Welcome to Economics and Beyond. I'm Rob Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I am here today with Janus Farafakis, a member of the European Parliament, and the leader of DM25, and a scholar whose work with Joseph Halivi and his own writings has been a beacon to illuminate many of the challenges that are now before us. Also with us is Dane Strato, an artist whose work has inspired me and who sheds light on many of the troubles and challenges that we face. Thank you both for joining me here today. Thanks, Rob. Thank you, Rob. So we are here in the latter part of May 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, in my view, has unmasked some failings in the structure of our society and of the ideas that have governed or led us in these directions. Now, how would I say? We have to face some challenges. I'm curious. From each of you, what is it that you see has been revealed? What is it that you see in response that is disturbing and encouraging? Well, let's start with the good news. The good news is that politics has been revealed in all its bullish reality up until the pandemic hit us. The media have portrayed politics as a game, a kind of football or basketball league where teams or parties score points, concede points, go up and down some league table eventually if they are lucky to win the championship. At the end of the term, they get to form a government, but in the end, they are not particularly powerful. So the idea was that politics is a game, governments can't do that much. They're in the pockets of the financial sector, which is not completely untrue. But now what COVID-19 has done, it has shown us what politics is really about and politics is about the capacity of some people to tell the rest what to do and what not to do. They can say to you, you're locked down. You can't go to the park. You can't go to the music venue. And that is positive because for a long time we had forgotten the immense power that government has. And now it has come back in full view. We can see that, you know, Vladimir Ilich Lenin was right when he said that politics in the end is about who does what to whom. That's the good news. The bad news is that the already fragile financial capitalism that we lived in that, you know, since 2008 was limping along, creating socialist conditions for the very few and harsh, stringent austerity for the many. That capitalism is now simply not fit for purpose, but it's not going away. It is simply buckling down using state power, not as a part of good, but in order to, you know, continue the process of enriching the very rich and disempowering the powerless. Danai, would you like to come in on this? Sure. Maybe I'll start with the silver linings and positive thoughts. One thing is, for example, that, you know, I think we were running too much after too many things. We were super busy. Everyone was always extremely busy. And this sort of made us slow our paces in a way, even though we have been working a lot from home, even though we have been going back to basic things like cooking for ourselves, taking the time to find the food, to prepare it, be together more. So these are good things in a way because we sort of took a pause from these crazy rhythms that we were all living in and looked back into ourselves, into our homes, into our family, with close, close people, people we love and maybe had not been given so much time to. So this is the good thing. The negative thing, of course, are how inequality was exposed because, of course, we have the possibility to be in our home and be safe in this environment, but other people do not, of course, and other people had to be out there in the front lines, not only in the hospitals, like doctors, nurses, and all the healthcare people, but people doing deliveries, people that had to work in the supermarkets and the pharmacies, all the people that supported the other people that could afford to sort of be secluded and stay at home. So this showed a lot of this inequality in the world. Talking about my people, the artists, in Greece in particular, because we come up out of a decade of suffering economically and many artists had to close their official sort of practice in tax-paying, their official papers, let's say. So they were nowhere, so many people are suffering. They have no work because everything was canceled, of course, from exhibitions to theaters to music to everything. And these people are not, we're not able even to take the small stipend that the government perhaps supports people who lost their jobs because we are nowhere, they're not visible. So these kind of things. Yeah, what my friend and poet, Ed Pavlik, says, we've revealed the importance of the labor in the shadows. And it feels like, how would I say, that sense of what's important in your life, what's important in the economy is moving to a very, very different place. Janus, Europe, you're a member of parliament. There's a lot of concern that, as George Soros has often emphasized, Europe is sort of halfway there. It's not an integrated nation with fiscal policy transfers and so forth. On the other hand, it has monetary integration. He has always said it should go forward. Some of the work that scholars that I net have been emphasizing makes how I say one feel like it is very difficult to go forward. You were talking about socialism for the rich and harsh environment for everybody else. I look at the country, Italy, and I wonder how without collective action as a whole system, Italy is going to be able to stay within Europe. But you're much more sensitive to this than I am. Where do you see the architecture of Europe going and what can be done? How about down the toilet for a very brief answer to your question? Many progressives, especially in the United States, I suppose, living in the shadow of Donald Trump, look to the other side of the pond and they think that things are much better here than they are over there and I can understand them for this. But what they are failing to discern is that the architecture of the European Union is simply buckling under the hubris of its establishment. It's not just Rob that we're not moving fast in the right direction. The tragedy is that we are moving in the wrong direction. So the criticism that the European Commission, the European Union Council, the Europe Group and so on are not doing enough is actually misplaced. What they're doing is in the wrong direction and if they were to do more of that, it would make things worse. Take for instance Italy that you mentioned. We all know that Italy was hit the harshest together with Spain in terms of deaths and in terms of the epidemic itself. Of course, that goes hand in hand with the effect it had on the economy because the lockdown was far more severe. The uncertainty, the grief doesn't help the economy as you all very well know. But on top of that, Italy relies a lot more on small businesses and on tourism than Germany does. So the internal imbalances, the contradictions within the European Union were strengthened by the virus itself. On top of that, and that is the worst aspect of it all, the fact that already Italy, before the coronavirus story began, had a massive public debt which there is no way of rolling over without some kind of debtor structure in the long term or medium term. This means one thing, that the enhanced budget deficit that is coming Italy's way, it will be more than 10% of GDP next year, is going to trigger an institutional reaction beginning from Berlin and then moving on to Brussels. And let me explain how this is going to happen. The German federal government is going to have a deficit this year of about 6%. At least that's what the latest estimate is. And very soon next year they are going to come close to zero. In other words, they will balance the books. The moment they balance the books, there will then be a telephone call from Berlin to Brussels, to the center of the beast of the European Union, and Berlin will be pushing Brussels to be pushing Italy, Greece, Spain, all the other deficit countries to balance their books as well in response to the balancing of the German books. Now that would mean that Italy is going to be pressurized by Brussels to bring down a budget that is worse in terms of austerity than what Greece suffered in 2010. Ten percentage points of GDP of austerity in order to narrow down the deficit is going to be a catastrophe for Italy. So Italy was the worst hit by the virus and by the economic conditions. This summer's disastrous tourism is going to have an even greater negative multiplier effect on aggregate demand in Italy and on aggregate output and on aggregate incomes. And then when Italy starts to recover next year, let's say, that's when a gigantic austerity wallop is going to hit Italy because of the faulty architecture of the user. Is this sustainable? No, I don't think it is. Already you can see that opinion polls show that a country like Italy proudly pro-European up until a few years ago, 80% approved of the European Union. Now the pendulum has gone the other way and 80% are against the European Union. So Europe is going through a period of what I would describe as a dereliction of duty to itself. It is scoring one own goal after the next. Everything they have decided to help Italy and countries like Italy to help Europe has been replete with a category error that is they are confusing a sequence of bankruptcies for a sequence of illiquidity problems. So they are throwing loans at the bankrupt and loans have never helped the bankrupt escape bankruptcy, as you know. So the same mistakes they were making in 2010, they continue to make them now. They have a better veneer around the package, but the reality is exactly the same. And Europe is rich enough to be able to waste one opportunity after the other to deplete its existing capacity to recover, but at some point the great and very broad discontent that this is all creating is going to feed political monsters. Already Matteo Salvini and the fascists in Italy are leading the polls majestically. The same thing is going to happen with urbanization. I'm talking now about Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary. This shift to the xenophobic right, recalcitrant nativism proceeding. France is going to be next. I very much fear that the European Union has just lost the plot. Denai, you've spent a good deal of time in the United States. I know both of you were in Texas and in New York. How do you see what's unfolding in the United States? Well, it seems very, very difficult. A very dire situation was happening in the States. Of course, we were there much before, I mean, up until 2015. What I realized while we were there as a European basically was how many connections we have as Europeans. I felt European, not a citizen of the world as I did before so much. And there are differences between Europe and the United States for sure. At this moment, of course, we have many friends. We hear the news. Things are hard. And with Trump being in government, I mean, this situation is not the best news. I don't know. What I felt during our time there was, of course, again about inequality that in the United States you have the richest and the poorest people. And I'm sure there's a lot of suffering in these conditions, right? I don't know. What else can I say? I've sensed from conversations we've had before when we've met in the United States that you were troubled by what you might call the contradictions between what you observed and the principles, say, that are in the founding documents for the United States and the hideous nature of inequality here, which feeds despair and feeds into that authoritarian type of politics is very haunting. I remember one time when we chatted, you had an exhibit, a photographic exhibit. I think it was called Fences. Division cut seven devices and then lines. Yes, this is a human condition, of course, that we find ourselves in very often.  