Hello, and welcome back to Abominations of Fan Fiction. Now, I know a lot of you are probably confused seeing that this is part two, and I'm saying welcome back. Well, I did a part one, but that was over two years ago. So, uh, a lot of you probably haven't seen it, but, you know, I figured now's a good time to get back into it. So, today I decided to go with a theme for the fan fictions I'm looking at, and I decided, well, let's look at stuff from our childhoods, or at least from my childhood, my generation's childhood, and see what kind of weird shit they could come up with.  So, we're just gonna avoid that and go for the other odd stuff. Also, real quick, before anyone asks, uh, I know it's not totally in frame there, so look at that. It's a berserk poster. There. I knew somebody was gonna ask about it. So, let's go for real now. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Alright, so this first one I'm gonna be reading is from Rugrats All Grown Up. Now, if you don't remember, Rugrats was a Nickelodeon cartoon all about babies that were talking to each other and stuff, and then All Grown Up was them when they were, like, eleven and twelve years old, and as kids, we just kind of took it for granted that eleven was a very mature age, but, uh, you know, whatever. This one is called Rugrats All Grown Up, my friend from Tokyo. Description. Kimmy, Pon, Paul, Sumay come to see her, but wait, what's this? It seemed that Tommy has a like to Kimmy friend. Read to find out more. This is my first Rugrats story. All One Sentence. And it's written by Sumay Sakamia. Alright. Chapter One. Her Arrival.  They saw three moving trucks down the street, not far from them. Looks like we are having new neighbors, mom, said Tommy. It looks like it. Why don't we go and say hi? She said. Let's not, mom. I mean, they did just move in and he stopped as he saw a girl jump out of the moving truck with three boys wearing dark blue, light blue, and blizzard blue kimono topped in pants with black shoes as the two girls were wearing gold top and pants kimono. As for the first girl she had on a light purple kimono with black shoes, that's all one sentence. And I don't know if this author is aware of it, but Japanese people don't wear kimonos all the time. In fact, the majority of them only wear them during, like, certain holidays and ceremonies. And I wouldn't be that bothered by it if it weren't for the fact that Tommy's best friends, stepmom, and stepsister are from Japan. Okay. Okay, let's go. Said Tommy as he and his mom walked over to the house. As they approached the house, they see how big it was. As women, about five, eight, walked up in a maiden outfit. She had long purple hair and purple eyes and wearing glasses. Can I help you? She said sweaty, but a bit stern. Uh, yes, we saw that you moved in, so we wanted to welcome you to neighborhood, said Tommy mom. My name is Dee Dee Pickles, and this is my son Tommy Pickles, she said, of the two women shook hands. It is nice to meet you. My new name is Yumi Sakameya. Are you from Japan? Ask Tommy. Y- I feel like, yeah, whatever.  Dee say, be nice, there are neighbors and I don't want any trouble out of you, said Yumi as she glaring at her son as she rolled his eyes and walked back inside. Is he yours, asked Dee Dee? Yes, that is my young son Dee say. He's a good boy, but sometimes is a troublemaker. So I guess the other kids and I saw coming out of the truck, are your kids too, asked Tommy? Yes, they are. They're inside right now, getting ready for school. Would you like meet them? She asked. Sure, said Tommy. They followed Yumi into house and into the living room and saw two boys bringing the sofa and the girls cleaning up the place as they set the table on the rug and the TV into place. Seriously dude, periods. You use them. Kids, I would like you to say hi to Dee Dee and Tommy Pickles. The kids stopped what they were doing and said hi. The older one is Kenichi, or, I'm sorry, the older one is Kenchi. Then Daisuke and you already met Disei. Then comes Sana and Hana, but Tommy didn't see the girl wearing the purple kimono. But wasn't, I don't even know what's happening anymore. Okay, so there's like another 47,000 words of that. I'm just gonna stop because, God, that is boring. That's just, God, it's boring. This next fanfiction is also based on a children's cartoon. This one is from Jimmy Neutron. It's called The Chronicles of Carla Weezer. Soon after the events of the Jimmy Neutron television series, life takes a downward turn for Carl Weezer. While trying to cope with the people he cares about being so tragically taken from him, he must deal with an even more pressing concern. Her identity as a transgender woman. Can Carl Weezer come to terms with who she is and rise above life's greatest challenges? Oh, the comments on this are gonna be fun, I can tell. Chapter one. Carl Weezer was once a happy-go-lucky child of Retroville. Some would call him plump, others jolly. Some might even call him big-boned. Perhaps husky. No, you're fat. That was four years ago. Everything went downhill when Carl's parents died of lung cancer two years prior. Carl, my boy, weezed Weezer on his deathbed. I don't think I'm gonna make it. No, Papa, cried Carl. You have to. I can't lose both you and mom in the same week. But then Papa Weezed let out his last weez and he dropped dead. Carl Weezer cried for two months straight. You know, that was probably my favorite part of Jimmy Neutron was just the dark, edgy tone that it had throughout his beautiful... Jimmy, he sobbed on the phone. The government is taking my house. I have nowhere to stay. Hang in there, my boy, said Jimbo. I asked my parents and they said you can come live with me. They'd really take me in, ask Carl tears of joy forming in his eyes. Yet, said Jimmy, and so it was. They lived happily and Carl began to move on and live somewhat of a normal life. But at age 14, Jimmy got accepted into Harvard. Goodbye, said Jimmy. You're really leaving? Asked Carl, sadly. Yes, said Jimmy. Take care of mom and pop. Don't worry. I'll keep in touch. Since Jimmy was at college and Sheen had been lost in space for many years and assumed dead, he had no friends. Wait, Sheen was in spit. Oh, right. They did a spin-off show where Sheen got lost in... Okay. Jimmy's parents tried their best to comfort him, but Hugh wasn't very good with kids. When I was seven years old, I sat on a banana, explained to you one morning.  Carl let out a light chuckle. Good one, Mr. Neutron. Hey, thanks, my boy, said Hugh, but call me Pop. Carl looked away nervously. I don't think I'm ready to do that yet. Carl smiled warmly, someday. And that is the end of chapter one. There are eight chapters here. I'm not reading any more of them. And now we have some Diary of a Wimpy Kid fanfiction. This one is called The New Kid by Zach the Boy One. Description. This is a story about me going into the dairy of a Wimpy Kid universe. Parentheses, The New Kid, and Parentheses. Anyways, I hope everybody enjoys the first part of the story, and I will make a second if I don't get busy. Enjoy one.   So, I appreciate someone going back to the roots of the, uh, of the medium. Chapter one. Hello, my name is Zach, and this is me in the Dawak universe. I really got into his because stories got me some easy grades in middle school, so I thought I'd better pay a tribute to the author by putting myself in the story. Trust me, I will try to make this entertaining as possible, if you like Percy Jackson, Naruto, Kane Chronicles, etc., so without further ado, I present you. The New Kid, Greg. So I woke up this morning thinking I was gonna have an amazing day, but of course I gotta have a bad one like I always do. This kid called Zach came all the way from Midwest because his dad had a job moving. I feel bad for the kid, honestly. When some of the big kids tried to mess with him, that's when it went down real quick. The ringleader tried to push him into the lockers, but the kid dodged him, then countered him with a putt push and an intimidating look. Wait, is this from Greg's perspective? Whatever, I don't care. Then the kid faked a left jab. Then to hit him with a right hook. That kid was down four counts. Now this Zach kid was my grade, but he looked mature and older than what grade he was in. Now that he took out that kid, he was pretty much Muhammad Ali of middle school now. So the other kids backed down and ran. When the teacher saw it, he told Zach to go into the office and he just smirked and said, Don't you mean the place where all kids go when they try to do something about something? Now! Yeah, yeah, whatever. It was bad because this guy was getting all the attention of everybody. I had always dreamed of it, but this guy came in here and took it without even trying. Anyway, I'm going to bed. GN. I will upload part two here in about two days. GN. I just want to point out here that there's only two parts to this. That was part one that I just finished reading. Part one was published December 1, 2016. Part two was not posted until July 25th of 2019. And then we have Swiper Yes, which is a Dora the Explorer fanfiction on Archive of Our Own. And nope, nope, not going anywhere near that. Hey, Dora's last name is Marquez. Is that Canon? See, you guys remember High School Musical, right? It was those Disney Channel original movies that got surprisingly big and they kickstarted the careers of Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens and nobody else. Well, that has fan fiction, obviously. Here's one called The Melody of Life. Troy and Gabriela are married in this story. They experience a miscarriage and other life-changing events such as the premature birth of their daughter Melody at 25 weeks. Gabriela's health and faith are tested later on in the story. Here we go. Chapter one, An Angel Baby. Time period, a flashback. Scene one, The Highway. Oh yeah, this one is written like it's a script, so if it sounds weird, that's why. Action, carefree, Gabriela drives to the recording studio. Funny text messages from Troy entertain her.  Their vehicles hit each other head on. The collision caused the truck driver his life. Gabriela is escorted to the hospital by an ambulance and that's the end of scene one. I just want to point out, they're saying that the drunk driver did everything but apparently she was texting while driving so they're both at fault here. Scene two, The Hospital Waiting Room. A doctor approaches a distraught Troy. Are you Mr. Bolton? Troy stands up from his chair. Yes! Doctor, your wife, Gabriela, survived the car crash. You can visit her in recovery. Troy, fighting back tears. My wife is four months pregnant. What is the baby's status? Doctor, reading the lab test results. The baby died. I am sorry for your loss. Heart broken. Troy collapses into his chair. The doctor moves on to a new patient. He tries to stay strong for Gabriela's sake. So that is probably the most callous doctor ever. Just looking at his page saying, oh yeah, your wife had a miscarriage.   