I ask those members who are leaving the chamber to please do so quickly and quietly. The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 7.522, in the name of Rona Mackay, on the cost to families of imprisonment and release. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. I would ask those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request-to-speak buttons. I call on Rona Mackay to open the debate up to seven minutes, please. The cost of living crisis is affecting everyone in some way or another. For those with a loved one in prison, it is a crisis that is disproportionately damaging. We know that when someone is sentenced to a prison term, the adverse ripple effect on families is immense. A cost of living crisis coming on the back of a decade of austerity and the Covid pandemic is really taking its toll. The impact of that harsh reality is highlighted in a new report from Families Outside, an excellent third sector organisation that has been supporting families of prisoners in Scotland for many years. The report is called, Paying the Price, The Cost to Families of Imprisonment and Release, and it sets out starkly the situation that families now find themselves in. The consultant to the report, Dr Brezh Nugent and the superb team at Families Outside, led by Professor Nancy Laux, highlighted that one in six UK households at 4.4 million, approximately, is now in serious financial difficulties. As convener of the cross-party group on women, families and justice, can I take this opportunity to thank all the stakeholders who attend the group regularly? We are very fortunate in Scotland to have such a stellar third sector network of organisations and professionals concerned with the welfare of families and children affected by imprisonment. The report reveals that 27 per cent of children are living in poverty and in areas such as Glasgow, that rises to 1 in 3. Single parents, predominantly women and low incomes, have been especially affected and the worries that parents face about putting food on the table and paying bills is described in the report as a toxic brew having an adverse impact on mental health. For the report, which was funded by ABRDN financial fairness trust, families outside were able to hear directly from families affected by imprisonment to understand the impact that this was having. There are currently approximately 7,400 people in prison, 96 per cent of whom are male, 280 of whom are women, 100 of whom are on remand and 102 of whom are on remand and most have children. For families with those on remand, it was an especially uncertain, stressful and costly time. Remember that those are people who have not been convicted of any crime. Scotland has one of the highest remand populations in Europe, with nearly 30 per cent of all people in prison held on remand. The bail and release bill, currently proceeding through Parliament, will hopefully alleviate that, but there is no doubt that remand is an especially costly and stressful time for families, with £300 per month on average spent providing support, if for some it rose to £1,000. The cost for families with those who had been sentenced, the costs are also stark. For someone who has served six years in prison, the median total spent on calls, travelling and visiting per month was £180 a month, that is £2,160 a year supporting the person in prison. Alison, a kinship carer in her sixties, is supporting her daughter who is in prison on a short sentence. She said, I cannot keep doing this, the stress is around us all the time, I have all the responsibility and it is wearing me down, it has affected my mental and physical health. The first two months after the person is out of prison are the most stressful and costly, as the person is often without any money until their benefit claims are set up, housing arrangements are made and they have no money needed simply to exist post-prison. As is almost always the case, women are left to quote, cope when a family member is in prison or has been released. They do that by careful management of their already pressured budgets by skipping meals, not buying clothes or visiting food banks. They stop socialising or engaging in activities that cost money, leading them to have a diminished lifestyle, which in turn affects their mental health. Rising energy costs are of particular concern, adding to the stress of eking out the family budget. Children miss out on activities and many interviews said that the concept of family time no longer existed as it had done before. There is no doubt that the Scottish Government's £25 per child benefit, not available anywhere else in the UK, will be a lifeline to many families at this time. Many prisons have now introduced excellent family units and early learning practitioners to help with family contact. What more can be done? Families outside who offer such amazing practical and emotional support to families have suggested many common sense recommendations and I only have time to mention a few. They ask for a removal of charges for electronic payments made into prison accounts, to allow families to hand in items rather than post them, maintain free access to video calls, maintain free allocation of minutes for phone calls, provide free basic hygiene products and packs in prison and to reduce the cost of food available in visitor centres, which is often way too high. Access to funds must be improved and financial support for families such as benefits, claims and travel passes should be available immediately upon release from prison to help that prisoner back into society. People should always be placed in prisons close to their homes and are required for an assessment of the potential impact of family contact before a person is transferred to another prison. Finally, reducing the stigma families affected by imprisonment facing society, there are a number of ways that can be done, such as removing the use of