The final item of business this evening is a members business debate on motion 8590, in the name of Rhoda Grant, on the clearances again. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I would invite members wishing to participate to press the request to speak buttons, now or as soon as possible. I call on Rhoda Grant to open the debate around seven minutes, Ms Grant. Thank you Presiding Officer. I also want to thank the MSPs who signed my motion allowing this debate to take place, and I make no apology for bringing the issue back to the floor of the Parliament. The impact that this is going to have on the whole of my region is unprecedented, and the Scottish Government must listen to and, more importantly, hear those concerns. It's a signal of these concerns that Donald Francis McNeill and Skipanish's song The Clearances Again has achieved such success. I also understand that it was a rolling success of the concert coinciding with the Scottish fishing expo in Aberdeen last weekend. The song spells out the dismay of our fishing communities regarding distant decision makers destroying their livelihoods and incomes at the stroke of a pen. The economy of much of the highlands is dependent on the sea, however every aspect of their life in our islands is governed by the sea. The economy and its connections to the mainland and the fishing community are obviously dismayed. The impact of each PMAs could have are devastating, even the most sustainable and environmentally friendly forms of fishing would be affected. We are quoted the success of the no-take zones in Lam Lash Bay and yet the Clyde Fisherman's Association, who were actually instrumental in setting up the no-take zone, tell us that that success goes unmeasured. There has been no comparative studies to show whether or not the policy has worked, and we also have the no-take zones in broad bake, which has not worked well at all. Therefore, we must have robust science to guide our management of the sea. Those who work in it, yes. She gets to absolutely the crux of the point. I am sure that she agrees with me here. The whole point is that if we are going to have a policy that is effective, we must understand the science behind it. The effect of PMAs has not even been looked at. Until such times as the Governments prepare to gather evidence together and take communities with them, that will be a bad policy. I agree absolutely with that. It is also important that those who live and work on the sea have their evidence recorded as well, because they have a huge amount of anecdotal evidence to add to the debate. They need to manage their fishing to maximise their catch while ensuring that they are leaving enough behind to make sure that they have an income and indeed employment for the future. Those communities have, by their own initiative, taken measures to conserve stocks. For example, the V notching of spawning lobsters in order to protect females from being harvested. Those are not people who damage the environment. They are people who need to work with it and to protect it. With the member's support, you have been talking about low-impact fisheries. I wonder if the member would support establishing area-based fisheries management zones, including low-impact only areas alongside HBMAs. Rory Grant. I think that what is important is that those measures are taken in with the agreement and consultation of local communities who know their own seas. Many communities have said to me that they want to have the management of their own fishing grounds and indeed their marine environment devolved to them. I think that that is something that we should be doing rather than having this very top-down policy that is causing fear and alarm within communities. The Government must revisit it. They cannot impose HBMAs on communities and say that the only communities that will be exempted are those that are vehemently imposed, because that actually ramps up the pressure rather than calms it down to be able to negotiate with communities and find out what is workable. I am most grateful. Does Rory Grant agree that every single local authority in the Highlands and Islands is opposed? The whole seafood industry is opposed entirely. The whole marine tourism industry is opposed. Therefore, it does appear that there is vehement opposition at least throughout the whole of the Highlands and Islands. On the First Minister's own logic, that surely means that he has already agreed that there can be no HBMAs because of that vehement opposition. Indeed, I agree that there is vehement opposition throughout the Highlands and Islands and indeed beyond. However, it is asking communities to demonstrate that vehement opposition rather than sitting down and working with them is the real issue, because we should be spending this time looking at how we protect our seas rather than demonstrating vehement opposition. Fergus Ewing mentioned a number of organisations there and numbers of industries, because most of the debates surrounding that have been about fishing, but it is about much more than that, because, as he says, there are other industries equally dismayed. For instance, fish farming. Will current fish farms be allowed to stay where they are? Will they be given exemptions such as Scotland sites or will they have to move from their current sites? If they have to move, what timeframe will they be given to receive the consents that they need to be able to move to another site? What impact will that have on fishing in that new area? It will also impact on seaweed harvesting, again an important industry supporting rural economies and jobs. If it is also bang, do we lose prime Scottish brands like Ischga and Hebridean seaweed? Will they no longer be able to harvest seaweed for their products? Less well known in the use of seaweed than other products is the way that it is being looked at to replace plastics with a more environmentally friendly substance. We also use seaweed as fertiliser, and that practice is well known in the Crofton communities. Indeed, the Scottish Crofton Federation response to the consultation pointed that out. However, now there are large sustainable industries providing fertiliser worldwide, such as Hebridean seaweed. Given what is happening to supplies of fertiliser around the world due to the war in Ukraine, we cannot view that policy in isolation. Tourism is also promoted throughout our coastal communities, a growing industry. However, that policy impacts on that too. Those proposals go as far as to suggest that swimming could be banned in some areas. I take that to include canoeing, kayaking and wildlife boat trips. They impact us huge. It also begs the question, if you cannot swim, will you be allowed to run a ferry there? That might, of course, be the object of the exercise, given the lack of ferries and the daily disruption. Simply to ban them might provide the Government with a valid excuse for the lack of ferries at the moment. However, not all areas will be designated. That means that we will be funneling activity into smaller and smaller areas. The culmination of that activity in small areas will be to create damage, and that impact needs to be assessed. Donald Francis in Skippenish's song talks about the clearances once again. The clearances are not something that is easily evoked in the Highlands and Islands, but yet in this instance it is valid. People are already selling up. Any investment has been shelled and families are already moving out. That will cause depopulation and will clear people of the land. People will not accept that. Donald Francis comes from Vattersea, an island that was made famous just over 100 years ago when his forefathers fought for their land. The Vattersea raiders were jailed for their temerity in cultivating the land and building homes there. Despite being imprisoned, their actions led to the Government of the day buying the land for crofting. They were among the very early land reformers fighting for their right to survival. The song evokes this. My people, my language, my island, the rights that our forefathers won to remain on the soil of our homeland will by the sweep of a pen be gone. Surely it should not take modern day Vattersea raiders to overturn that decision. I warmly commend Rhoda Grant for bringing this to the chamber again and for the eloquent expression that she gave to the anger felt by the proposals around our fishing communities. Last week I talked about our fishing communities. Tonight I want to focus on the impacts of our newer industry of aquaculture. Aquaculture is a tremendous success story supported by the main parties in this chamber, providing 2,500 direct jobs and no less than 10,000 indirect, with a turnover of a staggering £1,000 million a year. Our salmon has attracted the accolade, rarely handed out by the French incidentally, the labelle rouge, and provides no less than 850 million high protein healthy, enjoyable, nutritious, rich meals a year. At a time of burgeoning growth of this planet's population, with no chance of more agri-land coming available on shore, the world sea should surely be used over the rest of this century to help feed the world, particularly the poor. Fish farms are going to be fewer in number in future and, as with Norway, they are going to move from the estuaries out into deeper waters, and each PMA shouldn't hamper and prejudice this environmentally friendly development. The industry is indeed characterised now by innovation, high-quality marine engineering and higher standards of fish welfare and health, and its supports are growing on shore supply chain. In my constituency alone, we have Galeforce Marine, Acva, Benchmark and Farmac, all significant Inverness employers, but not just on our coast in Inverness and on our islands, but all throughout Scotland, Presiding Officer. We see many jobs, good jobs, well-paid jobs sustained by aquaculture, DFDS, with 150 staff in Larkhall, McDale Smolts at Bonner Bridge, Moewe, 1,000 people in Rassai. The industry, like others, needs to see sustainable growth. Here is what Sam and Scotland have said. First, the industry supports marine protection, but only based on evidence and science, and those PMA proposals are based on neither. The industry wholly opposes the proposals. They believe that they have been driven by politics, not rational analysis and evidence. They fundamentally agree with the glib and bald assertion that salmon farms are incompatible with marine protection, and neither the Bute House agreement nor the consultation document even attempts to consider the economic impact on all of these industries. Indeed, the potential of our aquaculture sector is perhaps illustrated by saying in Norway that it is a belief current there, which is that fish is the new oil. That is the extent of the opportunity that we have in Scotland. The opposition to the HPMA is very strong. I do believe that it covers the whole of the Highlands of the Islands and the whole country. My recommendation is to go back to the drawing board to review the existing MPA structure, which Mr Whittle mentioned quite rightly, because that process is regarded with mistrust by fishermen around the country for good reason. In conclusion, in the short time that I have available, I ask myself at the end of the day, what is Parliament for? What is the purpose of our being here in this centrally heated pleasant chamber, with our salaries and our perks? It is to give voice to the views of the people. I believe that that voice is loud and clear. Go back to the drawing board, go and speak to the people, go and speak to the fishermen. Listen carefully. They know, as Rhoda Grant has said, how to manage things best. If we do not do that, Presiding Officer, do we really continue to be worthy of the name for this institution as the Scottish Parliament and the honour of being a member here? Thank you very much.  