like him? I ain't that different, fam. I am not suggesting that I'm in some innately moral wonderful...  My life's good. I no longer behave in those ways. Neither does gigs.  Even though my life's great and I'm on tour and I'm very well off now, you know what would make this all better? Going back to prison.  You know what I mean? I know him personally. So I don't think people should try and make this big separation. Akala, the good black guy who reads all the books, isn't he wonderful? I was reading books when I was 15 and I was carrying a knife. And I was in the black bookshop with my bridging and my oldest. One of the main points I'm trying to make is that I am not that different from these young boys out here.  And me and my friends, we kind of looked at them as soft. And it's only when I got to 21, 22 where I was like, no, I'm not on it no more. I'm not in it. And a lot of my bridgings, I think, did say, you've lost it. Now, 10 years later, after 10 years of being in and out of jail, and one of my best friends got deported. He was in England since he was two. He was a naughty lad. People are saying, oh, actually, maybe you made a good decision, but I shouldn't be separated from other street black youths to make middle-class people feel good. I'm not that different from them. I think that sense of a refusal to pander to the white gays, I think, either through sensationalising violence or through kind of rejecting it and separating yourself off was something that really came across in the book to me. The other thing that came across was just how very, very British it is, and in particular, very, very North London, which absolutely made my heart sing. So I've got two questions for you on that. One, why is it that all you Acklin-Burley boys were such heartbreakers growing up? No, I ain't taking credit for the rest of them. I don't know. Oh, my God. No, you 100% why?  That was how it was. Northumberland Park? No, that man was way worse than we were. I'm not having that. I'm not having that. No, it's because the Acklin-Burley boys were like a little bit hipster, so they'd mess you around a bit more. Yeah, maybe, but that wasn't my, I can't take, Burley was a much more mixed school than say Northumberland Park or D&K or, I can't, my set was, I spent much more my childhood in, you know, Tottenham or Hackney or Halston and I did in Camden. This one of the things I talk about in the book, in a weird way, it's like I gravitated to where my cousins lived and where my friends lived because of that sort of isolation of, yeah, going to school with a lot of middle-class white kids and poor white kids, but then getting to a point in my mid-teens where I felt like I could no longer relate and sort of like self-get-wise and then kind of vacate in Camden for Tottenham. I mean, I guess the other thing I wanted to ask about that is because it feels so rooted in North London, so rooted in a British diaspora experience, do you ever think that as anti-racists in this country we're a bit too reliant on an American model of understanding racism? I very much, I think for African-Caribbeans in particular, and I've only started to realise this in the last five years, that can be one of the dangers. We love our Black American cousins, Malcolm is on the wall, Martin is on the wall, Mohammed is on the wall, but in a way the British state has encouraged that. Think about how many great documentaries the BBC have done on the civil rights movement, on Malcolm X, on Martin Luther King, almost a way of saying, look at these wonderful Black Americans and look how racist America is and look how much they've done over their Black people. You talk to most Black people in Britain even, they'll know that Alabama church bombing, they won't know New Cross, and so one of the points I'm trying to make in this is not that that's wrong, that we know about what's happening in America, it's the centre of the empire, it's the centre of world politics at the moment or at least believes it is, but one of the dangers is sort of hovering the British struggle and that being sort of a secondary of secondary importance, I do think it's very, very important that we are as familiar with Stuart Hall as we are with Tony Morrison or Angela Davis, and at the moment we're not, we all know Tony Morrison or Angela Davis, but we won't know Stuart Hall or Gilroy or Gus John or Claudia Jones and those are equally important because our situation as I've said is quite different, very similar but also very, very different. What are the specific things that you think make the British situation different? Well the lack of formal apartheid, it meant the British government had to try and achieve the outcomes of apartheid without having those legal mechanisms of actual segregation and never really actually aimed to achieve the same things that America had. One of the things post-war British governments were really concerned about was the creation of actual black ghettos in Britain because they felt that was too troublesome and so they did want a degree of assimilation, they didn't want to appear to be too racist so they wanted to restrict Commonwealth migration on racial grounds but then felt that the black people that were here, it would be too embarrassing to treat them as badly as they were being treated in America or Australia or Southern Africa and so that subtleness of British racism is why a lot of people think you're going over the top when you say police battered people in my family, people think you're just making it up to sound cool but if they talk to Irish people over 50 they'll find similar stories. In fact, the Irish story in a way in post-war Britain shows exactly what I'm talking about, the Irish in America by then had very much become white. They were not really accepted until the mid-90s after the Good Friday agreement when I was growing up Irish people in Kilburn getting battered by the police was still very, very normal and so it's all of those different nuances but mainly the fact of living in a neighborhood that is not segregated. My business partner is from Vandevere projects in New York and when she grew up there were literally zero white people in our neighborhood or in her class, in fact zero non-black people. There was nowhere in Britain that is quite like that, maybe Hansworth, maybe and that's Caribbean and Asian even, do you know what I mean? So it's not even like there is nowhere where there's that complete level of spatial segregation and that just creates a slightly different environment, a slightly different analysis and also having that direct connection to the Caribbean or West Africa to majority black polities is very different from being essentially isolated in America and severed from even though there's been migration from the Caribbean into America, severed