the Delygated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I have received apologies from Paul Sweeney MSP. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I would like to remind everyone present to switch their mobile phones to silent. The first item of business is to decide whether to take items 7, 8, 9 and 10 in private. Is the committee content to take these items in private? Moving to agenda item number two, we will be taking evidence on the work of the Scottish Law Commission and can I welcome Lady Payton, chair of the Commission, to the meeting. Lady Payton is accompanied by the commission's interim chief executive, Charles Garland. I know that the session five Delegated Powers on Law Reform committee built a very positive relationship with the commission. Indeed, in its handover report published in March the committee recommended that its successor committee takes the time to learn more about the commission's work in session 6 and also develop similar links. I hope that today might be the start of that work. I'd like to ask Lady Peyton if she wishes to make any opening remarks. Yes, thank you very much indeed, convener. We're delighted to be here in person. It's a wonderful change for us after the last 18 months when we've all been remote and virtual, but having said that, I'm pleased to report that the Scottish Law Commission has been faring quite well in the pandemic. It's partly because we focus on research and written reports and it's partly because we have quite good IT equipment, I'm glad to say. So the work of the commission has been carrying on despite Covid-19 and possibly finding it slightly easier to contact some stakeholders and some other law commissions, the Law Commission for England and Wales. As you know, we're an independent legal think tank doing research, giving advice to Scottish ministers about possible law reforms which are intended to simplify or modernise Scott's law and fill any gaps. As I think you heard from Charles at the business planning meeting, our present projects are cohabitation, heritable securities, homicide, leases, personal injury damages and, hopefully, tenement property and common repairs. What's happening there is that a Scottish Government reference is being adjusted between the Government and the commission. Then there are two projects with England and Wales, their automated vehicles and surrogacy. In our projects, obviously, we consult widely, we make recommendations but we're also keeping an eye on implementation. We really appreciated this committee's discussion with the Minister for Parliamentary Business during your session on 14 September of this year. It was so heartening to see questions about the 27 outstanding items of draft legislation and also questions about the Prescriptions Scotland Act 2018. Thank you very much for that interest. We're also delighted with the First Minister's programme, including moveable transactions as a bill. That's going to be of great assistance to make Scotland recover, as it were, from the pandemic. Another optimistic or two more optimistic features are the relaxed criteria for bills to come to this committee. We have to thank Andy Proudfoot, your clerk, and also our former chief executive, Malcolm McMillan, who was last seen absailing down a mountain in the sky. He has managed to triumph there. Should I mention the timetabling for the future, I think that you're going to try and keep spaces, or at least the Minister for Parliamentary Business, Mr Adam, is going to try and keep spaces for commission bills. We're grateful and thank you very much for all those changes, but apart from moveable transactions, could I mention again, and this is probably repetition for people like Graham, whom I've spoken to and also steered in the past, a high priority reform, funnily enough, is trust law reform. That reform is a must in our view. I wonder if I could just give you some of the evidence, but this is a small bit of the evidence that was heard at the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee in November of 2019. Gordon Lindhorst was the convener and our thanks to him for bringing that about, because practitioners and academics made a very powerful plea for trust law reform, and one witness said, quote, companies ask us where they should set up. Such companies might be considering whether it will be in Scotland, Berlin, California or London. The answer for most of those companies is that it will be easier for them in those other places because of the way that the law operates here. It's a bit like somebody saying, you haven't got fibre broadband, so why should I set up here? The witness went on to say, it is difficult to access finance in Scotland under the current law. Our current law puts off inward investment to Scotland. Finance companies look at Scotland's law and say, no, we're not touching that, close quotes. That was powerful evidence from people who really know, because they are having customers coming in and saying that we want to start a business. Admittedly, their focus was, at that time, on the need to be able to give security over movable property. Those are start-up businesses, SMEs, et cetera, that just don't have land. They don't have heritable items, which is the way that securities are generally created in Scotland, until we hope the movable transactions. The difficulty for start-up businesses is often that you have a keen young entrepreneur with good ideas, good presentation but no land or buildings. They've got, for example, intellectual property, software licences, trademarks, registered and unregistered designs and so on. That is the presentation that the witnesses at the committee were saying, it was heartbreaking to have to say to these people, because we don't have this facility, you have to go elsewhere. What a lot of people don't understand is that trust law reform actually goes hand-in-hand with movable transactions. Some people think of trusts as old-fashioned and Dickensian, but trust is a modern tool crucial for making Scotland an attractive place for business and investment. A former chair of the Scottish Law Commission identified three crucial areas to make Scotland's economy attractive to outside. First was the legal writings, counterparts and delivery Scotland Act 2015. That is important because of electronic signatures and so on, remote sort of dealings. We are so grateful that that was passed before the pandemic. Secondly, the second vital item is movable transactions. This is securities over movables, and that is now, hopefully, being addressed in the legislative programme. The third item that the chair identified, which was around about 2012, is trusts. The commission does recommend a complete overhaul of this 100-year-old legislation, the Trust Scotland Act 1921, regrettably in a time when, if you think about it, it means that there were percussive type writers, there was no electronic communication, the idea of having remote contracts and so on just didn't cross anybody's mind and it was very much more looking towards the deed boxes and the private trusts. Nowadays, trusts are in everything, NHS, tenements and common repairs, pension funds, commercial land with snagging work, partnership properties held in trust, church elders hold funds and trust. It permeates Scottish society and the people that are experts in trusts are absolutely adamant that we need to sharpen up the machinery. Just before handing back to the convener, I hope that I haven't abused my five minutes, but I would just like to add what we're thinking of doing in the future. We're very keen to join England and Wales in their research into digital assets. That is a cutting edge, again, of commercial law, probably, involving electronic trading documents, smart contracts, cryptocurrency and blockchain. We are very keen to move jointly forward with the LCEW, again with a view to making Scotland great post-pandemic. On that note, convener, I thank you again for this opportunity and I hand back to you. Thank you very much, Lady Payton. You mentioned quite a lot there and I'm quite sure that colleagues, when we have the private session, we will no doubt discuss the trust law reform that I suggested, but no doubt some colleagues may have some questions, too. Before I do some questions, you touched upon the tenement repairs work and I know that it's something that Graham Simpson was very much involved with in the last session of Parliament. I was a member of the group that Graham convened. Can you provide just a bit of information about where that work is at the moment, please? We understand that there has been an approach from Scottish Government to the commission, hoping for agreement about what the parameters of the research should be. As far as we are aware, Professor McCarthy is dealing with that. Our revised version of the reference has been sent back to Scottish Government and I believe that that's where it is just now, but perhaps if Charles has any more up-to-date information, do you have any? That's exactly my understanding. We are in the process of revising, as Lady Payton said, the reference, just to make sure that we know exactly how what we will be asked to do will fit into, undoubtedly, a wider package. The commission is in its second half of its tenth programme of law reform. How is the work progressing and has the pandemic caused you to change any of your plans? I know that you discussed a few months ago, Lady Payton, with the kit that is available to the Scottish Law Commission. Do you seem to indicate that there hasn't really been much of a hindrance through Covid? I would say that it hasn't hindered our business, if you could put it that way, as much as some other entertainment business, leisure and recreation and so on. They have been in taxi drivers, completely stymied by the Covid-19, but because we are all used to working at desks and computers and also reaching out to stakeholders electronically, because I can tell you, for example, cohabitation, it managed to put out its discussion paper. It was just before the pandemic, I think it was. There was a whole lot of roadshows and meetings and seminars lined up where the commissioner was going to go round the country. That, of course, came to an abrupt end, but I am happy to say that those roadshows and seminars were then arranged electronically. The consultation with stakeholders proceeded appropriately, and then a policy paper was put together. Now they are moving towards the report to the Scottish ministers with a draft bill. That is causing a lot of exchange of views and so on, but it is still done by virtual meetings and electronically. Cohabitation is absolutely on target. Heritable securities, that is mortgages and so on, has not been held back by anything to do with Covid-19, but rather by the discovery of a very rich aspect of mortgages, which is, I think, when you take a security on securities. It is called securitisation. It seems to involve millions and millions of pounds, so the net result of finding this area of what most people do not think of when they think of mortgages has been that they will need a third paper. I suppose that there has been a slight hold-up in heritable securities, but not because of Covid. Humaside was positively accelerated by Covid because we had to work discontinuously at home. I was the lead commissioner there and I had the benefit of very good legal assistance. I am not sure if you are aware of this aspect of the commission that we have legal assistants who come in from the university, they are graduates and they stay for a year. They are all absolutely excellent, so it happened in that particular period that one had a very expert criminal, he defined himself as a criminal law geek, so there you are, that was his own definition. The result was, with the electronic communication, I would get an email first thing in the morning, which was surely there is something useful I could be doing. That is nine o'clock in the morning, so the result was an acceleration, I would say, and productivity in the homicide field. Then leases. We had a new commissioner coming in, David Bartas, a member of the bar, and he took certain views about termination of leases, irritancy and so on, and whether we should be dealing