Thank you, Presiding Officer. Firstly, can I congratulate Rhoda Grant on securing this member's debate on what is still and will continue to be an extremely concerning topic? Some will possibly remember. I also mentioned the clearences song again, the clearences again when I spoke in the chamber last week. Can I also congratulate Donald, Frances, MacNeill and Skipnish on their chart success? The verse I read was, A may day call we cry. We stand for the rights of our children.  Powerful and emotive lyrics and be grateful that I chose not to sing them. I'm sure my son would have volunteered being a big fan and I know we'll all look forward to hearing Skipnish perform the song live at the Highlands show next month. We also learned that Donald Frances is a life-long inshore fisherman who has fished around mingalearned islands to the south of the island of Barra his whole life. Like many others, he fears that if the Scottish Government presses ahead with its controversial proposals to introduce HPMAs in 10 per cent of Scotland's seas, it will spell the end for many coastal communities scattered the length of this country. If 10 per cent HPMAs are put in place by 2026, an early indication certainly suggests that the SNP will allow its extremist green coalition partners to dictate this issue, regardless of the undoubted damage that it will cause. HPMAs will see a significant area of Scotland's coastal and inshore waters closed off to all fishing, aquaculture and infrastructure developments, where already spatial pressures are causing issues for our coastal communities. Quite why so many nationalist MSPs seem so hell bent in pushing through those highly contentious proposals, given that such a large number of have fishing interests on their own doorsteps just indicates how dysfunctional this SNP and the backbenters have become with the green tail wagging the yellow dog. As someone else said, the SNP are in government but they are certainly not in power. For coastal MSPs, voting in favour of this is almost like signing their own P45, because make no mistake, people in the fishing sector in coastal communities have long memories. Only a few have shown the courage of their convictions, ignoring the party who have been put the interests of their constituents first by voting against this mad cap plan. Indeed, perhaps the most dramatic intervention came from Fergus Ewing, who ripped up the consultation paper describing it as a notice of execution, a notice of execution for the fishing industry, but also a notice of eviction for those SNP MPs at the next election. Members right across the chamber and across the Scottish fishing fleet, who for generations of fish sustainably recognise the need for targeted specific conservation measures and working together, there have been successes without the need for sledge hammer legislation with stakeholders coming together to agree measures to protect stocks and habitats. How Mary Gusion and Mary McCallan can argue that MPAs are needed in 10% of her waters when there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support this blanket approach? These draconian plans have already united the seafood sector and some NGOs in opposing the Government's approach, undermining any sense of working together for the common good. Only last Friday at the fishing industry's conference in Aberdeen, Elswith MacDonald of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation warned that the conservation zones are too big a price for fishermen to pay when they are being introduced for political rather than ecological reasons. What has to be remembered is that the fishing industry has long been committed to nature conservation, founded on evidence, properly and carefully developed, with the genuine involvement of stakeholders and balanced alongside sustainable use. On the contrary, there is no evidence or transparency that the establishment of 10 per cent of HPMAs will guarantee the ecosystem regeneration that is sought. In fact, there is a significant danger of the exact opposite being achieved, with the potential increase of predator stocks impacting on other species. Our fishermen are already subject to our ever-tightening spatial squeeze, and further reductions of the areas that are available to fish will certainly drive many amount of business. The Scottish Crofters Federation has also warned that it will have a devastating impact on crofting. There is still time for the nationalists to do the right thing and ditch their approach to the HPMAs, even if it means a messy divorce from the Greens. Surely now they must listen to the widespread opposition from the Fishermen's Association Shetland, Orkney, Clyde and Galloway. I would strongly urge them to rip up their current commitment and start afresh with our fishers at the heart of the debate. I thank Rhoda Grant for bringing this important debate to the chamber this evening. I congratulate and ensure Fisherman Donald Francis McNeill and skip Inish on the protest on the clearances again. To have made it into the top 10 download charts within just 24 hours of being released indicates the strength of feeling of people in the Highlands and Islands and across Scotland who agree with the sentiments expressed about the Scottish Government's HPMA proposals. As an islander myself, albeit from northern waters, I understand the threat to the way of life the song so eloquently and passionately describes. But do not make the mistake of thinking that this is about looking through rose-tinted glasses at some romantic notion of how life used to be and is yearned for again. We have strong links to our seas and we want to ensure that they are healthy and sustainable for future generations. I should also congratulate the SNP Scottish Government too, Presiding Officer, as it has managed to unite coastal and island communities around Scotland in vehement opposition to what has been presented with astonishing insensitivity. It is not that there is opposition to sustainable and responsible management of the marine environment to tackle biodiversity loss and the climate emergency far from it, but the proposals as they stand have the potential to decimate communities, businesses, livelihoods and see people move away from what are often the most fragile of areas. The policy, a blunt instrument, as Shetland's only green councillor described it, appears to have been drawn up on the basis of political demands without any understanding of the interconnectivity between land and sea. Indeed, Donald MacKinnon, chair of the Scottish Crofting Federation, has pointed out that the impact of the proposals extend beyond the shoreline and inward through crofting counties. Crofters are often fishermen too. The no-take zone at Lamlash Bay is frequently highlighted during discussion about HPMAs, despite the lack of clarity about whether there has been a positive impact across all species. Lamlash, an area of just one square mile, cannot be used solely as the basis for no-take zones around the rest of the coastline. Different areas have different marine habitats and environments and should be considered alongside marine spatial planning. Look at the evidenced base work over the last 23 years of the Shetland Shelfish Management Organisation, which, incidentally, won the annual fishing news sustainability award on Friday night in Aberdeen. When we talk about fishing and aquaculture, what we mean is the provision of high quality and nutritious food and high value exports beyond our shores. It means business investment and jobs, often well-paid skilled jobs through direct and indirect employment, the catchers of fish, crabs, langoustines, scallops, the growers of salmon and mussels, the processors, hauliers, marine engineers, the net makers and feed suppliers and many more through the supply chain, as Fergus Ewing described. Communities that are viable because of fishing and aquaculture, keeping working-age families there that keep the school roll-up and the local shop open, the Government missed the opportunity to bring communities along with them by not engaging at the beginning of the process and seemed surprised at the reaction to the top-down policy. They have lost the trust of island and coastal communities. We already have marine protected areas covering almost 40 per cent of Scotland's seas. HPMAs could add 10 per cent more to that, and with offshore winds the impact on fishermen and fish farming is undeniable. As Elsbeth MacDonald of the Scottish Fishing Federation pointed out at the Scottish Skipper Expo in Aberdeen last week, the industry feels under threat like never before, because of both the rapid development of offshore wind farms and HPMAs. She said, and I quote, Let us be in no doubt while the energy sector rushes to show its green credentials in energy transition, these will be massive industrial developments in our own waters. Very little is known about the long-term effect. The problem with being ambitious to be global leader in offshore wind also means that you are the global guinea pig. Those offshore wind farms will become vast no-take zones for fishing vessels, increasing spatial squeeze pressures on the fleet. In conclusion, I repeat my call to the Scottish Government to rethink its current HPMA proposals. There are a number of points that I would like to address. First, I believe that it is irresponsible, inflammatory and misleading to compare HPMAs to the high-end clearances. If the member truly believed that this policy was so damaging, why did she and her Labour colleague stand on a manifesto to introduce HPMAs, covering 20 per cent of Scotland's seas? The truth is that Labour cares more about political point-scoring than they do our coastal communities. In the ecological and climate crisis delay matters, acting quickly is vital to restoring our oceans' productivity and resilience. Fish biomass in a holy protective marine reserve is on average 670 per cent greater than in unprotected areas. I have very little time and I want to get all my points across. This policy is about protecting our fish nurseries and allowing key areas of our seabed to recover to increase the abundance of our seas so that they support more fishers, fishing more fish and the ecosystem for all of us. That is what this policy aims to do, but we need to work with those on the ground who know the waters intimately. I urge all low-impact and static gear fishers to work with the Scottish Government and the Greens to make that work for you, the stocks that you fish and your community. Most of our crewlers and divers are, as the Skippanish song says, at one with the oceans and nature. It does a great disservice to conflate these responsible members of coastal communities with the big businesses that is trawl and dredge industries. Trawler gear is not at one with nature. They are destroying nature in our seabed, vital fish nurseries and other blue carbon habitats. Most of the dredge fleet is not based in the community where they fish. Bar Shetland, the majority of the dredge fleet is nomadic. Low-impact fishers are almost always linked to the patch that they fish and harvest our seas responsibly. I must keep going. Ms Burgess, could you resume your seat just for a second? The member has made it clear that she is not likely to take an intervention. That is not an invitation, Mr Carson, to shout from a certain position. There will be respect within this chamber, irrespective of whether or not you agree with the views being expressed. Ms Burgess, and I can give you the time back. I am very much appreciated. Clarences were operated through violence and force. The Scottish Government's HPMAs could not be more different. Coastal communities have always been central to the designation process, with the plan to bring stakeholders together with maps to draw out sites collectively, mitigating impact and looking at how to provide a just transition are a crucial part of this early consultation. The