the HMP prison stamps on post-received from establishments and implementing measures to promote education and equalities, for example training on the impact of imprisonment, reference to the impact of imprisonment as part of PSE classes in school. In conclusion, we must provide alternatives to prison, particularly for women. Many women who are incarcerated are victims of domestic abuse, have addiction and mental health issues. We have the evidence that prison wrecks families. It creates, sustains and deepens poverty among children and families. They are guilty of no crime, and we must do everything that we can to support them. I am grateful to Rona Mackay for holding the debate today. I welcome the findings of Families Outside's report on the cost of families of imprisonment and release. The debate is an incredibly important one, as those costs can be devastating for families. We need to acknowledge the concerns that prison has a role in creating, sustaining and deepening poverty among children and families, as well as the emotional impacts. There is a shocking statistic that around 27,000 children in Scotland are affected by appearance imprisonment. That is more than those affected by divorce. We must acknowledge the issue of remand. Scotland has a large remand population, and in the majority of cases, people are later released. We need to consider reforming the system while protecting public safety to ensure that families are not affected by the shock of someone ending up in prison temporarily before being acquitted. That is one reason why the Scottish Government's bail and release bill is much needed and I look forward to seeing it progress. The report from Families Outside states that the families of people held in prison overwhelmingly live on very low incomes, often below the minimum income standard. At the same time as bearing the loss of an average household monthly income of £890, some families find themselves spending a considerable proportion of their disposable income on supporting loved ones in prison. That has been made worse by four families by a decade of Tory austerity, which has now been exacerbated by the cost of living crisis. On release, the costs of support do not fall, but the Families Outside report highlighted that families face average costs of £300 a month in the first months after release. Rona Mackay's motion calls for more support for people who leave in prison, which in turn would help their families. Research indicates that better mainstream opportunities employment after release reduces the lightliness of re-offending. There is some good work being carried out in this regard. I recently visited a Thimson store in East Kilbride and was pleased to learn about their charity, The Thimson Foundation. We all know Thimson as the business that fixes our shoes and cuts our keys, but the foundation's work could offer a blueprint for industry to offer those opportunities to people. The Thimson Foundation specialises in the recruitment of marginalised groups within society, including those who have been in prison. Approximately 10 per cent of their 6,500 employees are made up of people who have criminal convictions, with a staff retention rate of around 75 per cent. By choosing not to judge people by their past, treating their recruits and employees with respect and by offering them autonomy through training and employment, Thimson is actively addressing the stigma faced by people who have spent time in prison. The Thimson Foundation goes further than simply employing people who have been in prison. They have invested in a number of training academies situated in prisons across the UK. They also train prisoners on release on temporary licence programmes, helping people into employment after leaving prison. To sum up, I would be interested to know whether the Scottish Government can support businesses and the public sector to follow the Thimson Foundation's lead. Importantly, I thank families outside for the work that they do to support families who are affected by imprisonment, as well as carrying out important research such as the findings that we are talking about today. I'm grateful to Arona Mackay for bringing this debate. Scotland has a prison population of around 7,500, with around 25 per cent of prisoners on remand. Many prisoners have families in our communities, partners, children, elderly relatives. In committing their crimes, they've knowingly put their loved ones at risk. There's financial hardship, stigma, mental burden. These financial pressures are happening at a time of continent-wide economic downturn, a global energy crisis and a war raging in central Europe that threatens to overspill. In recent years, our courts have seen a marked increase in common assault, rape and attempted rape, as well as threatening or abusive behaviour. In fact, the Scottish Government's stats find the number of people in prison for sexual offences has doubled over the last decade. The proportion of the prison population held in remand has also increased substantially. Our criminal justice system incarcerates people in order to protect the public at large, sometimes by breaking up crime syndicates. Removing perpetrators from society is also punishment, while prison also provides support for rehabilitation, which is important to reduce re-offending. Rehabilitation stands a much better chance of success if we are strict about eradicating drugs from the prison estate and we strengthen mental health support. It's estimated that 15 per cent of Scotland's prison population has a long-term mental health condition, with 17 per cent having a history of self-harm. While the Scottish Prisoner Survey found that 39 per cent of those convicted had used illegal drugs at some point while in prison, we can't net up on mental health support. That should also be provided to our huge remand prisoner population, who are not entitled to quite the same meaningful