with certain aspects. I suppose that you could say that because of a change of staff, that perhaps held up leases a little bit, but it is now at the stage of a discussion, no, not a discussion paper or report, and a draft bill, and that is going to be discussed on 18 October, so I would say good progress there. In personal injury damages, again perhaps a change of staff has caused a slight hicap, that was a project manager change, but the paper is now virtually complete and contains very important points, for example, whether, when somebody has been injured, your next door neighbour helps you out, you know, with bathing, dressing, doing gardening and generally looking after you, whether that next door neighbour is entitled to claim damages at present, it's just restricted to relatives, so this is a very, we feel it's a very important point for 21st century Scotland. There's also a rather sad point arising from plural plaques, because you may remember plural plaques was made an injury by a Scottish bill, which is excellent, because although plural plaques don't produce obvious symptoms, there's something nobody wants, it's a sort of precursor of other things that might be terrible, but unfortunately the time bar problem has arisen in that, when we deal with this in chapter 4 of the paper, it's something nobody foresaw, tonsons who deal with a lot of respiratory problems and asbestosis, nobody foresaw this. What happens is that if a doctor just mentions that you've got plural plaques and he's telling you also you've got COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, et cetera, well the person goes off thinking, my goodness, I must do something about my chronic, my COPD, but they don't pay too much attention to the plural plaques and then the years pass and they're perfectly fine up to a point dealing with maybe COPD and bronchitis and then they get to 15 years later and get mesothelioma and they're time barred because it's three years from the time you were told you had plural plaques, so everybody agrees that that is unfair, pursuers and defenders came together on that, which was quite extraordinary. So no progress is being made and as for the two joint projects with England and Wales, England is very strong on automated vehicles, I think they have a lot of pressure groups there and they are strong on surrogacy as well and they also have pressure groups there, so they sweep Scotland along with them, if I could put it that way. So no, we haven't been held back too much. Okay, no thank you for that Lady Paton and do you plan to narrow down any of the work that you are undertaking? Not at present, no, no. I mean we have this five year programme as you know where everything set out and it's agreed with the Government and at present no narrowing is considered, no. Thank you very much. Grym Simpson. Well thanks, convener. Lady Paton, you've pretty much covered everything. Oh well. Which is great. Not the bilberry bee, if I may say so. Oh well, good piece of research. Absolutely. I'm still the champion for the bilberry bee. I know, I know, I'm very impressed. And unlike last time we met, I have actually seen one now or several over the summer, so that's good. Yes, that is good. I'll ask you more about that another time. Yes, well you can certainly do that. A very enjoyable day hunting for the bilberry bumblebee in Persia. But we'll talk about your work. I was going to ask how you've been getting on since you became the sort of lead commissioner, but I think you've answered that. You've answered how you've been dealing with the pandemic, so I don't really need to go into that. We, as the committee in the last session, prior to your appointment visited your offices hosted by Lord Pentland. I found that really useful and we got to meet, I think it was all the commissioners at the time were there, so I wondered if that's something you would consider hosting again. Yes indeed, yes. Now that is something we would like to do, but presumably when Covid has settled down a bit more, we should also warn you that there are plans to move us from our present 140 cosley side, but we won't be moving until the end of next year. We could, if Covid settles down, we'll be able to invite you back to 140 cosley side, which is a certain, I don't know what to do, some critic charm because of its brutalist concrete presentation. Not quite as wonderful as this building, but it's an interesting building nevertheless, but I think what is happening is that the whole court estate is being reassessed, leases are not being renewed, premises are being closed down, and people are being moved about a bit, so we will move about in a year's time I think, but we hope to have a, that would be very nice if you could come and visit us again at 140. Charles will have noted that. Well, wherever it is, I found it was useful just to hear more in depth about your work and to actually speak to the individual commissioners because they've all got their own specialities, of course. They all have different backgrounds, so I found that really useful and I think all the committee did. Really the questions that I was going to ask would have been covered, but if I can go back to that particular area of interest of mine, which the convener mentioned, which is tenement repairs, and as the convener mentioned, I chaired a working group and the recommendations that stem from that have led to you being contacted. So for me it's a personal priority and I just wonder if you can give us any kind of idea for timescale if you were to take this on when would work start, how long do you anticipate it taking? Right, well I don't know if Charles has better place, but all we can see is that as a commission we are enthusiastic as well because I think the difficulties experienced with common repairs are massive. They really are and they're well they're worse in Edinburgh for example than in Glasgow. Glasgow with its factors and hacking and partisan etc managed to grasp the nettle, identify a common repair, get it done and then bill all the individuals and if necessary litigate if nobody pays, but I'm afraid in Edinburgh it's a bad situation because there's nobody in charge in many buildings so residents, well for example an owner in a building had something like 13 people to chase up and that is a huge number and an awful lot of work and also there can be people who are very difficult as you know. So we are keen, all we can say is that it's gone back to the Scottish Government for final adjustment because it's very important to set down the parameters, the definition, the limits of what the research is otherwise everybody's speaking across purposes. So what we'll do, we undertake to speak to Professor McCarthy to perhaps get in touch with the contact who has sent us the reference and just see what position we're in and then we could possibly let your clerk know what's what the latest is. I really appreciate that. No one I can understand that and me too I would appreciate it. I should say that I personally am in the middle of a common repair and it is very very tricky yes with one of the owners mainly based in Singapore and that doesn't help. Yeah not uncommon, not uncommon. You've spelled out the difficulties and I just think to get reform in this area would help thousands of people across Scotland. You're right. Not just Edinburgh and Glasgow but through it. There's mainly Edinburgh and Glasgow but it could be anywhere in Scotland frankly. So I'm pleased to hear that and I'd be grateful if we were kept informed of that. Convener, I don't really have anything else to ask. May jump in later, we'll see how it goes. Thank you. Good morning Lady Patent and thank you for your very clear and full opening remarks which I think may have taken some of my questions as well. However, for the record I've got one and perhaps a supplementary to it. Given how outdated the present framework is, you've obviously welcomed the recent Scottish Government announcement that a moveable transactions bill will be brought forward in the coming year. While the bill is obviously yet to be introduced and of course it will only be at that point when we find out which committee will become the lead committee. Could you give us a short summary of why you consider these reforms so important and also just in respect of the remarks that you said in relation to trust law? Is there some degree of risk that the benefits from this legislation could be perhaps underachieved if we don't simultaneously or contemporaneously look at trust law? No, I think to be absolutely frank if you deal with moveable transactions and you're not given trust law at the same time it will be fine because moveable transactions will give you about 50 to 60 per cent more capacity in Scottish business than it has at present. What was really frustrating to a lot of the witnesses who spoke at that evidential hearing was that they were either having to tell people to not try in Scotland because it's too difficult and complex and you have to make all sorts of special arrangements to work around the problem or they would say, no doubt, to the customer, well we can do our best for you but we will have to do these work rounds. This is because the moveable transactions bill isn't going forward and in a way for a lawyer to do a work round is money making if you follow me. One of the hurtful accusations at the evidential hearing was a suggestion by one of the members of the committee that the moveable transactions bill was simply a device, a plot to earn lawyers more money. Yes, well they were very hurt because in fact if the moveable transactions bill goes ahead they're doing themselves out of the work round fees. So no, I would say focus on moveable transactions, we're hoping it will come to your committee because I think what remains in the sort of relaxed criteria is that it shouldn't be controversial. Yes, well I have not come across anybody who is against the content of the bill. There was a bit of a delay meeting with the Minister of Community Safety, Minister for Community Safety. There was a mention of the cost of two registers that have to be set up, £500,000 each I think it is, but they will be self-financing once they get going and as I suggested perhaps rationally to the Minister a million pounds is a drop in the ocean compared with let's say the charms construction or maybe even the child abuse inquiry. So once these registers are set up admittedly 500,000 each I think is roughly what the budget is they will be self-financing through various mechanisms fees charged to customers or whatever not to high fee but just enough to keep it going and apart from the two registers the only opposition seemed to be lack of parliamentary time. So I think this is an uncontroversial much needed bill which resulted in a lot of press, I mean I have the press here sort of headed why are Scots firms still awaiting legal reform? That was one and letters saying you know if I and here we are here's another I don't want to be boring about this but Holyrood must find time to keep Scots law relevant by implementing the thought you know so I haven't seen any any word against the proposal and so I think it will be uncontroversial and probably a bit black letter loyge but you've got the expertise in Dr Andrew Steven and Hamish Patrick and all these other people who are knowledgeable. So could I just add one more more over 50s working for themselves? Well that means you know somebody has to go to the bank and say I've got a great idea here's my business it's going to be a an SM here whatever let's get going and you can't get going you know so I think to be quite frank you can work well on the movable transactions the trust law it would be good to get that sorted out but it's not essential although they do they do dovetail to some extent. You've covered the next question from relation to to controversy time I'm taking it that you don't think it's controversial so therefore it is absolutely fine for this committee to be yes that's my view committee if of course that doesn't matter everybody doesn't I'll take your guidance on that I'm sure but if obviously if this committee was appointed as the lead on the bill we'd no doubt be looking to invite the lead on the work at the