First Minister has even promised the HPMAs that fish nurseries will not go where communities are opposed to them. The clearances were driven by profit. They moved the majority of their land to boost profits for a privileged view. HPMAs, fish nurseries, are not driven by profit. They are driven by science, by the need to protect our environment and boost fish stocks to supply our communities and our economy, especially our coastal communities. They are used to be a time when Scottish Labour supported the many and not the few. It is seen that those days are long gone to help coastal communities thrive and build community wealth. I want young people to have ample opportunity to stay in their community. We must deliver housing that local people can afford and to invest in the good green jobs that they want to do and enable sustainable fishing. We need to support the local initiatives that are painstakingly restoring coastal habitats after decades of damage, creating jobs in the process. Protecting a mere 10 per cent of our marine commons from all forms of fishing is not a big ask for biodiversity and our ecosystem services. Let's listen to fishers, especially creelers and divers, but let's also amplify the voices of our coastal communities at large who may want a small slice of their coastal zone set aside for nature and biodiversity. Thank you, Ms Burgess. I now call the final speaker and open debate, Michael Marra, around four minutes, Mr Marra. I begin by saying to the member of the Green Party who spent most of her speech attacking the Labour Party for this that the comparison being made here between the HBMAs and the clearances is not from the mouths of the Labour Party, it is directly from the mouths of the community. It is in the name of the title of the song that is quoted in the motion tonight, written by an islander, written and listened to by people across the highlands and islands as being testified to by other members across the chamber tonight. It is that member and this Government who are refusing to listen. I would say that it is right to highlight the role of protest song at this point in time, because when rights are lost and when community is threatened and when parts do yearn for justice for their communities, they call to our common humanity in song and in poetry, they ask us to listen to them. I have heard the words of families of fathers and mothers in these communities saying that they see no future for their children. If the member wants to listen to them, she would do well to hear them properly and to revisit these proposals. The work of Donald Francis McNeill does call to mind, I think, directly the poetry of the clearances and land agitation of the early 19th century that was first collected by Donald Meek. Tua is Tierno, the name of his collection. That means tenants and landlords.  That is how people feel they are being treated, that the land is not their own, that the seas are not their own. They are being granted permission to be there rather than owning and living in their own communities. No, thank you, sir. The landlords are, as they ever were, the elite of Edinburgh, telling those people exactly how to live their lives and what they should do. The current debate over the HMAs, frankly, is just the latest example in a litany of policies. Certainly, sir. I would like to thank Michael Marra for taking the intervention. Would Michael and the Labour Party not accept the fact that we are only at consultation stage and that the point is that the minister is going to go around the country and speak to those self-same communities? The member would do well to listen to all of these communities right now. The member sitting next to him has highlighted that very well, the unanimous voice that is around there. I am sure that the minister will, as she tours the country, hear this loud and clear in the coming months. We know already that to have an axe hanging over the necks of these communities, every coastal community, is a very poor way to develop policy and it is receiving the reaction that you would expect. When we think about the ferries that do not sail, the breakdown of crossing regulation, delays in extending broadband provision, housing policies that are pushing families out of villages and the tokenistic commitment to the Gaelic language, this Government's myopic focus on the central belt policies has served our island and coastal communities poorly for 16 years. It has betrayed them. Listening earlier today to the statement from this Government regarding the ferries, the people listening in these communities would be appalled. The temerity of the cabinet secretary is attempting to make a virtue out of the very disaster that has happened. I feel that the tone of that speaks to the very problem that we see in front of us today. We need to maintain and build sustainable communities in the highlands and islands. That can only be done by growing these economies, creating more jobs, giving people reasons to stay with their families or to move to the highlands and the islands. Success for this protest song will not be measured, Presiding Officer. This cry for justice will not be measured on iTunes or Spotify. It can only be measured as to whether this cabinet secretary or minister and this cabinet actually listen to it, hear it and change their own tune. I want to thank you and I want to thank all members who have taken part in today's debate. I think that the fact that we are back discussing this topic again is testament to the importance of the issue. As others have, I should like to begin by commending Skipinishon, Donald Francis MacNeill, for so evocatively capturing the strength of feeling among some in relation to this issue. It represents, I think, one of two great things about our nation. Firstly, how politically engaged Scotland's polity is, and secondly, how we often express our political views through our culture and through the arts. It is a beautiful and important way to express ourselves, and it often communicates issues in a way that is more accessible. It also has longevity. When debates are over, when consultations are complete or ripped up in the case of Fergus Ewing, songs about people and culture will endure. With all that, I want to repeat what I have said before to those who are concerned about the proposals that we have consulted on. Firstly, I care. Secondly, I sympathise. I am a rural MSP. I have probably done more days working the land than most people in this chamber. I understand the connection with the land in a way that coastal and island communities feel connected to coast and sea. Lastly, I am listening. As I said, when I launched this initial consultation— I will very briefly use it. I appreciate you taking intervention, but when you say that you are listening, why— Through the chair, please, Mr Constable. I would like to ask the cabinet secretary why Elspeth from the Scottish Fisherman's Federation suggested that she was sorry to say that her recent experience in engaging with the Government on HPMAs has been far from meaningful. If anybody feels that way, then I am determined to work to make sure that everybody who engages with my department, with me and the Government, realises that I appreciate it and feels that it is meaningful. If that is the way she feels, I am determined to work on that. People are telling me today—Cabinet secretary—go back to the drawing board. The truth is that I never left the drawing board. We are at the drawing board. I have invited rightly Scotland's communities to the drawing board with me. I will take one more intervention. Brian Whittle is very grateful for the cabinet secretary for taking the intervention. She has mentioned before that some 4,000 replies to the consultation that she has initiated. If she is listening and is going to go through all those 4,000 replies to the consultation, how can you possibly, before you have read through all them, come to a nominal number of 10 per cent of HPMAs prior to reading all the consultation replies? The consultation was on the proposal. You have to put something on the table on which to consult. That is just how policy is developed. However, rather than consulting on predetermined areas at the end, what would have been a top-down model, we have instead consulted early and on principles, including what might constitute HPMAs, what people thought of the 10 per cent figure, how they felt about the timeline. Those are exactly the questions that we asked and the questions that I will now take one more.  The cabinet secretary says that she is consulting on the 10 per cent level. That 10 per cent is included in the bute house agreement and is it up for negotiation or is it set in stone? Every aspect on which I have asked questions in the consultation, I will be considering the responses to that. Obviously, I am working with my green colleagues on whatever we are told, but we have been very clear right from the start. We took our proposal to communities, we invited them around the drawing board with us and we will now very carefully consider what they have told us about it. Having confirmed that I will do that, I want to take this opportunity to address some inaccuracies, some of which have been repeated here this afternoon. Those are causing people concern. Contrary to what this motion says, our proposals would not ban inshore fishing and certainly not on marine activities. Our proposals that we have consulted on are that certain activities could be restricted in carefully selected locations throughout Scotland seas, both inshore and offshore. We suggested that those sites would be selected based on best scientific evidence, rigorous socioeconomic assessment. Fergus Ewing cannot have read the consultation if he thinks that there was no socioeconomic assessment built into that. It is like a thread through the consultation. We committed to doing that in close collaboration with stakeholders in order to understand how it would impact businesses, individuals and communities. I just take the opportunity to reiterate that we are at the very earliest stages of developing HPMAs no sites have been selected. They have not even been proposed. All of that is happening on the backdrop of a strong track record that the Scottish Government, the Scottish fishing industry and coastal communities have on working together to meet shared challenges, delivering mutual benefit and extruding sustainable co-management. Of course, sometimes we hold different views on individual issues, but we have had great success when we work in partnership and on a pragmatic basis, and my commitment to a partnership approach is absolutely resolute. In the time that I have left, I would like to remind the chamber that we cannot forget why we have to take action here. We are in the midst of a climate and nature emergency. Our oceans are absolutely critical to the sequestering and the storing of carbon and to supporting ecosystems and species, the abundance of which is directly tied to how healthy our natural world is. We have to protect our oceans so that it can protect us, but I am absolutely determined, and I will say this time and time again, to reassure people who I know are worried and I do not want them to be worried. I am absolutely determined that, as we take the actions that we must take in response to the climate and nature emergency, it will be done via a just transition. It will be done hand in hand with communities and, in particular, with those who could be affected by proposals. That is the task that is incumbent on me. As a minister, I do not have the ability to politically posture about this. I have to be serious about this, but I give my commitment to communities throughout Scotland that that balanced approach is exactly what I will take. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. That concludes the debate, and I close this meeting of Parliament.


