Okay, thank you very much. So this work has been done in collaboration with Andrew Dabal and Vascom Molini from the World Bank and Francesco Zasketino from Italy from the Second University of Naples. So the focus of this work is on Nigeria and it basically builds upon recent narrative according to which the poverty reducing benefits from stable and sustained growth pričo je bilo odpočenite na zelo, da je bilo vsega srečenost, zato je bilo vsega innekovalitva. Na zelo, da je vsega innekovalitva vsega innekovalitva, ki je bilo vsega innekovalitva na Zelo, pričo je bilo v 2004 in 2010, kdaj je bilo vsega vsega površnje, kako se je vzelo, da ne zelo, in inkružilo inkružilo, zelo z delovim inkružim. Vzelo po vzelo, da jih zelo, nekaj tudi je vzelo, da je vzelo v zelo vzelo.  Vzelo, da bi se vzelo vzelo, in ljup, početih vseč je vseč je vseč vseč je vseč je vseč je vseč, je vseč ta vseč bezpočetne, ki se pristimem vseč. Ako je predsačne, in je vseč na koncentratih vsičnev vseči, nekaj vseč, nekaj vseč. The second view of polarization, which is a more general view, regard polarization as clustering of groups of populations around the local poles of the distribution — let's say, local modes or means of the distribution independently on where they are located along the income or consumption scale, but notwithstanding these differences we sreč da bi vidi that both the views of polarization share the common idea that the more polarized the societies is, the more social conflict is likely to arise. Opravdu, že Nigerija prihodi skupanje, na poške načinovacji, na nozzle v državci, in tudi je, da se poradovače. Pod del vreselosti izgledaj, srednosti na radosti na nesrednosti včasno. Na vse, da je povedal, je je občasne občasno, in izgovoril stvar pa izgavov z svojih svih konflikov. Sveče tako povedljače na vsega izgovoril izgovoril na jeziru. Na vsega problema, ko ješel, je, da se vsega vsega zelo vsega sezera v �gavov z naprejženja, ki je vsega vsega kaj pa razjela.  Nezaj, da smo počeli do vsem izgledali prizavljenja, nezavljenja, nezavljenje, nezavljenje, nezavljenje, nezavljenje, nezavljenje, nezavljenje, nezavljenje. Ko se počeli? There are several household survey on consumption expenditure in most African economies. The minimum welfare variable, which is used for this kind of analysis, is consumption. And we also refer to consumption. There is, for example, the national living standard survey and the follow-up, which is a harmonized national living standard survey, which are the most frequently used by, for example, the National Bureau of Statistics to explore, to monitor progress in poverty reduction over the resilience. But actually the National Bureau of Statistics in Nigeria also conduct another important consumption hazard survey, which is called the General Household Survey, which is conducted in collaboration with the World Bank. What we do here for constructing the data, which should be, we hope, comparable over time, is to take the most updated and reliable data on household consumption expenditure in Nigeria. That is the GHS data, the General Household Survey consumption data, and then use them to reconstruct backward consumption expenditures in time. This approach is called survey-to-survey technique, which is basically an exercise of this kind. We estimate the model of local consumption expenditure using the most updated and reliable data, and we use the estimated coefficients on this data to reconstruct the consumption expenditure backward in time with reference to the National Living Standard Survey, which is the oldest one we have at our disposal. This is because essentially the two household surveys are not comparable between them, because there has been a revision of the data collection methodology in the meanwhile, and also they are not comparable because we did some preliminary checks, some experiments. For example, we calculated some preliminary figures on inequality and poverty levels, and the figures differ substantially, so we were forced, we can see, to use this kind of methodology to reconstruct at least two distributions at different points in time, which are the most distant between them when possible. In this case, we are able to cover about a decade. Why this kind of exercise? Because these are diagnostic plots, but I will prefer to say you about the methodology we use for export polarization. Why this kind of exercise to reconstruct comparable data series on consumption expenditures in time over a relatively long time? Well, sincerely and basically, because if there are no sudden shocks, phenomena like inequality, poverty, polarization, change very slowly in time. So, significant changes can be detected only over a relatively long period of time. So, we need before data series, which cover at least a decade, and we succeeded in reconstructing at least data series distribution, which cover a decade. And secondly, because the methodology we use to explore polarization, and this kind of methodology is quite different from the other methodology, which has been used by previous work on polarization in Nigeria, like, for example, simply computing, let's say, standard measures of polarization, and comparing them between time is a nonparametric methodology, the one we use, and it's called the Relative Distribution. It is based essentially on the comparison of two distributions in time, and hopefully the distribution, which are very distant in time, and lack, for example, in our case, because we have a distribution for the most recent data in 2013, and they reconstruct the simulated one, we can say, for 2003. So, we were able to cover our data at least a decade. And this kind of methodology we use is based, as I said, on comparison to distribution. Let's say, for example, the one at time t-1 in 2003 in our case, and the one at time t in 2013 in our case. Simply the relative distribution, it is simply the ratio between the two densities. And in particular, there are some advantages which are linked to this kind of methodology. In particular, the possibility to explore the sources of changes you can see when proceed to compare distribution. For example, this distribution enables us to perform the composition into location-shaped changes. We can see only composition due to some kind of median or mean shift, or the changes do only redistribution. And so, changes in distributions compared over time only due to shape changes, modifications in the shape. And furthermore, and finally about the methodology, this kind of methodology also give us the possibility of quantifying what we can say at the graphical level, because it brings a set of indices which are called relative polarization indices. And in particular, the first one, the median relative polarization index, gives you the possibility to see if there is movement from the middle of the distribution toward the tails. And moreover, it is decomposable into other two indices, the lower relative polarization index and the upper one, which give us also the direction other than the magnitude of the change. For example, we can say in this case, if we can see, sorry, in this case, if there is more polarization in the lower tail, which is called downgrading of distribution or more polarization in the upper tail. But let's see the results. In this table we have some preliminary summary statistics which concerns the data. The second column, this one, is the one referring to the most recent dataset, the one coming from the general household survey and referred to the years 2012 and 2015, simply because it's made in the second half on the first year and in the first half of the second year. The statistics shown in the first column on the table instead refer to the simulated distribution, the one obtained by means of the survey to survey technique and they refer to the data, the summary statistics shown there, which come from the national longitudinal living survey. This is the oldest data we have at our disposal and the one we have simulated. Apart from the changes, which are shown by the increase in the mean and median expenditure, also the changes in dispersion of the distribution, the most notable features are that there is a deterioration, we can say, between the two points in times of the consumption share of bottom percentiles of the distribution and an increase of the consumption share of the top percentiles of the distribution. We also calculated inequality measures, as, for example, the genie entire indexes and both show an increase of inequality. And obviously we have also calculated polarization measures, standard polarization measures, like, for example, the first Wolfson and the one given by the closest Banerre and both, even so, most likely, compared to inequality phenomenon, show an increase of polarization in this case. But let's see how it works in this case on the ground, the relative distribution methodology. In this figure you have in the upper left corner simply the nonparametric, estimatively kernel densities of the two distributions, which are at the beginning of our time period, in 2003 and the end of our period, 2013. You can see these lines give you the median of the distribution. You can see that there is an increase, a location shift from one period of time to the other, like we saw in the summary statistics in the specific tables. And there is also an alteration, a change in the shape of the distribution that was moved from 2003 to 2013. The subsequent graph, which is called relative distribution, is simply the ratio at any design, if you want, but also if you like, at any percentile of the distribution of the 2003, which is the reference one, to which we compare, the most recent distribution, and you have this kind of pattern. What you see, there is an increase in the share of households in the desires of the reference distribution, the 2003 distribution above the median, of the median of the reference distribution, which is the 2003 one, and a decreasing share of households below the median, but the same. So there is a general change, we can say, in the distribution. But what is the main source of this change? Like we see, but it's also visible here in the table, there is an increase of the median. So we have probably a location shift, and the location shift is shown here. This is the location effect, which operated in this kind of general change, overall change that we can observe. And the location effect is quite significant, but as most of the shape, but this is not the same in terms of redistribution. But the shape of this curve is quite similar to this one, but it's not really the same. There are other changes, which probably are due to the fact that other than increasing location, location shift of the distribution, there are also changes in shape redistribution. Net of this median effect, net of this location shift. And these changes are given in the last plot. Here you have, as you can see, a U-shaped pattern. And this kind of U-shaped pattern is simply polarization, because you have an increase of the share for households in the lower design of the distribution, an increase of the share of households in the upper design of the distribution, and a decrease of the share of households in the middle of the distribution. This is the changes that are only due to changes in the shape of the distribution that is in redistribution. Net of the location effect. Both the effect have operated to produce this kind of overall changes. When we move to quantify our polarization phenomena, because as I told before, there are also the possibility to use polarization indices. We can say that both indices, both, sorry, all the indices are positive, and also they are significantly positive. This first value tells us that there is a kind of process of polarization in the consumption distribution of Nigerian households, and this polarization is both a polarization in the lower tail of the distribution and in the upper one. This kind of polarization that we can say at the national level, it's obviously because Nigeria is exactly heterogeneous, it's a big economy, it's a populous country. It's not entirely homogeneous within the country, but for example, it varies from zone to zone. There is a south of the country, which is more polarized of the north one. I stop here, and I skip also the conclusions, because the problem is a kind of summary of the results. I just do the last remark, which is the fact that this kind of analysis will prepare the ground for further research on the link, which is supposed to exist in the literature between the fact that more polarized society are more conflict prone, and in Nigeria, basically, we have probably both the features of this kind of further research. Thank you very much. Thank you. In a few minutes, and I'd like to then collect a few questions from the audience and then give our presenters a few minutes to respond. So, let's start here in the front of the room. We have microphones that will be coming to you because we're recording.