So I had traveled in seven different divisions. One of them was the United States and Mexican border, of course. So we had traveled all the way from going in and out from Mexico to the United States for about a month. And it was excruciating, of course, to see this. And this was another six dividing lines on the planet. So putting these together in photographic material, in photograph sounds that I recorded and a video that I made sort of brings out this human condition in an extreme way. But the reality is that we have this kind of separation even within our homes, even within ourselves. And in America, you see this kind of division in equality and the qualities of the human condition may be quite extremely. Well, I think I'll quote the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes. His quote was intuition always precedes intellect. And I've often found people like yourself who are engaged in the arts can sense and see and begin to react to things before the intellectuals before it crystallizes later in the mind, but it emerges in the heart. And I think you were quite prescient. I've thought of that exhibit in those examples you showed me from that exhibit many, many times in the Trump-Build-A-Wall world in which I live now in the United States. Of course, this is the artist's sort of work. To have your antenna open, the way that I function as an artist is this. And I suppose most artists, this is what our job is to open our ears, our eyes and our minds' eye basically to understand what is happening in this society, to understand what's happening in the world. And this is why we can shed light and bring a different narrative, a different way of shedding light and raising awareness on these issues that are different from the political language and it's a different or the journalistic language for that matter. So this is really the artist's job to be there and to understand these things. For example, talking about the project on the divisions, what I saw is that poor Mexican people might be richer than poor American people, which is a huge contradiction no one would ever imagine. Or seeing really poor people in the Amazon or in India who are nevertheless healthy in their psyche, whereas the poor American people are not well, you can see. So looking at the human societies and understanding the human condition and then trying to show this in a human way, in a different way that people can be touched by and understand within themselves. As you said, beyond the intellectual, even in a physical way, maybe sometimes. Yeah, I'm always reminded of the mystic theologian, Meister Eckert, and reading some of his writings. He always said, try to see through the eye of the heart. And I have a lot of faith in how artists illuminate and sometimes heal because going to the heart is often a way of, which you might call counteracting the fear and the intensity of logical debate when we need something that's more soothing and more encouraging. This is a very nice, as you said it. There's a gentleman whose name is Celia. He's, I think, based in the Los Angeles area. And he once gave a very, very beautiful talk, I believe, in Nebraska. And it was one of those just very, how would I put this? Very surprising to me, but so enriching. And I've gone back to it over and over. And he said art, which is many things to many people, is just one thing to me. It is a whisper of the order of things that dismantles consciousness and suggests my place in the world. The whisper of the order of things is not meaning, but it offers a point of reference from which the measurement of meaning makes sense. Meaning that has answers to questions of my place in the world, of the choices I make on my relationship to others. The whisper is faint, but the best art helps us hear it. It has nothing to do with the realm of perceptions. Rather, the invocation of a great order in the face of nothingness is fundamentally an ethical experience. And I find that, how would I say, Giannis, the practice in economics is almost to have an allergy to values and moral and ethical discourse, to pretend we're scientists and value free. But I know from a lot of your writings and presentations that, how would I say, you've unmasked that false consciousness in many ways and shown that values are embedded in the structure of these policies, whether in your writings about Europe or your book, The Global Minitor, I found. I almost wrote you a letter about a month ago and said, what are you going to write as the reissue of The Global Minitor? What's the final chapter going to look like? Looking back now, because that was such a prescient book. Well, there was a second edition in 2013, and I have to say that the final chapter, which I had to rewrite for the second edition, is very close to the one I would write again, because the great question that I left that book with, the second edition, was all about the incongruity between the United States and China and the impossibility of the, The Global Minitor, by the way, for those who are listening and don't know what it is, it's a metaphor that I use for the United States economy that operated between the end of the Bretton Woods period in the 1970s and 2008 as a minotaur that was devouring both the net exports of countries like Germany, Japan and later China and the profits that capitalists in Germany, Japan and China were making that we're heading for Wall Street, inflating financialization and then giving rise to the bubbles that burst in 2008. So this beast, which was so central to the dynamism of globalization, of globalized financialized capitalism, is wounded. It's not dead and wounded beasts are more dangerous but at the same time quite unable to have the rigor and the rude health that they did once. So I very much fear that, look, between 2008 and 2020, we had a variety of the post-1929 period. The only difference was really that the central banks were pumping huge amounts of liquidity into the financial sector, refloating asset prices, refloating stock exchanges, refloating banks but not doing much in order to convert that liquidity into investment and that huge gap disconnect between the world of money and the world of real people whose job prospects were declining because not enough money was being actually invested into good quality production processes and networks of mutual support and public health care systems and all that. That incogruity bred the discontent that gave rise to people like Bolsonaro in Brazil, not to mention Trump in the United States. And that doesn't change. It's 2013 when I wrote the last edition of the Global Minerator. All that has happened is that this gigantic bubble now seems to be bursting because of COVID-19 but nothing fundamental is changing except that the discontent is getting deeper. The grapes of wrath are getting heavier for the vintage and a very bitter vintage it is. So speaking of books, Rob, you allow me to plug my next one which is coming out in September. What I tried to do instead of writing and rewriting the Global Minerator or books like the Global Minerator, I decided to use a little bit of therapy for myself. I wrote a book of political science fiction where I tried to imagine a different trajectory that we could have taken in 2008. So the book is called Another Now and there is a convoluted story based on science fiction which I'm not going to bother you with now. But the idea is that sometime around 2020 actually, that's actually natural, that's wrong, 2025, a bunch of interesting people discover through a wormhole that there is another trajectory that started in 2008 and there they find themselves as they developed in a completely different socioeconomic system, one in which there are no share markets and there are no private banks. There are markets, there are corporations, but no share markets and no private banks and I call this book Another Now. Well, I think there are a whole lot of people yearning for Another Now and particularly, which we might say, you know, you've written textbooks. I remember modern political economics with Joseph Halivia and it feels to me like the textbook in economics is what you might call selling a model that is an indoctrination that is now in tatters. What's Another Now look like that you would like to see become the textbook of economics? Look, ideally, since you mentioned Keynes, ideally we should live in a world where the economy can be managed like a servomechanism, like an engineering system. But we don't and we don't because of the financial sector and an oligopolistic structure of markets which results from the financial sector in combination with the share markets whereby most value is fictitious in the concept of fictional capital, which is completely absent from the economics textbooks. So allow me just to show you into textbooks. Every textbook that there is, even the best ones that are taught at the best schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, wherever you go to, great schools in India, every single textbook has a model of the economy, of any economy which lacks labor. There's no actual labor happening in there. Everything is portrayed as a sort of exchange and we know very well that if you labor in an Amazon warehouse, you're not indulging in any kind of exchange with Jeff Bezos in there. It's a labor process that no mathematical equation can capture. And actually, in these economic models, there's no such thing as money. Money cannot be modeled in these models and if no money is modeled, there's no debt. So imagine, if you were to go to a 10-year-old and say, okay, I'm now going to teach you how the economy works, but my model does not contain labor, money or debt. The 10-year-old would turn around and say, you then made your completely and utterly useless to me. So this is what we have. But in a world in which I would like to live in, we would need, as John Maynard Keynes put it, economists to be able to work out the mechanics of the system with a simple view to improving life for people. At the moment, you've got this remarkable disconnect in the same way that in the real economy, there is this disconnect between savings and investment. In the world of economics and economic policy, you've got this gigantic gap disconnect between, on the one hand, a model of how capitalism works, a theory, an ideology of how capitalism works, which is captured in the textbooks, that has no capitalism in it, and then the practice of capitalism that has no economics in it, and the practice of capitalism is very simple. Do whatever it takes in order to reproduce the oligarchic power of those in power. Yes. Dane, if you were designing a curriculum for economics or social science, what would be the mandatory dimension of the arts that should accompany the, which you might call more sterile or technocratic or systematic focus that economics has? How would you infuse the energy from the way you see things into that curriculum? So, firstly, we need to understand the importance of art, because art is not a luxury. So art is part of being human, right? So art reflects, if you see art through the historian of the future, it's extremely important in order to understand the history, what's happening in a society. It reflects the human society, the human conditions in each and every moment. So in this way, it would be nice if it could be more integrated, more organically. I find artists and the whole art system is always struggling. I mean, the art that is worth doing or worth existing sort of struggles in order to exist, because people may not want to support it, but