commission to appear before the committee and I'm assuming that's something that you'd be happy to do but well me not you personally or I would think for the black letter expertise I mean I'd be happy to come along but for the absolute but for the commission generally well I mean I think you would probably want people like Professor Gretton or George yes Professor George Gretton or Dr Andrew Stephen or Hamish Patrick or Bruce Wood I just mentioned all these people because they would be delighted to give assistance yeah excellent and just one final question if I may which is something that perhaps Paul Sweeney may have raised if he was here you were saying that one of the obstacles is parliamentary time and one of the things that we discussed I think with Mr Garland prior to this would be the capacity or the encouragement that could be given for members in this parliament to bring forward commission bills so that obviously that doesn't put pressure on the government parliamentary schedule yes is that something you would be open to examining this is a private members bill yeah yes we we are definitely open to that but we just feel that there is more authority more drive more clout as it were if the Scottish government says this must happen yeah private members bills the Scottish parliaments be congratulated because of the accessibility of legislation to average people much more accessible than in Westminster so it's to be commended and there have been wonderful results for example I think safety belts wearing seat belts in school buses was a private members bill and I think there has been assistance from an MP in the damages front although I don't think it actually emerges as an act but I think the commission feels that there's more authority more drive more a sort of stamp of approval if the Scottish government says this should go ahead and I'm also interested in your suggestion that it would resolve parliamentary time because I'm not sure if it's a private members but does it does it help with parliamentary time because yeah I mean this was a suggestion made by Paul Sweeney who's unfortunately not here today my view is a lot a lot of the stuff you're working on is quite technical and the process of taking through a member's bill it really needs to be a simple idea because if the government doesn't take it on it's very a very time consuming be none of us really want to get bogged down in something that could be extremely technical and really only lawyers understand so for me the sort of work that you're doing is should be taken on by government and not individual members unless it's really simple it's also grindingly slow I mean you get you get frustrated members who try to take forward members bills also get frustrated yeah so just my my view craig is that you know I think I think it's is better than government takes it on the members I think that's a very good point about the simplicity of the idea that has to be there everybody understood seatbelts and school buses not everybody is going to understand the movable transactions thing and it won't have how can I put immediate appeal across parliament you know has to be spelled out so I agree with tend to agree with you yeah okay okay bill yep and thank you very much to Lady Peyton and Mr Galland actually for being here because this is something that gives us some background as has just been discussed actually on some very complex ideas but explaining them in a way that are as much more understandable for the benefit of people who are looking for simplicity thank you Mr Simpson anyway I know but it's great that you're here but going back to the list of Scottish law commission reports which the Scottish government is reported to be looking to be able to legislate on for this parliamentary session. Do you have any view on the order in which these reports should be taken forward? Well let me just certainly the trust the trust lawful and I would actually think that that would exhaust the goodwill of the government you know what I mean by saying well we've we've taken on trusts the other matter is what cohabitation is possibly a very real life one and my personal preference is also for damages for personal injury I think having mentioned these I would say that's more than enough to keep keep matters you know busy I see there are judicial factors that's on the list isn't it yes well that to me is perhaps slightly lower down everybody seems to be managing all right even though the law could do with improvement although there are some rather awkward situations that have arisen so you see the trouble is one votes for just about every topic because this situation that has been drawn to my attention to do with curator bony's or it could have been a power of attorney but these all fall under judicial factors someone was granted a power of attorney or a yes I think it was a power of attorney and unfortunately then went and cleaned out this 80 year old lady's bank account and went abroad so I think that has to be looked at so you see I'm already contradicting myself by saying judicial factors might be worth a look yeah so I can't really put them in any I would say trust law reform is the top yeah right okay well thank you I'm I did notice that you mentioned cohabitation and damages for personal injury because those will be areas which people will feel might affect them or at all of these effects effectors all those will feel as if they're more personal and something which people generally in the population when they hear about what's going through the Scottish Parliament will feel as if that's actually talking to them or and I think that's very important so yeah so I'm glad you pointed those out that's really well is there any unimplemented commission reports from the slc which you consider maybe should even take high take priority over those that are highlighted by the Scottish Government have you got anything any particular hobby horses that you would like to be doing for no I have to say just exactly what I've said this morning so I haven't got a part from personal injuries damages that's perhaps a slight personal hobby horse but apart from that no no right okay so you think the ones that are coming forward are strong enough and good enough for us yeah okay and where were the slc and yourselves involved in the Scottish Government discussions on its programme of implementation of your reports definitely on the progress of implementation I mean rather than putting together the programme in advance well both actually then yes well certainly for making the programme in advance there's a lot of consultation with Scottish Government because people what happens is and next year we'll be doing this for our 11th programme we ask everybody to comment you know members of the public lawyers MPs everybody practitioners and people send in contributions what they would like reformed or looked at and then they're collated and discussed with Scottish Government to some extent usually our sponsors for example it'd be well it'd be Jill Clark and Alison Mason in the civil side and maybe Philip Lamont on the criminal side and soundings are taken about what would be useful because obviously Scottish Government are doing their own research into various topics and then together a programme is formed and it's approved by the Scottish ministers and then it's set down for five years so we will be doing that work next year working towards our 11th programme with a lot of consultation with Scottish Government I may say that there's a lot of communication because for example Scottish Government has been researching interstate succession and that is causing a lot of difficulty you know considerable difficulty and they're thinking of making a reference to the commission for some aspects of that so that's the interplay. That's interesting thank you very much no thank you very much for that thank you it's clear. Thank you Bill. Do we have any further questions for Lady Peyton and Mr Garland? No okay with that Lady Peyton and Mr Garland I'd like to thank you both for coming to the committee today and taking the questions from committee members and certainly the evidence that you have provided today has been very helpful and I'm sure that the committee if we do have any further questions we will write to you with those particular questions. Well thank you very much we've been very grateful for this opportunity. No problem thank you and with that I will briefly suspend this session to allow the witnesses to leave. Thank you very much. Under agenda item number three we're considering instruments subject to the made affirmative procedure no issues have been raised on SSIs 2021 328 and 329 is the committee content with these instruments thank you under agenda item number four we're considering an instrument subject to the affirmative procedure no points have been raised on the draft redress for survivors historical child embracing care exceptions to eligibility scotland regulations 2021 is the committee content with this instrument under agenda item number five we're considering instrument subject to the negative procedure no points have been raised on SSI 2021 317 is the committee content with this instrument under agenda item number six we're considering instruments not subject to any parliamentary procedure an issue has been raised on SSI 2021 314 which is the local electoral administration and registration services scotland act 2006 commencement number six and transitional provision order 2021 this instrument brings into force section 17 and schedule one of the local electoral administration and registration services scotland act 2006 it forms part of a package of elections the SSIs laid before the parliament earlier this month in correspondence the committee asked the scottish government why section 17 and schedule one of the 2006 act are now only being commenced 15 years after the act was passed the scottish government replied to say that there was an apparent admission in section 17 of the 2006 act at the time it was enacted in so far as it did not commence the accounting period for election expenses when an individual became a candidate this has been connected by article 34 of the Scottish local government elections amendment order 2021 which this committee considered last week this in turn enables section 17 of the 2006 act to be brought into force by the current instrument a copy of the Scottish government's full response can be read in paper three for this meeting which is available on the committee's website the response also indicates that steps to rectify the submission were not given priority despite there having been various local government elections since 2006 given that this submission and the delay in resolving it are members content to report the instrument under reporting ground g on the basis that it has been made by what appears to be an unusual or unexpected use of the commencement powers conferred by the parent statute also does the committee wish to highlight the scottish government's response as to why the delay in rectifying the submission occurred to the lead committee so that it may consider whether the explanation is satisfactory from a policy perspective no points have been raised on SSIs 2021 316 and 324 as a committee content with these instruments yes thank you i will now move the committee into private