Hi, everyone, and welcome to a real conversation between two native English speakers. I'm Liz Wade, and with me as always is Adam Navas in bright orange. Hi, Adam. Hello, Liz. Adam, this is a lot brighter than you normally go. It is. I'm very, I'm, you know, in my old age, I'm getting very adventurous in my clothing dresses. That's great. I hope that you get adventurous and check out that join button below this video. If you click on it, you can find out more about becoming a member of Spotlight English, supporting our work, and also getting extras along the way, including PDF scripts, access to exclusive videos, and what I think is the coolest, your name in every video that we make. Be sure, while you're down there, to hit the like button for this video and to subscribe so that you never miss any conversations or videos from Spotlight English. If you have not, well, I didn't even tell you the program that we're discussing today, did I? This program is one of the ones that gives me a little bit of the creeps it's called the truth in urban legends. And so, if you have not checked out that video or listened to that program yet, check it out on our website at www.SpotlightEnglish.com. You can watch it on YouTube with a music version and a classic style or a no music version, also an advanced version. So whatever really fits for your level of English, that's what you can find there. If you're listening to this as a podcast, you can find that program in the Spotlight English podcast. Just search for that wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And so, I hope you listen to that, and then I hope you come back here and join us in this conversation for this little bit creepy program. Yeah. Yeah. This program talks about urban legends, which are stories that seem like they could be real, but they can't be proved to be real. And usually, they tell us a sort of message either to be careful about something, or they tell what a community is scared of, or they can just have like a lesson for you to learn. Be nice to people or things like that. So the way that it makes me think it's a little bit of a creepy program is sometimes these stories are kind of creepy, right? So we have something that covers a broad range of stories. We just call them ghost stories or spooky stories or scary stories. So there's an overlap between urban legends and scary stories. I think the difference about, you can tell a scary story with the intent, nobody really thinks it's real. An urban legend, some people, you could be like, is this a real story? Is it not a real story? Did it really happen? Yeah. Did it not really happen? Did it really happen? But then through the various times it's been told, it's been changed, and it feels, I don't know, different, right? I think that's a good distinction, that you know that a spooky story isn't real. But an urban legend, it sounds like it could be real. And I think that another important thing that makes it an urban legend is that the person who's telling it actually has no first-hand experience. If I tell you, I met this person and I saw this thing and we did this together, that's different than saying, my friend said she heard from her friend that this happened. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I think that's another important distinction. Right, because you're not giving like a testimony, you're not testifying to the fact that this happened. You're saying, ooh. But there's something still about the story that hooks your heart and makes you want to tell it, right? Either it's like you said, it gets at some of your fears or a community's fear, or even like, it doesn't feel, I mean, the program talks about kind of an inspiring story as well. But I always think of urban legends as more of those scary ones. I don't know. Right. And what I also noticed from this program, and after I thought about it a little bit, is that urban legends actually aren't always long stories, right? They don't always have like a beginning and a middle and an end. Sometimes they're even just as short as the sentences in the beginning of this program. Yeah. Like if you call, and this is like a terrible thing to do because 999 is the emergency number in the UK. If you call 999 and then hang up, then your phone will charge. That's an urban legend. But you should not do that because that actually is the emergency line and you should not do that, the emergency line. Or that there's a small amount of drugs on every American dollar bill. Those are urban legends. Like, sure. I mean, there might be some amount of drugs on some bills. But like, I mean, yeah, so it could be true, but it's not actually like true. Yeah. And how would you even prove that? Yeah. Right. Exactly. So, Adam, this is another thing that I think is fun. What is your favorite urban legend? Do you have an urban legend that you don't? I will tell you, it will take about a minute to tell you. But this is one that I remember when I was a kid. Yeah. Tell it like it's over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no. I heard it from my brother who heard it from his older, you know, a guy at high school. His older sister was driving along one day. And she was, it was dark, of course, it was nighttime. She was lost. This is before there were cell phones and directions. Maybe her cell phone had died. I don't, I don't know those details. Yeah. So, but then a big semi-truck came up behind her and actually nudged her like they were driving along repeatedly bumping into her and she just couldn't get away. Oh my goodness, I think I know this one and I'm getting so nervous. He bumped into her and she started to swerve and he bumped into her again. And eventually at the last minute she took a different road and the truck kept going. Well, it turns out. Oh my gosh. That the truck, because it was so high, could see down into her back seat where there was someone hiding with a knife. And so she had, she got to her place and got out and he tried to chase her, but she got away I think. Yeah. Oh my goodness. So the moral of this story is like if someone's behaving erratically on the road, they may be trying to warn you of something dangerous. Right. Yeah. I have heard that one before. Oh, that's creepy. See, this is why these stories are so creepy. I thought that as you were telling this, that it might be another story that you were going to say like there is an urban legend that if you are driving along on the road and you don't have or you see someone without their headlights. Oh yeah. Okay. So you should have your headlights on in the dark, right? So that other people can see your vehicle whether you can see where you're going. Right. Exactly. Yes. So I'm going to tell this terribly, but okay, so you should have your headlights on and if you see someone without headlights, you can flash your headlights to remind them that their headlights are not on. This is normal because sometimes as the sun goes down, you don't automatically tell them. Right.  I turn them on. But there is sometimes that those people driving around in the dark cars are actually gang members. Part of a gang. Yes. Yep.  They have to like, yeah. Right. Because it's part of a gang initiation. Yeah. To be part of the gang. To prove that they're part of the gang. So, and of course, that is an urban legend. No, it happened to a cousin of a friend of mine. It was real. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You know, I know a person who knows a person who had that happen to them. Yeah.  Okay. This might have even made it into some kind of movie, I think. Because a lot of these horror movies, which I know I'm not a fan of, I don't think you are either. Oh, I'm not either. I cannot watch horror movies.  With a phone in their hand, someone had taken their kidneys to sell on the black market. Yeah.  Or even like, you mean, it doesn't even have to be at a party, right? Maybe you met a stranger. No, it happened at a party. It did. Well, I heard it happened like when you met a stranger. Yeah. And you can meet strangers anywhere. The grocery store. Yes. Walking down the street. Well, you should always be wary of strangers. So here at Spotlight, we like to have a very positive attitude towards these things. And I feel like this, this whole urban legend thing, it's very timely, right? Like how do you tell whether information is good, whether someone is trustworthy? Yes. And I feel like urban legends have made their way into just public conversation about COVID or about politics or about another country. That's very true. I know someone who knows someone who got the vaccine and then they died. Or I know someone who knows someone who like got COVID and then, I don't know, that's a terrible thing. I know. But what we're saying is, let's take a beat and let's, whenever you hear a story, how do we make sure it's not an urban legend? Probably just by saying, do I know where the source is coming from? Yes. Does this make me feel afraid? What is real? What is, what feels real? Because this is a question, my wife is a therapist. And when we're talking to our children, she always says, what is real and what feels real? Right. Because they are not always the same thing. They are not always the same thing. So if you can, if you can parse, that's a big English word that just means kind of separate what is real from what feels real. Right. It's having a healthy sense of skepticism. So not immediately believing everything that you hear or see. Right. So if you say, my brother had a friend and his friend said that his sister was driving the car, asking questions, right? Like who was this? What was her name? Where was she going? And remembering that even my memory of stories that did happen to me, my memory is not perfect. So this is my memory, to your memory, to the another person's memory. Yeah. So Liz, do we want people to comment with their urban legends? I think you could say, okay, because part of the point of this program, right, is not just to tell creepy stories. Right. It's to look at why people really tell urban legends. And one reason is that it is a way for a community or a culture, however big your group of people is, to really think about issues that are affecting them. Right. Maybe there's something scary that is too scary for people to talk about in their normal words. But they need a story to kind of think about that. And maybe this isn't the healthiest way, but it is all way. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think maybe have you learned anything from an urban legend? Yeah. Or have you been affected by an urban legend? Not like, you know, did a semi-flash its lights at you or whatever.  I do think, you know, you talked about hope and positivity, Adam. And I think that this program really has an interesting positive urban legend near the end, which is it doesn't actually matter if it's true or not because it can be a story that makes you think about something, right? So like these two boys, they meet at school, one helps the other, and then the other one was going to like commit suicide or leave the school or do something else terrible. And that simple act of friendship helped that person make a better choice. And then they became friends and it really changed his whole life. So in that urban legend, one simple act of kindness changes a whole life. Right. Which I think is a good lesson. It is a good thing. And then urban legend is just a simple story. We have movies and we have TV and I mean, these are all, they're not pretending to be real. But I think we do. We tell stories and we tell them in such a way that gives meaning to the world. And I think this was a great program that makes you think, that makes you question and think critically. So I think all in all, it's not, I think if you haven't listened to this program like listen to it because we may have talked about some of the scarier aspects, but it really is a very thought provoking program. Yeah. And yeah, you can check that out again on our website where you can read along with the script at www.spotlightenglish.com. I feel like I go right through those W's. www. Exactly. You can check it out on YouTube, make sure that you like and subscribe. And you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. If you can check us out on social media, anywhere on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, ask us a question. Tell us what you like. Let us know what program is your favorite or just, I don't know, say hi. Until then, listen, watch, practice and learn. Spotlight out.