Whatever. I'm getting too invested in this high school musical fan fiction. Scene three, Gabriela's recovery room. Gabriela bruised. She smiles weekly at her husband. Troy takes a seat near Gabriela's bedside. Thank God you are alive. Gabriela rubs her stomach. How is the baby? Just as when Troy is to tell Gabriela about the baby's death, a nurse enters the room carrying a fetal heartbeat monitor. The nurse, I was told you were pregnant. Gabriela beams with joy. I am indeed pregnant. Okay, here's the thing. If they already knew it was... She would have been told. Whatever. The nurse trying to locate the baby's heartbeat. Let's check the baby's heartbeat. Troy worried. I don't hear the heartbeat. Troy, dude. Tell your wife what... Gabriela squeezing Troy's hand. You have to listen more closely. The nurse turning off the heartbeat machine. There is no heartbeat. Gabriela, doubtful. She begs the nurse. No, please locate the heartbeat one more time. Troy trying to restrain Gabriela. Gabriela, Gabriela hysterical.  The nurse rests a comforting hand on Gabriela's shoulder. Your baby is an angel now. Gabriela, ruins the nurse's hand. Leave me alone. The nurse preparing Gabriela for surgery. The next step is a DNC. Your room needs to be cleaned out. You know, I got to say that was... I wasn't the biggest fan of the high school musical trilogy. But I got to say that was always my favorite part of it. Was the serious drama. The horrifying consequences for failure. The fact that anyone could die. And the surprise abortions. Those were always my favorite part of those movies. Let's do another one. This one's called Missing the One I Love. Things were going well for Troy and Gabriela until he witnesses a crime. So Troy gets put in a witness protection until the criminals are caught. Meanwhile, Gabriela does not know that her boyfriend had witnessed a crime and that he has been put in a witness protection. What is going to happen to Gabriela while her boyfriend is in witness protection? How many times are you going to say the word witness in one sentence? Chapter one. Troy and his girlfriend were at their lockers getting their homework and school bags.  Troy and his girlfriend went to the car and saw the school parking lot. Troy looked over his girlfriend... Troy looked over at his girlfriend and saw that she was thinking about the same thing. Gabriela sends her boyfriend and was looking at her. Okay, here's the thing though. Up until this point, you only referred to her as Troy's girlfriend. How are we supposed to know it's Gabriela? What are you assuming we're familiar with the source material? That we have to brush up on the lore before we can even read this? I gotta say, I'm not a fan of those types of stories.  Troy turned his head back and saw they were not far from his house. They arrived at his house and he parked his car. They got out of his car and grabbed their school bags. Troy locked his car up and then went over to his girlfriend. They walked to his house and went upstairs to his bedroom. Gabriela went over to her boyfriend's bed and sat down. Okay, any aspiring writers out there, you don't need to describe every action like that, especially if it has nothing to do with anything. Okay, this gets... this gets a five stars rating, okay? Because, you know what? That prose was bad, but the idea of Troy being put in witness protection is just phenomenal. Five stars, ten out of ten, 100 out of 100, let's go. So, most of you guys probably know Dan Schneider. And if you're not familiar with him, then you're probably at least familiar with his work. In fact, if you're around my age, I can guarantee you're familiar with his work in some way, because he created things like The Amanda Show, Drake and Josh, Zoe101, Icarly, Victorious, Sam and Cat. Like, a lot of those Nickelodeon live action sitcoms that they made, and I... I don't know if they still really make those, but I don't know, whatever. He made a lot of those. He's also possibly a pedophile, but we're gonna move on past that. And so, to end this out, I was just looking at all of those shows I mentioned and realized there are so many fan fictions for all of these that are still coming out today. Because it's not that weird for an older show or movie or whatever to still have a fan base that is passionate about writing fan fictions about it, but... Still, it takes me a little off guard when shows that have been off the air for six or ten or twelve years are still having fan fictions come out regularly. So, let's start with Drake and emo Josh. Description. The rapper Drake is Josh's brother, and Josh becomes emo. Chapter one, the beginning. Drake and Josh were brothers. Oh, I'm sorry, it says Josh and Drake were brothers. That's... Okay. One was an autistic slob, and the other was an award-winning rapper. The two of them were brothers, but Drake was adopted. Drake had beauty, and Josh had ugliness. Josh had no friends and no love. Poor Josh became emo and grew his hair long. He thought if he listened to screamo bands like Big Time Rush...  And grew, dyed his hair out, he would have friends. It worked, but not the way he wanted. His friends were the neglected emo ones. Drake was lucky. He had friends, he had loves, he had a good voice, and he was black. Wait... He's lucky to be black. Okay, we're not even touching that. Drake tried out for the basketball team and made the team. His team was called the Shreksters, and he was their star player, but his basketball career came to an end. Drake broke two ribs, cracked his femur, and had a swollen brain, broken hip, and lost his afro. He didn't care about his bones. He only cared about his afro. I thought he was a rapper, though. Like, do you need to be able to play basketball to be a rapper? I don't think so. Chapter 2, Losing Fat Josh lost all his fat to get his emo body, but he went to Hot Topic all the time with his friends buying more My Chemical Romance albums to listen to with his friends. That's not screamo, either. Josh went to Hot Topic once and found love with his emo fury. Her name was Shadi. She was tall, skinny, had long blue hair. He knows was pierced, and that's why Josh loved her. Shadi loved him, too. Drake was in the hospital and recovered after a few months. He had a passion in singing, particle rapping. Okay. He started rapping, and everyone loved it. His first album was comeback season, and it was a hit. Drake became rich and famous. He then moved to Hidden Hills, and got in love with Mia Khalifa. They got married a week later. They met. Don't pretend you don't know who that is. Okay. I'm going to stop there, because after that, Drake gets trampled to death, and then Josh, his girlfriend leaves him, but he still works at Hot Topic, and then he gets married to a Russian man named Vladimir. And so, you know what? I think you deserve to... You deserve to experience that masterpiece for yourself. Like, that's another 10 out of 10. 100 out of 100. Here's one called Draking Bad. Drake and Josh think it'd be cool to make meth, although they are freaking dummies. Parentheses. This is PG. And it is written by Pelican Slut 66642069. Oh, wait. It's 66642069. Cool. Chapter 1. It was a dark and stormy night. Drake had finished pounding the local slutbag in San Diego. Hey, Josh, check out this new hip candy I found yo, Drake exclaimed. Drake, you bumbling hooligan. That isn't candy.  This is not PG.  After arguing about the meth for two minutes, they both came up with ideas. We can use this meth and throw it at people, Drake said. Or we can do the just thing and hand it over to the police. That's not the just thing.  I'm a rebel. We should make more of this and sell it, Drake proposed. Drake, are you out of your mind? No, I'm just peachy. Hmm. Drake felt attacked by Josh's remarks. While they were both bickering, Meghan overheard it all.   Can you though? But Meghan, Drake rebutted, you already have millions off of iCarly, the new hit show. Now a Nickelodeon. Watch now, audience, please. Drake subliminally advertised. Yeah, the new hit show that went off the air in 2012. But I want to make more.  I have a guy that can give you some, Drake offered. Not that green stuff, I mean money. While they were talking, Josh vanished as he, we already asked Craig and Eric on how to make meth. Oh, for those of you who have forgotten because you haven't seen it in forever. Craig and Eric were the nerdy friends of theirs that went to their school. You simply put the lime in the coconut, Eric said. And then, and then what? Josh asked. Listen closely, Eric said. This is the most important part. Josh leaned closer to make sure he hears Eric's lessons. You take the lime, put it in the coconut, and shake it all up. That's a you make meth, Craig reassured to Josh. Thanks, Craig and Eric. I'll give you a share if we make any money.  Oh, for those of you who forgot, Mindy was Josh's girlfriend. Score! Craig and Eric proclaiming unison. Josh returns to Drake and Megan with the good news. We can start cooking now. We just need somewhere to do it inconspicuous. Inconspicuous. Josh advised. Josh, we don't want to be racist here. This is PG fan fiction. Drake also advised.  