somehow it doesn't find easily the funds and then there's this whole bubble of the cycle of museums, curators and all this, which is really not about what real art should be about, which is what I mentioned before. So if there was a way that it came more naturally, more organically, it would be good. I would like to mention a couple of things that may work in a sort of a therapeutic way also, which is important for me in my work process, for example. I find myself, one thing that I want to say, and it's very important to mention this, is that the big problem that we have is not the virus that we're now currently going through, which is of course very terrible, but when this passes and it will pass at some point, sooner or later, it's climate change, and this is something that you know, as we have discussed this many times, raising awareness through art, because I believe many artists are trying to work on this field, is extremely important, so I just wanted to say this, maybe we can discuss it in more detail later, about the role that art can play in this problem, in raising awareness on climate change, and of course working, artists working together with technologists in this respect. And another issue, of course, is the social way, how art socially can be engaging in these problems, in the political, social-political problems that we're currently going through, and later I will tell you what my reaction is on this and how I have managed to do something in this moment of crisis that we can't really do much as artists at the moment, but maybe something can be done. I want to underscore a friend of mine who I made a podcast with a few weeks ago, his name is Benjamin Grant, and his work, his book is called Overview, and Ben uses satellite photography of the oceans, of the coastlines, of the mountains, and what you might call the sequence of that photography over time, to create a very powerful artistic rendering of what's happening to our planet. And I'll put you in touch with him in his work because I think you sound very similar. The gentleman I mentioned earlier, Enrique Martinez-Salaya, he has so many quotes that come to my mind, I hear him all the time, but he says, art is not revealed in or as a stable meaning, but by a very particular instability of meaning. Art is that vibration between meaning and no meaning whose experience renders the opposition meaningless and dissolves our separation from the primal nature of the universe. The bigger the initial apparent gap between meaning and no meaning, the greater the art. The experience of art, the basis of meaning that it opens, is not only unstable, but depends upon instability. Any desire to make it concrete precludes the experience of art. I've often found in my own thinking, I remember reading about the social origins of Florentine painting by Frederick Anton, that in many ways, people like the philosopher John Dewey often says, quest for certainty, they quest for false resolution. And one of the things I find so powerful about art is that it contradicts the notion that things and meaning are stable and how you say unmoving or unchanging. I think that's a false consciousness that economics falls into very, very badly. Giannis, you know, when we were kids, we weren't all talking about the internet. This isn't a dynamic programming problem to a terminal equilibrium 30 years from now or whatever that we all understand.  Absolutely. It's the same relationship that astrology has to astronomy. Economics has to mathematics. You know, many astrologists use computers and charts and it's complicated. Some of them even use equations. But it's not astronomy, is it? Similarly, you know, the physics and mathematics envy of economics. What it does is it takes ideology, even religious beliefs about how markets work and gives them a mathematical structure which plays two roles. Firstly, it's aesthetically beautiful. There's no doubt that, you know, standard economic models are aesthetically very pleasing. If you understand the maths, they look beautiful and it's fun to play with. And the other thing they do, they speak to the only economic concept that economists understand and that is the power of monopoly. And if you use very high-part mathematics to couch your theories in, that means you exclude almost everyone from being able to understand what your theories are. And that creates monopoly power for you. And suddenly you're the expert because you're the only one who can understand that. And if your models contain with them very simplifying assumptions which taken from the ivory towers of the universities to Wall Street and applied there to models that pertain to compute, you know, the value at risk of, you know, Goldman Sachs and your model gives the CEO of Goldman Sachs the answer he wants. So suddenly you get a lot of money by being an economist in a university at MIT or, you know, Yale and you provide false models to somebody who wants false models in order to present their falsities in a way which is very lucrative to them. So the whole thing, you know, is wonderfully Darwinist but in an inverse kind of Darwinism variety because it's selection of the worst of the unfitest economic theories. The most unfit economic theories, the theories that are most unfit in explaining capitalism are the ones that are selected for by a process of, you know, reinforcing these theories through the connivance between the interests of the financial sector and the interests of the academics that peddle them. Yes, and when we embed this in the political process that false consciousness of saying that the rocket scientists can measure value at risk, we have it under control at the financial firm implies no need for regulation, supervision or examination which you might call further permits the reckless. And that recklessness, I think, played a very big role in the prelude to 2008 and it seems to be, which I might call re-engaging. Though in America now I think the sheer muscle of money in politics. Instead of having tax evasion, we have legal tax avoidance so that the wealthy can keep their money offshore and then say we can't afford it at home. But the entire design of the financial system is what I will call commodified social design and it lives on those false premises that you just cited with regard to the analysis of finance and the idea that statistical distributions made up of subjective psychological expectations have some kind of stability that you can count on, I find just unfathomable that people actually could believe that. Indeed, indeed. Statistics is a beautiful science. The problem must begin when economists get their hands on beautiful statistical theorems and models and they make assumptions that, you know, rubbish assumptions you get rubbish results. But isn't it fantastic, Rob, that when the whole edifice built on these false models comes crashing down, the very same people who were kicking and screaming at anyone who dares suggest that the state should help the poor, that the state should provide public health, that the state, you know, should do things in the public interest, those very same libertarian deniers of the role, of the proper role of the state are now asking for the state to effectively collectivise the economy, you know, start paying wages of people, take over airlines or bail them out, banks, the whole lot. And the moment they stabilise their hold over society they will go back to the same rubbish, to the same fake models, to the same flimsy conceptions of the relationship between the market and the state, as if nothing happened. And, you know, there's no journalism that can actually hold them accountable for the flip-flopping. Yes. Jani, Naomi Klein and her husband, Avi Lewis, are people who have been good friends of mine for many, many years. We met through the late William Greider, who was a fabulous analyst of the dysfunction of democracy and wrote a wonderful book on central banking called Secrets of the Temple. But Naomi's book, This Changes Everything in Relation to Climate, was getting at something that Yannis was just alluding to, which was, she was saying that in essence the scientific evidence about climate deterioration may be true, but acknowledging that allows governance to come back in and play a role and may set a precedent for the inadequacy of what you might call private sector market systems to handle everything and anything without the need of government. Do you think on the horizon now, awakened by the pandemic, that when we look at climate, we're in a place where, as Naomi said, it's time to change everything in the way in which government is allowed to respond to collective need and the public good where scientists are telling us we only have maybe a decade or two before catastrophic effect on humankind would emerge. How do you put this all together? How do we shatter the old ideologies and what is the challenge you see on the horizon? This is exactly as we put it, very much the challenge, because will we wake up, will we realize that each one of us needs to be responsible and take action and not allow things to go back to normal, as they were. So this is exactly the big, big challenge that we need to take things into our hands and to demand and to make a difference. And I'm talking about, of course, we each need to be responsible in our everyday lives, but this is not enough, of course. So will we pressure the governments, will we understand that we are billions, we are the many, we can make the change and we don't have to give in to whatever the authority pretends that they know everything and they understand it all. No, we have an obligation in this moment in history and this exactly is a very good opportunity, the fact that we are going through this crazy virus and this is maybe a wake-up call and it may be the only opportunity we have right now to change our predicament, to take it into our hands and to make a future for our children and their children, because the way that they are just going on, like everything is okay, is just impossible. So it is really, really a matter of opening the black boxes, let's say, of the system, revealing the way that they function and taking things in our hands and making the change. So I'm working on this project, which is an ongoing project which was initiated from the crisis, the economic crisis, 10 years ago, but it's now very relevant again and I'm making a new open call, a global open call, that people have with one word to answer what threatens you mostly today or what do you feel is being threatened and you would like it to protect. So I'm initiating next week through the website Open the Black Boxes, this global open call, which basically then portrays the psychological portrait of humanity, of our hopes and our fears. We need collectively to take things in our hands and demand a difference because, you know, I think that only when we can change comes when we can imagine what we want, when we can imagine what we want, what, where we want to be and not believing what people tell us that we have to be, where we have to be, the authorities, I mean. So we need to imagine a future for ourselves and make it happen. I'm very inspired. The opening black boxes experiment, I want to get information on that because I, at INET now, we have a young scholars initiative that's approaching 12,000 members and I would like to alert that network and get them to participate. Absolutely. I will send some details. Once we are ready to go online with this new open call, it will be very, very nice, useful for everyone to have this support. I think that's a brilliant, brilliant idea. Giannis, I'm reminded in 2015, I guess in late 2014, you and I talked about my annual conference that was going to be in Paris hosted at the OECD. And lo and behold, by the time we got to that conference, you were the finance minister from Greece.  