Welcome to this edition of Wednesday webinar. My name is Tina Salzer. I am a new technology integrationist here at ESU 8. Today's topic is going to be about the advisor dashboard and some of the information and data that it can provide. So what is advisor? It is a web-based view of school, staff and student data all organized into a quick reference tool that will help administrators and staff organize and disseminate data in order to individually serve the needs of their students. Okay, let's go ahead and log into their demo site for the advisor dashboard. If you open a browser and you type in advisor-demo.esucc.org and no www. The first time you log into that it's going to take you to a caution page that you'll have to scroll down to the bottom and allow that site to come up. But you should get to this site when you get logged in and you're going to search for grand-ben ISD test users. Now once you get there you have the option of logging in as a system administrator, a high school principal or a high school teacher. And if you want those different logins to get in and view that you can send me an email and I can send you the Google document. If you don't already have that we are going to for right now go into the high school principal login. And once we get logged in we are at the advisor dashboard demo site. Okay, let's begin by looking at a student here. So I'm going to type in the name of a student in the search bar. And then once the students come up I can just click on their name to get the overall information. So we're going to look at the academic dashboard here in a minute. But if we click over on the student information tab what we see here is we get the contact information for the student, the demographic information including parent or guardian and their contact information as well as date of birth. If you scroll down you also see information on the program status. So if the student is in HAL or ELL, SPED, any of those programs. Scrolling down there's also other student information if they're a ward of the state, an immigrant, any of those that are checked will give you that overview of the student. There is also the opportunity to have a list of the special education services that that student has received. Okay so let's go over to the academic dashboard. When we click on the tab at the top as you see there's other tabs that come up underneath that with the academic dashboard. The overview of the academic dashboard is going to give you an overview of different data that is collected on that student. So if we scroll down it's going to show you an overview of the attendance and discipline. It's going to give you overview of state assessments, other assessments, all of this overview information of the student throughout the years. And as you can see there's a metric status over here that's color coded. The red generally means that it's below goal, green means that it's met and all of those are down here to help you understand that. If I hover over those you can see that it's going to break down the information even a little more for you and give you percentages of that per date. Okay now let's slide over to the next tab in the academic dashboard and look at attendance and discipline. So if I click on that tab and you have to know that you have to be, so if you're on the teacher level and your administrator or people that set this up decided not to give you access to the discipline tab all you would see here is attendance. But right now I'm logged in as an administrator. They may give you the opportunity to see the discipline as well but just know that that is a choice by the district. So if I scroll down in this screen and I look at this we've got everywhere from daily attendance rate and again color coding to tell us what it was within the last four weeks, last eight weeks, year to day and prior year. There's no data there because there was no information added to the prior year. But if you keep scrolling down and you look there is more. This is talking about days absent but if I click on this more tab over here and click on one of the charts below that I can drill down to see more information about the student and the days they were absent. And if I look at this year to day that student has 10 unexcused absences. So you can drill down to see those specifics and as you can see it breaks it down within weeks and by the year. And you can close that and then if you scroll down yet and you see the discipline you can also drill that down and see an incident log which will tell you the days. The date, the incident code that was applied to it, a short description and then if any action was taken because of that. So if you look at this student there was a state of fence but no action was taken upon the school district with that. So that's what's recorded. And as you can see any of these options you get a lot of data in there but if you want to be more specific if you choose the drill down option you'll get more details about what all of that means. Let's take a look at the state assessments. So when I click on that tab it's going to give me an overview of the scale score and how they performed. The stats bar also gives you a little bit of information there at the beginning level. And again over here if you click on the more you can drill down to the objectives for each area and how they performed on each objective. And you can see that for each curriculum area. So that gives you more information about why they're at this level. Now we're going to go over to the other assessments and this is where you're going to see the map testing data. It will show their score and their percentile rank. So here's the information based on each curriculum level again. And if you drill down you can see a historical chart of their data for each grade level that they've taken the maps test. And you can see the strands and how they performed there for each level. And again each one of these is a different code and it means a different thing. All of that information can be found down here at the bottom so you can evaluate based on those codes. Let's take a look at grades and credit now. This is where you were going to find information on the students current grades.  But again if I go across here I can see a histogram of those failing grades. And I can use the slider and I can begin to see trends if there are any of failing grades for the students. So that's a very powerful tool. If I come down here to the credit accumulation and I click on more I can drill down to see cumulative credits for that student. Now we're going to go on and take a look at the advanced academics and the college and career ready. These two tabs only contain data if they pertain to the students. So if there's no data for the student it will just remain empty. But if I go over here to advanced academics it's going to break it down again into a subject area. And as you can see this student has no data entered in there. But these are the opportunities if they did have them you'd have the details right here. Over to college and career ready again this one is only if it pertains to the student. But if you look if they've taken these tests you can drill down and see how they performed on those tests. Again the student has no data in there because it doesn't apply to the student. Let's go over and take a look at the early warning system. This system will give teachers and administrators the ability to and awareness to intervene with students who are having issues in school or who might be at risk for dropping out. The early warning system is based on attendance behavior and grades. And each of those is set up under five matrix daily attendance. School code of conduct state reporting offenses and then failing math or failing English grades. If you look again you have this color code and this color right here is a caution warning. And you can drill down those again to see more information if it's available to really dive into why there is the warning on that student. Now the intervention catalog works really well with the early warning system. This catalog gives you the opportunity to assign interventions to students or to see what intervention a student has in place. And if you look at the top it gives you an overview of the early warnings the student has. You can preview that to see what interventions they need to have in place. And again you can choose any of these to assign to a student. Now back up at the top the course history. This will allow you to have an overview of all the courses that a student has taken in the past. There's no data on the student right now but that's the information that that would provide. I've been looking at student data and student information. So let's go ahead and switch now and take a look from at the school level. So I'm going to click up here at the top where it says grand bin high school. And it's going to take me to the page that's going to give me information about the entire high school. If I click on the school information this is going to give us an overview of the entire information of this high school. And so if you look here at the top it's going to give us information about the administrator in that school. It's going to break it down by school population up here at the top and give you percentages and numbers for all of that. Student demographic again it's going to break it down by percentages. We got ethnicity, race, even all the way down to the student population that you have enrolled in each of these programs. And the high mobility all of this other student data is also here too. What you can do is you can come down here and you can click on any one of these percentages. And so if I click on where it says male here under student demographics it's going to take me out to a page that's going to show me the list of males within this whole school system here. And the data that goes along with each of those students. And so you can kind of see an overlay of all the males within that district. And it will also have the designation here for each one of those in kind of an overview of the whole thing. Now let's go up and take a look at the staff list and the teachers list. So if I click on this tab right here this is going to give me the staff name. Their email address and their roles within the district. So you're going to get the entire staff at Grenben High School listed in this view right here. If I click on the teacher list it gives me the same information only this list is limited to only teachers you don't have the role listed over here. But it gives you their name and their email address. Now if I if I click on a teacher's name it's going to give me a list of that teacher's students that are within their classes. And so you get that entire list right there by clicking on hit on the name. All right now let's go and take a look at the students by grade students by demographic and then student list. So if I click back here on the high school page and I go back to school information. The students by grade I can come up here and I can sort them by specific grade if I choose. And you can get an overview of the whole class you can see their early warning indicators by class. And if I scroll over it's also going to show the attendance and discipline as well as the grades and you can look at that specifically by each grade level. So that's 12th grade I could switch to 11th grade and see the same details for that grade level. Now students by demographic if I click on that one this is going to allow me to sort the students again by demographic data. So if you remember before when we were talking about the school information we went and clicked we sorted by all the males within that high school. So if I click on student by demographic and I select male it's going to pull up all the males within that school. And again you get your early warning indicators attendance and discipline and grades. If I go to my students by list these are any and there's no data under this person but these are the students that are assigned to you. So if you have specific groups that you're assigned to your students would show up there. To finish up the advisor overview we're going to log in as a teacher. Okay when I log in as a teacher I can see each of my classes separated by semester and by class. And when I look at those classes it's going to bring up those students that are in that class as well as some of the selected data for those students. So I'm easily able to compare that. If I want to see the entire view of that grid in a larger format I can click on maximize grid and it will give me the comparison here across the board. Now I can also go in here and I can say create or see more data. And so then I can go and I can check mark these other fields so that I can see those and compare those two. I can also uncheck those so I'm able to compare only either failing grades or only the data that I want to see. Now one of the other powerful tools in advisor is here where you can create a watch list for certain students. Say for instance you have some students that are just below failing. So you can select those students and say that you want to create that watch list for the selected students. And then you title it whatever you want to title it. And then you can say OK. And once you've done that that watch list comes up here and you can select that watch list from the dropdown and then you will see only those students. So you can keep an eye on those students just from coming to that watch list to view it. All right. And that's pretty much the teacher view. You can also go here and select these different fields to watch or to look over those for each student. And again here's your keys that tells you what each of the data means. So basically you have an overview of your entire classes for each individual student and you're easily able to compare those students across the board. All right. Thank you for listening to this version of Wednesday webinar and I look forward to the next one.