Welcome to the fourth and final panel on entrepreneurship and innovation. Unfortunately, my colleague, Eleni Hadzi, she came from Switzerland yesterday, but unfortunately she was diagnosed with COVID in the morning, so you will only have me, I'm afraid. So the plan is as follows, as the program suggests. We will hear first a brief presentation by the CEO of Pfizer, Alex Burla, then we'll continue with the presentation of Mectarios, Tavernarakis. Then we have four distinguished panelists who I will introduce at the time. So let's start first with a video from Dr. Burla. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to address this embouching. Some people say there has never been a better time to be a scientist, and I couldn't agree more. Science is advancing more rapidly than ever before. It is becoming more diverse and competitive, but also more collaborative. It is becoming an integral part of dynamic innovation ecosystems around the world. It helps deliver groundbreaking solutions that tackle the biggest challenges of our time and transform people's lives. And our ability to harness scientific advances will be crucial in achieving long-term, resilient economic and social progress. This can be done only by fostering an environment where innovation can flourish. This means creating efficient ecosystems that bring together information, human capital, resources, policies, and stakeholders to help great ideas come to life and make an impact at scale. At Pfizer, we consider this kind of collaboration as critical to advancing our R&D strategy and delivering new medical breakthroughs. And we welcome opportunities to work with research partners in academia, government, and the private sector. Most of you know that we partnered with BioNTech to develop our COVID-19 vaccine. What you might not know is that we are participating in the Innovative Medicines Initiative, the world's largest public-private partnership in health research. We collaborated with leading biopharma companies and the Board, Institute of MIT and Harvard, to enable access to the world's largest brown-sable resource that links rare protein-coding genetic variants to human health and disease. And we also created the Pfizer Centers for Therapeutic Innovation, a dedicated model for partnering with leading academic investigators around the world to translate promising early-stage concepts into clinical drug development programs. Greece has a distinct role to play in promoting innovation, and in the past few years, the country has been making steady progress. We have seen significant improvement in terms of funding of scientific research, but also with policies and incentives for investment in R&D and startups. We have seen a surge of technology, clusters, incubators, accelerators, and entrepreneurial ventures. All of this has fueled a dynamic startup ecosystem that keeps blooming, raising more funds, generating more quality jobs, and creating more success stories. I am particularly glad that the life sciences sector has been spearheading this impressive growth, accounting for the largest number of startup and spin-off companies. All these factors have played a critical role in Pfizer's decision to establish two global centers in Greece, and in Thessaloniki, in particular one Center for Digital Innovation and our Global Business Services Center. The Center for Digital Innovation currently employs almost 400 skilled professionals, 15% of whom are Greek expatriates, coming back from abroad. One of the Center's main goal is to participate in and promote the city's innovation ecosystem by investing in local talent and protests. Our team is already collaborating with the academic community, research institutions and startups, sharing expertise and promoting digital innovation in the health sector. And of course, we are working in close collaboration with the patient community, listening to their needs and priorities. As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, Pfizer is leading the digital transformation across research and development, manufacturing and the way our medicines and vaccines reach patients. For instance, digital innovation enabled us to develop a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time without cutting corners. Within four months, we scaled our clinical trial to 46,000 participants in 150 sites in six countries. Artificial intelligence and machine learning helped our scientists to analyze vast amounts of clinical trial data in near real time. We also were able to refresh participants' data every four hours, helping us to present the trial data in record time. Of course, Pfizer's innovations won't do anyone any good if people can't access them. That's why we recently launched the Accord for a Healthier World, an initiative that aims to provide all Pfizer's patented high quality medicines and vaccines available in the US or the European Union as well as all future products on a not-for-profit basis to 1.2 billion people in 45 lower-income countries. In doing so, we seek to help reduce the health inequities that exist between many lower-income countries and the rest of the world. In the years to come, science and technology will keep breaking new ground. Countries that focus on innovation will see fast, sustained, but also more inclusive and equitable growth in the future. Greece has an excellent opportunity to be one of these countries. I strongly believe in the role that the Greek scientific diaspora can have in scaling up the country's innovation ecosystem. There exists an exceptional network of world-renowned Greek scientists and researchers that can be a source not only of valuable knowledge, information and experience, but also of inspiration. So we must build strong relationships and efficient networks of collaboration among people and institutions in Greece and around the world. I want to congratulate the founders and the members of the Hellenic Institute of Advanced Studies for taking this initiative and for exploring ways to leverage scientific excellence and achievement in service of our home country. I hope you enjoy the symposium and walk away inspired to create the types of breakthroughs that will make for a stronger Greece and a stronger world. Thank you.


Before we get into the video today, I just want to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors, Gnostic TV. Gnostic TV is ancient wisdom reimagined. This is a Netflix for those who are spiritually curious and want a place to go where there is no censorship. I personally am doing a whole series on Gnostic TV called The Esoteric Explore where I am providing exclusive content to Gnostic. Gnostic TV is a host to all sorts of different content creators, many of whom are your old favorites. If you would like to check out Gnostic TV, there is a link down in the description box below. Hello you guys, welcome back to Esoteric Atlanta. Of course, my name is Bryce and I am joined here today with my friends Jay and April from Spiritually Raw and Gnostic TV. How are you guys doing this morning? It's so great to see you. Thank you so much and like radiant. I was about to say you signed on and I was like, that top is popping on you April. I love it. It's just so beautiful. So, well, we have a really important conversation and I kind of wanted to get a little bit like personal with our audience, especially with the age demographic, you know, my age of 41. So, we're looking at like the zennials, the late generation X, the elder millennials, the people that are coming up to their midlife and I was telling you guys that I get sucked into these like TikToks, these Instagram stories and I'm seeing these heartbreaking stories of people in my age group who are being like, I followed the rules. I went, I got my bachelors, I got my masters, I got the corporate job. I've been working 80 hours a week since I got out of college and I still can't afford my life. I don't have a retirement. I'm not, I did what my parents told me to do and a lot of people are pulling up the graphs of how much inflation has happened. Like it's just like a no win game at this point in the matrix and I was telling you guys like it's just heartbreaking to see, you know, where my parents were at 41 is not where I am or where my peers are because of the matrix because the game is not fair. The game is rigged and so but the beautiful thing is, is you've got a choice, right? You can play that game or you can play another game and so I wanted to kind of shift and be like, let's look at the other game for a second. So, do you guys want to take it from there? Oh, you know what that's an interesting thought though, is the game really rigged or have we just been taught to believe it's rigged to take us off our path? That's a good point, right? Because when you think about it, I don't think the game is really rigged. If you came into this this planet and let's say you instead of landing in Georgia or the south of Florida, you landed in some exotic island and you didn't know the difference between anything other than this beautiful exotic island and that's what you grew up in and that was your environment. So, to say the game is rigged, I have to really question that. I don't think it is. I think we have been brainwashed to believe that it is but it's interesting what you said earlier that, you know, people are working 80 hours a week and they're, you know, and they can't snap the pieces together and they feel like they're working paycheck to paycheck and a lot of that may have to do with exactly what you said. It's the reverse, right? It's like the 80-20 rule where with that person or those people are doing, they're spending 80% of their time in trying to create this project or get to this level and they're putting all of, all 20, 80% of all this energy into the physical part of trying to create this where reverse is actually how you do it. If you flip that table and you take and then so that would leave 80% of the actual physical trying to move it, right? And that only leaves a small 20% to focus on yourself, your well-being, your mindset. Now, if you take that philosophy and you flip it, think about what's going to happen.  And when you flip that table and you're putting that 80% into your well-being and your happiness, that other 20% of the creation is going to fly because you're taking the time to look within, you're taking the time to be able to hear the messages and retrieve the messages, you're taking that time to expand on your intuition, you're taking that time, everybody has all the answers within. We've been led to believe all the answers are out, right? That's that 80%. You're looking 80% of the time, you're looking where is it, where is it, where is it, how do I get it? You got to stop and take a moment. So I think that that is a phenomenal way and it's a hard, for some people it's almost like a hard dynamic to shift because you, I mean, if you figure if you're 30, 40, 50 years old, you're when wired to work and function at that 80% and only leaving yourself 20%. So, you know, another thing too, Bryce, I'll tell you is like what you mentioned earlier, but I've lived by the rules and I lived by the rules and I got it. Well, I mean, at some point in time, there's got to be a, you know, we've all been given clues that the rules need to be changed throughout our lifetime. As we get older, as we get wiser, then we have to change those rules. So if you're stuck up 40 and 50 and you went by the rules, then maybe, you know, look back and try to process the signposts that you have that these rules need to be broken if they don't fit into your plans. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I was just thinking that like, why is your saying that? Because like I have a friend that is miserable at her job and she calls me and you know, yes, she's making a decent living, but she cries every day after work and just in my mind, I see it like her car with a spinning wheel with mud just splattering. And so you think about that quality of life, but that entrapment of the mind where I think I have to stay here, you know, and that's something that I have to rock on. Even my boyfriend even points it out to me. I went to a very, and he always blames it on my, this high school I went to. I went to a very intense private college prep high school and they beat, I mean, I actually believe it was academic abuse. They beat us down. And so I have a hard time in my personal life just having fun. Like I think I always have to be working at 41. My boyfriend was like, this is from Darlington. Like you understand this is not normal until for even for me, it's that reprogramming of the quality of life, you know, and so I think too, and you know, for people like I often think like, are we choosing to be enslaved? Like is the gate to the cage actually open? And we just have to push it open. But we're, and it starts young, like we start with these preschoolers, these kindergartners that are told to sit and sit still on a seat for eight hours a day. Well, I think that we are, I think that like the kids, you know what I mean, that are told to sit. I mean, obviously they're still working through their processing. They need to play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're still trying to not wet their pants. Exactly. Right. And then, you know, but I think once you get to a certain point, then then there's no victims. There's willing participants. You know what I mean? It is really what happens. I mean, you get a certain point in your life where you choose to continue.  