from those connections to those places and so there are similarities but there are big, big, big differences that I think have to be wrestled with and now we're coming more of cultural confidence, none of this is the divorce from popular culture, now we're coming more into our own, I think we're going to start analyzing those things even more. One final question, the year is 2022, we have a labor government, I'm often Ibiza somewhere getting munted and Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn approaches you and says you can suggest one single policy to significantly improve the conditions of people of color in this country, what would you offer up? Probably what I would suggest and I'll just say this publicly now because it is what it is but I've been working with lots of different groups of young people for a while in the ends and trying to look at what solutions there can be to some of the problems of serious youth violence and things of that nature and one of the things that keeps coming up is this idea of setting up community-run boarding schools and so the logic for that is very, very simple, despite what we're reading in the press, so for example in London the percentage of black people in London actually kill someone in any given year is less than 0.005%. So there's over a million black people in London, there's always less than 50 murders in the community so actually even though there are definitely big problems it's interesting the way those are being spun as if blackness is a sufficient common denominator, what's happening is the underclass within the black underclass is being used as a weapon against the people who are the primary victims of their crimes. The other 99% of black people who don't kill anybody are being held ethnically responsible. 47% of all the people in Britain's prisons were expelled from school as children, 24% were in the care system at some point. So the British government, the state, the Department for Education, the police themselves if you read their own reports understand very very well what the common denominators are and what the predictors are for crime or later attraction to violent crime that's as true in Glasgow or Liverpool as it is in London. So the rationale is same with these young boys who get expelled at 12, end up in a PRU and then end up causing problems later on if they were removed and put on a farm in Cambridge. But with people who understand them, I don't mean middle class missionaries, I mean the man them go out to Cambridge with them, elders train them you know you swim in the lake, you get that what it does it achieves two things is the argument on the one hand it tries to work with the group most at risk causing problems going to jail or being violent etc and the other hand the other 99% of kids in Hackney or Tower Hamlets or Brickstone or whatever else who actually just want to go school and get their grades and get a job despite being poor they're freed from the burden of the young people who've been less fortunate than them not just economically but in terms of their family circumstances and everything else. So that would probably be I think that would probably be the policy that I would suggest. It seems remarkably fleshed out considering I just like chucks this question at you out of nowhere. It's been something I've been thinking about quite a lot now looking at like this is significantly more expensive to send a kid to prison than it is to send them to Eaton. So we're perfectly fine to subsidize young poor kids to be in the countryside we just prefer they were in the countryside in a prison and so even for people on the right I'm expecting hopefully when you know these ideas get suggested lots of support on the grounds that it's economically more efficient if nothing else and so yeah the money is there and it's whether the political will is there to say we'd rather repair the damage than add to it. If you've got a larger prison population you've got more people growing up with parents in prison you've got more people who go to prison and Britain incidentally has the largest prison population in the whole of Western Europe right now and we've got people who want to grow it so that is probably the main solution I would suggest to achieve in many of those outcomes saving the taxpayer money lowering serious youth violence stopping allowing the black underclass being used as a weapon against the other 99% of black people promoting education there are so many things that we feel a policy like that properly implemented not as a means to spy on young people which is what it could end up being used for but as a means to seriously work with young people and repair some of the various damages that are in their life as a policy we would I would suggest. Thank you so much for joining us today it's been wonderful to have you and yeah Prime Minister Jez get on it


The next item of business is topical questions. We start with question number one from Monica Lennon. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government for what reason ministers will no longer hold a public session or Q&A as part of the annual review of NHS boards. Cabinet Secretary, Jeane Freeman. There is no change to the core purpose of annual reviews, which is to hold NHS boards to account. This year, all 14 territorial boards will receive a ministerial review, as well as the majority of national boards. Ministers continue to have separate meetings with front-line staff through the area clinical forum, area partnership forum, and to meet with patients and carers. The meeting with the relevant board chair and chief executive allows for a focused, free and frank discussion on local performance between the minister and those senior persons who are directly accountable from the board. I am clear that health boards should be accountable to the communities that they serve. All boards have been required to hold a public session to ensure that local people continue to have the opportunity to question their NHS board on matters of importance, and those will have a ministerial presence. I have also asked the Joint Scottish Government and COSLA integration review to consider how we can have jointly with COSLA where appropriate whole-system reviews in the years ahead. This is really quite a simple issue, so I am disappointed that the cabinet secretary has attempted again to spin her way out of this. The decision to stop members of the public putting questions to ministers as part of the annual review of NHS boards is a decision that the cabinet secretary has taken. It is a significant change in direction and stands in stark contrast to her predecessor, one of whom said, I want the public to be full partners in the delivery of NHS services. That is why it is vitally important that they get the