activity as convicted prisoners. My colleague Jamie Greene has been very vocal on this problem and of self-harm and suicide of prisoners on remand. For partners and children separated from offending family members, their mental health is often so stretched to the limit, particularly the mental health of children, and this cannot be swept under the carpet. Yet we know that the Scottish Government has failed to tackle country-wide backlogs in mental health support just as it has failed to tackle our country's mounting drug and alcohol deaths. Teenagers in Scotland refer to child and adolescent mental health services with eating disorders suspected ADHD, where autism are being told to expect a two-year wait for CAMHS appointments, and parents with savings are being asked to go privately at a cost of around £1,500 for assessment. This is simply not an option for many families, especially those of prisoners. As for prisoners and their families who suffer with addictions, our right to recovery bill should be at the heart of a health-led approach to combating addiction, which is so often the source of offending. The Scottish Prisoner Survey has found that 45 per cent of prisoners reported being under the influence of drugs at the time of their offence, while 40 per cent said they were drunk. Everybody who seeks treatment for addiction should be able to access a preferred treatment option unless it is deemed harmful by a medical professional. The focus of today's member's motion is on prisoners and their family, but there is one glaring omission—the victims of crime and their families. Victims also suffer financial stress as a result of theft, higher insurance premiums and loss of paid work. They experience anxiety, loss of confidence. Many are victims of sexual or physical violence. Some victims feel forced to move away and change jobs. Others simply do not have that option. Families affected by the imprisonment of criminals should be treated with fairness so that they can be supported to live healthy lives free from stigma. That should also apply to families of prisoners and also families of victims. Over the coming three weeks, I am looking forward to hearing from SNP leadership candidates on how they intend to reverse an alarming increase in sexual assault and violent crime and, for once, start to emphasise the right of victims and their plans to support all families impacted by offenders. The report from Families Outside rightly highlights the extraordinary strain that imprisonment of a family member places on some of our poorest families in Scotland. All those strains are greatly amplified, as previous speakers have pointed out, by the current cost of living crisis, where any flexibility in income has been greatly reduced. It is right that Parliament considers those impacts. I thank the member for bringing the motion tonight. The report highlights the importance of the immediate post-release period and found that all too often the burden of support fell solely on families who have already endured so much during the period of imprisonment, and the amount of resource that is highlighted that is spent by families is a huge amount of any income that they have to support prisoners when they are inside members of their own families. There is an urgent need for quality through-care support for people leaving prison and their wider families to best ensure that people do not return to prison and that the cycle of poverty is not further entrenched. The report is especially needed for those struggling with substance misuse, and my remarks this evening will focus on that pressing issue. In 2019, the Dundee Drug Commission report raised the challenges posed to accessing good quality treatment both pre- and post-release. In July 2022, the National Drugs Death Task Force report recommended nine actions relating to prisons. One such action calls on the Scottish Government and the Scottish Prison Service to establish an integrated case management approach so that the individual receives support from before sentencing right through until after they are released from prison. That work is directly complementary to the conclusions of the report that we are here to discuss tonight, so I would appreciate if the Minister in summing up could give an update on that vital work. Before we allow a newly released prisoner to emerge to chaos, to poverty, to hunger, we greatly increase the chances that they will soon be back in prison or, as in far too many cases, that their life can be lost within mere days of parole. We can ask then what was the purpose of all of this. The report was clear that the first two months after leaving prison are especially challenging, particularly with regard to finances. I find the report particularly insightful and illuminating concerning the fact that our devolved system of welfare was meant to allow for payments to be scheduled for release but, in practice, that almost never happens. The door opens to poverty and the path leads back to crime. More must be done to allow those released from prison to reintegrate into society to find work to prevent the cycle of poverty and feelings of despair that can lead to further substance misuse. The cost of government and action in all of this is counted out in lives lost and weighed out in the pain of loved ones who are left behind. According to the national drug-related deaths database report in 2017, 10 per cent of all drug-related deaths in Scotland were of people who had been released from prison in the last six months. In 2018, the figure was 9.7 per cent. Data for the subsequent years has not yet been published, something that I find to be entirely unacceptable. I continue to struggle to see how any policy approach can be properly assessed when we wait five years for data as to who lives or dies. We can only speculate on the impact of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis that we have