Yet there's still droves of people going to college to get that same degree, which there's so much evidence years and years of nobody making any money with that degree, but yet they still go there.  Honestly, like I said, that's on you.  You know what I mean? It might work for your parents, but doesn't. I mean, I was the first generation, you know, when my parents were coming along, my dad's a veterinarian. So he went all through lots of school. My mother has her bachelors.  It's fine. But then as I got older, it was like, Oh, now you need your masters. It's like the anti keeps getting up and it's interesting. This kind of gets into spirituality too. Obviously, I think we all three agree it all is all based in spirituality, right? We have these patterns that we develop. And so sometimes we get into these habits or these patterns of like, like you're saying, all these kids are going to these universities and getting these degrees, they're spending thousands and thousands of dollars taking out student loans for a worthless piece of paper. But they've been programmed to think that's valuable when the reality it's like that cognitive dissonance, right? Like the reality is. And that's a pattern that has to be broken in your thought process. And sometimes that can take time. But the first, the first step is just like AA meetings, right? The first step is recognizing that there's a problem is recognizing the pattern for what it is. So I guess my question to you guys, because you guys have really worked on this. Like I would say this is like your me a call like you guys have like really worked on figuring this out. And so what would your advice be if someone goes Holy crap watching right now, one of our friends, I, I, I understand why I'm depressed now. Absolutely. I'm in a I'm running off of a pattern that I know that actually isn't serving me. And I recognize that what's the first step of trying to course correct that for somebody? I don't think there's any other way to do it, but to just call Turkey, you have to stop the pattern you have to break the mental physical abuse that you are causing yourself. There's no, I mean, listen, you can go to therapy. How many times have I heard people say, Oh, I've been in therapy for three years. I've been in therapy for eight years. Well, obviously it's not working. Why would you be in therapy that long? Well, I will say therapist will help you with what you want help with.  So if that's what you're doing, the therapist is going to meet you where you are.  So again, it comes up to you, right? It's your you're the person controlling the strings, right? Absolutely. And the first step is to make the commitment that you're not going to live that lifestyle anymore. That is it. Regardless of what your friends say, regardless of how your family reacts to your what they're going to may deem as your craziness, you have to be so confident and strong in your decision that you're blocking everything else out. And it really goes back to kind of what I was saying, the 80 20, you got to do that flip. It all starts within the mind. It's a mindset you have to have that mindset in place first. And if you don't have that mindset in place first, you have to find places, whether they're coaches or academies or mindset academies that are going to help give you the right philosophies and the right structure and the right help to put you on the right path to start clearing out all that old junk, all that unnecessary dogma and nonsense that we thought we've been led to believe that is just not true. You know, the other thing is that talking about your friend that's like, well, making a good living but crying and stuff like that. What most people do in that scenario, Bryce, is they run and say they say they leave that job. And then they said, well, let me look at what else I can study. Let me look at what else I can study and I'll go to school for this. I'll go to school for this and they get back into textbook mode. And what happens is, they don't go on the journey. That's the thing. They don't allow themselves to go on the journey because you'll never get fulfilled unless you go on the journey. It doesn't matter what you do.  Let me go and find out and be a public speaker and they try to work through these things where they get into network marketing because they're a doctor. They just try to figure stuff out because they don't, they're not able to go on the journey. So it's a lot of different things for people. But number one advice I would say to people if they're at that tipping point of like, they're going to snap, relationships are suffering as a result of it, not enough money is coming in at the stage of your life. Then that's an indicator that you haven't gone through the depths of you to find out what your particular purpose is. So if you go to that part, not rush off to the local community college and say, let me take a course, you know, a course on what, right? Because you feel like if I eventually get educated, something will click. That's not how it's going to work. That's why there's still only such a small percentage of every industry, every occupation, every retailer, every, everybody that's always only less than, you know, whatever, just a small handful of people, industries make money because they don't follow those things. They provide those rules or those things for people to look at. But I would say, Bryce, the best call to action is if someone's ready to go stop, take a minute. If you got a little bit of money, sit for a minute and process what the hell's going on in your life. You know what I mean? And say there. I love it. And I will say to you guys, and I'm going to make this very clear, because I think what happens too is people try to do that and it gets painful. So they go back to what they know because the devil, you know, is better than the devil. You don't know. But guys, think about patterning this way.  There's physical pain involved in changing those patterns. If you've ever trained for a marathon, that's changing a pattern too. So when you change your life patterns, there's going to be uncomfortable moments because you're in new territory. But it's just like training a muscle. The more you work through, and if you slip up, you get back up on the horse, cowgirl up, you know, get back up again. It's going to take time to integrate those new patterns and allow that new thought wave. And it's interesting you say, as we're talking to you, I keep thinking about the Bhagavad Gita because I'm a huge, the Bhagavad Gita changed my life, you guys.  Like it's a battlefield, and there's a chariot, and he's talking to God, like what is this? And it wasn't until I kept reading it over and over again, and I started to really get into my adult life, not in the processing, my own patterns, which I'm still doing, that I started to find, holy crap, how life changing is this.  And so he's having this, this like come to Jesus moment where he's like, I don't want to do this. I can't do this. And so the whole Bhagavad Gita is this conversation that Arjuna is having with Krishna, who is the avatar of God in this story. And some of the things that Krishna says to Arjuna are very tough love. They're very tough love. But we get this concept of dharma in the Bhagavad Gita. And what dharma is, and I do believe that we are made to create, we are made to work, but we've converted that, right? The powers that be, whatever, have inverted what that means. They've confused work with labor. Your dharma is what you're here to do. And so it's your passion. So, you know, my grandfather who was a surgeon used to say, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in his life. Well, lucky for him, he liked being, he loved being a surgeon. He loved it. He loved, he loved it. So for him, it was a joy to wake up every morning. It was a joy to work with his patients, you know? So it was a quality field filled life. Yeah. So we're looking at, and I love that you say, yeah, not everything needs a master's degree. And I tell people, you know, we had our friend Catherine and Edwards and I interviewed a woman in Kathy.  And she talks about when you process trauma. And we'll say even patterning, bad patterning can also be classified as trauma, right? Is to write it out. If you just start writing it out. And you take that heaviness of thought and you put not typing it a pin yet because that connects to the heart chakra.   This is how I feel at my job. And then all of a sudden, as she says, and I believe it because I'm a big believer in journalism, all of a sudden solutions start to come to you. Yeah. Can I course correct? You know, and the other thing I'm speaking to India, we went to India and we met with a guru and he's one of the things he said is like, look, you know, in your lives, meaning us as humans, as we grow through our lives, you're going to need five streams of income. This is real, everybody. I mean, wake up for a minute. I mean, for God's sake, wake up. You can't rely on the job. Okay, let's say you're a married couple, one maybe works and they get an income. The other one works, they get an income. That's two, you're three short still, you have to have other streams of income. So what we did is as we got through India, we said, okay, well, how do we get five streams of income to but not have to work five jobs. And so that was all was that that's the trick. So that's what see that's the thing, people associate multiple streams of income to multiple jobs. And that's not it. So that's why we started to say, look, you know what, well, as we started to go through this journey, Bryce of like learning how to do shows and things like that, we're like, well, that model works, we can be in one show, one job, if you want to call it and have as many streams of income out of this one show, this one job and do it that way. So this was a very effective way for us to learn how to get multiple streams of income without being intimidated. You know what I mean? And without feeling like we have five different jobs, we could spend the same whatever hour, right? Or whatever we do. And then we can say, okay, in that hour, the one hour on a Monday, we could talk about this coffee cup and get paid one hour on Tuesday, we could talk about this iPhone get paid maybe even more. And you see what I'm saying. So the thing is, like the concept of a show for people imagine it as yes, you find your voice, it's therapeutic, but you're also building your own store. Think about it from this perspective. You literally are building a store. So your show, look at it as a store that then all of a sudden audience now comes in there in your store, they say, I like these people. I believe they're what's called a credible source of information because people buy from people that they like no one trusts, right? So now because you have a store, they like no one trusts you. When you start to talk about people or bring in other offerings or whatever, you have, you start the things that multiple streams of income, believe me, April and I are really resourceful. I think we would have found something if it was better than this, but I don't, I don't know of you.  This happens to fit our lifestyle really, really well. And I love one thing I love too about working from home is I don't have to do the nine to five, right? I get to schedule my own schedule. I can make my own, you know, and it's true. We're opening up my YouTube channel.  Like I love to, you know, and so now I can put it up there and you get sponsorships, you get all sorts of stuff going on that's bringing in that income.  They're crapping their pants, spitting up on themselves, taking their clothes off in public. They're great. They have no, no inhibitions, right? Right? They're just, they're just here. They're here, you know, like, but as, as we watch kids play, like my sister is really good at that. She allows her kids to like have a lot of play time. She requires, she makes them play because it keeps them in that creative mindset.  