Megan told Drake. Drake began to sniffle a bit, realizing the arrow of his ways. I... I don't even see how that could be construed as racist in any way. Cool. So, I think that's enough, Drake and Josh. Let's move on to another show in the Dan, maybe a child molester, Schneider catalog. So, here's a victorious one, if you don't remember victorious, that was the one where Victoria Justice tried to have a career for a while, and then she didn't. But, you know, it gave us Ariana Grande, so it worked out okay. Here's one called Aviana Reunion. Avan Jogia has a crush on Ariana Grande for the past decade, but doesn't believe she feels the same way. But everything changes when Ariana asked him to join her in her Thank You Next tour. So, this one is kind of weird, because it's not even, like, it's a romance story, obviously, but it's not shipping characters, it's shipping the actors that play those characters, and it's supposed to take place in the real world, it's... um... okay. Chapter One. This is an Aviana smut. This takes place shortly after Ariana and Pete broke their engagement. All of it is Avon's point of view. I do not own anything. Notes. This was originally going to be along one chapter story, but then I realized it would probably take forever. Also, I thought it would be better if this story was in certain chapters. Okay, so for background, Ariana Grande, and Pete Davidson, this guy, were engaged for a while, but they broke it off a while ago, and Avon, Georgia, Horgia, I honestly don't know how to say it, but whatever, he's this guy. He was also in Victorious, and I don't like dudes, but I could make an exception for him. I'm in my one-bedroom apartment, sitting down on my sofa, watching some TV while eating a salad. After I was done, I went into the kitchen and put the dishes in the sink. I got a water bottle out of the fridge before I heard knocking. I groaned. That better not be the landlord again. I told him I would have the rent money for him tomorrow, yesterday. Wait. Oh. Oh, okay, so you're supposed to have the rent money for your landlord. Well, pay him. Okay? He's a parasite, but he has the police on his side. I was relieved to see it was the mailman. I opened the door and saw he was holding a package. Hey, Frank, are you handing it to me? After signing a paper, I said thanks, have a good day. You too, bro, he said before leaving. I looked at the tag and my eyes went wide. The package was from Ariana Grande. I felt my heart flutter. It's been nearly three years since we last saw each other. The last time was when we had a victorious Christmas reunion with some of the others. I have a confession to make. I've had a crush on her ever since we first met, just before we auditioned for a victorious, but I've never had the courage to tell her. I've never told anyone about my crush. Then, after victorious ended, we didn't see or talk to each other much. Since then, she's blossomed into one of the most popular singers in the entire world. A top five singer at best, along with Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, etc. She's also been an inspiration to millions around the world. She's also dated some men. Kai Brooks, Big Sean, and recently Pete Davidson. I really didn't like him. I didn't think he was good for her, but I was shocked when I heard they got engaged and they'd been dating and wife, I did my best to push my feelings aside and be happy for her. If she thought he was a good man, then who was I to argue? Luckily they ended up breaking their engagement. Anyways, I opened the package and I was surprised to see an extra large Thank You Next t-shirt. There was also a small white box. I opened it. I was shocked to see it was her Thank You Next fragrance. It hasn't been out in stores yet. Lastly, I saw an envelope. I opened it and it was a ticket. It was a ticket to one of her upcoming concerts in Chicago and it said VIP on it. The envelope also had a card. It was a backstage pass. I debated whether or not I should go to her concert, but I realized it'd be wrong for me not to go, especially since she went to Great Lengths to get me this stuff. I mean, Great Lengths, I feel, whatever. The concert was in three days and I didn't have time to spare, so I packed the next day and made sure to pay the landlord before leaving to the nearest airport. Chapter 2. Title. Here is the second chapter. I made sure to pay for first class so I could avoid having to sit by annoying fans. Don't get me wrong, I adore my fans, just as much as Ariana does, but sometimes they can get loud and obnoxious. I just want to be able to relax until we get to Chicago. Does Avon Georgie have fans? Because, I mean, like, he was in Victorious, but that show ended six years ago. And since then, has he really done anything? Like, ooh, he's going to be in Zombieland 2. That's cool, I guess. I'm sure that'll get you swarmed by legions of fans all the time.  The concert wasn't happening for another two days, so I just ended up taking advantage of relaxing, going over the jacuzzi every once in a while. The night of the concert, I left my room and took out my phone to call for a cab, only to accidentally bump into a man. Oh, sorry, didn't mean to run into you, I said. You Avon Georgie? He asked. I furrowed my eyebrows. Yes? We have a private limousine arranged for you, he replied. I grinned. Thank you, Ari, I thought to myself. I made sure to put that shirt Ari got me for the concert. So wait, like, they had a private limo for him, but they didn't call him about it or anything before him? Whatever. Okay, so it kind of goes on like that for a while, eventually he meets her, she's very obviously into him still, like she had a crush on them when they were younger. Whatever, it's like cute romance stuff.  And that was kind of awkward, all things considered. Other than that, it's just, I just find it bizarre that they would ship the actors that play the characters instead of, I don't know man, people are weird. This next one is also Victoria's fanfiction and it's called The End of Hollywood. All is well in Hollywood arts until one day Tory gets sick, then Cat, then Robbie, and before anyone knew what was happening, the world began to crumble around them with an unknown parasite killing off everyone, mainly horror and suspense, but ships jewelry along with some others, rated M for violence and death. What? Like, how do you see this? Oh, stop. That's your fan? Yeah. It's not big. And come to the conclusion that you know what that needs?  That needs to have death and destruction around every corner. How do you come to that, whatever. Okay, so the last victorious one is called the Cat's 24th Birthday by Lord Jeremy Silver and I know I said I would stay away from the weird sex ones and I'm not gonna read all of this, but I kinda just wanna read the title, Cat's 24th Birthday, alternative title, Bukaki for B-Day, Summary, Cat turns 24 today and as a gift, some guys that she know have decided to give her Bukaki. When they told Cat that she got happy, now she's on her knees in the bedroom.  You remember I, Carly, right? Had Miranda Cosgrove from Drake and Josh, but she was older and stuff in it and she had a web show and stuff. Anyways, I'm missing. When Carly mysteriously disappears one night, Spencer ventures out to find her, but some things are not what they seem. It was an ordinary day. That's the surprising part about days that change your life. It's completely normal until it isn't. One decision can immediately affect the course of everything. It was a Friday.  I was excited about something and wanted to tell my sister, Carly, about it. So I guess this is from her older brother's perspective, cool. I had met a guy who could swallow fire and I had asked him if he would appear on iCarly, my sister's webcast. I knew she would be stoked to hear that he thought that was a great idea. I opened the door leading to my apartment. The lights were off and I felt the chill entering my spine. Something was definitely off. Maybe she's upstairs, I thought, as I turned the lights on and went upstairs. Okay, so as a brief aside, if you remember the apartments that they lived in in iCarly, they lived in downtown Seattle. How much would that have cost? I felt a slight nervousness bubbling within as if I was anticipating for something to happen. I turned to Carly's door and opened it slowly. The room was filled in stillness. She isn't here. I tried to shake my doubts away, but still they remained. A million scenarios magnified in my mind. What could have happened to Carly while I was gone? I needed to slow things down as I took a deep breath and released. I closed the door and headed back downstairs. So he tries calling her friends, he tries calling her, he can't get a hold of her. And then the only person I trusted at this time was Marissa Benson, my neighbor. Although her methods of raising a child differed from mine, without her I wouldn't know how to take care of Carly. The door clanged open. Marissa stood, peering watchfully at me for a few seconds. Did she not recognize me? After realizing it was me, she then opened the door. Sorry, Spencer, I wasn't expecting someone this late, said Marissa. Her face was drained of color, eyes puffy and shadowed in dark circles. She motioned for me to follow her in the hallway leading to her living room. It was clear that something was wrong with Marissa. Her usual composer was gone, and now all I could see was her tenseness in the way she moved. Okay, I don't know how this author is managing to do this, but there's somehow putting too much detail and not enough in there at the exact same time. I don't know if that's impressive or not, but... So to end this off, I don't really want to read anymore, but I did find one more iCarly fanfiction, and it's called Pulse, Season 1. Freddie Benson will begin college, and after a shocking series of events will become a crime-fighting superhero known as Pulse. This show is kind of a spin-off TV series of my creation. Several OCCs, as well as a few familiar faces. I hope everyone likes it. There is seddy in the future. Stay tuned. Now, that's kind of weird on its own.  One of the main characters needs to become a superhero. That's weird on its own. The weirdest thing is that this was first published September 12, 2013. It was updated in July of 2018, so they kept this up for over five years, or almost five years, and it has over 539,000 words written so far, and apparently it's still ongoing. For context, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all three books combined, is about 470,000 words long. Why would you put that much effort into a superhero alternate universe iCarly fanfiction? Like, I'm not trying to disparage anyone for, like, write what you want, I get that. It's not going to appeal to me, it's not going to appeal to a lot of people, but you know what, that's your thing, that's your thing, you enjoy it, you have fun with it. But I just, what? How do you even think of something like that? So I did it. I did a whole long fanfiction thing with ruining everybody's childhoods, and there was no weird sex stuff in there, there was almost no weird sex stuff in there. And I don't know, I haven't done this in a long time, I stopped doing it, I don't even know why I stopped doing it, I just never continued, and I don't know, just let me know if you liked it, let me know if you want me to try and do some more of this once in a while, and I'll see what I can do. And thanks for watching, thanks to all my patrons, especially thanks to Abhiraj Singh. Appo Savalainen, I know I'm saying that wrong, but I haven't gotten confirmation on how to say it right, Christopher Hawkins, David Martinez, Joseph Pendergraft and Melanie Austin, and you know, all the other names as well, you guys are, you guys are great, and if you haven't already, then rate the video, comment on the video, subscribe to my channel, because I need money, and I don't want to get a real job again, so, bye.