had. Scottish Labour welcomes the cost to families of imprisonment and release report. We look forward to hearing what action the Government will take to address the problems that it correctly diagnosis. I congratulate my colleague Rona Mackay on bringing this debate to the chamber and for her continued work to promote fair, progressive approach to prison policy and to Scotland's justice system. I also thank the charity Families Outside for all the work that they do to support families impacted by imprisonment. In my contribution this evening, I will touch on the report from Families Outside and I will also touch on the work of prisoners abroad, which is another charity that supports the families of those from the UK who are serving sentences in other countries. Presiding Officer, the evidence is clear that the cost to families of imprisonment is stark. Here are a few key statistics for families here in Scotland. For those who held on remand that average distance travelled per visit by families was 74 miles and the cost £70 a month. A £60 per month was spent on food snacks at visits and £100 into the personal account and £55 on other costs. Rona Mackay has mentioned the food costs on visits as well. For example, it costs £1 to purchase a galaxy chocolate bar from the vending machine in Parliament, but at pole month it costs £2.50 for the same chocolate bar. The profit is going direct to the private vending machine company. Why are the prices in Parliament and the prices in prison so different? I was interested to find that fact out. Is it just because it is a captive audience or is it just for pure profit? Additionally, if a person is sentenced, the cost increases significantly compared to remand. Rona Mackay has outlined some of those costs as well. Again, the average distance, if somebody is in prison that is serving six years, that was the average that they looked at. The family travelled twice a month for the visit. The average distance was 106 miles for a return journey, costing £77 a month on travel and £36 on supplemental snacks, £88 in the personal count and £75 on other costs. Those costs are pretty significant. The median total that was spent per month was £180 a month, around a third of the household income and £2,160 per year supporting the person in prison. I know that Rona Mackay has mentioned that already, but it is worth reiterating. The financial costs are significant and, of course, we need to reflect on the emotional impacts of having a family member in prison as well. There are clear ways to improve that. Families outside reported that they would like toiletries, prison clothes and footwear to be free for the telephone calls and the canteen to be cheaper and for the prisoner wages to be improved for the in-person work that they carry out. That would allow those in prison to be more self-sufficient in terms of not total reliance on the family, many who are impacted already by increased costs and, of course, the cost of living crisis as well. As the Scottish Government continues to move Scotland's justice system to a more progressive system that focuses on prevention, education and rehabilitation, I ask the minister to seriously consider those recommendations and outline the Scottish Government's position on them. Turning to families with prisoners abroad, that is my final point, Presiding Officer. There are 750 people from the UK in prison abroad. 196 are being held in the United States in federal or state prison. The cost to families visiting family members abroad, particularly in the United States, is in excess of £2,500 per visit. That includes airfare, insurance, car hire, accommodation, food as well, and the cost of paying for additional snacks, canteen and toiletries. In the United States, the same issues are reflected as what we are seeing in Scotland with the additional cost. Prisons abroad, the UK-wide charity supporting families of prisoners abroad, have called on the UK foreign office to consider the feasibility of creating a grant scheme that could allow family members to visit family in prisons abroad. I ask the minister whether that is something that could be considered or could you even raise it with the UK Government, as we know how vital it is for the welfare of families and for those in prison to maintain family contact. In closing, Presiding Officer, there are many complex issues associated with prisoners and families, and I have just highlighted a few, so I look forward to the minister's response. I thank Rona Mackay for bringing this extremely important debate to Parliament, and if I may say so, for making one of the most thoughtful opening speeches in a member's debate, I have heard for a very long time. It is right that we reflect on the human cost of imprisonment, the anguish and the hardship of families outside, the impact on children, but on parents, on aunties, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, the wider family network too. Their voices must be listened to and heard. All those worlds turned upside down, the devastating toll that it can take. I want to focus on the toll that one family has faced, the ultimate toll. I speak of the family of Alan Marshall. Anyone who has met Alan Marshall's loving family, as I have been privileged to do, or has witnessed from afar their denial of justice, will welcome the Lord Advocate's announcement just this morning that, on her instruction, his death in custody back in 2015 will at last be the subject of a police investigation. It is an investigation that may lead to the prosecution of the Scottish Prison Service for Corporate Homicide. We cannot, of course, prejudge that outcome. There is a live police inquiry, but what we do know is this. Alan Marshall was just 30 years old. He had two young children, a son and a daughter. He was in Sutton prison, not convicted but on remand. On remand for breach of the peace and for non-payment of fines. We know as well