opportunity to participate in annual reviews. The NHS board chair and I look forward to questions that members of the public have about their local health services and hearing their views. That quote was from a former health secretary, the current First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. If it was good enough for previous health secretaries, including Nicola Sturgeon, to participate fully in public sessions, can Jane Freeman explain to the public why she changed the guidelines and why it should not apply to her? Ms Lennon is absolutely right that it was our current First Minister when she was health secretary who introduced the public sessions and public Q&A sessions. Prior to her, of course, in the Labour and Lib Dem Administrations, that was not the case. Can I repeat that all boards have been required to hold a public session to ensure that local people continue to have the opportunity to question their NHS board on matters, to question their NHS board on matters of importance, to share their views and to have a ministerial presence? Presiding Officer, how is Lennon managed to manipulate that into accusing me of spin? Let me assure you that I am spinning nothing. I am simply answering the question in the straightforward manner as I did the first time around. Monica Lennon I quote extensively, for example, NHS 5 chair Trisha Marwick, who is quite clear that a new format has been instigated this year by the Scottish Government. The cabinet secretary was previously a board member of the Scottish Police Authority and, because of the scrutiny in this Parliament, we found out that he is a world leader in secrecy. None of us would want to see the same bad practices in police governance creep into the NHS. Our health and social care services are facing huge challenges, and people need to have full confidence in the NHS, in their health boards and in this Government. The changes brought in by Jeane Freeman will undermine public scrutiny and represent a backwards step. Will the cabinet secretary just admit that her decision to avoid public questions is the height of arrogance and will she commit to an immediate U-turn? Jeane Freeman I am not sure what part of there will be a public session where members of the community can ask questions and there will be a ministerial presence comes to a situation of Ms Lennon's accusation that I am avoiding public scrutiny. I genuinely do not understand that. I am also deeply disappointed, perhaps if Ms Lennon could just hold off for a second and listen. I am deeply disappointed that, in the absence of constructive, positive or even radical ideas from the Labour benches about our health service, we have to resort to personality attacks. I will not reciprocate on that. We are not talking about the SPA, we are talking about our health service, there will be public sessions, there will be ministerial presence, there will be questions and ministers will be there to answer those questions, along with health boards who are the subject of annual reviews in order to hold health boards to account. I do not know what more to say on that. Ms Lennon, I am sure, will continue to want to misrepresent and manipulate those words, but they are on the record and I hope that they are clear to the rest of this chamber. Clare Adamson Officer, for the avoidance of doubt and since this was not raised in the chamber when members had an opportunity to do so last week, can the cabinet secretary confirm that the reviews are about board performance and that the requirement to hold public sessions at least once a year remains? Clare Adamson Ms Lennon is absolutely correct, the reviews are about board performance. What I have said, if you want to look at changes, I have said to boards that they have to hold a public session at least once a year. In other words, they may need to hold them more than once, that increases accountability. Ministers will be at those public sessions. I made the point earlier that board annual reviews have changed over the years in order to reflect changing circumstances. I have not removed the public opportunity to question the board or to have a minister there to be part of that questioning. That is why the boards need to hold that public session. They will have a ministerial presence and I just add for the record that the follow-up letter to annual reviews, which sets out very clearly my expectation of the board's performance in the year to follow, will of course, as before, be public. Miles Briggs That might be more an example of a Twitter spat being brought into the chamber than anything, but I think that it is only right and right and proper that in a parliamentary democracy that ministers and HS boards undergo public scrutiny and from increasing parking problems to waiting times getting worse, the public has a right to be able to raise those concerns. Therefore, I ask the cabinet secretary if she will look at how the Scottish Government can improve accountability, not restrict it. I am grateful to Mr Briggs for that question. I agree with him. It is only right that there is public scrutiny and there is public scrutiny in a number of additional ways. There are two ways I think that we are currently looking at how we can improve on this. The first of those is, as I said earlier in my first answer, that I have asked the joint Scottish Government, COSLA-led review on integration, how we can have a review of the whole system. We talked before in this chamber with your colleague Ms Smith and others about a whole system approach to health and social care. At the moment, it is the performance of health boards that are subject to annual review, but we need to widen that. I need to be able to do that in partnership with COSLA, where that is appropriate. The second, again, is an area that we have touched on here. That is the whole question of how our health boards undertake public engagement and genuine community engagement throughout a 12-month period, in a sense regardless of whether or not they have major changes that they want to take to public consultation. That work is under way with them and inside Government, and I hope that we will be able to bring forward some proposals, certainly to make the health and sport committee aware of those, and we might discuss them further, but also into this chamber so that members are aware about the changes that we want to make to encourage our health boards to have a more consistent but genuine public engagement approach with the communities that they serve. Question 2, Rachael Hamilton. What action is the Government taking to ensure that rail transport performs well during the festive period? The member will be aware that ScotRail's ability to provide a reliable service for several parts of the Scottish rail network has been unacceptable for