this, and gender quotas are a very obvious choice that goes with the population, 50 per cent of the population, 50 per cent of equal rep women in those positions. However, to go to Janad's point about what the numbers underneath the demographics would actually look like, we need to do more thinking around race, disability, carers and all other protected characteristics to make sure that we are having intersectional analysis of those things and intersectional mechanisms. It is not the choice between, well, do we want to increase representation of men of colour or white women? That is not the choice, so there needs to be intersectionality throughout all of this. Thank you very much, Ellen, for your questions. I just want to bring in my colleague Willie Coffey with a question. He is joining us on blue jeans as well. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the panel. I just wanted to ask a question to our two councillor colleagues. First, I say thank you to councillor Ashraf for mentioning Bashir. I was privileged to serve in the Parliament at the same time as Bashir to assure you he is very much missed around the Parliament. I wanted to ask about the question that I asked previously to councillor Evison. It is about how to get more people attracted into local government who may actually be currently working.  You mentioned that a lot of your friends and colleagues are already earning well beyond what the councillor's pay is. How do we solve this? Do we put the pay up from £17,000 to £18,000 into what level? How do we attract people that are perhaps earning at the moment and have to support their family and pay a mortgage to still be attracted enough to come into local government? Do we need to somehow match what a person's salary might be so that they do not financially lose and it enables them to do the job full-time, as councillor Evison suggests that we should do? What is the solution that you think to it? Maybe Soraya and Jean-Ed could offer a few thoughts on that. Hi. I agree that your renumeration really needs to change. There is absolutely no doubt about it. I have a science background and I know that my colleagues and fellow scientists are working in the pharmaceutical industry and education. My renumeration at the council is nowhere near match. I cannot make up with it with a part-time job either. What I did find was that in 2012 I was teaching and there were certain committees that I had to chair at one committee every six weeks or one committee every four weeks. Because there was a requirement for a continuity from my employer, there was a requirement that they said, we do not really want to slot out the classroom, the module that you are teaching. We want that continuity, so either you can do all of these or, literally, it was a case of done. I think that certainly I can have more flexibility from the employer. That would definitely help me out. I am not going to put any particular employer on the spot, but I know from the feedback that I have got from my colleagues that the process that they had to go through to their employers that I am an elected member and I have certain rights in terms of resale being the public. You feel like you are being singled out in your colleagues and you are having to almost sometimes fight that corner, so you get an understanding and more flexibility from the employer. You mentioned actually mapping salaries, so if that was possible, you would see doctors, lawyers, scientists and engineers. Certainly when it comes to the pandemic, there is a lack of medical profession and a lack of scientists in decision making. Having that broad, diverse representation is so important. The idea that you suggested previously, when Councillor Alison Evans was speaking, and seriously looking at the remeriation, it needs to be looked at because it would be much more inclusive of broadening the representation. It is so important that we have a representative voice for the communities that we represent in local government and in all levels of government. From my perspective, what I believe needs to be done is, first and foremost, the role of a councillor needs to be defined. We do not have a definition of what a counciller is supposed to do. It differs from local authority to local authority in terms of the structure of local government. For example, Glasgow City Council has more of a government role where it has higher positions, whereas, for example, Mouth Action Council has more of a committee structure with conveners attached to it. First and foremost, it needs to be a defined role as to what it is. I cannot look up a definition of what my role actually is and what my role is in responsibilities. Therefore, what the role has slowly become over time is that, in the past 10 years, we have gone from, essentially, the level of everything that is our job. If somebody gets in touch with me with an issue with their GP or something to do with their Twitter account, the usual dog mess on the floor is all the way down to having to deal with high levels of banking issues. They are all my issues because they bring it to me. If I don't deal with the issue, the constituent will not be happy, and if the constituent is not happy, then I will not be elected or will not be re-voted in by that constituent. Therefore, we need to define the responsibility for the basic pay. First and foremost, the basic pay needs to be raised. It cannot be £17,000, just as it does with the Westminster problem, where it has an independent regulatory board that comes in to define what the pay should be. I believe that that process is required to take place within Scotland. We need for somebody to look at the role and responsibilities of what councils are doing across the country and define what it is. I could throw out a random number and say that it should be £22,000, £23,000, £24,000, or it should be the median wage of this country, about £26,000 in some areas, but I am just throwing out random figures here because we do not, as I go back to my first point, have what is the responsibility of the councillor. Secondly, I believe that it is tied after the basic pay. We need to have additional sort of monetary incentives for what we are getting involved with. For example, when I was at university for my first two years of being an elected councillor, I sat on three committees. When I finished university and said going straight into a job with a mechanical engineer or a finance company, I decided to spend a year and look at the political role and take on additional responsibilities. I sat on three committees. I sat on about six committees. Instead of being on no public external bodies, most councils are perhaps in one. I sat on three instead of being involved in just having no role. In my political grouping, I took on the qualities of the role. All of that has an impact on how much time is being used by myself. For example, a colleague of mine is perhaps on two or three committees and has no external bodies and has no additional responsibility in terms of a role within our political grouping. They get paid the exact same. That is why I am getting paid. I am not saying that I am the hardest working councillor, but there are councillors who think that they are significantly more important. Sorry to interrupt you. I just need to come in because we are moving quite well over time. A few other people would like to have time to offer their perspective as well. Thank you so much for what you were saying. Your contribution is very valuable. I would like to give a little bit of time to Ethan and Jesse. Then we have one final question that my colleague Paul McClellan is going to ask. Thank you. Absolutely, there is no need to find. I would take this as an answer in this question, as an organisational report, and approach how I recruit in my job at Inclusion Scotland. We recruit by making the wages competitive with the level of work that someone is expected to do. We have a clearly defined role description. Actually, it is a really competitive environment. The third sector right now has a lot of jobs going on. You cannot advertise a CEO role for £27,000. You are not going to get someone, because they can get a job at a lesser level with less stress or more money, or they can go and get a CEO role job for a lot more money somewhere else. We need to think about this. How do organisations do it? There is good practice out there. We could get recruitment consultants at any level of consultants. The thing is that we do not treat councils like it is a job. We are still on this. It is a public service thing, so councils do not have the right to an HR department. We have not got all that support if you have been dealing with someone, and it is potentially someone to your side of one day where it is the support that you would have on an HR department within your organisation. There is a whole level of things where we need to shift focus and say that this is a professional job. There needs to be an organisational structure behind it and support that you would get in any other role. Just a very quick point following on from what Ethan was saying. There is pay, but there are other measures that you expect in a workplace that relate to that HR-style stuff. The thing that I want to draw a bit of attention to is to go back to the family guidance, parental leave and the fact that, without having a robust and competitive policy on family leave, women are going to be—that is a massive barrier for women—largily not going to be able to win their face between choosing between a job that they are currently in that provides generous and good quality of family leave. Women are often going to leave that for what is offered within the council role, so I think that that needs to be a priority. Thank you very much for that. I am going to move to Paul McClellan with a question. Thanks, convener. One of the key things is that there was equal representation in politics toolkit that was just launched, and there were three or four organisations that were represented today that took part in that. The question is what engagement has been with political parties and local authorities in that respect? One final concluding thing would be that you have already mentioned all of your end about how we encourage women and underrepresented groups in the local politics. If there is anything else that you think you would need to add just at that stage, just to close. I will probably come to myself first of all, Jesse. I know when gender was involved in the toolkit development itself. I am the development officer on the equal representation in politics projects. All of the organisations on this panel are members of the equal representation in politics coalition. The toolkit was developed a couple of years ago. Part of my role has been working with coalition members to enhance, develop and do outreach with political parties to promote and support use of it. There has been an overwhelmingly positive response from political parties or individuals that I have contacted within that role towards the toolkit. There is enthusiasm to do something about that issue. Just to explain quickly about what the equal representation in politics toolkit does. Basically, it is a set of online resources that parties can use completely for free, and it provides comprehensive self-assessment quizzes across seven topics that can support parties to identify areas for improvement and measures that can be taken to improve to support diverse representation and involvement of underrepresented groups in politics. Parties have been enthusiastic about using that, but