Good morning Anthony here Monday the 16th of December. I hope everyone had a great weekend and Thank you very much for everyone who joined us on election night. I hope it was the coverage useful and Yet we're all recovered now ready to go for a for a new week and as per the usual process I'll talk you through the main things I'm looking at on the calendar for the week ahead if you do need this Calendar it is available on my Twitter account post it every Sunday Combination of not just economic data, but all the main speaker events any political events like with the UK For example, what's happening in Parliament this week? This is your your one-stop kind of shop a quick look though first of all overview of the charts how we set up this morning and Yeah, quite quite quiet a few things to update you on the trade Negotiation side between the US and China. There's been some data from China and Japan key data coming out this morning So I'll try and keep this as brief as possible because it's the preliminary PMI numbers which are Influential and market moving and they'll be coming out shortly We've also got some updates of course on what to look out for next from Boris Johnson having secured that Resounding victory at the end of last week So overall pound a little bit of our performance first thing this morning But it's already kind of given up that bid tone initially when Europe came in so trading just sub pivot at the top chart In the futures at the moment you're a dollar marginally positive So both pairs up slightly with the Dixie down about two tenths of one percent Gold pretty much unchanged trading at 1481 Index futures mildly positive. Don't forget as well We managed to avert as largely expected those Chinese tariffs coming in at least the new ones from the US and China on Sunday And then the US 10 year just giving back a little bit Perhaps some of that risk premium built in in anticipation of potential threats at that tariff Being implemented could have had on markets. They're just seeing a little bit of unwinding of that this morning So first things first, let's jump through and look at some of the headlines and Obviously after math now a lot of the UK press Filled with pages on what next now for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and as far as the The schedule is concerned for this week today. He's going to be looking to appoint some new members to his cabinet This is mainly really procedural This isn't going to have any immediate packs or impact on the the British pound the culture secretary the Welsh Secretary and the environment minister all need to be replaced for a variety of different reasons Zach Goldsmith think his name the Richmond MP Needs to be replaced because he lost his seat for example a bigger reshuffle of cabinet members is going to be Conducted after the January 31st kind of initial Brexit deadline is what the press have been speculating This then leads us on into bringing back the withdrawal agreement bill otherwise known as Wab and he'll look to rush that through as quickly as possible now he's got this Big majority in Parliament so that he can deliver this kind of Brexit in time for that self-imposed deadline This does mean then that in terms of the formalities He does need to put forward his new agenda where the Queen Speech basically she needs to do a bit of a top-up to what she delivered in October Putting forward the new government's agenda and that's like to happen on Thursday Quick overview then of a couple of graphics This first of all really just putting into context the size of Johnson's win last week As you can see here It's the biggest majority that we've had in UK Parliament ever since Tony Blair smashed it in 97 and 2001 Going back to that though. You've got to go to the Margaret Thatcher years of kind of 87 the last time the Conservative Party Specifically had such a large size majority when she had it was around 100 obviously his now around 80 But a significant break from what had been the pattern of really the last previous three elections Which should be incredibly indecisive The timeline now is quite key and here's one I shared on the night This is by way of danska bank analysts and so first things we've got now is the Brexit kind of day if you like and this being the elapsed of article 50 and moving into the Implementation phase or transition whichever way you want to coin it The transition period takes us up until the 31st of December of 2020 However as part of the already pre-written agreements The UK government would have the ability to extend the transition period by one to two years and Putting my neck on the line right now Monday 16th of December Boris Johnson will not deliver Brexit by the end of the transition of 2020 What basically he has said is that he has ruled out extending the transition period beyond 31st of December 2020 What I'm saying is he will absolutely extend The transition period so as he's done before he will put some kind of spin on it But a trade deal being locked in Secured with Europe by the end of this time next year. No chance is my view And so you know as much as there's going to be ebb and flow in the price of the pound along that 12-month journey The the complexity. I mean I was looking at the weekend reading of what needs to be done I mean in terms of an actual trade deal. I mean it's horrific. It's it's so complicated so arduous so lengthly An extension is almost a foregone conclusion in my mind But I guess at the moment he's got a ride the wave of political triumph at the weekend Of course given now the red wall has turned blue He's been promising large-scale reinvestment into the north and obviously that's a strategic play I would do the same. You've got to appease now the people that for the first time Really in a long time have now changed their political backing and allegiance to your party and so he needs to lock that in Other things This is now what happens next for the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn obviously has said he wouldn't run in another election and that he'll step down as and when a new Labour leader is appointed So the likelihood is that's not going to happen. I don't think until probably a Good while yet a number of months. I think I read this morning might not be until May of next year But who's the favorite and you remember on the actual night itself? We were talking a lot about Keir Starmer was the outright favorite. He's actually dropped a third now according to the bookies the favorites at the moment What actually favorite at the moment is Rebecca long Bailey Quite an out front runner at the moment at 27% and she is the shadow business secretary And if you remember she was the person they kind of rolled out in replacement of Corbyn and any of the final televised Debates as the main Labour representative. So she's pretty well known within the party fairly senior She is aligned though with the left and Corbyn's more social policies the other person that's getting a lot of Traffic in terms of the betting market is Lisa Mandy now. I think she's the MP for Wigan She hasn't yet declared that she would be up for running although she has intonated that she could be interested She is very different. She's a soft left candidate She actually resigned from the shadow cabinet in 2016 because of the fact she wasn't happy with Corbyn's policies So you've got quite a big Difference there and those two front-running candidates at the moment one very much in a similar ilk to Corbyn and the other much more center left in the What could argue in the old I say the old the new Labour format? Whether or not who will get chosen. I think it's really too early to say I do think though my initial thoughts upon seeing this Reflected in the betting market. I think if Rebecca Long Bailey gets picked. I don't really see too much difference then from what's happened with a catastrophic failure of not only Yeah, obviously Events like the inability to deal with anti-semitism, but also the the Social policies that Corbyn was trying to follow Obviously have not worked And the working class particularly in the Northeast are dissatisfied and so perhaps then a move towards someone more soft left rather than left could be the order of the day, but You know who am I to say? That's how I'd see a probably a better route for Labour if they're going to form any type of more credible opposition Given that the Labour's performance at the end of last week. I think it was the worst since the 1930s Couldn't be any worse as far as their performance All right off the election and Brexit Let's talk about the biggest story of course that dominates global financial markets still and that is the US trade negotiations Robert Lightheiser the trade representative said that phase one trade deal is quote totally done and will double exports to China in two years so Let me just give you the tweets from the man himself Donald Trump He said they've agreed to very large phase one deal with China They've agreed to many structural changes and massive purchases of agricultural product energy and manufactured goods plus much more 25% tariffs will remain as is and the seven and a half percent put on of much of the remainder The the penalty tariffs set for December 15th will not be charged Because of the fact that we've made this deal. So that's the delay of which we were kind of expecting last week He finishes we will begin negotiations on phase two deal immediately rather than waiting for the 2020 election however Robert Lightheiser then came out and said no no no no no no no there's no date set yet for US China phase two talks We need to wait and see the implementation and the fact that China does come come through with its commitment So he basically has just said the president's wrong. I think I wouldn't read too much into this I don't think this is market-moving. This is Trump just getting a little bit excited And obviously the PR that comes with kind of leveraging the fact that he wants to make this look like he's in control And he's cracked a deal and so I don't really think too much to it. I think Lightheiser's comment is absolutely Prudent and I think this is the right approach and the one that will be chosen and that is the look Let's not talk phase two yet Let's just ensure that this massive amount of as Trump puts it purchasing of agricultural product energy and manufactured goods And China comes through then we'll start talking Turkey if you excuse the pun Having a look elsewhere This was a headline that came out over the weekend and I did think that this was quite interesting and certainly I think going into 2020 You know this this kind of protectionist stance from the US Spilling out into other areas across the globe and here what Bloomberg were reporting was that China The ambassador to Germany has threatened Berlin with retaliation Basically if it should ban Huawei's 5g Depending German legislation would impose a de facto ban And so the particular retaliation that China were talking about was as to hit Germany where it hurts as we know is on the auto manufacturers who of course China is a huge market for the lights at BMW Daimler Volkswagen and so on so quite interesting here. I mean the last thing that Germany needs Having had issues with their domestic politics having had issues with the risk of a no-deal Brexit issues with the US Targeting these auto manufacturers and other exporters now China getting involved You know he's could could spell disaster going into a country Which has been sitting on the you know in the recessionary territory Okay, a few other headlines to to quickly go through and as I said I want to get things wrapped up for the PMI from Germany coming out Shortly and just while I say that The French number has already come out the French manufacturing PMI 50.3 Against expected 51.5 so weaker than expected services 52.4 a touch above expectations of 52.1 So quite weak on the manufacturing slight beat on services for the French PMI and a German figure coming in about 15 minutes Having a look final headlines here did see a research note out of Bank of America this morning They were basically saying that as Brexit and trade war risks recede and with the Federal Reserve and ECB still adding liquidity They are quite bullish over the first half of 2020 US equities I think their call was for the S&P to hit here. This is it Bank of America are calling S&P to reach 3333 by March 3rd Which would be a 5% rise from Friday's close so getting as per the target here pretty bullish going forward So something to be aware of Data-wise some other things at the weekend growth in China's industrial retail sectors beat expectations in November That was going to data that came out overnight however, not so pretty in Japan and Japan's factory activity extended its fall in December as a prolonged decline in output and new orders threatened to tip the economy into contraction in the current quarter Their factory activity shrunk for an eighth month In a row so things you know not looking good in Japan But hence the reason why Shinzo Abe the PM few weeks ago unveiled another substantial fiscal stimulus to try and prop