passengers and the Scottish Government over the past few weeks. Instead of celebrating the provision of 65,000 additional weekday seats and over 100 additional services per day following the recent introduction of the new timetable, I am extremely disappointed to, again, be speaking about unacceptable levels of cancellations. I have made my position clear to Alex Hines, the managing director of ScotRail Alliance and also to Dominic Booth, the managing director of Ibellio UK, that ScotRail must take all action necessary to ensure that services return to schedule as soon as possible. At passengers begin to see the benefits of the new timetable. ScotRail has sought to reassure me of a plan of action to address the number of cancellations. Firstly, ScotRail has already recruited 85 drivers and 54 conductors to deliver those new services. Secondly, an intensive training programme to recover the delays caused by the delivery of trains and the RMT industrial action is under way. That will continue throughout the Christmas holiday period, allowing a steady service improvement as each staff member completes their training on the new trains and routes. Thirdly, an additional expert operational planning resource has been added to ScotRail's team to optimise the use of available resource and thus minimise cancellations. I have made it clear to ScotRail that restorative action rests entirely with them, and I expect them to take whatever action is required to ensure that services return to normal as quickly as possible. I also ensure that services run smoothly over the Christmas and New Year period, delivering the benefits of more seats and services on a consistently reliable basis. Rachael Hamilton I thank Michael Matheson for that full reply and for acknowledging that there have been problems recently. However, I would like to point out some of the issues that many people in the chamber have having letters written from the constituents. Last Friday, travel chaos ensued across the ScotRail network, and that continued until Monday, with over 70 trains cancelled. Many of our constituents experienced terrible service, including on the Waverly line to Tweedbank last week. Trains were delayed, cancelled and the situation escalated so much so that the trains did not stop at Stow. Hard-working ScotRail staff bore the brunt of the passengers' anger. Presiding Officer, that is absolutely unacceptable. Cabinet Secretary, this was the first proper weekend of the Christmas rush and ScotRail failed to step up to the mark. Has ScotRail already fallen at the first hurdle? Cabinet Secretary, I fully recognise the experience for some of the travelling public over the last week or so that has not been to the acceptable level. The Government has been very clear that it is not to the levels that we expect. As a constituency MSP with four train stations based within it, I very much understand the concerns that constituents have about the quality of service that has been experienced to date. I have outlined a range of reasons as to why it has had an impact on service provision at to date. What I expect ScotRail to do is to take appropriate action to address those matters as a matter of urgency. The elements of work that I have said that ScotRail has taken forward are actions that are intended to address those very issues. Additionally, alongside that, we can see the additional progress that has been made with the Donovan review that the ORR will publish its findings on the progress around implementing the recommendations in the Donovan review tomorrow, which will also set out the range of progress that ScotRail is making in addressing some of the infrastructure issues that also have to be addressed in order to improve reliability on a rail network right across the country. I thank the cabinet secretary for taking the time to tackle the issue. It is absolute priority over the Christmas period, but I just want to reiterate that we have had the lowest performance in two decades. We have had overcrowded trains, we have got overworked staff, we have got services that are cancelled, we have got angry passengers and now we have got compensation payments that are rising. Cabinet secretary, you know that this is deplorable. When will you wake up and realise that perhaps the Scottish Government needs to reinstate the performance targets and hold ScotRail to account? I am a bit confused by the member's question. She is praising me for taking action to try to get the matter addressed and then saying that when will you wake up to the matter? I assure the member that I am very much awake to this particular issue, but I have also outlined a variety of different reasons as to why it has had an impact on performance to date with the late arrival of trains. That has had an impact on training of staff alongside industrial action. It has also had an impact on the training programme in preparation for the new time table being introduced, all of which have spiralled to create the particular difficulties that we have at the present moment. However, notwithstanding that, I understand that travelling public expects better. The three actions that I set out in my initial response are the actions that the Scottish Railers Committee took forward in order to address the issue and to make sure that we get the level of performance that we expect for travelling public in Scotland. I should point out to the member that some 60 per cent of delays and cancellations on the Scottish network are the responsibility of infrastructure problems, a matter that is a responsibility of the UK Government. I have made calls in this chamber time and time again that there is a need for us to align the rolling stock provision alongside infrastructure service delivery in order to make sure that it is much more passenger-focused. The most effective way to do that is to devolve it to the Scottish Parliament to allow us to put a model in place that delivers a much more passenger-focused train service. Colin Smyth will be followed by Mark MacDonald. Last month, S&P and Tory MSPs united to vote down Labour's proposal to end the failing franchise. Rather than taking enforcement action against ScotRail for plummeting performance, the transport secretary issued a waiver allowing them to deliver the worst punctuality since the franchise began. Had that licence to fail not been granted, the company would be in breach of the franchise and the Government could have issued a remedial plan notice against ScotRail. Is not it time that the transport secretary stopped bailing out ScotRail and started standing up for Scotland's hard-pressed rail passengers by demanding a proper remedial plan from ScotRail, showing how and crucially when they will hit the performance targets they are paid to hit, not the two inadequate improvement