What's going on, everybody? Got Kyle and Shawn here relating sports cards. We're up in 2023, Gilda Collection Baseball, six box number 13, this time PYT stop. I've got Anthony T with the Astros, Brandon S with the Phillies, Brent C has the Rates, Chris M has the White Sox, Chris S has the Guardians, or sorry, the Dodgers, I get Guardians, Dodgers, Chris G has the Braves, Daniel Y has the Tigers, A's, Darren G has the Royals, Scott Edward P with the Pirates, Gabriel C has the Debacks, Orioles, Hiramitsu A has the Rockies, we have Joshua B with the Cubs, Keri R has the Rangers, we got Kevin M with the Giants, Mariners, Angels, Mark A with the Nationals and Marlins, Matt P has the Brewers, Michael D has the Metts, Nate S with the Guardians, Peter N has the Red Sox, Peter M has the Yankees, Shipmine Cards, Vilandru has the Cardinals, I'm Stefan A Reds, Thomas V has the Padres, Troy S with the Twins, and Zack D has the Blue Jays. All right, all right, guys, let's do it. Thank you, Patrick, taking a spot in our Legacy of Luminance, or the Immaculate Mixer, it's called Immaculate, something of Elite Patches. All right, you guys, Case 13. Come on now, it's time for the cut. It's time for the cut. It's been long enough. It's been long enough. Good luck, guys. Getting Case Number 13 this time, pick your team stuff. Stuff is fire. Cut her another Super, let's go, let's go. I'm in, always down for a Super. I'm pretty hot with the Supers recently. I've actually pulled quite a few, quite a few recently. Pack first. First up is a Brandon Shoemake, or Braden Shoemake to 199, rookie for the Braves. Shoemake, got a Francisco Lindore, that one's a 75. It's a cool image there of him sliding in. Francisco Lindore and Otto, not bad there to 50 for the Angels, is Logan O'Hopy. Nice rookie there, the catcher to the 1950, for the Angels, and a Johnny Bench to 99. We'll throw back there for the Reds. That's true, Enrico, that's true. Nice one, here we got Donnie Baseball to 50. That one's going to the Yankees, Don Mattingly. Nice one there, Yankees on the Goldframe, 49 to 50. That's the Gallery of Gold Otto, it's Donnie Baseball to 50. Box number two. That is what they call me, Victor. That is what they call me. I made Sam's nickname Super Fracture Sammy, but I like it, I like it. Box number two, a Wave to 75, that one's going to be George Brett for the Royals. This one has extra Otto, I believe. Oswell Paraza, nice one there, a Mini Diamond to 50 for the Yankees. Yankees with some hits so far. And this one is Drew Waters on the Otto, rookie Otto Royals to 99. Drew Waters, and that one's going to be Joey Menacis on the Otto to 75. Nice one there, Nationals. Joey Menacis to 75, and a Hunter Brown rookie to 99. Bunch of rookies in that pack for our frame. It is to 10. Nice one there for the Rangers. Last team taken is Nolan Ryan. Very nice one there. Nolan Ryan with a nice big on-card Otto, one of 10 on the gold frame. Sick one there. We go Rangers, appreciate your last one taken. Box three. Box three. Let's go guys, let's go. Such a big box. Such a big box. First up is Bobby Miller, rookie starting pitcher for the Dodgers to 199. Bobby Miller, nice. Jordan Walker to 99 for the Cardinals. There we go, Cards. A little Jordan Walker rookie. And Otto Rangers. Last one taken to 75 is Josh Young. There we go, Rangers.  We'll mag that for you on the Josh Young to 75 Otto. That's sick. He had two home runs last night for the Rangers. Trying to make their rally. And a Yogi Barrett to 99. That'll be for the Yankees. The Rangers play tonight too? Yeah. Oh, I know we had both. Okay. That works. That's why I was at five then. That's why I was at five. I got two games. It's a 25. We got Raleigh Fingers for the Brewers.  Raleigh Fingers. Nice one there Brew Crew. 24 of 25. It's Kyle's uncle right there. Uncle Raleigh. Uncle Raleigh. Uncle Raleigh. Hey, got you, Andy. Got you. See if we can get you some more, man. See if we can get you some more. I know the Cardinals got a pretty decent checklist in here. Especially stuff with vets. Always got the wizard somewhere in here. Box four. Got two. Oh, there he is. The wizard to 99. Ozzie Smith. Just saying. Just saying. They always have the wizard. Nice one there to 99. Got a 50 Ken Griffey Jr. That's a sick one there. Mini Diamonds for the Mariners. Like that old Mariners logo too. The M's. Auto is Oscar Gonzalez to 99 Guardians. Guardians and a Alex Bregman. That one is the 75 on the wave. Alex Bregman. Another frame. This one is going to be Astros, the 50. It is Jeff Bagwell on the gold frame. That one is the hull of Famer's Auto to 50 Jeff Bagwell. Nice big on-card one there for the Astros. His last name is Ginkl. Ginkl. Nassay Pools. Pools. Pools. Do it, Albert. Come on, Albert. Don't be afraid. Got a rookie DL Hall to 75 for the Opes. This one is rookie Nick Prado to 99 Royals. O is for the Dodgers to 99. James Altman. Nice one there, their rookie Outfielder. Had a solid year for the Dodgers and a Ted Williams to 25 on the Lava. Or the Raywave. Nice one there, Red Sox. Very nice. That's a sick Ted to 25 for the Red Sox. Our Framed Auto. This one is Gallery of Gold Auto. Going to the O's. The 50 is Eddie Murray. Eddie Murray on the on-card Gallery of Gold Auto. It's a sick one there. Nice one. O's, 37 to 50. Another hull of Famer. And last one here, box number six. Get a random team style going next for Gilded. And we are on to football, guys. Bowman, Chrome, you. Bowman, Chrome, you. Thank you, Brian, taking UCLA in our first one. Our Bowman. Four cases. This is a couple trash cans of Nonsense. Box is huge. Box is huge. Six to go on our first one, guys. Number nine. Got Jake DeGrom to 75 on the way. This one is Rookie of Van Herrera for the Cardinals to 50. Another one for Andy. Van Herrera, Minidiamond Rookie. And a Petalonzo. Number to 60. Always, always can find a Petalonzo. Nice one there, Metz. Home Run Champ. And J-Rod to 99. Nice one there. For the Mariners. Nice little J-Rod to 99. And our Gold Frank. This one is Red Sox again to 50. It's Carlton Fisk. Carlton Fisk on the Gold Frame. Auto to 50. There we go. Hall of Famers, Auto. It's Carlton. No, no Ray Finkels tonight. We don't mess around. Ray Finkel around here, man. Places out. Places out, Marino. We're Marino guys around here, so. That's right. No Finkels. Alrighty, guys. So do a quick hit recap. Quick hit recap and then get going on to our random team style next. Yeah, the Polar Bear is sick. I like that Frankie, too. That Frankie Lindora slide into base. This one is Auto to 60. Polar Bear to 99. James Alvin Dodger's Rookie. 99. Oscar Gonzalez Guardians. Joey Manasis to 75. To 50. Logan Ohapi to 99. Drew Waters. Our Gold Frames. We had Donnie Baseball to 50 for the Yankees. Had to 10. Nice one there. Nolan Ryan for the Rangers. Had a Raleigh Fingers to 25. Brew Crew to 50. As Jeff Bagwell for the Astros. Had Eddie Murray to 50. And a Carlton Fisk for the Red Sox. And our big hit of this one was a Josh Young working out of the 75 for the Rangers. Nice one there. Rangers. Last team taken. Got a few nice ones there. Alrighty, guys. That'll do it for PYTK13. We will get random teams going next.


A young student approached his guru one day and said, Master, you have spoken so much about karma, but I do not yet understand it. How can I truly learn? The guru smiled and gestured for the student to follow. The two walked silently to the edge of the village where workers were busily engaged in making bricks for a house. The two stood and watched the activity of the brick makers for some time. And the guru asked, now do you understand karma? No, Master, the student replied. The guru paused and slowly nodded his head. He cleared his throat. What are the workers doing? Making bricks, the student responded. Very good. And what happens to the bricks once they're made? Asked the guru. They're put in the stack, the student said. And then the guru asked, well, they're used to build a house. The student responded, getting more agitated because he could not see what a single brick had to do with karma. The exchange continued, elaborating on every step of how and where the bricks were made until finally the guru sighed and turned to a student. He leaned over and picked up a freshly made brick and handed it to the youth. Here, carry this brick with you everywhere you go. Do not put it down under any circumstances.  Yes, said the student. Good. Returned to me with the same brick in a year's time, exclaimed the guru. A year later to the day, the student returned brick in hand to the guru. The youth was barely able to contain his frustration. Master, I have done exactly as you told me. I have carried this brick with me everywhere. And it has nothing more than caused aggravation and a nuisance among several other things I will not mention in your holy presence. And I have learned nothing at all about karma. The guru chuckled. Did you set the brick down at any time? He asked. No, master. I carried it everywhere. The student exclaimed. The guru smiled. Ah, now do you understand karma? Karma is one of those things in the West that is seldom understood truly, as it has been passed down to us through translation after translation. While the basic understanding states that whatever we do will eventually return to us, the actual philosophy is much deeper rooted. This parable speaks to the burdens and choices we carry with us and how they can affect us in later life if we don't take time to work through them. Just as the tiny brick is used to make the foundation of a house, even the smallest and most seemingly insignificant event or act can have huge effects on our future and lives if we aren't aware. Perhaps this parable even speaks to the cyclical nature of the universe. Maybe there's an echo here of the whole holding onto a glass idea where initially a glass of water is easy to pick up but the longer that you hold onto it, the heavier it seems to become to us. Perhaps even the smallest of choices that we make can be carried with us for long times. Now, the student could have put the brick down at any time, but they remained true to their word and hopefully learned the lesson the guru was teaching. While karma is often presented as something we carry over between lifetimes, perhaps the silver lining here is that maybe clearing our karmic baggage is as easy as choosing to let go of the brick. And by letting go, we simply become part of a new cycle.