up the economy given the relatively Few options that the Bank of Japan has left on that note Back to the calendar the Bank of Japan do have their interest rate decision on Thursday. That comes alongside the Bank of England the Bank of England One thing I would say with that not expecting a great deal of action. I would say They can't really make too much in a way of decisions given yet to see Definitive conclusion of at least the the Wab getting approved through Parliament so they we can move into this Transition phase of Brexit. So very much a wait-and-see situation there for the BOE Otherwise in terms of the calendar highlights for this week the PMI data coming out of Europe right now is very important Particularly I'm interested in the German figure coming out in about 10 minutes UK manufacturing service PMIs are coming out a bit Later this morning, then you've got the US New York Empire State manufacturing later as well Tuesday highlights US industrial manufacturing production a couple of Fed speakers as well Williams Kaplan Rosengren and ECB's Ren all speaking on Tuesday Wednesday German iPhone business climate again as I've mentioned With that Chinese headline targeting or threatening at least German trade that in combination with the German PMIs and then ifo quite a lot of Good insight as to the current and future expectations for that economy, which obviously is key in the Eurozone And then going back to Friday on Friday. You get the GDP. These are final readings So no great shakes to speak of really Q3 is pretty much wrapped up That's all data now given the fact that we're almost in January now But we get the final GDP readings from both the UK and the US I do also think it's called Drupal witching as well But obviously as we get towards the end of the week, that's pretty much it I'd say going into Monday the 23rd and then Christmas Eve things will be very quiet borrowing anything unexpected So this week really I would expect volumes Potentially to start tailing off even towards the end of the week given the fact that those GDPs are finals So they're not going to be particularly market moving in that respect Okay, that's it for me. I will post if Sam is still on the German data as and when it comes out But I reckon he could wrap it up in time give me a bit of a target. You got ten minutes, Sam Thanks guys. See you later Ten minutes. I've got this with this is actually the the last full trading week of the decade So distract yourself in it's gonna Be a good one have a look over the pound. You can see that gap. Obviously still still big and with the With the market as it is, of course that longer timeframe will be useful just to To mark up any of those potential points of where it could be traced to and to then find some Support and and this is a level we were talking about In the early hours of Friday The third of the May high and you mean you can't get much perfect much more perfect than that to the tick And the bounce was was fantastic below there So below the the low that we had back on those last couple of days I'd argue the 7th of May is worth having on on the futures around 1.33 to the handle And then of course just below that you are looking at those levels that we had back from The 12th last week. Let's get the pivots on us. They'll be a bit closer Today than that where they were last week, but you can see if we put this now 15 minute Obviously quite far away from that s1 area, but that does mark up with that level from May As well so some key points of support below where we're training I'd be keeping an eye on all of those above The high of the day you can you can see is a pretty good area of resistance from the early hours of Friday 134 61 and then above that I would have 87 marked up as well No real trend line as such in play From those last couple of days, so keep it quite I would say horizontal, but to the downside you can see certainly from Friday's low And you can see how many times we tested that area We have just now made this third test 1 2 3 So really keep a watch on that also 134 handle also the resistance from 3 p.m On Friday, so actually quite technical the pound at the moment Lit maybe the market tell you what's really going on euro filled It's got pretty quick and actually came down quite aggressively on Friday Quite a big area of support almost hit as well And let's just bring this in here the the low that we had on the 12th and the 13th You can argue that's the 10th high and then also the the fifth really big zone That I'll be keeping a watch on you can see the buyers came in late on that session We have driven price higher to the upside keeping eye on 112 30 I would say the low that we had on the 13th in that morning We're keeping a watch on that to see how we can come into play Really I'd be be focusing on that as the as the range Also, I guess if we were to have a stronger move at any point And obviously maybe this data could lead to something This potential trend line which would at the moment mark up with the low That we had from overnight yesterday as well there for For the euro gold it did get lower Filled it very very quickly and since then has pushed on You can argue everything would seem fine Brexit's done trade war trade talks are going well And well gold's been been pushing higher here so we're not out the woods just yet Quite a key level I would would have would have up you know despite this is on on the 12th But 1483 and a half I'd still have that as a level of interest to to have on And certainly if you now can put this on the 240 any strong move to the downside You've got to be aware of these these trend lines depending where you draw them You know if you go from the the first two points you can see we've had a few goes At really trying to spike through most notably here there there three times But every time it's been left over rejection and that low that we had in the early hours post The the brexit or the general election I should say You can see we did come back down to test that so Longer term for the week and of course the year that would be very very key And looking at this on the 240 as well those highs that we had a couple of times last week Remain very significant 1487.6 so for for gold I think longer bigger moves Those would be the areas that I'd be focusing on above the resistance horizontal or below that support S&P well just going higher and higher and higher my my Dow 30 000 hat has arrived So I'll be bringing that into the office soon because it seems like nothing wants to stop This market just yet a move lower only found support on some levels from Thursday And we've driven higher gaps as well a double top from Friday around 31 89 It's the R1 today you're keeping a watch on that because if that goes 3200 Could well become a bit of a formality below obviously mentioned the s1 You've got before that 3170 would argue 31 53 is probably the most important support point Was the higher from the 6th higher from the 12th and then we came back to plan Support once that had broken through with the the trend line from those lows It still have that on starting here on the most move my calendar Canada chart on the third came up there lovely tests of those and would be having that on Still you can see there the low the 10th and almost low the 12th will also come into play In an area that would mark up with s1 and that's how simple why would really keep it Those would be the points that I would focus on there for the S&P I'm going to quickly look over at the other charts how we're trading Dax relatively quiet not doing too much gap to bit on the weekend Obviously got a bit of resistance just above where we're training from Friday And then I would argue this lower point near where we closed Friday's key as well And keep a watch on that for a bit of a guide if the highs are to go that horizontal line S&P On that R1 and double top you'd imagine would have a good chance of doing so Oil will start in the day strong but just on a key resistance point now 6012 resistance That we found on Friday and having a look at this on the 240 Much like equity as you can see has just been drifting higher over the last few days And actually trading at levels we haven't seen for a while so it's moving that to A smaller chart 6150 remains a key point and having a look at this on the daily chart Well, you can see not far away from those levels that we saw from The incident in the middle of September with Saudi So keep a watch on oil literally where we're trading now should be An interesting battle between the bulls and the bears to begin the Monday morning Relatively quiet out there, but of course you've got that data approaching in a couple of minutes So I'll get off the mic and we'll put the The data release into the chat as well, but any questions, please do Let us know I hope you'll have a good trading day and even better week ahead


Hi everybody thank you for watching today so I'm super excited because I've got a new release for you and this is my twist and pop cards so I've got three new cards I've got a six by six five by seven and a six by four and I have three new themes so I've got magical garden and celebration there's stamps there's dies and there's a new paper pad as well so let's have a closer look. Okay so this is everything in the new release but what I thought I'd do is first of all show you a card example in case there's anybody there who is unfamiliar with the twist and pop this is the kind of card that you can create so this is a six by six I haven't decorated all of the fronts because these are actually all samples that I took on TV and they were displayed open so I didn't need to do anything on the back but basically you would have your you know decoration on the front open the card and then this will pop out so this is one sample that I made using the garden collection which I really love you can see one of the seam papers in the background there and just some of the tools that you can die cut using the dies there they're just I love them and then I've got the lovely bees stamped there from the stamp set so that's just one example in the six by six I'll give you an example of the magic let's do this one here I'm just grabbing anyone so there's the magic one okay lots of fun there's the stamped images of the playing cards there you've got a silhouette of the rabbit and then that hay presto sentiment which is cut into the card and that is the rabbits is popping out of the hat there which I really love and I'll show you a little bit more of that in detail and then I'll give you this one here this is the five by seven it pops open and this is the celebration so you have the birthday cake there you've got party hats wine glasses balloons and again you can see the papers on the back of that one so that's the card style that you'll be able to create with these dies and stamps here so this is the paper pad so it's a seam paper pad the last seam paper pad that I done for Christmas done really well and completely sold out so we've done this one here so you've got magic celebration and the garden background so you get this one here which is really nice there with the magic ball or the crystal ball you've got the wand dice you've got the magician's hat and the bunnies really really like it there playing cards you've got the masks and roses hearts and then this is one of the garden scenes you can stamp directly onto this here at the bottom and build your scene you've got your fireworks there so this would be great for a new year's card I actually do have a new year's card which I'll show you in a moment but also for birthdays it looks really nice and then you've got your champagne bottle there and the glasses with the bubbles and you've got this one really fun love the bunny there popping out and then you have this one here with the butterflies with that kind of meadow really really pretty and then you're back to the beginning again so this one here is 180 gsm and you get four each of six designs and it's an eight by eight paper pad and then these are the actual stamps now I only have the packaging for the six by four and five by seven because I got these you know very early on so we were still you know getting the packaging sorted but this is the size of the packaging how it