plans that simply do not go far enough? Will the transport secretary join with Labour in calling for a fair freeze until passengers start to get the decent service that they deserve? As I just mentioned, the update on the Donovan recommendations will be reported tomorrow by the office of the rail regulator, which will set out very clearly the progress that ScotRail and Network Rail are taking forward in addressing infrastructure and rolling stock issues that were recommended, which is improving services for passengers. I await to see what the findings of that report demonstrate. There are already some early signs that improvements are in particular being experienced in the Strathclyde electrics area, where there is greater resilience and there has been an improvement in performance overall, although not today because of an infrastructure failure in points outside Glasgow central. However, since it has been introduced in the course of the last week of the new timetable, we are seeing improvements in performance there as well. As the member also recognises, the standards that are set out in the franchise agreement remain in place. The waiver is to take recognition of issues out with ScotRail's control that have had an impact on performance. For example, Network Rail's performance, which the ORR has said is now at such a level, is investigating them for their failure to deliver properly and some of the weather incidents that have occurred that have an impact on it. However, the franchise agreement requirements remain in place and in force. I assure the member of that when you are investing in a region of more than £400 million in new and upgraded rolling stock in Scotland, you are intending to invest £5 billion in the next five years in railways in Scotland. That is a Government that is investing in rail infrastructure here in Scotland in doing it in a way that continues to drive up performance. Performance today has not been to the level that we expect, and the actions that ScotRail is taking forward are actions that they believe that can address the problems that have had to late. There are five more members who would like to ask a question. Mark McDonald is followed by Alex Cole-Hamilton. Passengers arriving at Dice station in my constituency this morning were notified that the 726 to Aberdeen was cancelled, the 759 to Aberdeen was delayed and the 831 to Aberdeen was cancelled. Those are important services for commuters in my constituency. Trains are also often running with fewer carriages, leading to experience for passengers that causes discomfort and inconvenience. My constituents welcome the improvements to the infrastructure between Aberdeen and Inverness, which will bring the infrastructure into the 21st century. However, the question that they are asking is when will the train service get there? I do not know what the specific reasons were for those particular services, but I suspect that it was relating to matters relating to crew, which is for the very reasons that I have outlined as to why ScotRail has had some challenges because of the late arrival of the new train types, train staff and some of the conductors. The member will also recognise that one of the key issues that we are trying to address is increasing capacity on the rail infrastructure by the end of 2019. There will be a 23 per cent increase in seating capacity, but that is dependent on the delivery of the new high-speed trains alongside the new Hitachi trains, which will allow the rest of the fleet to be cascaded out to other routes, including in and off East and North of Scotland. Once that programme is complete, there will be a significant uplift in seating capacity in Scotland and in the range of services that are available. The actions that are taken to address crew issues are actions that should help to improve the delivery of those services as the new fleet becomes available. Alex Cole-Hamilton is followed by John Finnie. Every weekday morning in recent weeks has seen hundreds of my constituents stranded at Dalmenny station and at South Gail due to a chronic underprovision of rolling stock on services bound for the centre of our nation's capital. Ali McKean messaged me this morning from the platform to say that not one soul got on the three carriage 757 train at Dalmenny. People are missing meetings and shifts. That must be costing the economy millions. That is not just a workforce or infrastructure issue, is it, cabinet secretary? It is a chronic underprovision in rolling stock. Can he tell the chamber and my constituents when the rolling stock issue will be resolved and what an effective timetable would meet with his approval? There are two areas of rolling stock that the member is referring to. One is the Hitachi trains of 385s, which have been delayed by Hitachi. There should be something in the region of about 56 of those available to ScotRail for the timetable change. Unfortunately, only 31 were provided, which has a direct impact on their ability to deliver that new rolling stock and to then cascade the rest of the train fleet. Wabtech has also failed to deliver on the refurbishment of the high-speed trains. I spoke to the global head president of Wabtech in the United States last week. They do not expect to complete that refurbishment programme by the end of 2019. The full Hitachi programme should be delivered for the next timetable change in May and in a discussion that I had with the global head of Hitachi just a fortnight ago. He gave me assurances that he is doing everything possible to make sure that he can deliver those carriages on time for the next timetable change. There are two companies that have let down ScotRail in delivering rolling stock, which is a direct impact on passenger experience. However, I can assure the member that we are applying every pressure possible to those companies to make sure that they deliver that additional rolling stock as quickly as possible in order to address the problems that we have at the present time. John Finlay to be followed by Stuart Stevenson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Cabinet Secretary, you appear to be commending a plan of action to address the plan of action in its shortcomings, which you described as unacceptable, said that you were disappointed and here we are again. Have you made any assessment of the reputational damage to the Scottish Government by not enforcing the terms of the franchise? You want to take control of Network Rail and you enjoy the support of the Scottish Green Party for that. I think that that would be a significant development. Why not end the franchise now and take control of ScotRail as well? For the very reasons that I have previously stated is that the franchise agreement still remains in place, the objectives of the franchise agreement