Novel Vaccines As we have seen that the immunization or vaccination is in a process by which there is an providing of protection against certain damaging pathogen. For that particular purpose we have just used certain substances or molecules which are called as vaccines. So when we talk about vaccines, we have just discussed that there are two different variety of the vaccines are being there. The first one is the active form of vaccines and the second is the passive form of vaccines. According to their nature or their you can say that mode of action of causing immunization. But there are certain novel vaccines are being there. Novel vaccines that means that which are very innovative means most of the time we can say that these are newly developed ideas in order to use the different components or you can say that different molecules which can be used as a vaccines that is why these are called as novel vaccines. Now the novel vaccines these are the innovative or the novel ways of designing vaccines. Means irrespective of the conventional ways that means that the active or the passive immunization it is a very novel or it is a very unique idea of designing new vaccines for providing protection because previous ideas like active or passive immunization they have certain constraints for which we can compromise the host immune system most of the time. That is why these are the novel ways for designing vaccine so that those constraints can be addressed. For that particular purpose the first important constraint regarding the vaccination or vaccines the toxicity means when vaccines we use host may individuals may so it can it has the potential of causing toxicity. So if there are certain ways that give a live attenuated organism regain our virulence so for providing protection it can be harmful it can be dangerous or it can cause toxicity. Similarly if we talk about the passive vaccination so passive vaccination may we have just to use the antibodies so those antibodies they are being raised in different other animals or most of the time in other individuals. So those antibodies can be heterologous or can be homologous. We have discussed that homologous antibodies are the same type of species of organism that can be introduced in the same type of species of organism. For example as a human may disease or human serum antibodies recover some other individual some other human may be introduced so it would be called as homologous antibodies. Now when in this process we transfer antibodies in other individuals so if there is a possibility or potential that if that individual where antibodies are being taken he or she is suffering from certain viral infections like hepatitis or HIV. So those can be the source of transmitting such kind of diseases so this is another important constraint or toxicity for causing. On the other hand if we talk about the heterologous antibodies which are developed in other species like animals like rabbit or mouse or horse these are being used in order to develop the antibodies or if they are used in humans then it can cause certain immune reactions those are not homologous those are heterologous that is why the immune reactions can be there or toxicity would be there. So that is why there is a dire need to develop or design the vaccines which has very least toxicity. So the novel vaccines has this plus point or advantage that it has novel and they have less toxicity. They can provoke the immoral as well as cell mediated immunity because we have seen that these are the two important arms of the immune system the immoral immunity by which the antibodies they are being generated or the cell mediated by which the T cells or T lymphocytes they are just going to be activated for cell to cell interaction. So if these vaccines are that both the immune system arms at the same time activate then that immune response would be aggravated or more protective because antibodies will be there or cell mediated immune response will be there. Or if for example the organism is an extracellular pathogen they will perform their function or agar organism intracellular hair so it cell mediated immunity come into action and they would provide the protection they provide the immunization for that particular purpose. So that is very important advantage of using such kind of novel vaccines. Right now the status of the novel vaccines they are being used experimentally. Experimentally means they are in certain trials, experimentations they are going on and most of the time they are not being ready to use as a clinically in the individuals or the humans. So that is why they are experimentally used and they are showing to some extent their efficacy. So if we talk about that these vaccines they would be available they would be available for clinical use in very near future because now due to the toxicity problems or the other constraints the active or the passive immunization they are just going to replace by such kind of novel ways. So job a experimentation state say complete ok whenever the efficacy of such kind of vaccines would be you can say that authenticated they would be available clinical use for in near future. Now if we talk about the novel vaccines so there are different categories of the novel vaccines. The first important category or first important type of the novel vaccine is called as DNA vaccines. So as the name suggests that as the vaccines which are DNA or DNA is called as DNA vaccines. So these are basically the cloned viral peptides. These are the viral peptides which are cloned and their genes are cloned and their expression is purified and those peptides they are going to transfect it into host cell. That host cell directly transfected means that they are directly introduced to host cell using different ways chemically means that it can be introduced inside the host cells. So there would be the generation of the hemoral and cell mediated response like live at animated vaccines. These DNA vaccines which are viral origin viral peptides you can say that we are using as a DNA vaccines so these would have an ability to cause the activation of hemoral as well as cell mediated immunity. So particularly for HIV the DNA vaccines that means that anti-HIV DNA vaccines means that HIV against the vaccines experimental stage may have those are being used in order to provide protection against HIV. But as I have just told already that right now these vaccines are in experimental state that is why we can say that there is no as such efficiency or efficacy in the experimentally we are not being able to do it but the experimentation is going on. So in near future maybe these NT or you can say HIV DNA vaccines in different forms they would be very effective in order to provide protection against HIV infections. Okay next the second important type of the novel vaccine is the immunodominant peptides. Immunodominant peptide as the name suggests that means as a peptide immunologically they are dominant. So what are these? These are very simple and easy way to prepare the immunodominant peptides means organisms that you can talk about that peptides as I have seen that peptide proteins which are basically T dependent antigens and T dependent antigens need T cells for activation of the immune system. So when T cells need T cells they need antigen presenting cells and antigen presenting cells and after processing them they will attach them to the MHC complex and present T cells. So if we put the peptides and proteins as such in the body, if we incorporate them already with MHC major histocompatibility complex then that complex it will make the immunodominant peptides. Now those peptides are immunodominant because they are being incorporated with MHC complex. So those would have an ability to activate the hemoral as well as salmiriated immunity. So as a result the organisms here you can say that microorganisms against protection it can be provided in such a way that is very novel in nature. And the third important category is anti-idiotype antibodies. As the name suggests there are such antibodies which are being used against polysaccharide antibodies. That means that anti-idiotypes means that sometimes we can say that if in the body self-tissue against antibodies are produced then they damage the tissues and cause autoimmunity. If we neutralize the antibodies using another antibody that would be called as anti-idiotype antibody. So the anti-idiotype antibody which is going to damage the self-tissue then if anti-idiotype antibody is used and neutralized then that would not be available to damage the self-tissue. That is why we can say that these kind of antibodies they are very very helpful for providing protection against such kind of antibodies which are against the self-tissue. So this is another important novel way of designing the vaccines or protection against such kind of diseases.


to put a cap on at this moment with the current legislation on private hire cars, would they be in breach of the 1982 act? Do you not be explicitly in breach of it? I suppose that, where I am coming from, there is a specific provision about taxes that has not been replicated for private hire cars. What a court would make of that, I am not sure that the point has been taken. How many local authorities are you aware of? I know that you probably won't be able to answer, but are there many local authorities that you are aware of who have a cap on private hire? I was not aware that there were any, but there may be. In terms of section 10 of the 1982 act, what is your interpretation of that in terms of private hire car caps? I agree with Mr Campbell. I have always thought that no-one had a limit, and I certainly would think that if you had a limit under the current legislation, that would be challengeable on appeal. John Swinney, do you want to come back? I am trying to still understand Mr Campbell's licensing committee remit. If you have reached your cap and somebody makes an application, then the committee can then adjust their thinking on that and grant a taxi licence, which means that your limit would go up to 214 if the committee agreed to grant that licence. On the basis of that, is there really a cap there? The limit would still be 214, but in the situation that you are describing, which is not a situation that we have at the moment, but if that situation arose, the limit in terms of the policy would be 214, but, de facto, we would have made an exception to it, which would take the actual number of licences issued to 215. The point that I am trying to make is that, in the application process, we can have a policy but somebody can still come in. The wording of the legislation is that we may refuse a licence where we consider their significant unmet demand. It does not say that we will because we have found evidence that there is no significant unmet demand. I am just trying to get my head around the flexibility that exists for licensing committees if you have already set an upper limit. I think that the answer to that is really up to the licensing committee, our board will set the limit, and then the licensing committee, our board, then will look at applications that may breach that limit. We have to look at applications and evidence in its own merits, and the board has got a discretion, and it cannot fetter that discretion, and the courts are clear about that. However, that is not to say that a good case might not met an exception. Cameron, you want to come in on this. You mentioned significant unmet demand. That is presumably something like West Lothian, if it was outwith the reach of the centre of West Lothian, then that would constitute significant unmet demand, whether it was not enough if there was a case for it. Is that what your meaning is? No, I think that the test is actually that we can refuse an application for a tax licence where we are satisfied that there is no significant unmet demand, so I apologise that I haven't made that as we seem to have might have. Thank you. Alex Rowley, please. That is the same bit. I mean, it was mentioned, but I would ask both the local authority witnesses in terms of significant costs, in terms of determining what is provision and over-provision. In terms of the types of surveys that you would do, do you see major cost implications in terms of trying to establish private hire? Also, it was mentioned by one of the last witnesses that, how would you measure that? How would you measure for private hire what was over provision? Let's start with Mrs Watson this time, please. Well, in 2009, West Lothian Council decided to do away with our limit on taxis. The reason for that was twofold. One, we didn't think that there could possibly be unmet demand, say there was no unmet demand, when there were new private hire cars being licensed every day. The market must work, and those people must find work in order to remain licensed, and the numbers of private hire cars have gone up steadily through the last few decades. We thought that that was a difficulty. The second one was that having a cap creates a black market for licences. Licence plates change hands on the basis of money. Given that the legislation provides that the licence comes to an end when someone dies, what we found in our area was that Mr A no longer wished to operate his taxis, so he leased it to Mr B, who perhaps provided a new vehicle, but when Mr A died, the licence came to an end, and we didn't think that that was right. We did away with the limit. Mr Campbell, in terms of costs, they are substantial, the costs even for doing a taxis survey, and now that what is proposed for private hire cars, and I have to say anything that gives discretion to localised and authorities are broadly welcome, but it is a different test, so I am not sure whether that would mean basically doubling the costs of surveys if authorities decided to go down the private hire route as well in terms of over provision. I