And so I think what happens too is like as we get older and we start to look outside of ourselves, because kids always look within themselves, right? They're, they're creating from within. Our sparkle gets stolen, like don't let anyone steal your sparkle. And so I tell people, what, what did you love to do when you were a kid? What did you love to do when you were, well, I love to play dress-up. Okay, well, think about that. Was it close you lot? Like what, you know, go back to what inspired you when you were young, because that's going to tell you a lot more about, and I think the problem is, is we often ask young kids, like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Instead of saying, who do you want to be when you grow up? Yeah, that's right. That's a good answer. That is very good. You know, it's, so yeah. And it really goes back to exactly what, what you're saying is it's flipping that table, the 80-20. Again, when you take that 80% of your time now to work on your own well-being and your, that's where you, all the ideas start coming from. That's how the creative process, the creative juices, the creative engine starts to get turned back on. But if you're running your body at 80% seven days a week and you're only left with 20% to turn that engine on, it's going to die fast. You're going to burn out really, really, really, really quickly. You're tired. You're exhausted.   And, you know, we, we say as a business, we're like, well, you know, keep posting because nobody's going to take you seriously unless you do what we, I mean, that's a reality of a people.  I mean, we, we didn't define ourselves by a product. We had a show. People liked us and trusted. We had a very successful consulting company before the show. We didn't have a website for two years, but it didn't matter. You know what I mean? Because we had a show and that's the website. Right.  Yeah. Exactly. You know how it is. All those coaches, consultants that are like, where's my next client coming from? I can't get it. I'm posting on here.  Right. So, you know, I think about, you know, it's not so, it's just the best way to do it. Like that's how you, that's how you get that relationship going with people. And that reminds me too, there's another thing that Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita where he says, love the work for the sake of the work, not for the fruits of your labor. And that meant a lot to me too. Cause a lot of times I think what people do is they're running that hamster wheel just to make that paycheck. But we've absolutely done it. And that's why we have absolutely committed to never go back to because we were on the 80-20. We were running at Mach speed. We were physically, mentally exhausted.  Because if you are loving, if you are loving the work and the pay comes, it's like a double bonus because, you know, and it's interesting too because when you're in alignment, you don't have to force anything. And I will say that was something my boyfriend, when I first opened up my YouTube channel, I was all of a sudden getting on all these shows and my boyfriend said something to me. He goes, the interesting thing is you have not sought this out. You've just let people, people have just come to you. And I was like, that's interesting because I was in my rhythm. I was in my, I was, I loved what I was doing. I loved the sake of the work. I loved researching weird stories about giants and missing books of the Bible. I was, I'm so fascinated that the, that the studying was fun for me, you know? And so I wasn't, I wasn't out there trying to force anything, right? Because then you guys watching know what we're talking about when you're doing something you love to do, you get in the flow. Actually, that's something I will suggest to people. I don't know if we've spoken about the book flow before, okay, in April. I don't know that one, Bryce. It is an incredible, I lent my copy to someone and I still have not gotten it back, but there is a book. I'm not even gonna try. I will link this down in the description box below. I'm pulling it up right now. Oh, hold on one second. That is not the correct one. There is a book called Flow that is, here it is on Amazon. The guy's Hungarian, so I'm not even gonna try to embarrass myself by saying his last name, but he is a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but he studied, he studied human, the human mind and human development for like 25 years. I want to say it's been a while since I've read the book, but for a long period of time, he studied all these different cultures, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different job intensity to figure out what puts somebody in the optimal experience of flow, where you've lost track of time, you're loving what you're doing, and basically it does come that you're stimulating your mind in something that your mind enjoys and that's what puts you in that, and that's meditation, that focused point of focusing the mind. And it's very fascinating. He even says in this book too, he talks about how people, you know, get to the weekend and the highest level of depression is in the weekend, because your brain has nothing to focus on. It's trying to solve problems, gearing up for the morning of the next, actually grief process for the next week to come. So I would also, I'll put that, I'll link that book in the description box below guys, because it's a very interesting scientific look at what we're talking about that might seem kind of woo-woo, right? Yeah, practical steps. I mean, when we sold our, our financial services agency, we were out of a job. So we had to figure out what to do. And so we used the show initially to start finding soul searching, if you would. But then what happened was this, and this is a great thing for people to try on. That's how it started. That's really, we were on our own search. Yeah. And then that's how it expanded. But this is how we were on our own spiritual search. We learned how to do so much stuff from it, because we'd interview people and we'd never heard about this concept of life coaches and, and intuitive guides and all this stuff. I mean, we're from a banking kind of insurance industry, right? So when people were like, and we had to get licensed and regulated and people like, oh, they did come on the show, they're like, I'm a life coach. And I'm like, and our questions were like this to them. We're like, I hope you get certified for that. How do you get, oh, you don't need a license, you don't need a license. People pay you for that. So we're literally unconsciously interviewing people, like, what the hell do you do? And then what we did is we started to learn very quickly, holy shit, there's a whole world out there that people are making money because they don't need certifications because we came from a world of certifications. And when we went into a world that we no longer needed it, and we had to question that it took us. Oh, we questioned it a lot. You mean, you don't need a degree to do that. Right. And you can still get paid that much money. We're like, hold on, man. Yeah. So, so, but it was an eye opener to us.  So, you know, people can do that. I would say if you had a show, you start interviewing people, like if you want to do it instead of learning it, ask people what they're doing. It's the best way to learn, right? Or not even that. You could just start talking about things that you do that you enjoy doing, like you could be explaining a hobby or you could be sharing your cooking techniques or something that you excel in that other people don't, but they want to learn about. It could be photography. I think I said on a show once, my aunt's a real estate agent and she has a client that's a multi-millionaire. And he has the YouTube channel. And I think I told you guys, you know what his YouTube channel is? He shows people how to clean carpets. Oh, right. Yeah. Exactly. There's so much. There's a lot. There's faces even on the camera. And it's, there's no, it's just like, this is what you do for this Oriental rug. This is what you do for this. And people, and I've said that with cooking shows, like my sister is a busy mom and she loves to hurt her in-laws or Italian. So there's a lot of pressure to cook. And she's like, I just want someone to put a cooking channel up where they don't give me the backstory. Just I'm busy. Just tell me what to do. Tell me how to cook this. Just nothing, you know, you know, and those types of shows people watch over and over and over again. And of course, when AdSense, that starts to accumulate hair. There are so many YouTube people how to do like hair now. Yeah. I mean, it's endless. You're right though, but we're not designed to work. We're here to find a purpose in our Dharma, if you like you said to call it. And you know, what is it? Because if we came from, I mean, do you really think we just got dropped here? It's such a do work. No, if you took that philosophy and said, what am I going to instead of saying, what am I going to do for work? And you just replace it? What am I going to do to create my passion? Yeah, because that is that like, yeah, you had mentioned your girlfriend who is literally like distraught every day. It's because she's not in alignment with her heart's desire. That's why she became that way.  But if you take a look at the concept of Dharma, and you have a purpose that you do, yet we all work for someone as an experience, like we have to learn somehow to do understand something. So there's always a teacher, which is our employer that teaches us these things, or we don't want it. Yeah, but from there, by infinite design, we're destined to learn from that and create our own sandbox. Yeah, saying that's really what we're supposed to be doing. I don't believe that we're supposed to stay there and get the gold watch in 50 years and die. You know what I mean? Because it wasn't you didn't live your Dharma. So, you know, if you can learn whatever that's your 20s and your 30s, and then start to take a look at, well, maybe I need to consider like my Dharma now, or as you say, that's the way people, their existence will be better. And then they won't be like looking at like, I'm just working for the weekend. It's like, it doesn't matter. Yeah, exactly. I hate, you know, and I'm thinking too, like, I know so many people want to travel more. I'm like, well, then be a travel blogger. You might not be able to book a trip to France right away, but start building yourself and do a day. Absolutely. And research them and talk about it and just start build your channel. You'll make more and more money where you can start and you can get them sponsored. Oh my God, did I lose you guys? Can you hear me? Hello? I think I just lost them guys. Hold on one second. All right, you guys, the building that Jay and April were in just lost, I think their power. So, we're going to go ahead and close this video out, this video out today for part one on finding your Dharma. So, we're going to give you a little bit of homework if you want some homework. If this has like, sparked an interest in you to find your Dharma. Now, with your Dharma, I can't tell you what your Dharma is. Your spouse can't tell you what your Dharma is. Your teachers can't tell you what your Dharma is. Your spiritual guides can't tell you what your Dharma is. Only you can tell yourself what your Dharma is. And that's very simple. It's something you're passionate about. It's something that doesn't feel like work. It's something that you enjoy getting up in the morning to go and do. And if you're feeling very lost and confused right now and you don't know what that is, don't worry about it. Just take a deep breath. At least you've noticed that there's a pattern and I want you to start journaling. Now, again, I've always recommended the five-minute journal where you write down things you're grateful for. It really, really helps. But in the back, there is a section just to journal your own thoughts. And you can also just get a cheap notebook or something at the grocery store. Start journaling it. Start really thinking about your life as the quality of life versus what you're producing for others. For your employer or whatever, what's your quality of life like?  And if not, we start to change that. Now, the answers might not come overnight. Again, we're changing patterns. And so it's going to be a little painful, a little bit uncomfortable to do that, but it's worth it in the end. So I want you to also, if you can, get the book flow. If you want to look at commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, that's a great resource as well. And just start journaling about these patterns that you've observed in yourself that are not healthy, mindset patterns. And then start figuring out what it is that would make you happy in your life. What activity could you do every day that would make you happy if you had nothing to fear? And failure was not an option. If failure was not an option and money was not an option, what activity would you do every single day that you would love to do? And that's where we start. All right, you guys, if you have any questions about that, please leave that down in the comment section below and we'll do part two next week where we'll elaborate more on this idea of Dharma and try to help you guys, those that want to be helped, figure out how to take your power back and figure out what it is that you like to do. All right, you guys, we'll talk to you soon. Bye everybody.