remain in place, the 1 per cent waiver is on the basis of issues that have an impact on the franchise performance that is out with ScotRail's control, particularly infrastructure that has an impact on their performance alongside that of weather events as well. That is provided for within the franchise agreement and the enforcement of the rest of the franchise agreement provisions is already in place. As I have also stated to the member, there is a provision within the franchise agreement for it to be drawn to an end at an earlier stage if that is appropriate. As I said, I want to see the existing investment that we are making into our rail infrastructure and also into our rolling stock in Scotland to be successful. Our focus at this time is to make sure that we do it as impossible to make sure that we deliver the best possible rail services through travel and public in Scotland. Stuart Stevenson, to be followed by Edward Mountain. I refer to my register of interests. Has the UK Government apologised to the Scottish Government for the performance of network rail that it owns? There is absolutely no doubt that, over the course of the last couple of years, but in the last year in particular, the performance of network rail has had a very significant impact on rail service performance in Scotland. So much so that the ORR has investigated proceedings against network rail for its failure to be able to respond effectively to concerns that have been raised by service operators, including ScotRail, to address their issues of concern. When, in excess of 60 per cent of our delays and cancellations in Scotland are caused by network rail, it tells me that there is something very seriously wrong with the existing structural arrangements for our rail service. The way in which network rail is not accountable to this Parliament, to this Government and to the people of Scotland through its Scottish Government, in my view, is a major weakness in how we can deliver rail services in Scotland and the sooner we have direct control over the infrastructure elements of our rail network, alongside the passenger provisions of it as well, the better to deliver a better service to the travel and public in Scotland. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and that, of course, is the point. Every time we have this discussion, the minister brings out the same point that it is all down to network rail. Given the fact that you have quoted the 60 per cent figure, could you break that down, please, Minister, for the amount that was down to weather, the amount that was broken down to broken trains and the amount that was down to track deaths, all of which, unfortunately, as they may be, cannot be controlled by network rail? The fact of the matter is that, even if you had control of network rail, you could not stop those things that I have mentioned. If you could split them out so that one can understand exactly how much is down to matters that can be controlled by network rail, I would be grateful. I am not entirely sure whether the member realises how illogical his question was, because a number of those issues are outwith the control of ScotRail as well, never mind network rail. To say that all of those are the responsibility of network rail is patently untrue, because I said that, on some occasions, it is an excess of 60 per cent that are the responsibility of network rail. I am disappointed that, as a convener of the REC committee in Scotland, he is unwilling to recognise that network rail has a significant impact on rail service performance here in Scotland. The very reason that the ORR is taking proceedings against network rail is because of its failure to be able to deliver the standards that are expected within a railway network, not just here in Scotland but across the whole of the UK, something that is the responsibility of the Department of Transport. I apologise that there are three other members, in fact four members, who wish to ask questions, so I apologise to Mike Rumbles, Neil Findlay and Patrick Harvie in particular. It is time to move on to the next item of business, which is a ministerial statement on preparations for EU exit. The cabinet secretary will take quick questions at the end of his statement, so I would request any members who wish to ask a question to press their request to speak buttons.


Okay, welcome back everyone. LiveCube coverage here in Las Vegas for Amazon Remars. Hot event, Machine Learning Automation Robotics in Space. Two days of live coverage. We're talking to all the hot technologists. We've got all the action startups and segment on sustainability. Ana Pinheiro, Prevet, Global Lead, Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Did I get that right? Can you- You did? Absolutely. Okay, great. Thank you. The analyst mixer and blown away by the story going on at Amazon around sustainability data initiative because we were joking. Everything's a data problem now because that's cliche. But in this case, you're using data in your program and it's really kind of got a bigger picture. Take a minute to explain what your project is, scope of it on the sustainability. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for the opportunity to be here. Okay, so I lead this program that we launched several years back in 2018, more specifically, and it's a tech for good program. And when I say the tech for good, what that means is that we're trying to bring our technology and our infrastructure and lend that to the world, specifically to solve the problems related to sustainability. And as you said, sustainability inherently needs data. We need data to understand the baseline of where we are and also to understand the progress that we're making towards our goals, right? But one of the big challenges is that the data that we need is spread everywhere. Some of it is too large for most people to be able to access and analyze. And so what we're trying to tackle is really the data problem in the sustainability space. What we do more specifically is focus on democratizing access to data. So we work with a broader community and we try to understand what are those foundational data sets that most people need to use in the space to solve problems like climate change or food security or think about sustainable development goals, right? Like all the broad space. And we basically then work with the data providers, bring the data to the cloud, make it free and open to everybody in the world. I don't know how deep you want me to go into it. There's many other layers into that as well. So the perspective is zooming out, you're looking at creating a system where the democratizing data means making it free, and it's really available so that practitioners or citizens, data wrangler, people interested in helping the world, could