we really need to recognise the challenges in terms of time. Many people that are in pivotal roles within political parties are volunteers who are time stretched. There are a million and one things to get on with in terms of their volunteer role and their life outside of the party. Getting a consistent and integrating use of the toolkit and integrating the methodical way of reviewing internal practices and processes is a challenge in terms of volunteer time. It is a great investment for parties to make to develop internally appropriate ways of using those toolkits. The resources that the work has been done by the organisations that have created this toolkit and who want to provide the support for parties because they recognise the really pivotal gatekeeper role that parties have within creating a more diverse representation. There is information in the toolkit relating to a range of different things that cover party life around candidate selection procedures, looking at tackling abuse, looking at how accessible activities, events and campaigning are. All manner of things that a political party does are to make sure that it is as inclusive and open as possible to support as many people as possible to be able to get involved and crucially to stay involved. What is really positive about it is that there has been huge enthusiasm of parties using and accessing those resources. There is enthusiasm in what happens with that enthusiasm. How is it sustained and how is it built in to processes? Hopefully, it becomes a self-fulfilling thing. When the toolkit is accessed, people use one part and then they use another part, and it becomes a self-fulfilling thing. Processes grow and become more accessible. Do you have the ultimate impact of creating more diverse representative institutions? Was that the whole question? That was the first part of the question. I think that you covered it, Jesse, just about how we encourage other groups, but you have covered that in your answers in that regard. I suppose that you are opening up the question. If there is anything else to add, I think that Jesse covered that really well, but if there is anything else that anybody else wants to add, I do not know if that is going to come through. We have run out of time on that. I want to say to everybody that this is not the only session that we are going to hold on this. I think that we, as a committee, believe that this is a very important issue to address and see progress on. Thank you very much for coming this morning. I am sorry that you were not all able to get into every little bit of detail, but it has been very helpful for us to meet with you this morning and hear your perspectives. I am now going to suspend the meeting to allow for a change of our witnesses. Welcome back. We are going to continue to take evidence on barriers to elected office and welcome our third and final panel this morning. The panel is comprised of James Kelly, general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, Councillor Louise McAllister from Ellen and District, Roslyn MacPherson, a former council candidate in the Western Isles, Councillor Kelly Parry, the local government convener of the Scottish National Party, Sheila Ritchie, convener of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and Councillor Cameron Rose from Southside Newington. Thank you for joining us today. We are going to move straight to questions and witnesses. If you wish to respond to or contribute to a discussion, please add an R in the chat box to indicate that. I am going to ask you all up front to try to be succinct in your responses. Time is against us. We want to hear from everybody and we have quite a few questions. And also we might direct specific questions to someone in particular if that is more relevant. I would like to start with a question that could take us all day, but with that risk, I am going to ask you how and why you became involved in local politics. Maybe the person going first will have a harder time with this, but if the rest of you can be kind of thinking about that key moment that really brought you in and said, this is something that I really want to engage in, that would be very welcome. So I am just going to begin with the order that I called the name. James, if you could make a start there, that would be great. Okay, thank you, and I welcome the opportunity to participate in the evidence session. I have been involved in politics for 40 years as a member of the Labour Party. I have gone from a party activist to an election agent to an MSP and now a party official. In terms of what drove me to be involved in elected office, I suppose everybody joins a political party with a commitment. Whatever their politics, they think that and they believe that what they are committed to will make country and society and the community to come from a better place. What drove me forward was the community that I grew up in, canvas line, where I still stay. I was decimated by factory closures that were involved in politics. I enjoyed that involvement and through time people approached me and asked me to stand for Parliament and regarded that as an honour. Ultimately, I wanted to help to make my local community a better place. That was what brought me into it. I will now go to Louise McAllister, followed by Roslyn McPherson. Thank you so much and thank you for the opportunity to speak. A really interesting question and one that I can answer very briefly is that I was asked if I would consider standing as a councillor having been sat on the community council for some time. Prior to that, I had been chair of various groups in our local community. I was approached by a sitting councillor to see if I would consider standing. With that in mind, we had an event not that long ago, and it was a woman-centric group, where we all discussed how we had come to stand as local councillors. It was almost 100 per cent, if not 100 per cent, of female councillors who were standing, had all been approached by someone else to see if they would consider standing. It was very much that we were all invited, if you like, to stand, rather than necessarily stepping forward of our own volition. We all find that that was really quite an interesting take on our perspective from there. I was asked, as I think many people are, and that really sparked my interest and, having looked more into it, followed up and stepped forward. Short and sweet answer to that when I was asked. I don't know if you can hear me or see me. Yes, absolutely. Trying to keep it brief, same as James said, I believed that I could do some good in my community. I had strong opinions on lots of things and felt that I could be useful to the community. That pretty much sums it up. Thank you very much for that. Kelly Parry, followed by Sheila Ritchie and then Cameron Rose. Thank you. I'm really grateful to be here this morning. I'll keep this very brief, but I became a member of a political party, a Scottish National Party, back in 2005. It wasn't really until I got involved in a local school closure that affected my son, so many women in politics are a way that we get involved in our communities. Of course, the independence referendum was a key catalyst for me to take the next-level step, if you like, between being involved in politics and standing for elected office. I was elected in 2015 in a bi-election. In 2017, when I stood, there was a real push, encouragement and empowerment in getting more women elected as well. We'll look to stand again in 2022. It was about my community and what I wanted to change locally, but also the national politics. I approached it from a slightly different perspective. I joined the Liberal Party in Scotland in 2000—no, I lie—in 1981. I approached it from a political philosophical perspective. I think that the world is better if it's liberal. Although it wasn't the reason that I'm here, I was a councillor from 1988 until 1996. I wanted to make my area more liberal in the way that it did. Thank you for inviting me. I wanted to change the world. I looked at what was happening around, thought that it wasn't going in the right direction, so I wanted to, at least in my small corner, be a contribution to changing that. I'm not sure that I've been very successful in that, but it was significant that I had the time. I got to a stage in my life when my children were grown up, my wife supported me and I was able to do so. That's why I got involved. The next question is addressed to our three councillors that we have with us this morning. I'd like to hear—again, it's going to be in brief, but it's difficult to baby-do for the first person to take that question. We'd like to have the councillors talk us through what a normal week looks like, how much time do you spend on councillor duties and how do you fit in other things in your life, such as other work, running a business or caring responsibilities, as we've heard earlier. I'm going to tack on to that. I've got another question, but I'm going to tack on to that in the use of time. Tell us how much you're paid and if you think that councillor should be paid more for that work that you're doing and, if so, how much do you think it should be? It's a great question. What a varied answer you are likely to have from all the councillors. There is no average week in terms of being a councillor every day. It can be different. Additionally, the way that council meeting structures work, they do tend to work in six-week cycles. That means that it can be very difficult to predict what will happen in terms of your week-to-week business. In terms of what that means for me, that's a challenge. I've got two children and another paid role. It means that I have become an expert in trying to juggle those roles, which can be difficult. There's absolutely a barrier to people with caring responsibilities or family responsibilities from entering local government. That being said, I think that having more women and other represented groups is essential in terms of local government and the types of decisions that we make affect all of our communities. However, it's important that we have that lived experience in our council chambers. It is incredibly complex and time consuming. I am an opposition councillor, so I earned the very basic minimum in terms of councillor salary. I don't think that I would be able to financially survive if it wasn't for the fact that I had another paid role. I'm very lucky that I have a flexible paid role and that my paid role is within local government. However, I know from personal experience and experience of other colleagues that it's incredibly difficult to find other part-time work that not only fits in with being a councillor, but sometimes recruiters will look at your current job, such as being a councillor, for example, and that can be off-putting to some employers. I hope that that's helpful. I'm not going to put you on the spot, but maybe I'm going to put you on the spot. Would you be willing to say how much you get paid as a councillor? I know that it's difficult to speak for yourself, but what do you think we should be looking at in terms of a right level of remuneration for the work that you're doing? I'm paid like every other opposition councillor that doesn't have a special responsibility to pay £18,000 a year. In terms of what councillors should get paid, it's a very interesting question, and I think that we often debate that councillors should absolutely be paid to war, and I think that that's quite accepted. Whether you increase the councillor budget and pay everybody more or whether you distribute