I was later told, by the way, it was the first time in the history of Bloomberg television that they had switched every show in every country away from its regular programming and onto that event. But I remember very warmly the power and the energy of what you brought forward that day and have continued to bring forward.  A year or so ago, I went to Bruges, Belgium, and I was talking to people about a man named Lawrence Freeman who's building a leadership retreat here. He's a monk and has been a mentor to many people, but primarily through the role of meditation. And what I said in my talk was that one has to go into yourself and understand your neediness and where you're vulnerable so you're not just getting in front of parades that other people create in order to, what you might call, lick your wounds or fortify your weaknesses. You have to go in and decide on an inner purpose. And that inner purpose is something once you can reach that, and I was advocating that meditation is helpful in this regard, then you come back out to the world and it's only then that you have the power to actually help and heal. And when I delivered that speech afterwards at the dinner, somebody asked me for an example of someone who I thought operated like that and the person I mentioned was you. My man Enrique Martinez-Salea has said, what Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and most of the prophets have in common is a strong ethical outlook and a heightened sensitivity to attitudes and morals, the obvious ones as well as those that lurk beneath the surface. They also share urgency. Prophets are not inclined to wait for the right time. Their prophetic vision demands action, leaving little room for calculation or diplomacy. Truth for prophets is not merely a belief but a moral imperative that compels them to speak and act with little regard for convenience or gains. But prophets need to do more than speaking and acting. It is not enough to be apocalyptic. Something must be brought forward. Giannis, when I look at you from that day and we knew each other before, but from that day when you were on the center stage around the world and the changes you've made in your career and the voice that you've created, I sense that, how would I say that you're compelled to go for something that is healing of society and you're not merely apocalyptic. You're trying to build things going forward. Where do you find the strength? I know as I'm listening to Denai with you that the two of you are much bigger than the sum of the parts and I know each of you is very strong in your own right. Where do you get the conviction? You've taken a beating from elites mocking you and so forth and you keep moving. I'm actually talking to you about you as an example to my young scholars of what to become, but I need your vision of what you're doing and where does that strength come from? To begin with, Rob, thank you for your kind words. The last few years have been difficult because as you said, the fact that Bloomberg turned on all their stations to me was not because I'm so important. At that moment, I was the only finance minister in the Eurozone that was saying no to policies that were catastrophic for Europe and I had to be crushed for that and I was a major threat to most of the clients of Bloomberg. But that did not matter because as you say, on the one hand, yes, it is true that with an eye, it makes such a huge difference that it's two of us, not just one and also that we're not both economists that she's an artist and I do what I do. You reminded me when you were talking about effectively integrity of the vision but you were linking it to the profit. I link it to the artists on the one hand and the scientists on the other because one of my great influences, Rob, was Iris Murdoch, the philosopher who turned playwright as well but mainly novelist and she makes this neoplatonic point that I always adored and the point is that the true scientists and the true artists share one thing that in pursuit of truth through different channels they overcome themselves and in the end just because you have managed to overcome yourself you become the person you could be but that takes a capacity not to care about what the establishment says what Bloomberg says what the systemic press says it doesn't mean that you don't pay attention and that you don't learn from your mistakes because then you end up being a fanatic but what it means is that you learn how to appreciate for instance when the systemic media mass media that are paid that's what they're getting the salaries for in order to promote the interest of a particularly parasitic oligarchy when they take swipes at you well that should please you and you should be particularly worried because they are saying kind words about you but let me just finish off by saying that you're totally right what truly matters is to combine a capacity to just be self-deplicating and constantly to be critical of yourself with a second capacity not to budge simply because there are strong headwinds the headwinds don't come from the interest of the many but the headwinds emanate from the toxic interest of the very very few yes, yes Danai I am also I'm very fond of poetry and one of my favorite poets and writers is a woman named Muriel Ruckheiser she wrote a book called The Life of Poetry and when I heard Janus moment ago talk about not so much prophetic but science and arts it brought to mind this quote from her poetry it's a way to allow people to feel the meeting of their consciousness and the world to feel the full value of the meanings of emotions and ideas in relation with each other and to understand in the glimpse of a moment of consciousness of things in their possibilities the relations of poetry are for our period very close to the relations of science it is not a matter of using the results of science but of being that there is a meeting place between all kinds of imagination poetry can provide that meeting place she wrote that in the 1950s but I see I see you very much in that meeting place and bringing the arts as a way a pathway in to the realm where, say, Janus and I were directed and I think that this daunting time right now can only be healed with the pathway that you construct how did you, how did you I'm asking a similar question that I brought up, Janus how did you define that inner purpose that has become who you are today you're quoting beautiful beautiful writers and ideas it's lovely to hear these very inspiring words that you have found so for me there's a common thing that we have with Janus that I think has to do with the fact that it's not so much caring about yourself like your everyday self but you feel one feels that life is a bigger thing and we need to celebrate it and it's a huge gift and for me since I was a small child I had one fear that I wouldn't live up to see the whole of the world and to give everything back to this gift that I was given which is life so what I feel very often when I have an inspiration to make a work to do something to work is it's like a mother of life and death it's like it needs to come out and it's like giving birth but you give birth to an idea so poetry is art and art is poetry and the argument is science so if we put poetry and argument as two not opposites but different ways of being in life everything is connected and they're both in value but it's just different ways of being in life and expressing ideas and yeah the human mind is about going a step further than having ideas and making them happen in different forms this is what makes us unique Janus I've remembered because of my musical interest that you've worked with Brian Eno and he has this artistic dimension as well and I always remember I believe he was the producer of the U2 album Octone Baby and there's a song in there called One we're near the end the verse says well it's too late tonight to drag the past out into the light we're one but we're not the same we get to carry each other carry each other I see the two of you carrying each other but I see you each defining yourself to bear a lot of weight and carry us all deny you said I brought up beautiful quotes and I thank you for that but what you must understand is I didn't come to this talk with any of those quotes in preparation I was inspired in this conversation those things emerged from my reading from things that I've had meaning and they correlate with the two people that I'm talking to today that's what inspired beautiful quotes so I guess I'm saying I moved two very beautiful people well Rob what can we say it's so touching and you are very much touched by what you have said just now and it's a big privilege to be in this company with you let me say something about Rob Johnson very very briefly I don't know whether in the next 15 years there will be people who start working in Wall Street funds and in finance I hope there will be but I'm very much fear of there won't be people like you in 50 years from now who will have the capacity to move from the added and toxic world of finance to do what you are doing which is to try to effectively warn the universe rear young men and women young scholars into a kind of conception of the world that gave you your professional legs initially and make them wary of it and make them look at it critically and make them even subverted and resist it I wonder whether there will be people like that in the future I hope there are Rob I hope there are other Rob Johnson's in the future well I and thank you for your lovely comments but I find right now that we are at a juncture after over 200 years where the notion of religion has been discredited in the notion of the market and economic logic has become deified and the fault lines of such a false consciousness are very much how would I say evident now I remember a scholar at Oxford from the 50s R. C. Zainer who said the loss of faith in the given religion does not by any means imply the eradication of the religious instinct it merely means thoroughly repressed will seek an object elsewhere I believe that you each and together have defined a courage in your purpose that helps us with those yearnings those psychological desires that are akin to religious devotion but we need to move them to a different place and I'm reminded that the word courage if you take its Latin roots core and age when translated means to tell the story of your heart core excuse me to tell the tell the story of your time your age with your whole heart core and in getting together with the two of you I am encouraged to continue on the path of my story to try to help like you mentioned the younger generations evolve to a much healthier place of guidance for what is good for themselves and what is good for society but each of you and it didn't start today though today has been a beautiful conversation each of you has been inside my heart an example and in your support fortified my courage for as long as we've known one another which is now many many years but I want to thank you each and both for being with me today so much time passes we can reconvene have another look at the world and how would I say open those black boxes as you both do so marvelously thank you thank you so much Rob it was just wonderful for us the fact that you invited us together is also it was so touching for us how important to be together in this conversation so really really from the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for that you're welcome and for me Rob as a faithful devout unbeliever I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart because the only alternative to faith even for an atheist like me is superstition and that's what we are trying to fight together all three of us superstition yes I might have to play a little Stevie Wonder when we get off the air but but we'll play a little Stevie Wonder and open some black boxes together fantastic thanks talk again soon bye bye and check out more from the Institute for New Economic Thinking at InetEconomics.org