cannot release any figures, I am not aware of any way at the moment, in relation to how much we spend, but it would be a substantial sum on a single survey even just for taxis. In terms of private hire car measurement, it is perhaps more difficult than taxis because you can measure at ranks for taxis for pre-booked cars. I am not quite sure how you establish if there is over provision, which in terms of the proposed legislation requires an examination of demand as well, so you are looking over provision and demand as part of that. I also have some lack of understanding of how it would work in practice. In terms of liquor licensing, there are clear licensing objectives that are sought to be achieved by the legislation such as crime prevention, securing public safety, preventing public nuisance and health objectives that are sought to be achieved by that legislation. I am not sure whether over provision as a test, as opposed to unmet demand, necessarily sits well with taxis, where it would be harder to say that there are too many cars available to take people home at the end of an evening. We are talking about demand and all the rest of it. Mrs Watson is describing an approach in which your authority is letting the market decide that you are paying for surveys and all the rest of it. Mr Campbell just mentioned surveying demand. Local authorities survey residents quite a lot in various ways, shapes and forms throughout the country. Would it be wise in those surveys of residents, whether that be citizens, panels or whatever, to survey the general public and see what they think about taxi and private hire-car provision in their area? We will start with Mr Barney. As a point, of course, I come here with a different remit from others. I am not a local authority, I am not a taxi owner, but we are looking at a point of view of the customer. At the end of the day, the reason that you are tidying up the regulations is to make life better for customers safer and better for the general public. I do not think that you can really make things safer and better for the general public unless you tell them what you have done or what you have achieved from. One of the things that I was asking for—I do not think that I am winning here—was that if we learn, for example, that drivers in order to be licensed have to have a disability training, discrimination training, health training and so on. I think that it would be helpful that the public knew that. I also think that it would be interesting to know, for example, that if taxi drivers have to have that type of particular training but higher drivers do not have to have it, I would think that would be wrong. I think that anybody who is being paid to drive the public around ought to be properly qualified and part of that qualification ought to be that they have had some training in how to deal with disabled people and that kind of thing. I know that you have got views on all of those things and we will get to them. The specific question was round about whether the local authorities should be asking the public in their area about demand, whether they think that provision of taxis and private hire cars in their area is enough or not. If we want to organise a series of meetings around the country, we can make that one of the issues that we discuss with our people. I think that local authorities could organise that. That would be extremely useful. If you want to feed anything back, you would be grateful. Mr Campbell, I think that I can be brief for perhaps the first time today. To answer your question bluntly, I think that it would be wise to survey the public, but to put that in context, in terms of taxes at the moment, what we do is we have an external survey carried out from time to time. It is fairly detailed and thorough. Ultimately, this is all challenged before the courts, so evidence tends to be produced to local authorities that are robust. To answer your question, I am sure that I would imagine that that would form part of it. In our submission, convener, we mentioned a lot of the changes that the council has whistled in a broad instance in 2009. The reason why that happened was that we did a survey in 2008. We got a very good response—over 40 per cent, which is quite incredible for surveys. The biggest response that we got was on disability issues. Whistled in council decided that they would set up a consultative group with representatives of key stakeholders. That is where our changes came from. The biggest fault was the lack of disabled accessible vehicles. Some people found that they had a very good response from the local operators that they used, but the vast majority were saying that there are not enough vehicles that are accessible to us. It is not just about wheelchairs, it is about people who are hard of hearing, people who cannot see properly and people who need ramps and steps. There needs to be drivers trained as well. That is why we think that it is important that the Government brings forward training for all drivers. In terms of demand, what did your survey show? Did that lead to any policy changes or were your policy changes already in place? Our difficulty was that if what the survey was telling us loud and clear was that there were not enough accessible vehicles, then by having a policy that restricted the number of accessible vehicles from being licensed, it was a no-brainer. The limit on taxis had to go. What has happened in the past five years is that the taxi numbers have stayed at almost the same level that the number of private hires has gone down, but the number of accessible vehicles has gone up. That is extremely useful. I wonder if I could come back to the protection of the public issue that I raised earlier and take the advice of particularly my local authority colleagues. In terms of one taxi driver moving from one authority to another where a substantial number of complaints had been raised against a person in the one authority that was not known in the other authority, how can we improve that situation so that we can somehow improve and ensure protection of the public? I know that, in our application forms, we ask if we have applied to other authorities, and that is one aspect of it. Obviously, all applications are sent to Police Scotland, who will comment, and that can include convictions and non-convictions conduct, as well, that have not gone that far. I appreciate the point that you are making. It depends on the particular strength of the information that is available to the police, and ultimately, the presentation that is put before the board. There will always be differences in approach by a board of elected members, because they have a discretion that they are entrusted with under legislation, but I take the point, and it is certainly a concern that local authorities have, but we ask whether they have applied to another authority, and we also take into account information from the police. One of the points that was made earlier in relation to that is that the board would not set aside the police letter. It becomes a matter as to how much weight is given to certain information that is before the board when they exercise their discretion. On concealing and lying about his or her personal circumstances, how are you going to find out about the other authority? I do not mean your two authorities. How are you going to know? Is one authority entitled to pass on to another authority case examples where substantial complaints have been raised about a taxi driver? Are you not permitted to do that? I am not absolutely certain about that, but I would say that the application formed themselves that asked that question and passed on to Police Scotland. They do sometimes raise this person has applied to Glasgow for a licence and been refused. That does happen. Our applications say the same thing, but I am thinking through that. That probably works fine when it is a criminal matter, but where it is more a matter of low-level conduct, I am not entirely sure that we would know that a driver had had problems in other areas short of being suspended. An authority would not necessarily pass that information on to neighbouring authorities that substantial complaints were raised about a particular driver. They would not share that naturally, would they? Not a data protection specialist, but I think that I could see issues in relation to that. One of the provisions is whether you welcome the removal of the contract exemption and what the practical implications of that may be. We have heard from some rural local authorities who are concerned about the withdrawal of the exemption because the additional costs might cause some higher-car operators to withdraw from the market and because there might be an adverse impact on council procurement, for example, to take children to school or maybe older folks to lunch clubs or whatever. Mr Burnie, do you have a view on that? No, I do not have a comment on that. Thank you, convener. I am not involved in the procurement process, but I think that it is part of the standard framework that we have for contracts that hold those sorts of licences anyway, so I do not know whether there will be an implication in that respect. In broad terms, I welcome the proposal to remove the exemption as I have indicated in my consultation response, because I think that it is an enforcement lacuna where unless you monitor a driver that you cannot realistically do 24 hours a day, how do you say, if they say to you, well, I will only take one hire a day, it is a potential loop-pull out of that. I accept that Mrs Watson has put in her response a couple of cases where there may be merit for an exemption that I have not raised in mine, but I think that where you have limousines that have less than or eight or fewer passenger seats, effectively you could have limousine companies saying, well, you cannot licence us. It is an issue, potentially. I think that there could be more control if the exemption were to be removed as proposed. In my response, I say that it would be quite difficult to identify the top-end, the chauffeur-driven vehicles. How would Police Scotland know that they were taking someone on a higher-car journey? There would have to be some sort of signage, and that would have to differ from the private hire signage. As you have heard this morning, a lot of steps have been taken to make sure that the public knows the difference between a taxi and a private hire car. Gently, in Whistley and in Edinburgh, there are door signs. I would not imagine that the top-end market would want that, but if it did not get that, how would you identify how they became the top-end? What markers would you have? I would simply worry about how that would all work in practice. In England, there are plates that they put in the boot so that the passengers can check that it is a licensed vehicle, but I do not see how enforcement officers could check that. Can I ask you if you share the Scottish Government's view that services that are run by community groups or charities, which are not for profit, continue to be exempt from the licensing regime? I do not know whether some local communities have been running their own services. It worries me a bit, because I would want to feel that the people who are doing that have had some testing before they are allowed to do it. It is fun to think for me to say or give somebody a lift, occasionally, which I do to the hospital or something, but if you are running it as a kind of service, as some cases are using it to cover up the lack of public transport, I think that that becomes a worry. I would prefer that there was some sort of testing for people like that too. Do you think that community groups and charities should be included in the licensing regime if they are running services? Possibly a less restrictive licensing regime, but it worries me that someone could just say, well, okay, I am going to start replacing the local bus service. I know a couple of people who are doing that. It is a bit worrying, because I would want to think that we knew that they had at least a PSP licence or something like that. They actually properly qualified for it. Mr Campbell, I suppose that coming at it from a regulation perspective, certainly I would take the starting premise as the protection of the public. I can understand why the view would be held. I do not want to feel like an extra. It is based appropriately for their view on it. Mrs Watson? I would imagine that most of the hires would be covered by the provision of vulnerable groups legislation anyway, so that protects people from the drivers. In relation to vehicles, I am simply not aware if there have been issues with vehicles that are not in a good state of repair taking people around. We certainly would not want to be involved in licensing if they did not need to be licensed. Okay. Do you have any concerns about the operation of the licensing regime that is not being addressed in the bill? In relation to the checking of previous convictions, if you are a taxi or private hire applicant, none of your offences are spent unless they are offences that have been dealt with by ATPs, which are fixed penalties that were introduced a few years ago. I would like to see those not becoming spent for taxi and private hire car drivers. We are seeing some fairly serious offences such as violent disorder and drug offences being dealt with day and daily by ATPs. Those are being spent, some of them immediately are issued and some of them within three months. It means that, if the police want to bring forward a person's entire history, they have to do what is called the two-stage test. It becomes quite legalistic and not necessary for members of committees to have to deal with. First, we have to say that there is something that is not here that we want to tell you about. Will you let us tell you about it and then they need to tell you what it is if they pass that test?  