it differently is certainly a political question. There should be a bigger budget. I don't think that we should necessarily reduce the amount of councillors to fix that conundrum, and I think that we need better parity with MP and MSP paid, because, as was discussed earlier, the demands of being a councillor has increased. I think that the expectations from the public continue to increase in terms of what they expect from their councillor, yet councillors are often working, mostly working full-time hours, with absolutely no staff support at all whatsoever. In terms of parity, I think that what councillors do with no support is absolutely up there in terms of a level of, say, a backbench MSP. While I'm not advocating that that's what the pay level should be, I think that it should absolutely be aiming to be much better and somewhere in between. I'm not sure that I've got an answer to what we should be paid. I'm just a little bit hesitant about the professionalisation of councillors or going too far down that route. Yes, I agree. The £18,000 that we get paid as an opposition councillor, everybody gets paid £18,000 that those who have special responsibility payments. However, I'm just not sure that giving an appropriate amount or amount that's commensured to the hours worked is necessarily the answer. I don't know the answer to that. What's the shape of my life as a councillor? Well, key is flexibility. There are certain things that are fixed, like the times of meetings, but I can fit all sorts of other things round about it. We obviously work in the evenings as well. I do some weeks, I maybe do 30 hours a week and other weeks I'll do 60 or 70. It doesn't stop on a Friday and it certainly doesn't stop at five o'clock, but that also means that I can see the grandchildren or the children sometimes during a weekday as well. There's a lot of flexibility there. There's a huge amount, a huge opportunity to expand. You can spend as much time as you want and there's always a demand there. However, as we see from the profile of different councillors, some spend quite a lot less in terms of their time commitment because of the circumstances that we've talked of. Thank you for that, Councillor Rose and Louise McAllister. Thanks very much. Yes, absolutely. How long is a piece of string is how our working week looks? This is my only timed meeting today. However, I've been in my little office at the bottom of the garden since 8.30 and I'm likely to be here for the rest of the day, answering emails and chasing things up. I think that it's worth taking into account that those evening meetings, for example, I have about 11 evening meetings a month between schools and community councils that, although I might not be obliged to go, it's absolutely expected. Certainly, the people sitting on those community councils and school parents councils expect me to turn up to those things. There is that level of expectation that's there that falls far out with our scheduled meetings from a council perspective week to week. Yes, absolutely, it differs, and I think that we need to take into account—for example, I sit on education and childcare. Not only are there those meetings, they are also the pre-meetings, but there are also the papers to read through beforehand, and they can run, as anyone will note, hundreds of pages of really quite detailed information that needs to go through. They take up a considerable amount of time as well if you're to do the job properly. I think that that's key. I do know of councillors and I've heard anecdotally of councillors who seem to skate by doing the bare minimum. That's required of them, but of course that's not really what we want. We want councillors who are dedicated to their course of work and their commitments that they've made and their pledges that they've made to the people who voted for them. I have to say that I have a second job. I'm self-employed, and I absolutely could not survive on the councillor's income as it stands, again, which is £18,000 a year. How much do we need to increase that by? I would put my hat in the ring and say at least a third again, so let's round it up to 20. You're looking closer to 30,000 to make it anything like an attractive proposition for anyone. Whether we could ever match salaries, I don't know that that's the way to go. I think it's essential that all councillors across the country are paid the same, so going down the route of matching salaries takes us into a completely different territory. I was having a conversation with a fellow councillor earlier today, and she put forward the fact that she has been in receipt of universal credit as a single parent of two children.  She has now taken on an additional two-day a week role, so she steps back from universal credit, but she did say to me that she's struggling with even just working on that additional two days on top of her councillor duties. Have I answered everything in that? Yes, I think that you have. Thank you very much. Thanks to all three of you for that. I'm going to pass over to Miles Briggs to continue with some more questions. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us today. I wanted to ask, given the limited time, we've got two double questions almost. The first one is about what support you received from the political party that you stood for at the election, and secondly, what support you've received from the council to do the job as a councillor or any other external bodies. I'll maybe start with councillor Perry, and then we can move around. That's a really good question. I completely acknowledge the role that political parties themselves have to play in terms of increasing diversity. In 2017, I certainly felt very supported, and I know that others did. The Scottish National Party increased our women's representation in terms of local government by around 15 per cent in 2017, so I think that extra support was effective. Since then, we've ran a number of programmes around mentoring, inspiring and supporting not just women but other underrepresented groups. However, I do think that there comes a point when there's only so much that political parties can do. I think that, certainly, and there's been a huge focus of the party role that I do over the past year in terms of making sure that we can maintain that and where possible increase it. There are two things that we have an issue with. One is retention of councillors who come from underrepresented groups, and I think that you touched on that earlier, Miles. I know that a lot of the evidence around this is anecdotal, but for some of the reasons that we've pointed out around paying conditions and trying to gain other employment, along the way we have lost women councillors and other represented groups. I fear, although we won't know that until after the election, that we will see more underrepresented groups not stand again in 2022 as well, so I do think that that's an issue. In terms of what councils have done, it's a really interesting question, so just a local perspective on it from me, so Midlothian was the most gender-balanced council in Scotland after the local elections, however, every single senior position a Midlothian council is held by a man, so there are absolutely things that councils can do and should do, and the third thing that I would just point out, because it was raised earlier as well by a number of organisations, is just some of the gaps in terms of the Equality Act and what that means that political parties can or can't do. All women's short lists are a really good example, so where we've already had equal representation for women, we do have an issue in terms of that not being compatible with the Equality Act. It would certainly be good if that was one of the things that the committee could look at in terms of devolving that or seeing how we can change that. Thank you for that, Councillor Perry. I'm going to just call a stack here of the other councillors but also bring Roslyn in, so if we could hear responses from Cameron, Roslyn and then Louise on Miles's questions, that would be great. Thanks very much. I'm tempted to respond with some dissension to some of the things that Kelly just said, but answering the question, the two parts of the question that you asked Miles, not enough, I think, on both parts, either from the party or in the council. I'm a councillor in Edinburgh. I have a personal assistant who I share with five other councillors and there's just always more to do and I can do with more assistance here. And similarly, back at party level, more assistance would be welcome, but that's life, that's where we're at. I can't do everything. Thank you for that, Cameron. Roslyn, if you could come up. Let's go with Louise. You're already up on the screen. Thanks so much. I have to say that I stood in by-election just in October of last year and I felt that I was supported hugely by my party, which is the Scottish National Party. And in fact, I was urged forward by a couple of male colleagues who particularly noted that where men like to talk, women like to do, and they felt that having more women in the mix was a really positive step forward. And I received absolutely nothing but encouragement and enthusiasm during my campaign, which was absolutely wonderful. In terms of the council, of course, I've done everything in life from this little office since being elected. I've never sat in a meeting room with anyone and I've had, I suppose, minimal contact with the council, perhaps because of that. The general consensus is that I've managed brilliantly well when I speak to officers in the council and that I seem to be getting to grips with everything. However, I can assure you that, within about five weeks of after-election, I really felt cut adrift. I didn't share their confidence in my abilities and to the point where I really reconsidered my decision to stand and wondered what on earth I'd done. I'm glad to say that I've stuck in, but certainly I think that the council could do more to support councillors. That said, I appreciate that everything's done at a distance and perhaps where I am in a building with people unable to pop down the corridor and speak with someone, that might make life a lot easier. We'll see what next year brings. I'm standing again in next year's election, so it hasn't put me off to any great extent. I was taking part in a group looking at councillor induction. Whether that was someone who stood in a bi-election or stood in a wider election in 2017, there are lots of gaps in there. Of course there are, and that's always going to be the case. I don't think that an induction session or sessions can ever cover every aspect of life as a councillor. Some things you have to discover along the way, as most people do in their line of work, whatever that might be. I would say that the offers of help have always been there. Practical help, I could probably have done with more of it, and perhaps that will change in 2022. Thank you very much for that. Roslyn, would you like to come in and share your perspective on how he stood as a candidate in the Western Isles? I think that I have to disagree slightly with the party experience that has been expressed by other people, partly because my local branch was very dormant, and so there wasn't a lot of local help offered to me when I stood. The majority of the help that I got and the support that I got came from elected members and the neighbouring branch, who were absolutely fantastic at bringing people down to help campaign with me. However, the wider party, I actually felt quite abandoned, and when I didn't get