I welcome members to the 25th meeting in 2017 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. David Torrance has submitted his apologies and I would like to welcome Colin Beattie to his first meeting. In accordance with section 3 of the code of conduct, can I invite Colin Beattie to declare any interests relevant to the remit of the committee? I would like to be here and I would direct members to my interests that I have got on record declared. Agender item 2, decision on taking business in private. It is proposed that the committee takes item 7 in private. This item is consideration of the evidence heard from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills on the Children and Young People Information Sharing Scotland Bill. Does the committee agree to take item 7 in private? We move on to agenda item 3, children and young people information sharing Scotland Bill. The item is to consider that. The committee's role in scrutinising this bill is to consider the delegated powers in new sections 26B and 40B to be inserted into the children and young people Scotland Act 2014. Those sections impose a duty on the Scottish ministers to issue a code of practice about the sharing of information under the 2014 act. The bill is the Scottish Government's response to the judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of the Christian Institute and others versus the Lord Advocate, which held that the information sharing provisions of the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014 in relation to named persons are incompatible with the rights of children, young people and parents under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life. The committee's role is to consider the delegated powers in the bill, specifically whether the correct balance has been struck between what is set out on the face of the bill and what will be addressed in the code of practice and whether the appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny is provided for in respect of the code. I welcome the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills to the meeting and his officials, Ellen Burt, Bill Team Leader and John Patterson, divisional solicitor. I don't know if you had any opening statements that you wanted to make. I don't have an opening statement. I'm very happy to answer the committee's questions. In that case, we will move straight to questions. I'll start off. Can you explain why the Scottish Government is confident that the new bill addresses the concerns of the Supreme Court when that does not appear to be a view widely shared by legal witnesses who have presented evidence to the Education and Skills Committee? I take that view based on the fact that we have considered in great depth the analysis that the judgment that was made by the Supreme Court and have focused on very specifically the issues that the Supreme Court came to a conclusion about as you have just narrated to the committee. The conclusions of the Supreme Court were very clear that the information sharing provisions within the Children and Young People's Act 2014 were incompatible with article 8 of the ECHR. We had to identify how directly we could address that and how we could address the issues that were raised by the Supreme Court in relation to the provision of clarity around the interaction between the terms of the Children and Young People's Act 2014 and other legal instruments that are relevant in that respect. We have given that careful consideration. I am aware of the views and comments that expressed by a variety of parties on that point, but in my view and the view of the consideration that I have given to the question, we fully and adequately addressed the issues raised by the Supreme Court in that respect. The faculty of advocates said that some of the criticisms of the Supreme Court will continue to apply if the bill is drafted is passed. Are they wrong? I disagree with the faculty of advocates, yes. Okay. I will come back in with other questions, but I will move to other members of the committee. Monica Lennon. Thank you, convener. Good morning, cabinet secretary. I am interested to hear from you in what way the bill seeks to respond to the Supreme Court's concerns about the lack of clarity surrounding the rules on information sharing under the 2014 act and how it will interact with wider data protection legislation? There are essentially two critical elements of our response to the Supreme Court judgment. The first is to put into law the duty to consider the arguments and issues relevant to the sharing of information and the circumstances in which that may be permissible. What the Supreme Court said was that we had not adequately set out in accordance with law in the 2014 legislation exactly how that interaction would take place. We have established within the bill that duty to consider the question of information sharing. We have also addressed the Supreme Court's judgment by applying the approach of establishing a binding code of practice, which is there to inform individuals who will be in a position to exercise those responsibilities. That code of practice is designed to address the conclusions of the Supreme Court that the arrangements that we had made previously were not in accordance with law in the words of the Supreme Court. The code of practice will be obligatory. It will be binding on any individual exercising those responsibilities. We give the interaction between the existing legislation and the wider field of legislation that exists in this respect the clarity that was sought by the Supreme Court in the judgment that it arrived at. It is fair to say that a consistent factor in the complications around the in-person legislation has been the uncertainty and the worry over what the duty to share information means in practice for professionals, i.e. for health visitors and teachers who will have to carry out the in-person scheme. On that basis, I am still not really understanding why the Government chose not to address the issue of consent on the face of the bill. We have said to the convener that we do not agree with the faculty of advocates. The faculty of advocates have been quite clear that a code of practice is not a substitute for legislation. If there is any conflict between the statute and the code of practice, it would be the statute that would prevail. Given the massive concerns, I just do not really understand why the Government is not putting it on the face of the bill. I think that there is a really important distinction here about what is the purpose of a bill and what is the purpose of a code of practice. The purpose of a bill is to make law. The purpose of a code of practice is to explain the legal framework and the legal issues. I am not proposing to change the issues in relation to consent, so I have no reason to change the law. I do not propose on the bill to change the law because I have no desire to change the issue of consent. I accept that the Supreme Court has placed an obligation on us to explain the interaction between the existing legal framework and the legal framework that will be in place here, which will be the duty to consider information sharing. That is precisely why I have taken the decisions that I have taken about what is in primary legislation and what is in a code of practice. Do you have a view on some of the comments that have been made about the code of practice? It needs to be accessible and in a clear language. Do you have any sympathy with what the faculty of advocates say about that? I accept that the code of practice has got to be able to be navigated by individuals. I have put forward an illustrative code of practice because I thought that it would be helpful to the parliamentary process to have sight of that at the time that the bill is being considered by Parliament. We have to get the sequence of events correct here. We are considering a bill that will then be a separate consideration of a code of practice, but what I wanted to do was to try to be helpful to Parliament to see an illustration of what a code of practice would look like. I am not sitting here for a moment saying that is the last word on it. There will have to be consideration about the accessibility of that code of practice. If we have not got all that detail precisely correct at this stage, I am very happy to continue to look at that. Should Parliament agree to the bill that is before Parliament, there is then a separate process that comes forward to consider the contents of the code of practice, which would involve further dialogue with Parliament and other stakeholders in that respect. I think that other colleagues want to ask about the role of Parliament in terms of scrutiny. To go back to the concerns of the Supreme Court, can you explain to the committee how the bill seeks to respond to the concerns about the lack of safeguards in terms of the consideration of consents? That is essentially addressed by the contents of the bill, which contains the duty to consider the question of information sharing and the requirement to follow a code of practice. The purpose of all that is to ensure that a proportionate approach is taken to the consideration of issues in relation to the question of information sharing, as would be faced by any professional practitioner active in the area. I want to continue along the code of practice route. Given that the Supreme Court's focus is on clarity in terms of when information may be shared, I still do not understand why the Government did not choose to specify in the face of the bill that the code of practice must include an explanation of the relevant law on data sharing, with which practitioners must comply with, when they are sharing information. The question that Alison Harris has asked me answers itself. The purpose of a bill is not to explain the law, it is to specify the law. There is a fundamental difference between the specification of the law and the explanation of the law. The bill specifies the law and the code of practice explains the interaction of the law as proposed in the bill and other legal instruments and statutes. The code of practice, because it is called for by the law, essentially has the force of statute behind it. It has to be followed, it has to be addressed by those who are taking these decisions. What I have put into the bill are the elements of the law that I propose to change, and what has gone into the code of practice is the material to explain the interaction between the law and the children and young people's act and wider legal frameworks that I do not propose to change. From what you are saying, am I correct in saying that the users have to really look at the code of practice in order to be able to operate the bill? I just do not understand why it would not have been more clear to have it all included as one, because from what you are saying, and correct me if I am wrong with my understanding, are you telling me now that teachers require a legal degree in order to read the code of practice before they implement the bill? No, I do not think that that would be what I am saying at all. What I responded to Monica Lennon last question to me was about the accessibility of the code, so that code has to be accessible to practitioners and professionals, and I am absolutely committed to making sure that that is the case. That is why I have put in front of Parliament an illustrative code of practice