looks and then you can see everything now you get so many dies so you know when you see this you kind of think oh they're quite small they're not they're big dies this is just how we squeeze it all in onto the packaging there and you can see you've got all your mechanism parts here and the dies in here will actually cut the card blank and I want to mention if you're someone that likes to cut your card blanks then I would say that you would you would need a large die cutting machine for that reason however if you already have your card blanks and when I'm talking card blanks I'm meaning you know this this piece so this this is a die that has cut this shape and put the score line through the middle if you already have your cards you know you may brought them from the store then all of these dies the six by six the five by seven and the six by four will all fit through a standard die cutting machine all right so the only thing that makes these dies need a larger machine is just if you want to cut your base card this is a mat layer that's a mat layer for your panel and then these are all your dies now a lot of the dies are also stencils and you'll see that with some of the samples as well that I'll show along the way so that's the packaging but this is actually the dies so you can see there just how big they are this one here is a really nice panel like edge die and we haven't put the cutting line there along the bottom and it just means that you can do so much more with it and I'll be showing that in future tutorials and this is the rabbit with the ears popping out of the hat there and that's the gap there means that you can use it as a stencil and again with the dies you use those as a stencil you've got the little wand there now bring in my little tray here because again you can see there's the wand and I've just backed it with some red card it looks really really cute and here's the playing cards in the stamps and I've just layered them up to found them out but you can see they're just like so you just cut those ones out and here is the rabbit popping out of the hat and you can see what I mean there about just inking up so if you just I cut that one you'd leave it in the die and then just with a little blending bud or brush just pop some pink if you were doing this for example and then when you take it away you'd have that so it's a really nice easy way to add the detail to the dies and then you've even got your little playing cards there again you use those as stencils but it's just so fun and then on the back are the dies so you can see there's that big one but actually if that haven't put my mechanism in from when I done my demo these are the the pieces that you need to make the pop-up piece and you can put this in any size cards that you want really you know some of them might catch you just have to help them close but they would still work and I know a lot of people already that I've because I had my launch on Hachanda and I've done my craft stash launch people are already saying that they're going to use theirs in their mini albums and on scrapbook pages and all that kind of thing so you know they're not just for using in your cards you can do so much more with these so that's the magic one the die and then I'll just show you these stamps now you can buy all this separate but we do have bundles on at the moment the current offer as I'm doing this launch and our date you know I'll put the date of the offer you can currently get with any bundle so any die and stamp you can get the paper pad for half price and you just need to enter the code twist I'll link that below but it will expire so you know you won't get it for too much longer here's the stamp set minor heavily used so there are stains on them but again stains do not damage the stamps and they just work you know perfectly so don't don't worry you've got have a magical birthday believe in the magic surprise you are something magical and you've got the dice you've got some little stars you've got all of the different playing card in images there and then you've got your four playing cards there as well so don't mean I always like to do something a bit different okay next let's have a look at the celebration so actually before I do that let me just show you the samples of that magic so I've got lots here um so I showed you that one so there's your hey presto and then I showed you this one here so that's the front with the bunny you can see I haven't stenciled in the pink on that one but it still looks great and then you open this one up and you have all of that lovely detail just all you know down to the little key there in the the diamond there's the pat you know the playing cards together there and then these ones well what I done is I done you know these as kind of playing cards but these were for inspiration on how to decorate the fronts so I did do it so that for example that one would go on the front of this card and then when you open it this one pops out you've got the magic there looks really cool and all of the sentiment dies are designed to die cut into the paper and again you'll see that in the future tutorials and I'll explain that more and then let's say this one yeah I think this one so you'd have that one on the front again really like just level all this detail and all of these little dies they're all from the die set and then you open it up and you can see the silhouette of that border die I've done in the center there you can see the dice there's the wand and then there's that lovely pattern paper on the back and then this one we've gone on the front kept it quite simple put lots of sparkle on the the dove there as well and then you'd open this one and you have this inside I just kept that all with the silver some of the holographic card there as well I think it looks really nice and then happy birthday sentiment at the bottom and then I've got this one here with the playing cards through the middle I even love the gloves I think that's really cool as well believe in the magic and then I have this one could go on the front so just use the playing cards there and just stamped all those smaller images and then again you can see the magic in those papers and then this one thought I had a front for it but oh no this was a sample that I done live on Hachanda it's got the hay presto to the left there little cluster of those die cuts and then I stamped the playing cards along the bottom and then you've got the silhouettes there you can see I've got the wand and the gloves there or the hands if you do it in black it's just like hands if you do it in the white on the black then it looks like gloves you've got to have a magical day as well okay so that's those samples then we've got the five by seven so that was this one here that I showed you okay so let's look closely at the dies because again they are huge just look how big let me just take out here just look how big that one is and this is the kind of thing that you can create and this is for my new year's card so if I just grab it's at the top here so this one would go on the front and then you'd open it up and you have 2021 new year and there is happy up there as well and these are using my alphabet dies so it's just a nice you know just a quick idea there but I just loved the the bottle there and that's the celebrate sentiment as well that comes in the die set you can see the celebrate there you've also got the wine glasses love the present and I'll show you this one here this is probably one of my favorites so I love the bold color look at that I think it looks great so I've stamped the background here using the celebrate and then all of the different numbers stamps and that is from this one here so you've got them all along here you can see you've also got your party poppers there you've got like streamers or it could be a firework and then you've got little images here you've got the birthday present happy birthday celebrate and enjoy your day and then this is this lovely background and I'll show you that again in more detail which is here so you can see that's all embossed on the back here how nice is that it's really that lovely texture to it as well so that is showing you the presence and the cake again and then you've got the hat and you've got like the rocket with the streamers and then this you can see how big this is and again you don't have the cut line at the bottom so you can use this as a topper on lots of things but I'll give you a card sample so this one here you can see I've put it along the top here and I've used the balloons as a stencil to ink the different color there so you know done something a bit more I guess masculine or for anybody that loves blue I've just done stars along the bottom there and then what else can we show you on here you've got the balloons I love this one which is your crackers they've just been pulled apart and then all of these are all different like little streamers you've got one there one there one there and that will give you this effect you can see there loads of them and there's the different dies again there's the cracker and the cake party hat and the present and then this on the rocket again with the stars I think that looks really nice love that one love the color love the tutti frutti and also what I've done is if you just sometimes you have when you put these in you have to get them straight and you may the only thing that's going to happen if you were a bit wonky as it may catch but an easy way around that is to just cut little you see I've cut like a little wedge in the tops there and it will just mean that when it closes it closes without catching so it's just a little tip but you'll see me do that in tutorials so that's the celebrate and again on the back there you can see the dies but again that's your mechanism piece and then the panel die is where have I put my panel die oh I've just popped that down somewhere because I've just not long done some more demos but it's that one and then it's just one that's about that big and a little bit longer again will fit through a standard machine it's these dies that make you know the card blank that are obviously larger so we just put them in there just you know some people do like to cut it themselves so that is the celebrate and then the garden I think the garden and the magic are probably my favorites I just think they're a little bit different and I love the bees in this one here these bees bee images are gorgeous I love the grass you've got the meadow border here and then this panel looks lovely heat embossed but also coloured and you'll be seeing that as well in future tutorials and even this one looks really cool the fence and then you have just a beakers bees and butterflies all welcome garden and be happy and these will work across my other buds that I've already released as well so the wipers the sliders the tower fold and the pop-up ones you can use elements on to that as well and then obviously this new one now so here you can see the dies again very big dies this one here I love this die and these look nice wrapped and you can have them wrapped around like a candle or a gift box there's so much you can do with these and my brain's already full of lots of ideas but if I just bring my tray in again there's that die so you can imagine if I get I mean that's not the best example to use but you can just get an idea of wrapping it around something so you imagine that around the bottom of a gift box or something to match the card that you're making that's the one with the rabbit again just to give you an idea I've trimmed the bottom so obviously we don't have the cut line there so you can trim it to whatever you want look at the wheelbarrow and again the wheelbarrow like a lot of the dies will work as a stencil so that's actually brown ink that I've inked up through the stencil I just had a little silver handle I've dug up the wheel just with some black card as well and then you can see if I show you this was the one that I just made on my Facebook craftstache live and this one actually done in a vertical orientation rather than a horizontal which the others are I think it's turned out really well but you can see here the wheelbarrow and then I've used all the different flowers along