that 13 prison officers held him down or to use the jargon, restrained and controlled him. They did it with such force that a fatal accident inquiry concluded that his death was, I quote, entirely preventable. That is why today's decision by the Lord Advocate is welcome. It is a completely unprecedented move that may end up with the Scottish Prison Service being held corporately responsible, but it begs the question whether it was right that prison officers who were described by the fatal accident inquiry as, I quote, mutually dishonest should have been granted immunity in the first place. And there are other questions which arise from this case which have a wider resonance in tonight's debate. Why did the Scottish Prison Service believe that it could just ignore three of the 13 recommendations of the fatal accident inquiry, including the recommendation? Leonard, I do not wish to be unduly restrictive, but the member will realise that we do have a motion in front of us and I am sure that the member would wish to bring it back as important as the issues that he has raised are. He would wish to bring the issues back to the actual details of the motion. Thank you. Presiding Officer, Rona Mackay spoke about paying the price. This is one family's story of a prisoner held on your man. That is why I have given the member latitude, but I do think that focusing on the family of the individual that Mr Leonard referred to would perhaps be of more relevance now in his last minute in the debate. Well, let me finish with just two final points, if I may, Presiding Officer, because one of the other questions that arises is why was the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Humza Yousaf, prepared to sanction the Scottish Prison Service, taking out an interdict to censor the free press and stop the Sunday mail reaching the newsstands? Mr Leonard, I have made it quite clear that we need to address the motion. If the member wishes to bring a different debate at a different time, that is absolutely up to the member, but we are dealing with this debate. Please bring it back to the family of the individual that he is referring to. Thank you. Well, tonight we consider the price paid by all families with loved ones in prison, and tonight our and Marshall's family believe they are one step closer in their fight for justice. Our thoughts are with them all, our fight for justice and for a better world than this carries on. Thank you, Mr Leonard. I now call on the minister, Elena Whitham, to respond to the debate up to—oh, no, I'm sorry, I don't call on the minister, I'm off my stride. I call on Audrey Neco to make her contribution. Up to four minutes, please, Ms Neco. Thank you. I'm very grateful to Rona Mackay for bringing this debate forward today on an issue. I know that she is passionate about, as demonstrated by her convenership, of the cross-party groups on women, families and justice and men's violence against women and girls. As we've already heard, Families Outside is, for many, a lifeline organisation that supports families and navigates the challenges arising from a loved one serving a prison sentence. I commend the detailed research and analysis set out in their report, The Cost to Families of Imprisonment and Release. It outlines the ripple effect of financial, emotional, mental and physical harm experienced by families and, in particular, single women on low incomes affected by imprisonment. Today, I would like to focus on release, an issue that both Rona Mackay and Michael Marra referenced in their contributions. That has been considered recently by the Criminal Justice Committee during its work on the bail and release from custody bill. That seeks to give greater focus to rehabilitation and reintegration of individuals leaving custody. In their report, Families Outside narrates the challenges of the financial cost of someone leaving prison, anything from £30,000 to £1,000 a month. Women interviewed for the study felt very much left to get on with it, describing the first two months following release as the most stressful and costly, often at a time when money is short due to benefits not yet being in place. Meeting and taking someone home from prison can incur significant cost. One woman had to travel the day before, reside overnight in a hotel before travelling home, costing around a quarter of her monthly budget. A woman spoke of the cost of basic items such as a kettle, a TV, curtains, where a family member was moving into new accommodation having lost their previous home. Two interviewees were unaware of the grants available within the Scottish welfare fund. One interviewee spoke of the cost of protecting a friend from returning to the area where she was likely to resume drug use, covering costs of clothing and food until her benefits were set up and keeping on the heating during the day. One mother spoke of the pressure of taking time off work, having to take time off to settle her son in his flat. That is by no means an unusual scenario. During its scrutiny of the bail and release from custody bill, the Criminal Justice Committee heard from Professor Fergus McNeill, who referred to research undertaken by the University of Glasgow on post-prison integration, and they need to address key facets, including housing, employment, skills development, social integration and political participation. The conclusions set out by families outside add to this analysis recognising the added impact of austerity, service cuts, a pandemic and now the cost of living on families affected by prison. The report sets out ideas for development around release, including reinstating through-care and facilitating making benefits claims and engagement with support services while in advance of release. Indeed, on our recent visit to HMP Grampian, the governor there, Mike Heddon, reflected that planning for release should begin the day that someone enters prison. The ideas