get access to it and then maybe collaborate with people around the world. Is that right? Absolutely. So one of the advantages of using the cloud for this kind of effort is that, cloud is virtually accessible from anywhere where you have internet or bandwidth, right? So when you put data in the cloud in a centralized place next to compute, it really removes the need for everybody to have their own copy, right? And to bring it into the traditional way is that you bring the data next to your compute. And so we have this multiple copies of data, some of them are on the petabyte scale. There's obviously the carbon footprint associated with the storage, but there's also the complexity that not everybody is able to actually analyze and have that kind of storage. So by putting it in the cloud, now anyone in the world, independent of their computer capabilities, can have access to the same type of data to solve the problems. I remember doing a report on this in 2018 or 2017. I forget what year it was, but it was around public sector where there was a movement with universities and academia where they were doing some really deep compute where Amazon had big customers. And there was a movement towards a open commons of data, almost like a national data set, like a national park kind of vibe. That seems to be getting momentum. In fact, this kind of sounds like what you're doing, something similar where it's open to everybody. It's kind of like open source meets data. Exactly, and the truth is that these data, the majority of it, and we primarily work with what we call authoritative data providers. So think of like NASA, NOAA, UK Met Office, organizations whose mission is to create the data. So their mandate is actually to make the data public. But in practice, that's not really the case, right? A lot of the data is stored in servers or tapes or not accessible. So yes, you bring the data to the cloud and in this model that we use, Amazon never actually touches the data and that's very intentional so that we preserve the integrity of the data. The data provider owns the data in the cloud, we cover all the costs, but they commit to making it public and free to anybody. And obviously the compute is next to it. So that's a value added. Anna, so give me some examples of some successes you've had, some of the challenges and opportunities you've overcome. Take me through some of the activities because this is really needed, right? I mean, sustainability is top line conversation. Even here at the conference, Rimar is talking about saving climate change from space, which is legitimate and they're talking about all these new things. So it's only going to get bigger, this data. What are some of the things you're working on right now that you could share? Yeah, so for me, honestly, the most exciting part of all of this is when I see the impact that it's creating on customers and the community in general. And those are the stories that really bring it home, the value of opening access to data. And I would just say the program actually offers, in addition to the data, access to free computes, which is very important as well, right? You put that in the cloud, it's great, but then if you want to analyze it, there's the cost and we want to offset that. So we have basically an open call for proposals that anybody can apply and we subsidize that. So what we see by putting the data in the cloud, making it free and putting the compute accessible is that we see a lot, for instance, startups. Startups jump on it very easily because they're very nimble. They, we basically remove all the costs of investing in acquisition and storage of the data. The data is connected directly to the source and they don't have to do anything. So they easily build their applications on top of it and workloads and turn it on and off, as you know. So they don't have to pay for it? They have to pay, they basically just pay for the computes whenever they need it, right? So all the data is covered. So that makes it very feasible for a lot of startups. And then we see anything like from academia and nonprofits and governments working extensively on the data. What are some of the coolest things you've seen come out of the woodwork in terms of things that built on top of the data? The builders out there are creative. All that heavy lifting's gone. They're being creative. I'm sure there's been some surprises or obvious verticals that healthcare jumps out at me. I'm not sure if FinTech has a lot of data in there, but it's healthcare I can see, a big air vertical. I'll see, you know, oil and gas, probably concerned. Yeah, so we see it all over the space, honestly. But for instance, one of the things that is very common for people to use this NOAA data, like weather data, because basically weather impacts almost anything we do, right? So you have this forecast of data coming into the cloud directly streamed from NOAA. And a lot of applications are built on top of that, like forecasting radiation, for instance, for the solar industry or helping with navigation. But I would say some of the stories I love to mention because are very impactful are when we take data to remote places that traditionally did not have access to any data. And for instance, we collaborate with a program, a nonprofit called Digital Earth Africa, where this is a basically philanthropically supported program to bring Earth observations to the African continent and making it available to communities and governments. And things like illegal mining, fighting illegal mining on the forest station, for mangroves too, deep forest. It's really amazing what they are doing and how they are managing their resources. And the low cost nature of it makes it a great use case there. Yes, yeah. So it makes it feasible for them to actually do this work. Yeah. You mentioned the NOAA data, made me think of the Sail Drone, my favorite use case. Yes. Those Sail Drones that go around, meaning to them twice on the cube at re-invent over the years. Really good innovation. That vibe is here too. At the show at ReMars this week, at the robotics showcase, you have startups and growing companies in the ML, AI areas. And you have the convergence of, not obvious to many, but here, this culture is like, hey, it's all coming together. Physical industrial space is a function of the new IoT landscape. I mean, there's no edge in space, as they say, right? So it's unlimited edge. So this kind of points to the major trend. It's not stopping this innovation, but sustainability has limits on earth. We have issues. We do have issues. And I think that's one of my hopes is that when we come to the table with the resources and the skills we have and others do as well, we try to remove some of these big barriers that make things harder for us to move forward as fast