elected, I felt completely ignored. I stood twice once in a bi-election and once in the last full council elections, and both times there were messages going out from the party congratulating all those who had been elected, and those of us who had stood and didn't get elected were completely ignored. It was not an edifying experience, and one I fed back, but received again no feedback on, so I was quite disappointed in the party at that time. Thank you for that. My second question was with regard to looking to the future then, and what you think would help for those who have given your experience on the council, what needs to change to actually put in place better support services? We know that some councillors don't have any secretarial support whatsoever, and others do receive that. I wonder if our panel could make any comments with regard to that. My second question is one that I raised earlier with regard to personal security, because sadly it has become an issue that we are acutely aware of. I know that most councillors will be working on their own. We are currently, as parliamentarians, looking at our own security here in the Scottish Parliament and Westminster the same, so I just wonder if you had any reflections on that as well. I'll maybe bring in Cameron Rose to start and then move right in the panel. On personal security, I don't personally feel any angst or concerns about that, and regard my contact with members of the public as very much part of my job in all sorts of circumstances. Sometimes there are risks when you're dealing one-to-one with somebody who might be volatile, but I just think that for me that's part of the job. The other part of the question was… It was regard to support services. I know that you'd mentioned you share someone with five of the councillors. Miles, it's just never enough, but I recognise that, as for many other people, resources are limited. I would welcome more resources to deal with the pretty heavy workload that I have with 24,000 electors, 33,000 souls in the world that I have. I can never do all that I want to do and need to do to serve them adequately, and more support in that respect would help, but I realise that there are other calls on resources as well. Councillor Perry, can I move to you? Yes, thank you, Miles. Really good questions. In terms of personal security, I'm often struck when we have these conversations about how many male councillors I often hear from who say that personal security isn't an issue. It absolutely is certainly for women councillors who, as we know, often face a higher level of abuse and criticism from their male counterparts. I really welcomed the response from Police Scotland around personal security for councillors on the back of the really tragic events that recently unfolded at Westminster. However, you'll probably be aware that a lot of the personal protections that councillors were asked to put in place in terms of personal safety were around having staff members present at surgeries and at particular points like that. As we've already heard from various evidence givers today, staff support given to councillors varies from local authority to local authority. That is a political, budgetary decision, and I think that that perhaps shouldn't be the case. In terms of what needs to change, you're right that that is a fundamental part of that as well. Interlinked with that, and of course, as a barrier just standing as well, is what happens on social media in terms of scrutiny to women. We need to start moving away from the rhetoric around how it's our responsibility to keep ourselves safe. Of course, we want to make ourselves accessible to the public, but we have to start looking at that from the point of view of challenging social media platforms, to earth specifically, as a particular issue. I think that perpetrators as well, people who take part in toxic abuse on social media, that should absolutely be addressed as well, so thank you for those very good questions. Thank you for that. Finally, could I bring in Councillor McAllister? You've already outlined that you've been working from the bottom of your garden for most of this pandemic and since you were elected, but I wanted to ask specifically the questions with regard to different working means and methods as well. A lot of us have moved to working from home, whether or not you think that's helped to improve the way in which you're able to undertake your role as a councillor. Again, if you have any reflections on your concerns or any information given around personal security by Aberdeenshire Council to yourself as well. Thank you very much for that and good questions. I recently attended a loan working session where we looked at personal safety and that was quite interesting. It was a discussion, I suppose, as much as anything else. We did have a presentation, but it was very much discussion led among us as councillors. Interestingly, one of the things that came forward was the seeming reliance on people who have nothing to do with us as a role as councillor, looking out for our own safety. I would list with that a couple of councillors mentioned working from schools in the evening and feeling that having the janitor in the building provided them with a level of safety. As I pointed out, the janitor is in no way obliged to stand between you and an angry constituent who might be presenting a threat. We have to be very careful when we like to be able to rely on people to come to our aid if need be, but I don't think that we can oblige anyone or we certainly couldn't hold anyone to account if they weren't willing to put themselves at risk. I think that, in terms of working from the bottom of the garden, that has great advantages. I think that the silver lining of Covid has demonstrated to many people that we are able to work remotely or, like the issues in Facetime or Zoom or whatever platform we are on, that we can still connect with people who have issues. That obviously protects everyone and keeps everyone safe. It is not ideal 100 per cent of the time, but nothing is. However, it also allows us to manage our time much better. I would take us back to our evening meetings. When I don't have to attend in person, I can spend half an hour or therebytes at three different meetings during the course of one evening. However, if I have to attend in person and there is travel time in with that, half an hour each by travel time bites into the evening and I can then only attend one meeting. I think that there are advantages with that. That also ties in with our safety, especially if the nights are now drawing in, as they say. I can be out driving around the countryside in rural Aberdeenshire. Quite some distances to attend these different meetings. It's dark when I go in, it's dark when I come out. Yes, there might be other people around, but if I want to hold back and speak with one person, I am then leaving the building in the area and that shady car park on my own at night. I have done that in a previous role. It has never caused me undue concern, but it is something that we are all increasingly aware of now that we really need to be careful and look out for our own safety. Again, as a female, as a woman, I am quite accustomed to going into strangers' houses in my other role and sitting and having conversations with them. Whether subconsciously or otherwise, I always look after my personal safety. People know where I am going when and how long I expect to be there. I position myself closest to the door.  I would then take forward with me. The loan working presentation was a useful one, but anecdotally, we have all had experiences where we have suddenly realised that we are in a bit of a precarious situation. In terms of support that is available, I did not realise that people could have PAs. Cameron, you are awfully lucky, even if you have to share someone amongst five others. That would probably be superb, but that said, we work with what we have, absolutely, as Cameron rightly points out. I will move on to a question from Eleanor Wittam. It is one of our final questions, and it is to those who are here representing their party, as opposed to being here as councillors. I will direct it to Kelly as the local government convener of the SNP, James as the general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, and then to Sheila as convener of the Lib Dems. My question is, what are your parties doing to encourage a wider range of candidates for next year's local government elections? If you could please be as succinct as you can, that would be fantastic. Kelly First, thanks. Thanks, really good question. We have been working really hard to increase our diversity of candidates, so we have worked with a number of organisations, many who have been represented today, in giving evidence. We have had a mentoring programme, a body system, and we have done various events in terms of recruiting and supporting underrepresented groups to ensure that we have a biggest pool that we can. We have also tried to instill culture change within our party, and we have made sure that it is an important part of our recruitment process. In fact, I would say that it has been absolutely central in terms of our recruitment process. We completely appreciate that to make sure that we have a diverse cohort of councillors after the next election is really, really important. As I said earlier, we managed to increase our representation of women in 2017, and we hope to increase our representation of underrepresented groups as well. However, I guess that there is just one challenge to flag up, is that we can do our best to make sure that our candidate pool is the best that it can be, but we also need to make sure that we focus on making sure that those candidates are selected and then elected, and then able to continue on their role as well. There are lots of political parties that can do that, and I genuinely feel that the Scottish National Party has done every single thing that it possibly can in terms of increasing our diversity, but there are other things that the Scottish Parliament and, I guess, this committee can do to help all parties to realise their ambitions in terms of that work, and that is absolutely around paying conditions. Over to you, committee, as a message from me, I am quite sure that we are doing our bit, and I am sure that other parties are as well, but I guess that that is the message that I would like to leave you with today. Thanks, Kelly. If we could then have James and Sheila briefly, that would be great. Okay, thanks for the question. Specifically, what Scottish Labour has done is, in terms of target seats, winnable seats, we have said that 50 per cent of those have got to be selected for women, so their AWSs are all women's short lists. We have also run a series of engagement events in order to try to get new people to come forward. Not just women, but ethnic minorities and other groups that are underrepresented in councils. We will back that up in specific training sessions so that, again, we cannot only support and encourage those who are coming forward, but make sure that they have the kind of backup that is needed to give them the confidence to take place in such selections and also take that into the election campaign itself. We have spoken to organisations like Engender and are using their toolkit also to provide support. In terms of our local government committees, we are very proactive with them in ensuring that they follow up on candidate applications, particularly when there is a shortfall in terms of underrepresented groups coming