A lot of the ones that I have concerns with are drug offences. I would echo those thoughts by Mrs Watson. I think that the two-stage test becomes really quite complicated when you get into different regimes because there are exclusions and exceptions in relation to drivers of private hire and taxi vehicles. In effect, it can disable boards as they understand the position, which is not straightforward in relation to looking at those matters for drivers. We have become Spain either immediately, Mrs Watson says, for fiscal warnings or after three months in the case of fiscal fines. We have heard today concerns about companies such as Uber and Halo entering the market. Do you have concerns on those fronts? If so, what are they, Mr Burnie? I am sorry to ask you a question. In terms of Uber and Halo, the app companies that we were talking about earlier, do you have any concerns about them entering the market? Yes, it is pretty much what I said at the beginning. I have an app in my own phone, like most people, and I can contact the local taxi company, so that is relatively secure. The worry was when Dr Cooper was describing a possible explosion in the market, that if we have a few local companies, we can get to know the reputation of the local company, but if we have a complete brief at all where there are dozens of companies and you are not sure who you are getting, that would worry me. I do not think that he outlined in his paper the difficulty of keeping track of that type of thing, but I do think that it is important that the Government takes a grip of the local authority, and we make sure that anyone providing a service is a properly qualified driver. I can see, as he said, the difficulties in doing that. You pick up your phone and dial a number and you get a car. How do you know? Again, that is what I was talking about earlier. The important thing will be to let the public know what the situation is in relation to those kinds of companies. Mr Campbell, I think that there is probably widespread concern about the points that Dr Cooper has made. I think that he has raised considerable concerns. I would perhaps add to those concerns that Dr Cooper is the best place to speak about in detail, given his knowledge of the technology and his particular specialism. I would add to that that is that in the civic government we have level 2 fines, where offences are committed by people who do not have licences, and so forth. Whereas in the liquor licence and its levels 5, perhaps those levels of those penalties might be looked at at some point. Mrs Watson, please. Yes. I was interested in what some of the earlier panels said about booking office licences. Certainly Mr Campbell and I had a quick look at the legislation when we were sitting behind. As far as we could see what the evidence that you heard was not correct, you do not need to be licenced in your area to have a booking office. We certainly have one booking office that operates vehicles from the Falkirk area, which is licenced in West Lothian. There is nothing to say that the booking office and the vehicles and their drivers have to be connected. I know in the cities that most people work for one of the big companies, but that is simply not the case when you get out with the cities. Lots of people are self-employed, they might have their own vehicle, they might not be involved in any booking office at all. As far as I can see, it may not be the case that Uber would need booking office licences. If someone had a booking office in England, for example, I do not think that they would need a licence. I think that that should be tightened up immediately. I think that that is extremely useful. Yes, Mr Burnie? I think that the situation that he was describing worries me is that the way that the internet works is that I could tomorrow open a website inviting people to put their name forward to be a driver and they could then put their name on my website, or they then someone contacts my website, it goes to one or the other of the drivers. Is that how you regulate that and how you make sure that that type of thing is properly regulated rather than just having that kind of random system that the internet lends itself to and that is the type of thing that he was describing was difficult to control? I am not quite sure. I take Mrs Watson's points entirely and we did have a discussion and agree with what she has said. I am not quite sure how it would work if the office was out with Scotland altogether, because it may be theoretically possible. Although it has to be relevant vehicles that are registered at booking offices, I suppose that whether they would be registered in England is perhaps less likely. We have a condition locally, in addition to the mandatory conditions of booking office licence, which states that the holder of a taxi operator's licence shall not have installed in his taxi a two-way radio or similar device, the base of operation or control point of which is situated out with the boundary of venture counsel, so we have done that certainly at a local level and we had done when the booking office regime came in. It may be that, given that there are other mandatory conditions for booking offices, that is something that could be considered. Okay, Mrs Watson? Yes, I would think that that would be an excellent idea. My issue is that we do not have a condition like that, because I am not satisfied that that is a reasonable condition that would stand up to scrutiny by the appeal court. However, if it was in the guidance, it certainly would. I think that things have moved on very quickly and Dr Cooper talked about that this morning. I think that the conditions and the mandatory conditions in the guidance all need to be scrutinised to make sure that they are completely up to date. Thank you very much. Any other questions, members? No. I thank you very much for your evidence today and I suspend when we move into private session.


It's pretty cool. Hey, where are the melodic men? And we play melodicas.  And we found this, I found it at my grandpa's house a few years ago, a really even worse version of this, but it was really fun to play. And then I showed Tristan and he thought it was hilarious. And then we started jamming together and now we're here today as the melodica men. And it's really fun to play, try it out, and check us out online, melodica men.


You have had a little bit of eye-opening available yesterday in Caroline's introduction and in that sense I have to say I'm sorry I'm going to disappoint you because what do you take to state everything? As Caroline seems to have implied what I might do so I'm one of the reasons that would take forever and you'd want to get to lunch at some point. What I want to do instead really is opening up a conversation. We are sort of in some ways about to change the way how we are sort of supporting research and how research services run and operate at a wider rate. I would very much like to do this working method-wide a sector partly because I think there's some clear problems and building on some of the discussions we've had today and also yesterday I sort of send an increased interest to think are there ways how we can maybe work together better to be more efficient and in that sense I want to give you a bit of an overview of what we are trying to do thinking about not to say that this is all set in stone but rather say this is what we are working on maybe you can sort of bring to the table what you're doing and then we can see if there are some things that we can maybe work together in new ways. As far as libraries concern some of our thinking sort of goes back to 2015 when we launched the living knowledge strategy for the British Library I'm not planning to explain that in much detail I just want to sort of pick up on one point that our Chief Executive made when he launched it and he was speaking about time of historic disruption seems quite timely this year and last year I think but he made it specifically in the context of global systems of information and public hedging and he sort of set up, there is a challenge here and he said that institutions like the British Library but also institutions that many of you work at should have a role in changing the changes so I thought I'd briefly speak about some of the disruptions that we experience and then sort of move on to some things that we are thinking about in terms of shaping one way, one disruption is that the way our researchers work is changing you can sort of tackle this from many different perspectives I've decided to pick up one number that comes from the survey it was started in 2014 by the Sophomore Sustainability Institute and they interviewed researchers from Russell Group institutions and the result was that second-largest hand researchers say they can't now really in a meaningful way do their research about software that was two years ago there's a lot of interesting data in there but it brings up a few I think quite relevant questions for libraries one is, if software is so important for research are we sure it's being preserved properly if you sort of needed to offer certain research the second thing then is are we actually capable of really looking after all the digital outputs that are created by software and manage them and make them accessible and usable and the third one if our research is increasing your work with software are we able to feed our content so that this is into that software to a way that it's easy to consume and fits into the researcher's workflow and the libraries have been doing quite a lot of work in that space but arguably it's not something that we've cracked across the board in terms of workflow the second question is not just Google but I think it is user expectation where these data probably all of our new researchers expect there will be a nice clean interface between some where that I can access from whatever device I'm using regardless of where I am I can type something in, press a button and some results fall out, I can click on it I get straight through to my result and I have something that I can get on the internet and it can work with our discovery and access services we're meeting these requirements at the moment there's a study that just generated a library that a few years ago called Researchers of Tomorrow if you look through what sources researchers use for discovery you find that Google and Google Scholar or Firewall is popular more than you get citation databases and the others and library catalog and cross-institution library have lots of somewhere here I think if you did the same now or a few years later if the trends are the same you might see this shifting further so we are not necessarily the place where discovery is starting and arguably in some areas we are not also not the place where access is happening here are two tweets from our researcher who effectively said the access solution I get from a certain large publisher is so crap I'd rather go to the legal source even though I could legally get access through my university now it's easy to play a publisher I mean, but only if we should but we should also think we're negotiating these seals we need our service providers and perhaps our access services are quite a smoothie but it's something that we also need to look at on our end a problem that will come up in this context is money I'm particularly thinking in terms of cost of subscriptions is going up budgets, not quite as much speaking from a library here in particular our subscription budget is going down we can't afford to buy as much as we used to so the idea of just buying everything just in case a few researchers would need it because of all this particular problem which we think about value for money because of the budget library buying fairly broadly we have the issue that lots of resources that we buy get relatively little use per individual article compared to what universities do so the cost of providing these items and the value for money I think isn't there so we have to make some significant changes in terms of procuring content for our users in some cases it means if we can't negotiate significantly better deals we'll have to stop subscribing to content which is a challenge in terms of serving our users there's another discussion that will partly help but it's also, I think, confusing in some ways let's see how open inside is generally we talk all day just about solution of your forward points here but one point I want to make in particular from the view of the National Library if increasingly content is published in open access our discovery services are maybe that valuable anymore we don't need to provide access services it's an our role in helping our users doing their research if it's no longer providing them the information in the traditional way I'm not going to plan to speak in all these points in detail but I'd like to raise a few general points to reflect our response to this I think partly is if controlling the content and access to the content is no longer the issue maybe we need to put more work into the infrastructure on which the content is provided and see to it that we get the content out to our users wherever they are and in whichever kind of form they want it so that in some ways means sometimes thinking about software or machines as our users or at least as our interface is getting into the users and also certainly from the point of view of National Library means we're thinking our collections because the collections we have here are huge but considering the amount of data that's out there we could argue there's been relatively small so if we want to support our users we can't just make the assumption we have these fantastic collections and people will keep coming and coming we need to sort of in some ways we think our approach to collection management to engage in excellent collections and make