the top there we've even got Colin the caterpillar just in there but you can see how that looks and then on this side look and there's a die that does this which is just brilliant I just think it's such a nice addition but how lovely are these bees I just think they look so so pretty and then the relax which is cut into this paper here I just think it all comes together really nicely and you can see here again just how big these are so just dye cut it in brown then dye cut it again you know in silver at the bottom isn't it cute I mean my dad's a huge gardener he's got friends who are gardeners even my mum so these kind of things they're just so nice for lots of people they're great retirement cards just relaxing cards birthday cards and even for someone who maybe has a wedding in their garden you could turn these into wedding cards in some way look I've got a little ladybird there that's just one of the trees I just need to add the flowers um what else I've used quite a lot oh yeah we've got the watering can let me show you so I've just died cut a few of them but I've done a green one I've got gray ones there as well you've got your dragonflies and there's butterflies as well there's all sorts in there and again if I just hold it up you can see these are the dyes which were just die cut there's one there as well but this is the heart one that I just showed you so that will just die cut these stitch detail into the paper or cardstock whatever you use and it's the little bee trail or the flies or the butterflies you know whatever flying little insect or creature you have these look really nice just behind but you can see just how big the other and there's the flower dies you've got grass here as well and the width of that is the width of the panel if it's in a portrait um there's the spade you've got your plant pot and then enjoy and relax so let me just show you I've got another little one to show you as well of a another way that you can use the border dies so that was the one I showed you at the beginning you can see the papers there and then this one so there's that meadow I just done it as a silhouette so I just stamped it all in black and then here's the meadow and I've actually coloured it and I've put glossy accents there we go on the tops of the flowers and I just think it looks so pretty and I've put glossy accents on the wings as well really do like this card it's lovely and then this one here I think I must have a bit of glue there this was again these have travelled with me some of these so but look at the wheelbarrow at the bottom there all like the daisies and you can see this is that panel running right the way through and there's the butterfly dies and then that paper and then this one so you can see the stamped image of the fence and I've used the flower the bee and the butterfly there and that's again using my alphabet dies and then this one you can see the background there which has been heat embossed but I'm going to do a coloured one and I've got the dragonfly got a little garden sign this is the garden die this is the grass die here and then I've done the papers at the bottom this time with enjoy and then just some of the tools and again you see the caterpillar and I put some glossy accents on him I think he looked great and this is using my dragonfly embossing folder in the background here as well it's just a nice little extra there but I also want to show you what else you can do with those border dies so here is a cute little pop-up box card and you can see what I've done is this back piece is using the panel die so I just flip this one over here so this die here you can see just folded in half and then I've die cut again this with the grass and fence to give you that piece and then I've just started building up there's still a little bit more I want to add to this but I just wanted to show you what other things you can do with the dies they don't just have to be used you know as for the twist and pop and also all of these can be used with the other kinetic card styles that I have there's just so much scope for this so I do need to finish that one off but I do really like it I think it's turned out really cute okay so there are my twist and pop cards so I hope you've enjoyed this latest release I can't wait to see what you make with them all and I can't wait to start sharing more ideas using them so I'll be releasing tutorials for the six by six five by seven and the six by four but I'm also going to be doing tutorials where I mix these up with my other dies and just start to you know think of some new fun ways to use them as well because I'm always that's what I kind of like to do so thank you for watching and I'll be back again very very soon bye


This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Happy Eclipse Day, everyone. I'm releasing this on April 8th, 2024, but recording it ahead of time using my 2017 data. I just wanted to give a few processing tips more sort of on the basic side. I might get a little dip my toe into things that are a little bit more advanced, but I wanted to start here with just the power of processing raw images, single raw images with something like Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. If Lightroom is more your jam, a lot of these sliders are the exact same in Lightroom. I'm just doing this with the Adobe Camera Raw add-in here that's part of Photoshop when you open up a raw file. Okay, so I have a variety of different shots here with different features of the Eclipse. And I just wanted to show some of the cool things that you can do with just this basic section over here in Camera Raw. The first thing is it's useful to jump back and forth between the fit view, which is showing you the whole picture and a zoomed in view. And the default is 100%, but I'm gonna change it to 200% just to get us an even closer in view here. And what I like about this zoomed in view is you can see this is, on one hand, a shot of the sun's inner corona, its atmosphere that you can only see with a special space telescope or during a total solar eclipse, but then it's also showing off these prominences, these filaments or loops of plasma shooting out from the sun's surface. And I thought in 2017, this one especially was really beautiful. And what I find really interesting about solar eclipse processing is you can make multiple different interpretations of the same photo to highlight different features. So for instance, if I wanted to highlight the prominences, I could do that by diminishing the role that the corona is playing in this photo. So to do that, for instance, I could take down the exposure slider quite a bit, bring up the contrast slider, bring up the clarity slider and look at that. Here's before and there's after, right? It gives you a very different look. I think with this shot since so much of the photo is black, I would probably crop it. And you can do that right here in Camera Raw. The second tool down here is the cropping tool. And I'm gonna choose a 16 by nine. That's sort of the standard monitor ratio if we wanted to fill a whole monitor with this. And I'm going to go way in here on the sun, do something like that. Okay, so that's our first image done, right? Just a few changes here to the sliders. We brought down the exposure up to the contrast, up to the clarity and cropped to 16 by nine.  So I'm just going to click Convert and Save Image. And I'll save it as a JPEG. Okay, save, done. So processing can really be that simple. Let me show you another example here. So here's a, you could still call this inner corona, you might call this mid corona. It's one 100th of a second, but we're seeing a bit more of the extent of it. If we zoom in, let me do 200% again, you can still see those prominences, but they're quite a bit harder to see. Even if we brought down the exposure, well, now if we really brought down the exposure on this one, they become a little bit easier to see. But you can see here, over here, they're much more blown out, right? Compared to this one, where we could see them a lot clearer and they retain their sort of red color. Well, here, they're blown out, even if we bring down the exposure to negative four. And that's just a result of this exposure to begin with was four times as long, one 100th of a second versus one 400th of a second. Okay, so this one is obviously more about the corona than the prominences, but no part of the corona is blown out, right? Even here, right along the edge of the moon, you can see this isn't pure white. If I bring down the exposure, that's even more evident, right? So there's still nothing is completely blown out here. Now, let's say we wanted to make this quite a bit brighter and show the larger extent of the corona. You might be tempted just to take this exposure slider and bring that over to the right. But if I go too far with that, you could see what happens is we get a lot of camera noise, this vertical and horizontal banding. And that's typical of digital cameras, especially like a Canon camera like I was using here. Some very new cameras might have less of this, but they're probably still gonna have it if you really push the photo like this. With one 100th of a second, it's just not picking up enough information in these shadow areas to combat the self-noise of the camera. So that's why we take these longer exposures is to get the full extent of the corona without all of this noise that comes out if you try to push it in post. Okay, but let's say you did want to see a little bit more of the corona in this shot. Let me show you a really simple way, which is just the clarity slider. Let me zoom in a little bit here. Okay, so here's before. Now I'm gonna up the clarity slider to 100, plus 100. Look at that. Here's before, after. By doing that, you're seeing a lot more detail in these streamers, right? You're seeing all these little striations in here and here. You're seeing a lot more detail in here. If I go back, that's how it was before, that's how it is after. Now you're also starting to bring out some noise though. So what I find is if you just want to do this one adjustment on a single photo and be done, I found that going up to about plus 50 on clarity is a good balance between bringing out a lot more detail in the corona, but not bringing out all of this noise that you start to see in the darker areas if you push it all the way to 100. So if you just want to sort of do one adjustment here on your corona shot, pushing the clarity to 50 or 60, I think is pretty safe and it makes for a more dynamic shot. And that might be all that I do with this one. You could crop to a specific size here with one of these ratios if you were gonna print this. So for instance, a good print size might be eight by 10 inches. So I could choose that and just center the eclipse here. I could zoom in or crop in if I wanted to and done. I could now save this off as a TIFF file and it would be ready to print. Now, next, what I want to show you is if you want to take this technique of bringing out the detail in the corona, one step further, there's a bit more of an advanced technique in Photoshop proper that I can show you next. There we go. Now, I just sort of eyeballed the center, but for this technique to work, we're gonna want to get much closer to the true, we wanna center the moon here a lot better than just eyeballing it like that. So what I suggest is turn on your rulers. This is control R on Windows or command R on Mac. Right click on them and change the option here to percent. So right click on either ruler and change it to percent. And then drag out guides. You just click and drag until you're at 50% with both the horizontal and the vertical. And so now we know where these two intersect. That is the center of this photo. And you can see that the moon, the eclipse is currently off center here. So let's just take our move tool and move this. And when we do that, it says, this is the background layer. You can't do that. Let's convert it to a normal layer. That's fine. Okay. And there we go. I think I'm just using my arrow keys to nudge this into place and I just wanna make sure that that is right in the center. Now we have this transparent area down here at the bottom and on the left. What are we gonna do with that? What I would do is I'm just going to add a new layer here and put it below the eclipse layer. And I'll fill that with black. So I'll just do edit, fill and I'll fill with black. Okay. And then I can just combine these two layers together by clicking on one, shift clicking on the other. And then I'll say merge these two layers together from the right click menu. Okay. So that's it. We've now centered the eclipse in the shot using the rulers at 50-50 and these guides.  