forward. I agree with what has been said in terms of political parties. Obviously, we have a role in bringing new fresh people forward that are currently underrepresented. However, the key theme that has come across in this session is the issue of what councillors are paid—£18,604. It does not represent a full-time salary, and that is the biggest constraint for us in terms of bringing a wide range of people forward. It also means that people in the system are reluctant to retire and move on, so they do not get a refresh and do not get new people. Political parties need to take a strong leadership role in that, but the fundamental issue that needs to be addressed is the rumouration that is available to councillors. Only once that is addressed will you get a wider range of candidates and councillors. I would start by totally agreeing with what James said about barriers to candidacy. Having done a fair bit of research inside the party, the single biggest issue, particularly for young people and for women, is the pay. I think that this is a bit of a problem of being careful what you wish for, because I think that we have completely changed the nature of councillorship. I have sat through the earlier panel sessions, so I am fully conscious that you have engaged with those issues. We have done a lot short-haul of moving to all women short lists. We were hammered in 2016 in the Scottish Parliament elections, and Willie Rennie led from the front in engaging with change to the extent that we have achieved from our very high numbers, 50-50 female representation in the Westminster Parliament between men and women. That helps in a different way, because it gives us two really good role models. I think that role models are a core to having women in particular see people in political roles that they recognise as being the same as themselves. Part of the work that was done on gender diversity by Willie Rennie has subsequently been extended to groups of people with other protected characteristics. Our diversity fund was set up with a base level and is required to be increased by the rate of inflation every year, and that money is spent to support candidates, preferably candidates in winnable seats, who come from groups of people with protected characteristics. About 85 per cent of it is spent on women, but it is available to disabled candidates, candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds as well. We are seeing more of those people coming forward. We have two UK national programmes that help. Our last federal president, Baroness Brinton, set up a future women leaders cohort, which trains and brings on women not just at parliamentary level across the country every year. We set up a campaign for gender balance inside the party that does mentorship training for approval and training for selection, and generally provides additional support for women candidates again at every level. Our women's group within the party has run a women's supporting women campaign over the last three or four years. It is normal when you see a women candidate in a by-election to have poured some Scottish Liberal Democrat women turning up and helping over weekends and providing additional support that might not otherwise be available. That ties on to the 50-50 practice of Ask her to stand, which we are realising needs more than one ask if it is a women candidate. There is actually received data that says that if you ask a man to stand, he is far more likely to say yes the first time, whereas a woman may need to be asked five or six times before she is persuaded that this is a course of action that she wants to take. If I can say one other thing that relates to earlier sessions and that was on data collection, we have had GDPR problems in collecting the data that Inclusion Scotland asked us to. We have got past them because it has involved us in changing our data policies and obviously publicising those to the membership. We cannot require people to give us the information that we need in order to be 100 per cent on collecting statistics around protected characteristics, but we are absolutely going for it this time to the extent that we possibly can. I would like to think that we will be able to provide better data come the end of May next year. That issue is as important at the selection stage as it is at the nomination stage, although selection is becoming significantly less of an issue because of the barriers of pay, working conditions and culture. Thank you very much, Sheila, for your responses and for rounding up this panel. I just want to say thank you so much for making time to be with us this morning. I am sorry that it got a little bit shifted in the schedule, but your responses have been very helpful for us to get perspectives from lived and beyond experience from political parties. Thank you for being with us this morning. As I said earlier, this is one of several sessions that we hope to carry out and hopefully in the next sessions we can start to move towards what kinds of actions can we really take and get concrete there. For now, thank you very much and I am going to suspend to allow the witnesses to leave. The fifth item on our agenda today is consideration of the Scottish Government's draft policy statement and draft annual report on the use of the keeping pace power conferred on the Scottish Government by the UK withdrawal from the European Union continuity Scotland Act 2021. The Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Cultural Committee has shared those with subject committees for comment and invited us to submit comments to the Scottish Government. Do members have comments on the draft policy statement and the draft annual report? No indication for comments. Perhaps only to ask convener in the point 11 in the paper we could ask the Scottish Government if it would outline the benefits to us of aligning Scotland's law with European law. It might be worth just simply asking that and perhaps to receive a regular update on progress with that perhaps annually or something like that that might be appropriate, so that's all I would suggest to do to add to the bill of points. I would like to include a part where we ensure that local governments included in those common frameworks and that we make sure that that is outlined from the committee's perspective. If there are no further comments, do we agree to write to the Scottish Government highlighting those comments and points for clarification in the paper for the agenda item? I see that we are all agreed. Thank you. As agreed earlier in the meeting, we will consider item 6 in private. I now close the public part of the meeting and we will move into private.


And then let's jump right in. So first, what even are ice breakers? So right, ice breakers are games that are designed to break the ice. Typically you would use those kinds of games at the beginning of like a new school year when you have a new set of students, a new class that you don't know and they don't know you. And that's why that's when you would use ice breaker games and why are they important? So for one, they get your students going and speaking in English and that's really important. You don't wanna come into the classroom and then be like, okay, open your books to page five. And then we start studying and going right into English. It's especially for EFL when you're teaching students who don't live in a country where they are exposed to English at all, the classroom that you are in is usually the only place where they are exposed to English. So the whole day they speak their own native language, they're not surrounded by English at all. So that is the only place where they use English. And so they need time to like switch their language in their brains, in their heads, right? If you speak another language, if you know another language, you know what I'm talking about. It's sometimes really difficult to just turn it off and then the other language on, you can become confused and that's why it's so important. So ice breaker games and ice breaker games are not about studying per se, they're just about loosening up, creating like a comfortable and fun environment for you students to use English to get started and get going in English. So that's one thing. Then ice breaker games are also great for getting to know your students, especially if you know you teach them for the very first time, you don't know your students at all. So you get to know your students, they're like what they like, what they don't like and a little bit about themselves. But also you are able to assess their English level a little bit with those ice breaker games. And that's really, really useful for planning your future lessons, right? When you know what your students like, what they don't like, you can create games around their likes. And also obviously when you figure out their level, you'll be able to create much more suitable lessons for them in the future. So that's the second part. The third important reason that I've chosen for the ice breaker games is that you can use them to build rapport with your students, right? Because you create this fun environment, a comfortable environment for them to feel safe, to use English. A lot of English learners, they're shy, they feel uncomfortable using English because it's not something they typically do. So you can use ice breakers to sort of give them confidence, show them that English learning is fun, that there's nothing to worry about. And yeah, you can also, yeah, build rapport, get to know them, they get to know you. So those are the three important things why we use ice breakers typically, there's probably a ton more, but those are like the three important things that I chose. And yeah, now we're gonna get into five and more. Different games. So the last, the fifth game has a couple of different versions to it. So that's why I say five and more. So let's... Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT, the leading provider for TEFL and TESOL training courses. If you liked this video, please subscribe by clicking the button down here and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