to give Parliament a sense of what might be there and to gather feedback and reaction about the issues that we need to address to make sure that it is an accessible code. In that respect, it is vital that individuals find that code of practice to be of use and of value in that respect. Given the Supreme Court's focus on the need for safeguards, specifically in terms of consideration of consent, why did the Government choose not to include on the face of the bill a specific duty in information holders to consider whether the consent of the child or parent should be sought before information is shared? Why does the Government consider it appropriate to address the issue of consent in the code of practice instead of on the face of the bill? I still come back to whether it would not be clear for people to follow and understand if it was written in the bill. For the simple reason that I am not proposing to change the arrangements around consent, and the question of why it is not on the face of the bill, I come back to my fundamental point that the purpose of law is to specify the law, not to explain it. If I am not changing the law, there is no requirement to specify that in the legislation. The code of practice will provide for safeguards applicable for the provision of information under the part of the bill. That will be specified within the bill, that requirement on the code of practice, to ensure that the necessary safeguards are observed by any practitioner in this respect. Have you only published an illustrative code of practice, which might bear little resemblance to the real thing, rather than the actual code of practice, which could be properly scrutinised? We have to get events in the right order. I do not have legal power to issue the final code of practice because Parliament has not approved the bill that contains the legislative empowerment of such a process. What I decided to do in preparing this bill was to try to be as helpful as I could to Parliament by providing the bill, which I have to provide, and all the associated documentation, but also providing an illustrative code of practice to give Parliament a sense of what might be in the document. There is no formal process associated with that illustrative code of practice at this time because the legal force does not exist to adopt that code of practice. Once I hear the views of individuals, stakeholders, members of Parliament and committees of Parliament during this process, I will then be able to reflect on the illustrative code of practice, which is essentially our first attempt at putting this together. Assuming that Parliament approves the bill, the code of practice that would be the subject of the consultation and dialogue that is expected of the bill. Does the Government consider that the process of parliamentary scrutiny of the code set out in the bill is akin to the affirmative procedure, given that there is no formal requirement for the Parliament to approve the final version of the code before it is issued, as there would be for an affirmative procedure? Essentially, because the route that I propose provides an opportunity for extensive dialogue with Parliament around the contents and the substance of the code of practice, and I obviously will have to take account of the views and the points and the issues raised by Parliament as part of that process. The bill puts a requirement on me to take account of any comments that are expressed by Parliament on the draft code, and that is actually a greater obligation than is carried by the affirmative procedure on ministers, where Parliament is essentially given the choice to either accept or reject, whereas what the approach that I have taken here is designed to ensure that I can subject the code of practice to detailed parliamentary scrutiny, can then take away that parliamentary scrutiny and consider the contents of it before moving to the finalisation of a code of practice to be applied in terms of the bill. The Government's delegated powers memorandum notes that the code of practice is an important document, and it is on to explaining that a detailed level of parliamentary scrutiny is appropriate given the binding nature of the code and the significance of the code to the named person service. In light of that, and given the importance of the code in responding to the concerns expressed by the Supreme Court, does the Government consider that it would be more appropriate to make the code subject to the affirmative procedure for parliamentary scrutiny? What would concern me about that is that Parliament's interaction would only be to accept or reject the code of practice, whereas what I am trying to do is to create a mechanism that is appropriate for deeper parliamentary interaction about the terms of the code of practice. I want to be able to produce a mechanism that will enable Parliament to reflect closely and carefully on the contents of the proposed code of practice and then for me to be able to address those as the bill places a duty on me to do so as part of the process. I am actually taking this approach because I want Parliament to be more deeply involved in the question rather than quite simply a take it or leave it question, which is the conclusion of the affirmative procedure. Just for clarity then, the process that you are undertaking is to allow for a greater level of feedback and suggestions from members and committees that you would then consider when producing the final code to go into Parliament. In short, the bill requires me to undertake a public consultation on the bill. The bill would require me to consult with Parliament and it requires me to take account of any of the comments expressed by Parliament on the code. I think that that represents a greater sense of interaction with Parliament on the detail and substance of the code that will then be reflected in the consideration that I give to the final contents of the code of conduct. I am trying to recognise the importance of attracting wider confidence around the contents of the code of conduct and I think that the mechanism that I have set out is of assistance in undertaking that task. The issue here is that the code of practice you will merely consider comments. There appears to be no mechanism where Parliament can make amendments to that and make changes to it. It is all in your hands. Is that correct? Ultimately, the final design of the code of conduct would be at my decision-making, but in getting to that point, I am going through an exhaustive level of consultation with the public and with Parliament to gain the widest understanding of the issues of concern and to maximise the accessibility of the code that Monica Lennon raised with me. The measures that I will put in place will be the product of an extensive amount of discussion and dialogue with Parliament and the consideration that I have given to the issues that have been raised. Is there no mechanism for Parliament to change that code of practice? If we look at this as a statutory instrument, there would only be available to Parliament the ability to accept or reject it. Parliament cannot amend statutory instruments. I am trying to find a means of taking forward as engaged in a dialogue as I possibly can do with Parliament to arrive at what will be a helpful design of a code of conduct that can deliver on the expectations that are envisaged within the bill. Practice is not a code of conduct. We are still not getting to the point where Parliament MSPs can change that very important code of practice. The code of practice, as I have already explained, is about setting into context existing legal provisions and weaving them together with the context of the Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014 and the Children and Young People Information Sharing Scotland Bill. It is an explanatory document that is binding in its nature, but it does not create any new law. It explains to practitioners the basis of interaction around the content of existing law. For that reason, I think that the route that I have set out is appropriate because I am trying to maximise the degree of engagement with Parliament rather than simply saying, here is a code of practice which Parliament can either accept or reject and has no meaningful interaction in formulating. I just want to read you out a couple of quotes from evidence from the Faculty of Advocates. They say, first of all, it should be remembered that code of practice is not a substitute for legislation. A code is not debated and passed by the Parliament. Where there is any conflict between the statute and the code of practice, the statute will prevail. They go on to say, the issue of informing a child or young person or parent, that information is to be shared and the issue of obtaining that person's consent are discussed within the code of practice but are not mentioned within the bill itself. In our view, those issues are sufficiently fundamental to be referred to within the legislation itself rather than simply being dealt with in the code of practice. The Law Society of Scotland says, we support the creation of a code of practice, setting out clarifications and guidance on the operation of the information sharing provisions of the bill. However, the key safeguards and information should be contained within the bill itself and subjected to full parliamentary scrutiny. Those are the top legal bodies in Scotland, and they are saying that the code of practice should be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, in other words, giving MSPs the ability to amend it. Is that something that you could consider? The provisions of the bill and the approach that I am taking provide the opportunity for members of Parliament to consider the contents of the code of practice and to provide a mechanism for ministers to give further consideration to the issues that have arisen from the Parliament's views being expressed. Fundamentally, the issue comes back to the material that is going to be in the code of practice, and the material in the code of practice is explanatory information. It is information to set out the interaction between different legal instruments. It is not creating any new or different legal instruments. That is where I disagree with the point of view that you put forward by the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society. I am surprised by their views because the purpose of statute is to define the law, and I am very clearly making steps to change the law in certain respects. However, I am not taking steps to change the law in relation to consent, which was one of the issues that was raised by one of the bodies to which you referred. Therefore, I consider the code of practice approach to be the most appropriate to explain that material to practitioners. What I have tried to do in the bill is to put in place the means by which we can have extensive dialogue around the contents of the code of practice in a way that can be more effective and that can represent deeper engagement than I could do under a statutory instrument, where Parliament would not have the ability to amend it. Parliament would simply have the opportunity to accept it or reject it. I am trying to create as interactive an approach as I possibly can do to enable me to take account of the views of Parliament in this important area of activity. I do not want to hog this, but I have to press you on this. You have used this phrase extensive dialogue. Can we get to a point where you agree that MSPs, as part of that extensive dialogue, as you describe it, can have the ability to change this code of practice? That is not in the proposal that I have before Parliament today. No, but could it be? I will obviously reflect on anything that a committee says to