We're now done with these guides. So we can go view guides, clear guides. Get rid of those. And again, what we're doing is we're trying to enhance the detail in the corona. This is a multi-step process, so bear with me. The next step is we wanna make a duplicate of this layer. So we're gonna right click on it and choose duplicate layer. And let's call this duplicated layer blur. Okay. And then what we're gonna do with this, as the name suggests, is blur it. And we want a specific blur here, which is the radial blur. So if you go to the filter blur menu, choose radial blur from that menu. And what we want is the blur method, we do want spin. And you can see what that's gonna do is the further that we get out from center, it's gonna spin the image to blur it by an amount of 10. I'm not sure if that means 10 pixels, but 10 I found works pretty well. And we want the quality to be not good, but best. Okay, and then you can go ahead and click okay. Okay, and you can see it did a good job of just basically blurring the corona. And you might be wondering, why are we doing this in order to bring out detail? And you'll see in a second here, the basic idea is you take a blurred version of the part you want the detail from, you subtract out just that detail so that you can then put that detail back into the image and sort of have more control over how you're adding that detail back. So that's basically what we're doing here. So the next step is we need to separate out the detail from the blur. And to do that, we're gonna go to image calculations and for source number one, we're going to choose the layer that is blur and choose channel gray. For source number two, we're gonna choose layer, layer zero. And again, choose channel gray. And then for blending, we're gonna change that from multiply to subtract. And if yours doesn't immediately look like mine, it's probably because I think the default offset might be one. So if yours looks like this, instead of like mine, just change this default offset to 128. And you should get this pretty bright gray image, but then here, all along the, in the corona, you should see this sort of embossed look with all the details of the corona. That's what we want with this. And I'm gonna save the result as a new document. So right here, it says result, just choose new document, click okay. Okay, and then if you're going on to more sort of advanced processing of combining multiple images, you would wanna save this off, so you have it. It might be a good idea to do anyways. I'm not going to just cause this is a more basic processing, so I'm not gonna save this, I'm just going to copy it back into this one. So to copy it back in, we can just do select all, edit, copy, and then edit, paste. Okay, so we have this. If we look over here at our layers panel now, we have layer zero, that's our base layer. We have the blur. We don't actually need this anymore, so I'm gonna turn the visibility of that off. And then we have this layer one. And I'm gonna rename layer one, difference, because this is the difference between our base layer and the blurred layer. And what we wanna do with this is we wanna change the blend mode from normal to something like overlay or soft light. And I often have difficulty deciding between these two, so I often actually do a combination of both. And I'll show you how to do that here in a second. But let's start here, I'll just pick the one that I think looks better, which in this case I think is soft light. Okay, and now through the video, you might not have seen exactly what happened here, but if I turn this off and back on, hopefully you can see that it's a subtle difference, but there's a lot more real detail here now in the corona. And here's the really cool thing. You can amplify this effect by just duplicating the layer. So you can just press Command J on Mac or Control J on Windows. And each time you duplicate that layer, you get more and more of the effect, right? So here's the original now and here's after I duplicated the layer four times. You can see the extent of the corona is going out further, but we're also getting a lot more detail in these striations and these streamers in the corona. So for instance, just look at like this part right here. If I go back to the original and then go back to this one, we can see those striations a lot clearer after we do this. But just like with anything in Eclipse Processing, there's no free lunch. The more that you bring out these kinds of details, the more the noise will start to appear. Now, even duplicating that difference layer four times, when I zoom back out like this, I'm actually not seeing a huge amount of noise even in the dark areas. So if I go back to the original and then once we've added all those, you can see, I think it does a pretty good job of really bringing out that corona. Now, I mentioned that sometimes I like a mix of the soft light and the overlay. So one thing you can do is if you've duplicated this difference copy a few times here, you can have some of these be difference overlay and some be soft light. So I'm gonna change that, this one to overlay and I'll change this one to overlay and you get just a different kind of effect that way. So play around with that, play around with the blend modes and hopefully you get a really nice detailed eclipse picture this way. Okay, so what's next? So far, we've only been looking at how to edit single exposures. I want to in this video at least introduce stacking multiple exposures together. The benefit is you can reduce noise and you can also bring in more features like you could bring in earth shine and the outer corona with the inner corona and do all that very elegantly. It is difficult though. So I'm only gonna introduce it in this video and then hopefully do a more advanced processing video later with my 2024 data. So to start here, we're gonna go file, automate, no, sorry, file, scripts and load files into stack and then just pick the pictures that you wanna use. I'll just pick a few here and leave these options off. You don't wanna automatically align or create a smart object yet. We will do that in a second here but first we want to manually align our images. So click okay, all right. And then you have these four images over here in the layers panel and we want to, I actually like putting the brightest picture, the outer corona on the bottom and work my way up that way. I'm not sure why I like it that way but that's how I do it. And then you can just turn these off one by one. Okay, so here's the bottom picture. We're gonna do that same thing we did with last time of bringing out our guides from the rulers to 50 and 50 to find the center of the picture and then manually align each photo that way. And then once you've done this sort of basic centering, what you can do to more precisely center is click on the top three. So you can click on this one and then shift click to select all these, everything but the bottom layer and change them all to difference. And this is going to show you compared to this bottom layer, what differences can you see? And of course we're seeing major differences out here in the corona but what we're interested in are the differences between the positioning of the moon. And this is actually looking pretty good. Now you can expect there to be some difference because the moon is actually moving across the sun during all of totality so it's not staying still. So technically the better way to do this would actually be to align based on the corona but this is a close second. And so now I'm just gonna go one by one and see if I think these images can be better aligned. Okay, I'm gonna turn off that one and turn on this one. I think this one could go a little bit to the left. I'll turn off this one and turn on this one. I think this one can go a little bit down. Okay, and I'm gonna turn back on all four and that's looking pretty good. So I can turn these back now to normal mode and we now have successfully centered all four images. And now we're ready to stack these together into one image to do that in Photoshop. What you can do is click and shift click to select all four layers or however many layers you have and go and then right click over there and choose convert to smart object. It will turn them all into one layer over here with this little smart object icon and then we can do layer, smart objects, stack mode and choose from one of these many options. I'm gonna choose mean, which is just like an average and we get this. Okay, so that looks pretty cool, right? I mean we're now, the advantage of this is much lower noise, right? Because since you're stacking four images together the signal to noise ratio is going up so I'm not seeing much noise here but we're getting the outer corona and the inner corona and prominences all in one shot. And then from here you can do the same kind of processing that we did before. So here was to begin with and here is after duplicating that sort of difference layer a couple of times and if I zoom in it should be even more obvious. So here's before, it's very nice and subtle but it's just a little bit understated and then here is after really bringing out all those streamers in the corona. Okay, and then you can go a whole lot further with this kind of stacking and compositing to bring out all the features you want in a single image. So for instance, another thing you can do is if we look back at my stack of images here if we look closely at this one you can see the corona is mostly completely blown out but that's because the purpose of this one was actually to bring out the details in the moon, right? So this is called earth shine because the light reflecting back from the earth's surface onto the surface of the moon you can actually resolve detail on the lunar surface with a long enough shot. So we could try to bring this detail into composite here. That's one idea. Another idea if you just sort of more liked the black moon is to fix this up because you can see down here just because of the way that stacking works we're getting this sort of like ugly red glow down here. So we could take a single photo from this stack and replace the moon here to get more of like a nice black moon. We could work on noise reduction, further sharpening. So this is really just the start but I wanted to give you what I think are sort of the basics of processing your solar corona images which are sharpening either through the clarity slider in Adobe Camera Raw or through this sort of blur and subtract the detail out and then put it back on with overlay or soft light blend mode. And then also stacking, which again we did through first carefully aligning the images then using Smart Object to open up the stack modes in the layer menu. So after you've spent all this time capturing the total eclipse and processing your image what are you gonna do with those images? Well, what I would suggest is to put them on your own personal website that you control and that's where today's sponsor comes in Squarespace. If you want your photography portfolio to stand out, Squarespace is the perfect tool. They have this new way of guiding you through the design process called Squarespace Blueprint and then the SEO tools, search engine optimization are built right in. So as soon as you launch, you're gonna be well positioned to allow people to find your work online. And then if you wanna sell your photos like as prints, Squarespace again makes that super easy for both you to set up the store that's all built in and for your customers to pay however they want with flexible payment options. You can do credit cards of course, but also PayPal, Apple Pay, Afterpay, all kinds of options that will make your customers happy.  All right, that's it. This has been Nico Carver, Clear skies.