sure that we sort of surface valuable resources to our users that we currently don't quite do and that means we have to significantly increase our capacity for discovery because there's much more stuff out there giving something new for back to users is difficult and we also need to think very carefully about how we can provide that content and move more to pay out provision of content and some of the means of doing this is we are looking at replacing at least the review involved in some cases certainly replacing pretty much the whole core infrastructure of the library and we need much more of the shelf height systems and we also need to rethink how we develop services that can increasingly mean finding partners either elsewhere or in the industry where we could say there's an issue provided or something really useful we could partner and sort of almost say we as the library guarantee that the data here is looked after properly if that service provider isn't that good anymore in the future we might move it somewhere else but it would certainly help us to be more agile and flexible and be able to respond to some of the user demands the way we are tackling this is through making everything available it's one of five portfolios that we have sort of change management I don't want to talk about it in much detail but we have one strand that looks at making higher attention to digital in particular digitizing collections sound for example that we are using we are working hard to transform the building here and it will be an extension to the new services to develop we have a program to engage more with the public also out to the world and change the way how we work with public libraries partly through that work of public libraries we can bring services to the user community we are looking at renewing our facility and most inspire and effectively expanding our capacity to provide connection management services both for print but also digital on a much larger scale and then there's everything available that sort of from a research perspective in a way the interface for some of these developments where we are looking at improving effectively discovery access and use and also rethinking some of the ways how we provide infrastructures to give a few examples we are currently working on a long term roadmap for changes that we want to do and this is discovery the general idea in terms of time scales short is something that we are working on at the moment midterm is something that we are sort of planning and hope to do a lot of this in the future maybe 1, 2, 3 years and long term is more sort of 4 or 5 new horizons or perhaps looking towards 2023 so very practically for our discovery services we currently have usability study that will hopefully tell us a lot of how we can improve them and will make some changes to our users in parallel we are trying a few new approaches partly working with startups and we are exploring working with the open access box and say isn't there a better way of finding open access content and sort of facing this to our users and how can this be integrated into a library discovery solution because if we can't afford to subscribe to everything anymore we need to expose the open access content which by the way is a good thing anyway because generally it means we need to supply some of the users we are not starting to think about certainly reviewing our current whole discovery architecture and say you might want to replace it with something better in the next few years that's sort of seeing what's the best off the shelf solution that we can get but most of the interest is taking a long term view and saying what our approach is like machine learning and artificial intelligence should we just wait for providers and say this is what you librarians need or should we just say well let's do some research and see if we can sort of check the market indirectly in a certain way and we've started some plotting on what do we think the discovery solution should look like in a few years and how can we research and develop this and one way of helping us is we now have the Arturing Institute of the House it's the National Data Science Center they're separate institutions but host at the British Library and we are starting to explore some collaborations and we've got a very strong staff on the same level for what he said he'd like us at the NTLI to work together and develop something which he calls data-driven library that came in all sorts of things admittedly but it might be a good way to get funding for some of the ideas and try new approaches around areas like discovery and I think this would be a part that would be really interesting to work with universities partly because you have researchers with expertise in this space and you will also have I think interest in seeing something we can do to explore new discovery services the other area that we're focusing on now is access and use and partly means developing infrastructure that at least for the British Library is new I realize university libraries have been doing for a while which is switching from just buying everything just in case someone wants it to having just in time provision and also expanding our capacity to give remote access and that will mean we have to have a much better understanding of different user groups and be able to tailor specific content partly to meet the requirements of rights holders who might say we allow you to give remote access to this resource for that type of user but certainly not for the other type of user so in some ways this is the area where I'm doing the catching up of the universities we're already having but it's something we sort of need to do as a first starting point we're also looking at in terms of how we can open up our collections a project that starting now is setting up an API platform for the library, the ideas that we have a sort of centrally supported space where we can expose all our APIs to the world to give people access into different collections the first APIs that we're going to set up on that platform will be the APIs that we force into the service but we're also looking for more directly on the human side by realising we have lots of digital heritage collections and we are sort of exposing them in different ways that maybe are confusing so we're looking at bringing this all together and saying he has all the digital stuff that we hold of our heritage collections and he has an easy way for users to get access we're also looking at sort of improving services on the side of particular at the moment we spoke briefly about the digital type reading room yesterday we are looking at actually having a space where we can have very flexible audio and visual setup that will effectively allow people to interact with all the collections that we have that we can't expose online for legal reasons but if someone wanted to come to us with a server plug the server in and do some text and data mining, we need space and particularly skills to be able to support us and hopefully some of these services you might then be able to sort of roll out your building on what the digital library maps have been doing and we're generally also looking at sort of changing our infrastructure for access and preservation key part of this is replacing the library's digital library system it was developed in-house roughly 10 years ago it was set up at a time as a preservation system because there wasn't to be anything on the market so it was developed in-house we currently hold about 750 terabytes that's replicated across source sites and we're now in the process to take really forward replacements that will be significantly more scalable which allows us to bring more content faster people have provision for both preservation and access and it will be multi-tenancy enabled we do this in the first instance because we need to enhance our capacity because we get more content in them than we did 10 years ago we need to be able to process that faster but it also gives us an opportunity to make some of these services available to others if there's an interest and believe it and one area where we are now starting to have discussion is in the repository services area the British Library doesn't have an institutional repository but you could argue as we're doing certain models of research we should have some function of an institutional repository www.bl.uk which is currently set up on a central repository platform here we're also hosting ethos for the sector that's run separately the idea is that we think let's bring this all together onto the central infrastructure so we can run it better in a more efficient way and while exploring this we've now realized that's actually quite a lot of interesting information so we are thinking about getting a repository or changing our repository for a shared service model and linking into this one area that I'm particularly concerned about in the open access space we're not going to get all this open access content coming into our repositories which is great but I'll be confident that we're preserving this but I think this is something where if there's an interest I could zero for the British Library we've also lodged a data strategy that Essence says that we want to integrate data into our services as well as we've currently been doing this with textual collections the different components that we're looking at partly for our own needs data management, data curation data archiving and preservation and particular data discovery access we reuse this is something again we need internally but it's also something where we can build on that capacity and see are there so this is something we can provide that others might want to work with us on in terms of the way we're serving in searches there's a key part where we serve where we search on all sides of our life but like in already offering some services to institutions and also international international level data site is more example or UKRR so we're kind of thinking there might be different roles that we have to play and in some ways we can probably help individual users that we can't get to directly by providing services to others such as data site or via data site or actually interface with users where in all cases of putting us all together into a roadmap I don't want to talk these things through in detail because it's undevelopable but you'll see lots of things I've been talking about about improving our access and discovery services that are already things that we're working on and there are some of the more speculative or we'll try different areas here like improving our capacity for on-site data-driven research and there are some things that we're planning to do long term for example new types of discovery systems or see if we can not really significantly enhance our capacity to enable types of data mining research in our collections but I mostly still see this at the point we're starting to think about these things and really get your feedback and what would be useful to put on the roadmap and perhaps take forward together and with that I'm sort of coming to an end and trying to give a slight different definition of everything available and the only way how we can really give researchers almost everything they want to need if they're working together because these challenges are way too big for one single institution arguably in some cases we can't even do this on a national level it has to be international I don't want to say much more about this because I think we've heard a lot about these types of arguments in John's keynote yesterday so I'll effectively say just think about everything he said yesterday because we've left this across the slide and then you get some of the main points I want to get across but I thought maybe useful to add on to concrete things one thing I haven't really spoken about is skills we need to enhance our capacity and capability in the library one thing I'm quite keen for this new research services department that we are forming is to have work placements and channelings so we can send our staff out to you to learn about how you work and what challenges are and there might be similar ways how we can sort of organize a more regular kind of work placement and exchange system or some other activities that we can be able to help start to expand our skills and very concrete terms as I've mentioned we're speaking to some partners about ways how we can think about repository infrastructure in a more systematic way it's partly links into the UK working group and I mentioned earlier that I've also mentioned that we are thinking of, if there's interest, maybe setting up a workshop sometime in spring where we bring those of you who would like to have a discussion how can we make repositories work better together and do some of these options to sort of end on to concrete examples of what we're thinking of doing at the moment thank you


I am from Syria, I live in Lebanon, studying at university, studying business management. My age is 23. Well, Madeleine is a college intern from Canada who is with us for the summer, learning about journalism and about international broadcasting. So you're both in college? Yeah. What do you want to do after you're done school? I will work. I will search for work at other countries like America, like United Arabic, Emirates. Do you want to open your own business? Yes, if I can or if I have enough money or enough things, I will do that. So you've been away from Syria for how long? How many years have you been away from Syria? How many years I'm here in Lebanon? Right. I'm here from one year ago. So you left Syria during the war? Yes. I was in Syria. I am studying at the university of Aleppo. I did not finish my courses because of war. I am going to Lebanon to complete my study. Do you keep in contact with your family in Aleppo or do you have family in Aleppo?