me, but my proposal is not to do that. Okay. Any other committee members? Colin, do you want? I continue to look at the scrutiny of the code. Given that the code is not subject to any formal scrutiny process beyond the 40-day laying requirement and the requirement to take account of any comments expressed by the Parliament in that period, can you explain why the Government chose not to frame the code as subordinate legislation? For the simple reason that subordinate legislation creates new law and the contents of the code of practice will not create new law. There are examples where subordinate legislation has been used as a vehicle for bringing a code of practice into force, for example the letting agent code of practice. Why is this code different? For the simple reason that the code of practice that I am proposing will be an explanatory document that sets out the ways in which the bill interacts with other legal instruments, and as a consequence of that, it is not creating new legal provisions. Any other members? Given the circumstances and background to the bill and the concerns expressed by the Supreme Court, does the Government consider that it could be merit in applying an enhanced form of affirmative procedure to the bill, which would allow the Parliament an opportunity both to shape and to approve the code before it is issued? I have been mindful of the Supreme Court's judgment when I came to the conclusions that I came to around the code of practice. What the Supreme Court said at paragraph 81 of its judgment was that the court can look not only at formal legislation but also at published official guidance and codes of conduct when determining the proportionality of any interference with article 8 rights. At paragraph 107, the Supreme Court identified that a number of approaches could be adopted, including the provision of binding guidance, which is exactly the advice that I have followed in bringing forward the provisions that I have brought forward. In addition to that, the Supreme Court references a particular case involving the Metropolitan Police and their operating procedures, which in the judgment of the Supreme Court provided adequate safeguards in respect of proportionality, which is exactly the framework that we have used within the bill. The measures that I have taken have been designed to create as much opportunity as I possibly can do for Parliament to interact around the formulation of the code of practice and for it then to have the status that is envisaged within the legislation and have the effect that we want it to have in the form of binding guidance. I was quite struck by your earlier answer to Stuart McMillan. I felt quite reassured when you said that you want Parliament to have a deep involvement in that. I still feel unsure about why the Government is choosing not to address the issues around consent on the face of the bill, because that would give Parliament the fullest involvement possible. Can you explain to me why that has been dismissed? It is purely and simply because I am not changing the legislative provisions around consent. If I were changing the arrangements around consent, I would have to put that into primary legislation, and I am not doing that. The issues around consent are so fundamental to the operation of the law, should they not be on the face of the bill? They are on the face of other legislation. They are specified by other instruments of legislation, such as data protection, the rules around confidentiality, and I do not propose to change them. I propose to explain in a code of practice the interrelationship between the legislation and those existing parts of the law that I do not intend to change. Can I finish by asking in the face of some very serious stakeholders saying that there is a better way of doing this? Can you explain why the Scottish Government is so confident that this is the correct approach? I do not follow the rationale of some of what has been put to the committee by other stakeholders, because I do not intend to change the law on consent. I suppose that there is no reason to put that on the face of the bill. I have an obligation to address the issues that arise out of the Supreme Court's consideration. One of their issues was about the legal puzzle that exists between the legislation and other legislation. I am directly addressing that by the contents of the code of practice and to make that as accessible as possible. The question that Monica Lennon raised with me earlier about the accessibility of the code of practice is absolutely fundamental to the discussion, which is why I want to make sure that we get that right, which is why I am committed to what I have given an illustrative code of practice much earlier in the process than I should have done. It is why I am committed to the extensive dialogue with Parliament about it so that we can get that correct, that we can undertake the necessary public consultation and that we can have a set of instruments that are clearly understandable by members of the public. Go on back to your phrase, extensive dialogue. What do you think that means? What does that mean to you? It means that the committee is looking at the code of practice, having adequate time to engage with relevant stakeholders on that question. It involves the Government undertaking a public consultation and having the appropriate opportunity to reflect on those issues before moving to the finalisation of the code of practice. What it does not mean is that Parliament is able to amend or change the code of practice at the moment, but you have said that you will consider comments. It is not, just so that we are absolutely crystal clear, it is not my proposal to do that. Yeah, we are clear on that. Any other members? So confused, sorry cabinet secretary, when you go on about the code of practice, it is binding, it is obligatory on the individual, but because you are not changing the law and consent, you are not going to put it on the face of the bill, but the fact that it is so binding and obligatory, I do not see why you do not make the bill more clear and open to Parliament. You scrutiny by putting it on the face of the bill, I still do not understand despite hearing what you have said this morning why you just are not going that step further for us. For the very simple reason that a bill is designed to make the law, not to explain it. So are you telling me then that the code of practice is binding obligatory but it is not the law? If it is binding, it has the force of statute but the law is defined by what is in primary and secondary legislation and the code of practice will be, the requirements in the bill will require individuals to follow that code of practice. What that code of practice does is it explains the interaction of law. It does not create new law. I understand what you are trying to say there but I still think that if it is a code of practice, it is obligatory, it is binding, it is not making new law but it could help to surely clarify the law that you are looking to make by putting it on the face. I would have exactly the opposite effect of the one that Alison Harris seeks because the law must be crystal clear and the purpose of law is not to have sort of wide discussion about its applicability. The purpose of law is to specify what is the law so that it can be judged by the courts as to whether it is being pursued or not. The purpose of guidance and the purpose of the code of practice is to explain the interaction of different legal instruments but to place an obligation on individuals to follow it. It comes back to my original point that perhaps in the future teachers might need slightly more legal teaching. No, because I will address the issue that Monica Lennon raises about the accessibility of the code of practice. I am not sure that we can agree on that but never mind. Thank you for your answer. At that point, I thank you for your time this morning. Mr Swinney, Mr Patterson and Ms Burt. I will suspend the meeting briefly. Back in session, we move on to agenda item 4, instruments subject to affirmative procedure. No points have been raised by our legal advisers on the draft international organisations, Immunities and Privilege Scotland amendment 2, order 2017. Is the committee content with this instrument? Agenda item 5, instruments subject to negative procedure and no points have been raised by our advisers on 2017, 282, 284, 285, 287 and 289. Is the committee content with these instruments? Agenda item 6, islands Scotland Bill stage 1. The purpose of this item is for the committee to consider its approach to the scrutiny of the delegated powers in the islands Scotland Bill at stage 1. Specifically, this is an opportunity to identify matters that the committee may wish to raise with the Scottish Government. The purposes of the bill are to make provision for a national islands plan to impose a duty on certain public authorities to have regard to island communities, to make provision about the electoral representation of island communities and to establish a licensing scheme in respect to marine development adjacent to islands. It suggests that the committee raises questions on two of the delegated powers in the bill. Section 73 provides the Scottish ministers made by regulations amend the schedule which lists the bodies, office holders and other persons which are subject to the duty to have regard to island communities in carrying out their functions. However, other acts include a power to modify a list of authorities contained in the schedule by modifying an entry in the list. For example, section 6 of the British Sign Language Scotland Act 2015, section 8 of the Gender Representation on Public Board Scotland Bill, presently before the Parliament, contains powers by regulations to modify the list of authorities in schedule 1 so as to add an entry vary the description of an entry or remove an entry. Does the committee agree to ask the Scottish Government why it has been considered appropriate not to extend the power to modify an entry in the schedule in addition to the power to add or remove an entry? In regard to the power in section 21 to add supplementary, incidental or consequential provisions to the regulations under section 73 or 18, the delegated powers memorandum provides no explanation of why those powers are necessary or appropriate. Does the committee agree to ask the Scottish Government in relation to the ancillary powers in section 21a for explanation why those powers are considered to be necessary or appropriate? In particular, why are those powers appropriate in addition to the powers to make ancillary provisions by regulations in section 22 and why is the power to add supplementary provision appropriate in respect of both regulations under section 73 and section 18? I'll now move the meeting into private.


Hello, I'm a snake, Chichou. Hey, Chichou, glad to see you again. As always, how long do you think censor tube will last? Censor tube is going to be around for a long time, right? But its power has diminished greatly, greatly. Even two years ago, even two years ago, censor tube was a Goliath, right? It was untouchable. Within two years, within two years, right? Censor tube is shaking to its core, right? What horrendous management. My God, I have never, and I've been following business like economics for a very long time, gang. 25 plus years, I've been following businesses, economics, the markets and stuff like this. I have never ever in my life or know of any company like this in history, where the management has taken a company that owned it all and fractured this foundation and is bleak. I have never, ever even witnessed anything similar to this, okay? It's a disaster on a monumental level, on a monumental level.