as we need to, right? We don't have time to spend that, you know, I've been accounted that 80% of the effort to generate new knowledge is spent on finding the data you need and cleaning it. We don't have time for that, right? So can we remove that undifferentiated heavy lifting and allow people to start at a different place and generate knowledge and insights faster? That's key, that's the key point. Having them innovate on top of it. What are some things that you want to see happen over the next year or two? As you look out, hopes, dreams, KPIs, performance metrics, what are you driving to? What's your North Star? What are some of those milestones? Yeah, so some, we are investing heavily in some areas. We support, you know, we support broadly sustainability, which as you know, it's like, it's all over the space, but there's an area that is becoming more and more critical with climate risk. Climate risk, you know, for obvious reasons we're experienced, but also there's more regulatory pressures on business and companies in general to disclose their risks, not only the physical, but also the transition risks. And that's a very data heavy and compute heavy space, right? And so we are very focusing in trying to bring the right data and the right services to support that kind of activity. What kind of breakthroughs are you looking for? So I think again, it goes back to this concept that there's all that effort that needs to be done equally by so many people that we're all repeating the effort. So I'll put a plug here, actually, for a project we are supporting, which is called OS Climate. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's the Linux Foundation effort to create an open source platform for climate risk. And so they bought the S&P Global, Airbus, Laliance, all these big companies together, and we are one of the funding partners to basically do that baseline work, what are the data that is needed, what are the basic tools, let's put it there and do the pre-competitive work so then you can build the competitive part on top of it. It's kind of like a data clean room. It kind of is, right? But we need to do those things, right? Are they worried about competitive data or is it more anonymized out? How do you? It has both, actually. So we are primarily contributing with the open data part, but there's a lot of proprietary data that needs to be behind the wall. So yeah, absolutely. You're in the cutting edge of data engineering because web and ad tech technologies used to be where all that data sharing was done for the commercial reasons. You know, the best minds in our industry, quoted by a CUBE alumni, are working on how to place ads better. Jeff Hammerbacker, founder of Cloudera, said that on the CUBE. And he was like, embarrassed. But the best minds are working on how to make ads get more efficient. But that tech is coming to problem solving. And you're dealing with data exchange, data analysis from different sources, third parties. This is a hard problem. Well, it is a hard problem and my perspective is that the hardest problem with sustainability is that it goes across all kinds of domains. We traditionally have been very comfortable working in our little swimming lanes where we don't need to deal with interoperability and extracting knowledge. But sustainability, you touch the economic side, it touches the social or the environmental, it's all connected. And you cannot just work in the little space and then go and test the impact in the other one. So it's going to force us to work in a different way. It's big data, complex data from different domains and we need to somehow make sense of all of it. And there's the potential of AI and ML and things like that that can really help us, right? To go beyond the modeling approaches we've been done so far. And trust is a huge factor in all this, trust. Absolutely. And just going back to what I said before, that's one of the main reasons why when we bring data to the cloud, we don't touch it. We want to make sure that anybody can trust that the data is NOAA data or NASA data, but not Amazon data. Yes. Like we always say in the CUBE, you should own your data plane. Don't give it up. Well, that's cool. Great to hear the update. Is there any other projects that you're working on that you think might be cool for people that are watching that you want to plug or point out because this is an area people are leaning into and learning more younger talents coming in? I think whether it's university students to people on side hustles want to play with data. So we have plenty of data. So we have over 100 data sets, petabytes and petabytes of data, all free, you don't even need an AWS account to access the data and take it out if you want to. But I would say a few things that are exciting that are happening at ReMars. One is that we are actually got integrated into ADX, so the AWS data exchange. And what that means is that now you can find the open data, free data from ASTI in the same searching capability and service as the paid data, right, licensed data. So hopefully it will make it easier. If you want to play with data, we have actually something great. We just announced the hackathon this week in partnership with UNESCO. Focus on sustainable development goals, a hundred K in prices and so much data for you two years. They got the world as your oyster. Go check that out at URL website. I'll see you at Amazon and use our website or the project they can join or how do people get in touch with you? Yeah, so Amazon SDI, like for Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, so amazonsdi.com and you'll find all the data, a lot of examples of customer stories that are using the data for impactful solutions and much more. And there's a new kind of hustle going out there. I've seen entrepreneurs do this and very successfully, they pick a narrow domain and they own it. Something really obscure that could be off the big players reservation. And they just become fluent in the data and it's a big white space for them. There's market opportunities and at the minimum you're playing with data. So this is becoming kind of like a long tail, domain expertise data opportunity. It seems to be really hot. So yeah, go play around with the data, check it out for a good cause too. And it's free. It's all free. Almost free. It's not always free. Is it always free? Well, if you're, a friend of mine said, it's only free if your time is worth nothing. Yeah, exactly. Well, Anna, great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for sharing the story. Sustainability is super important. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for the opportunity. Okay, CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas, I'm John Furrier. We'll be back with more day one after this short break.