Hello again, Casey Luskin. I'd like to talk to you about the recent email newsletter I received. It's called Nota Bene, and it included a link to an article called Evaluating Nature's 2009 15 Evolutionary Gems Darwin Evangelism Kit. I'd like to point out for you, Mr. Luskin, where you used a few common fallacies. I'm sure you'll appreciate the corrections because I know how committed you are to rationality and honesty. First, I note that you mock the cover art on the nature brochure as resembling religious tracks. You compare it to Jesus and lion lamb imagery. The difference here is that Darwin was in fact a naturalist, what we might today call a zoologist, and he is pictured with the subject of some of his books. If Jesus had been a lion tamer, I think it might have been appropriate imagery to picture him with a lion. If he had been a vet, a lamb might not be inappropriate. However, he is reported to have been a carpenter, and perhaps that's why he's frequently pictured in the context of lumber and nails. You next point out that nature was originally published in part to popularize the new theory of evolution by T. Huxley and others. This is very true. It is also true that it is the most cited interdisciplinary science journal, the Very Pinnacle, with an impact factor of over 34. And your attempt to smear this journal based on your disagreement with the nature of its founding in 1869 constitutes a fallacy called the genetic fallacy, where a conclusion is based on something's origins rather than its current meaning or context. We could really use your argument in a textbook. It's so clearly fallacious. Next, Mr. Luskin, you use a classic creationist fallacy of creating a distinction without a difference, micro and macro evolution. Such terms both refer to the same common mechanisms, allelic change over time within a species, and allelic change over time between species is still just allelic change over time. You could have gotten this information from the very brochure you are reviewing in your article. The mechanisms of evolution, such as genetic drift, selection, mutation, aneuploidy, polyploidy, co-evolution, migration, and gene conversion work both within species and between them. Where indeed would we define the end of micro and beginning of macro in terms of the mechanisms of change? I suspect only at your level of comfort with the science. Interestingly, you minimize the number of items in the brochure that relate to macro evolution. Most, you say, might be best views as micro-evolutionary gems. I would point out your spelling and grammar errors, but I'm too polite to say that it should be best be viewed, not be best views. But I am not too polite to say that, by my count, 12 of the 15 items are about changes above the species level. The remaining three deal with subspecies population dynamics. 12 of 15, it should be noted, is a majority. So your claim that most might be best views as micro-evolutionary gems is factually false. Here's another rather blatant fallacy, this time a fallacy of substitution. You state correctly that the packet says, most biologists take for granted the idea that all life evolved by natural selection over billions of years. Natural selection is a fact in the same way that the Earth orbits the Sun is a fact. And then argue that if the statement is true, then we will find no notable scientific descent from the view that all life evolved by natural selection. If you were arguing against the second part of the quoted statement, then you should use the same terms. Natural selection is not disputed by any serious biologist I know. The first part of the quoted statement that most biologists take for granted that all life evolved by natural selection uses the term most, which is a generalization supported by polls of scientists that show over 99% of research biologists support the modern theory of evolution. However, you substitute all in place of most in your proposed test and claim that we shouldn't be able to find scientists who disagree. Therein lies the primary fallacy. But then, dear Casey, you begin the use of personal quotes. You first quote Susan Mazer, a journalist, as though she were an authority on scientific acceptance of evolution. However, she's not a very credible source. She wrote a book on an evolution theory scientific conference that was described by attendees as speculative fiction. Her non-scientific opinion isn't very good supporting evidence for the prevalence of anti-evolutionary thought in research biology. Here we hit the primary underlying fallacy of your article, Mr. Luskin. You frequently confuse opinions for evidence. It might edify you to know that science is not a courtroom with a jury voting on theories. There is no democracy in research. You cite the opinions of 800 scientists who signed a statement. But you should know that this means as much to me as if you got 800 mathematicians to agree that 2 plus 2 equals 5. I would want to see the math. For intelligent design creationism, it doesn't matter how many park rangers and engineers you can produce to vote your way on the jury. In science, we count evidence submitted in peer review and you came empty-handed, Casey. There's more quote mining, an argument from authority. You managed to quote creationist chemist Philip Skell, a professor of geoscience, Lynn Margulis. But as I previously stated, I'm not terribly interested in their opinions on the topic, only their empirical data. The next to last problem in your article isn't so much a fallacy as a lack of due diligence on your part. You state that if evolution is as factual as heliocentrism, as claimed in the brochure, why don't we see an active effort to combat geocentrism? You claim that this is because no one of consequence disagrees. You apparently missed the modern geocentrists. They are quite serious and have published serious books and papers. In fact, Gallup poll suggests that up to 19% of Britons, 18% of Americans and 16% of Germans believe the sun revolves around the earth. This is apparently because of a religious commitment, not unlike the commitment many people have to a literal Biblical creation. Some of them are also quite fond of your work, as I understand, and it's important not to alienate your supporters, so I would say icsnay on the heliocentrism, hey. The last fallacy in your article, Mr. Luskin, is the claim that the journal nature is being too passionate in making their case and therefore suppressing academic freedom, a phrase that is bordering on mantra for the Discovery Institute. The brochure itself is a summary of current findings and theories. Along with summaries and discussion, it contains citations of original research papers containing evidence to support the described conclusions. Academic freedom is your right to go into the field or into the lab and produce data to challenge or falsify these existing models. I haven't seen much research from the DI, nor from its wholly owned subsidiary, the Biologic Institute.  Pick up a pipetter and get to work. Let me be clear here because this is something the Discovery Institute really needs to get their heads around. Academic freedom is not the right to make whatever claims you like and have them respected. We don't all have an inherent equal opportunity to scientific equality. That's what you seem to think that everyone should have the right to publicly state whatever views they want and not be subject to ridicule and criticism. Those without evidentiary support are not entitled to equal time with theories supported by hundreds of thousands of peer reviewed papers. Let me give you a very clear definition of academic freedom, Mr. Leskin. It's the right to do research, engage in scholarship and develop theories and then attempt to present them in the appropriate forum. But the ideas themselves are not guaranteed any success. The scientists who attempt to subvert the scientific burden of proof will be slapped down as your colleagues have been. They may be denied access to serious journals if their cases have no scientific merit. That is not a violation of their academic freedom. It is the process of peer reviewed publication. If they can't hack it, I suggest they look for other work. Likewise, professors who are unable to support their claims with empirical experimentation will find themselves edged out by more productive scientists who do. There are a lot of us out here and not that many tenure track spots.  I understand that you plan on extending your criticism of nature's brochure on evolution to an eight part series. Hopefully you will receive this open letter before you make too many more of the same fallacies. I'm sure you share my enthusiasm for science and logic, so I know you'll want to make the appropriate changes. Sincerely, concordance. P.S. Good luck on your next court case. I'll do my best to attend, and I'll even bring my friends. Thanks for watching.


Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I just thought I'd do a quick supplementary video this week because despite something on the charts that I think really does bear a mention. Before I get into that, on this sunny Friday afternoon on the 26th of February, 2021, just take you through a risk warning because it's just a question of housekeeping for compliance purposes. Nonetheless, what I'm going to be talking about here is a couple of interesting patterns that I as a technical analyst are going to be watching quite closely over the course of the next few days. And that's simply because as an analyst, first and foremost, I like to see evidence of a potential turnaround, a potential reversal or a potential for a particular price move to take place. And one of the things that I use to do that, something called correlation, certain markets correlate with each other quite nicely. And one of the things I've noticed, and you may have seen that I've got three charts up in front of me, one of the things I've noticed over the course of the past few months is how copper prices, I think more or less tracked the rise in stock markets. If we look at, say, for example, the S&P 500 here, we can see that it is slowly embarked on a slow move higher from the March lows of last year. And it's been a fairly steady move. Yes, we've seen the occasional pullback, but nonetheless, we've seen a fairly decent progression higher. However, in the last couple of weeks, there is some evidence of a potential turnaround in sentiment, but more than anything, we obviously need to break below this trend line here. And ultimately correlations are only as good as when they stop working and then they're no good at all. So we do have to also bear in mind that sometimes when a correlation breaks down, it can catch us out. So we can't just look at the correlation all by itself. So let's look at copper prices. So copper prices here, again, nice steady uptrend, and again, the occasional pullback, but nonetheless, we have gone steadily higher from those March lows up until the last couple of days where we've really accelerated higher since the beginning of February on supply versus demand concerns, ultimately the use of copper in renewables and electric cars in battery technology, solar technology has driven a massive move higher, but we've now slipped back a little bit and we've posted a key day reversal or a bearish key day reversal on the daily candlestick chart. Now that might suggest that we do a little bit of a pullback. And in conjunction with those mining stocks, what we've, sorry, those copper prices, we've also seen mining stocks move higher as well. Companies like Anglo-American, BHP, Billiton, Rio Tinto. I've noticed something on the Anglo-American chart which really does intrigue me. Someone who likes looking at Japanese candlestick charts, this is called an island doji reversal. And generally it's a warning sign that upward momentum is starting to run out of steam and we could be about to embark on a little bit of a retest lower. So what's gonna be the catalyst for that test lower? Well, for a start, we'll need to take out this series of loads through here. Ultimately, any type of reversal pattern always needs confirmation. So you can't just say, there's a doji reversal, we're going to go down. Doesn't work like that. You need confirmation of the particular move. So what we'd wanna see is not only Anglo-American share price starts to rotate lower, we would need to see copper prices start to rotate lower. No market goes up in a straight line. The moves that we've seen over the course of the past few weeks are going to be susceptible to a correction. So while the overall upward trend remains intact, we are going to get pullbacks. This chart here is telling me that we could be susceptible to a little bit of a pullback and a little bit of weakness in overall copper prices which could translate into some weakness in copper prices as well. So that's it for this brief technical analysis update on Anglo-American copper prices and broader markets in general. Thanks very much for listening. This is Michael Houston talking to you from CMC Markets.