Hey birdwatchers, it's Robin with Creativity RV and I am back from my winter break now It's been three months since you guys have seen me and during that time. I've had a bunch of cool travels I've made plans for this year made some changes like you might be wondering where I'm sitting right now and I also Unfortunately have to tell you about one turd in the punch bowl So the last time you guys saw me was about three months ago I've been traveling through Wyoming and had just put out the 2023 edition of my book work from home while you roam Which was a lot of work because there's hundreds of resources in there So I wanted to take a little bit of a break and do some traveling just for myself Which I did and I'm going to show you guys some of the highlights and the coolest things that happened But first again, I have to tell you guys about the turd in the punch bowl Which I don't want to do I don't want to come back for my break and do this but you know Let's consider this a public service announcement. It's the right thing to do. So I'm going to tell you about it Now if you've been watching my channel for a while, you know that I have endorsed a company called Nomad Internet for unlimited Wi-Fi on the road and I used them for two years and honestly, I really like the service I used it for about six months before I endorsed it because it was a little wonky in the beginning But then honestly, it was great And so the business model was that you could choose between Verizon AT&T and T-Mobile SIM cards and Different routers on a membership basis and get unlimited internet And that's what I got and I recommended them and loved them, but then Near the end of last year things started to get a little bit weird And I was home with my family for the holidays and I started to get a flood of emails from you guys Saying that your service had been turned off So I went quick and turned on my Nomad router and sure enough my service had been turned off And then there was a press release from the company making this sound like it was such a great thing That they were changing their entire format. Well, of course I reached out to them right away and I'd had a relationship with this company like I said for a couple of years and could not get a straight answer at all on what was going on and They said that existing customers would still have service. I couldn't find anybody that did and I did not So I kept emailing them saying can I get a meeting? Can I get a meeting? I want to understand this new service. Can we help my people? I'm forwarding emails to them And it was just a clown car. Honestly, they were tripping all over themselves They couldn't keep their story straight. And so I started to do some more digging and I'm not gonna bore you guys With all the nitty-gritty. What I'll say is this over the course of two months. I probably emailed with the CEO of the company about a hundred times. This is him right here. His name is Jane Garza. Oh I'm sorry wrong picture. I'm a terrible editor. Um, this is him he was just throwing all kinds of stuff at me and Making me insane offers to keep endorsing his service Which I turned down. I'm not going to disparage anybody here or any other influencer that still endorses them But if you guys are a customer or you're considering being a customer Do your research is all I can say look them up on reddit, for example See who is working at the company and where those people are based Look at the privacy policy and their terms and conditions and how they're paying their affiliates now I know that there have been a lot of big YouTube influencers that have been endorsing them in recent weeks and you know, I guess more power to them Maybe they they didn't do a deep dive like I did. Maybe it's willful ignorance They were throwing me money that would have doubled my income and I turned them down because What I want to say is that my relationship with you to me is the most important thing and my integrity is the most important thing and I do work with other companies and I do endorse companies But it's after using them and loving their service and knowing that it's something that you guys can use And I just don't feel that way about no matter internet anymore, but I am just Washing my hands and I think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens with that company going forward. So now Let's get to the good stuff Okay, so I had some wonderful travels after I last saw you guys in Wyoming You know, I went through Grand Teton. I visited the National Wildlife Museum Loved it there if you guys haven't seen that Met up with my friend Peggy. We went down to Flaming Gorge and into Moab and I have to tell you We were in Canyonlands and we caught the funniest footage We were looking over the ledge of this one Canyon where there were jeeps down below and they were Going down this skinny little dirt road way far down there trying not to hit each other and then This happened. So as you can see there is an RV down there and everybody was like, ah Should we help those people? Here he comes What do you think he's thinking right now? It is wider than I thought it was but look how close he is to the edge. Oh my god.  I Mean more power to him, but I wouldn't do it. Oh my god.  I Mean, you know by the time they got through what I think there were 40 of us looking over the ledge Nope.  Yeah, it looks like it but then those jeeps just built up steam and they're like, ah, I Bet that's at least an eight or nine percent grade. What do you think? Yeah All right. Oh my god, look at him rock. Oh My god, I'm scared for him.  Oh My god, I know that the ads show you these RVs and they go oh go anywhere, but that's not That's not really what you maybe should do By that guy a beer and get him a new pair of underpants Then I came back home for the holidays got my parents a puppy meet Teddy Roosevelt our little rough rider He's great. And then I left here to go to a meetup for my patrons That was in January in the Arizona, California area if you're one of my patrons You have been getting the play-by-play about what's been going on with me the whole time because I don't take a break from them so this information might be you know a little bit redundant for them, but While I was on my way out to go see them I Got stuck in a traffic jam. And because of that I got stuck behind a snowstorm There was about 20 inches in flagstaff when I was going through so I got stuck in Gallup, New Mexico for three days And when I got out of it The roads were a mess. I was going four miles an hour for hours and saw about six upturned semis But I finally got through it got through Arizona got out to the Blythe, California area where I got to meet my patrons for the first time And here's some distant shots of that because I don't show anybody without their permission I have to tell you if you're looking for a crew of really amazing people. I could not believe How great these patrons were they are just amazing wonderful People so after I left the patrons. I got to go off by myself a little bit, which was great I got to sit out under the stars and just chill out and then I finally made it to Joshua Tree National Park Which I've been trying to get to for years and just kept going right by it and I'm so glad I saw it You guys it is an amazing place if you get a chance to go do it. I stayed at a harvest host Going into the park on one side got a good night's sleep hit the park early stayed in the park for about three days Then when I came out of the park on the other side I went to the 29 Palms Farmers Market, which was amazing It's on Saturdays if you guys get a chance to go that way Then I drove out to the Mojave and stayed at another amazing harvest house Look, if you're not a member of harvest house, the link is below for 15% off. They are As I've said a million times the most smoke and deal in RV life Because you get to stay overnight at these amazing places and see things and do things you wouldn't do otherwise I'm so excited for this year and for 2024 I almost can't keep it together because I've got some really Exciting stuff coming up that I'm going to share with you guys But I bet you're wondering again what rig I'm sitting in so I'm going to give you guys a tour of what I'm in now in Next Sunday's video. So sorry for the teaser But if I did it today this video would be way too long But last you guys knew I was in a truck camper And I love the truck camper and I got to go places in the truck camper That were more remote and I didn't have to worry about the car or you know the clearance or anything And it was a great boondocker, you know every year in the fall I come back and do my doctor's appointments and so this year when I did that it turns out that I need to Spend a little bit more time in Colorado in the next few months than I was planning to and don't worry I'm fine.  My fifth wheel was still in storage As you might know because you guys I spent so much time renovating that when I was with Doug and now You know Doug's not on the road. He's great by the way But the fifth wheel just feels like a lot for me to travel in right now But if you told me I had to stop traveling I would pluck out my own eye with a fork. So While I'm taking care of the stuff I need to take care of off and on in Colorado I'll be staying in the fifth wheel, but I wanted something that I could easily hook up and Go camp for most of the time by myself without having to ask people for help The thing about the truck camper was if I kept the truck camper on the truck It was fine, but when I needed to take the camper off so I could use the truck I couldn't do that by myself because I couldn't get the tailgate on and off for example, and I'm loving what I'm in now I'm very excited to show it to you and if you guys know my kind of origin story about how I started out on the road What I'm in now will not be a huge surprise to you. Just wanted to give you guys an update That's what's happening. I am good. I hope that you are good, too And I'll see you guys next week until then. I hope you're all having happy travels and be free


Stand-up paddle boarding is inherently slow and so it forces you to slow down. It makes you slow, it makes you steady and then you end up taking in more. We set off down near Aheracle and we paddled the full length of lock shield. We're three mates and it was the first time that we'd really got that opportunity to just fully engage. It just felt like a really special experience. Paddleboards will often force you to go slow and take in the area around you. You're slowing things down and then you can enjoy the whole journey rather than just getting to a point. Conversation is a really important thing and this kind of trip allows that to happen in a really natural way. An adventure where it's not about physically challenging yourself, but it's purely about travelling through a landscape. It felt like we had a lot of time to talk. We made our way onto the main stretch of the lock and that's a really impressive sight to see. It's this one big scar in the mountains. Obviously being outdoors, there's a sense of the ownership being almost the other way around. We are definitely owned by the landscape and it is absolutely up to the landscape as to what it wants to do with us really. The weather changed the second day. We had a lot more wind, we had a lot more gusts and that made paddling a little bit more difficult. Wind on our back, the water could be a bit choppy, if it was a bit too much we could kneel down. What we could do is put our arms up in the air and make ourselves as big as possible and we all got carried by the wind. It was a really nice way of us connecting with nature which was almost giving us a helping hand. We had a bit of a struggle finding a spot to camp for the night. And we could all feel the grump setting in. After paddling across the lock and exploring a couple of small beaches we managed to find a perfect little spot for us to camp up. The second camp spot was a definite highlight of the trend. Quaint about us all stood round the fire chatting away and enjoying ourselves in the dark and in the rain. Nice relaxed start to the day and I got in the water and enjoyed a swim. Wild swimming is unique because on a number of levels it makes me feel really powerful. If I've stripped down to my swimming costume and I've then pushed through the challenge of getting into cold water I get an immense sense of pride in what my body can do but what my brain can do as well. When a lot of things all come together they gradually build and build and build until I simply struggle to keep them in. It could be that just something almost like topples me over the edge. So I've maybe had a really good conversation with someone and then suddenly some sun comes out from behind the cloud and I just... I can't keep it in. And it just makes me want to dance and wiggle and laugh. And I'm not laughing because everything's funny. I'm laughing because smiling's just not enough. I felt like that happened a lot on this trip because we slowed down. It wasn't setting a goal, it was more about just allowing our brains to slow down and connect with each other with the water.