Income tax 2021, 2022, tax software example, business income or loss and other gains or losses. Get ready to get refunds to the max. Dive it in to income tax 2021, 2022. Here we are in our LASERT tax software. You don't need access to any tax software to follow along, but you might want to have access to the Form 1040, which you can find on the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov, our starting point being the single-filer Adam Smith living in Beverly Hills, 90210, 100,000 online, one starting out from the W2 income standard deduction at the 12,550, giving us the 87,450 on the taxable income, mirroring that then on our worksheet, the 100,000 standard deduction 87,450. Going back on over, letting the system calculate the tax at the 1515. That's going to be here 15015. That's our starting point. Now let's imagine we switch this thing up and say that instead of having 100,000 on the wages, let's say that they have Schedule C type of income. So now they're self-employed. Now note, we're only really concentrating right here on the flow through of the self-employment through the Schedule C. We'll talk a lot more about the other implications and impacts of a Schedule C type of business. It really opens up a whole lot of things. It does add a significant level to the complexity of the tax return, and it often leads to tax preparation, needing or clients needing not just tax preparation, but they're also going to need basically more projections. They might need accounting help and so on when they have these small business needs as well. You might need to do some adjustments or help them out with that kind of thing as well. So as a tax preparer, you really want to think about what kind of clients are you picking up? What's your business model? Are we picking up clients that have more difficult returns and we're putting more time into them? Do I want to pick up returns that have more consulting that's going to be needed and put more of my time into consulting, charging higher prices oftentimes for that kind of work? Or am I doing more simplified returns and doing a lot of them and trying to crank through the returns and then have a system to sort those out, possibly working with other people to shore up those things that you're not picking up in your practice, if you're doing it from a tax practice standpoint. So let's go to the first tab over here and I'm going to say, okay, let's say the income is not coming from the W2 income. We're going to say that there's a Schedule C, we'll also get into Schedule C businesses a lot more in future presentations. So I'm not going to enter all the data up top. I'm just going to show the flow through at this point in time. So let's say the gross income was something like, let's say 120,000 just to show that there could be some deductions, of course, down here. Let's put the deductions, let's just say advertising 20,000. So then if I go back on over to the forums and take a look at the Schedule C now, now I've got the 120,000 of the gross income and notice that all these expenses down here, these are going to be expenses that we used in order to consume or in order to generate the revenue are going to be deducted that we're going to have down here. So the net is going to get down to this 100,000. That net amount is what's going to flow through to the Schedule 1. There's the 100,000 here. That then is what's going to flow through to the first page of the 1040. So now we have the 100,000 not up top but down here in the other income system. Now note, you'll see that there's other changes. We'll talk more about at a later point in time because we're really just focused on the income at this point. But we also have the adjustments to income and we also have the self-employment that's going to be taken into consideration. So self-employment taxes like the Social Security and Medicare that has to be dealt with now that you're not getting it done through payroll taxes with the W-2 income. You got self-employment taxes. We'll talk about it. There's complexity with it because basically it's going to be calculated as if you're the employer and the employee. So you also get to deduct half of it and that gets confusing. We'll talk more about that in the Schedule C kind of area. But you can see online, I'm sorry, Schedule 2 here. And then we have the self-employment tax on the other taxes. And then if I go to Schedule 1, we're then going to have in page number 2, half of that being deductible. And if that pulls through to the first page of the 1040, first page of the 1040, now we've got the 100,000. We've got that adjustment 7,065, which we'll talk more about later. But that deductible portion, that's going to give us the 92,935. So if I was just going to kind of mirror this in our tax software, I'd have to add another schedule for the income. So I might add, say an income line. Let's put it right here. And so I'm going to add another one. I'm going to call it a Schedule C, a Schedule C. Just to mirror this out, I'm going to highlight the whole thing, right click and format this thing. And we'll make this into, we'll make it into, let's make it currency, brackets, get rid of the dollar sign, no decimals. And I'm going to call it Schedule C income. So we'll call it Schedule C income. Let's make the whole thing emboldened as well. I'm going to embolden the whole thing. And then you might have an income statement. So you might have say income, and then line items and expenses. Now oftentimes, you might not be putting in the data input into your worksheet here for income and expenses. That might be something your client provides you. And you might just put the net amount here to put into your schedule so that you can have it flow into your income statement. So but I'll just leave some space just in case, leave some space just in case. That's what I like to do. So I'm going to go up top and say this is going to be, let's make this blue and put some brackets around it, bracketizing it. I'm going to move this down one. Move it down. I need more room. Total income. Total income is on the outer side here equals the sum of these items of these items. And I said income was 120,000. And then the expenses I had advertising advertising, which I said was 20,000 20,000. I'll leave some room here. If you were doing an income statement, there would be substantial room. Again, if you were doing bookkeeping for them and helping to construct the income statement, you might do a whole another income statement worksheet, which I won't get into here. I'll just kind of reconstruct the general idea. And then what this is going to be total expenses, summing this up on the outside, summing this up. And then that's going to give us the tax net, let's say net income, net taxable income equals the revenue minus expenses. So you can see in essence, it's an income statement that we have here. What's being pulled over to the first page is the net amount. So notice I could pull this amount into the schedule one, which is basically what's done on the tax return. But I don't typically do that on my worksheet. I would just basically pull it all the way over to the to the tax formula, double click in the tax formula, I'm going to say plus the bottom line of my schedule C that 100,000 right there, adding into my income. And then on the income tab, I'm going to remove the W2 income. So now I've pulled in basically that 100,000 from a schedule C income. Then we had the adjustments to income. We'll talk more about them later. But notice we had an adjustment that's going to be taken place here for the self employment tax. I'm going to go to the adjustments. I'm going to bring us a little bit more room. Let's add some room here, insert.  So the deduction for the self employment tax. So in other words, if I go back on over here, I'm looking at schedule one, and we get to deduct half of the self employment tax. So we've got deductible part of the self employment tax 7065. So I could kind of recalculate it if I want, but I'm just going to data input depending on the salt one 7065. I'm going to make that blue going to add it to my total down here for my adjustments. So now we've got our adjustments. So I can see where that's coming from. And that pulls into line line two or the adjustments. So there's the 92 935 going back to my tax return. I'm see I could see where this is coming from. So I'm going to say, okay, there's the 92 935. And then we've got the standard deduction 12 550. And then we also have this qualified business income deduction, which can get fairly complicated, complicated as well. I'm just going to mirror that. I'm going to talk about that now. We might get into that more in the Schedule C, but substantial deduction 1677. I'm going to put that in page one for now. We might have a separate worksheet on later and put that at 1677. So I'm going to say that was 1677. That gets us to the 64 308. So there's the 64 308. And then on page two, we see the tax at the 990. So I'm going to put that here 990. And so there we have that. And then we also have, because of the self employment taxes, we've got the other taxes, other taxes pulling from Schedule two. So if I go to Schedule two, that's the other tax, huge tax, self employment tax, social security and Medicare in assets, pulling in from Schedule two to the second page of the 1040. So I might then go back on over here to my other, my other taxes. So I had other taxes on my worksheet, other tax, there it is, additional taxes right here. And then again, you could recalculate it, but I'm just going to manually put it in here. So we'll put it in here for now and let the system calculate it, the 14129, just to show you the different things that are going to feed into as you add the Schedule C, that then flowing into the 14129 back into the first page of the 1040 that flows in here. So the taxes at that 2429, which is going to be the 2429 going back to the first page of the 1040. And then you've got the 2429. So you can see all the different things. You kind of have to double check when you add basically that Schedule C income. It's a lot more complex. If you have the 100,000 of the Schedule C, even going further and beyond, just basically putting in the net income, basically income statement in the Schedule C, then if you have the W2 income, because all these other things are going to be impacted. Again, we'll talk about that more in the future. We're really kind of just focusing now on the flow through and how it flows through on the income side of this 100,000.  For example, notice when you look at the Schedule C, it's just an income statement. So you've got the revenue minus the expenses on it. You don't basically have the balance sheet in place. And when you sell like a long-term asset, something like equipment, like a forklift or something like that, then you might have another schedule that would basically reporting that sale. So that's going to be this $47.97. So for example, here, we're just showing a quick example here of selling a misspelled forklift. It's a for-lift in any case. So we got the sales price $25,000. And then we've got the depreciation and then the cost here. So we've got this amount for the gain or loss of the $2,347, the $2,347, then flowing through to the Schedule 1. And so that's where you have this other gains and losses attaching Form 4797 that could also be impacted. Again, it would be something that could be an added complication if you've got a Schedule C type of business, although it would be more of an unusual kind of situation. We're not talking like normal sales. They're like inventory of stuff like that. You're typically talking about like sales of depreciable types of assets within the business.