set out by families outside align with much of the evidence heard by the Criminal Justice Committee. I very much hope that we will inform a robust and meaningful response from the Scottish Government and lead to positive change in policy and practice, so that release from prison is no longer a burden, rather it is a starting point for all families in Scotland. Once again, my thanks to Rona Mackay for bringing this motion forward this afternoon. I now call on the minister, Elena Wittam, to respond to the debate up to seven minutes. I also would like to thank Rona Mackay for bringing this important issue to the chamber today. The impact of imprisonment on families as families outside report makes clear significant and often unseen. That makes it all the more essential that these issues are openly discussed and debated. That is not someone else's problem. We all have a responsibility to listen to these families and to take action. I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge as others have done the vital work that families outside do. I know that they are a lifeline to many families affected by imprisonment. Twenty years ago, when I worked supporting young people at risk of homelessness, many facing addiction issues, experience of care, childhood trauma—often times it felt like I was on my own—trying to hold everything together when one of my young folk was in prison and it is extremely exhausting for everyone, not less their families. The report covers a number of extremely important issues, and I cannot do them all justice in the time that I have, but I like to focus on some key points. Firstly, the report emphasises the negative impact on imprisonment and calls for the use of prison to be truly a last resort. The Government has been clear that whilst prison will always be necessary for those who pose a risk of serious harm, we need to look again at how custody is used in a modern and progressive Scotland. There is no reason why we should have the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe. We know that short periods of imprisonment, including on remand, do not address the underlying causes of offending or support rehabilitation. It is important to take a second to understand that many of those people who are in prison are often victims of criminal acts, so, although they may be offenders, they are indeed victims. We know that many people in contact with the justice system have experienced multiple and severe disadvantage. We should not use imprisonment to address wider societal harms. As the report highlights, the impact on the children and families of people in custody can be devastating and wide-ranging. That is why we are taking action to shift the balance towards greater use of community-based interventions that we know are more effective than short-term imprisonment at reducing re-offending. That includes continued investment in community justice services. In 2023-24, the Scottish Government will invest a total of £134 million in community justice services. That includes £123 million to local authorities to support the delivery of community-based sentences and interventions, including alternatives to remand. That is not by any means soft justice. It can be transformative justice at the heart of our communities. We have also introduced legislation in the bail and release from custody bill, which members have already referenced this evening, which will be shortly debated in the chamber at stage 1. That bill focuses on two of the key issues raised in the report—the impact of remand and improving support for people leaving prison. Remand removes people from their families, homes, jobs and communities. We must remember that those are mostly people who have been accused of an offence and have not been convicted of any crime. The bill seeks to refocus how remand is used so that custody is reserved for those who pose a risk to public safety or the delivery of justice. The bill also seeks to improve the pre-release planning and support that is provided to people leaving prison to enable their successful reintegration. We know that holistic well-planned support for people leaving prison can reduce their risk of reoffending and improve their outcomes, and the provisions within the bill are intended to support that. That is alongside on-going investment in national third sector through-care services. As has been referenced tonight through-care, we know is a hugely important thing. We need to provide that one-to-one support for people leaving prison. That investment currently totals £3.7 million a year. I know firsthand from my work in homeless and services just how crucial the support is at the time that someone is liberated. Our third sector partners are providing that critical lifeline. We must strive to ensure that support is in place in advance of someone leaving prison and why embedding the shore standards, which is the sustainable housing on a release for everyone standards across all areas, is important via local authorities and rapid rehousing transition plans. The report also highlights the importance of specific financial and emotional support for families of people in prison. That includes the critical role that prison visitor centres play. The Scottish Government has provided funding currently up to £800,000 a year since 2016-17 to support the development of PVCs across Scotland. I am delighted that there are now 12 of those centres. We remain committed to maintaining funding for prisoner visitor centres in 2023-24. I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge well-done to East Ayrshire's recovery enterprises, who have been providing the PVC service at HMP Kilmarnock since January. I know the team personally and I know how committed they are to supporting folk during difficult times and their families. As highlighted in the report, the Scottish Welfare Fund can be an essential source of support. The fund, which was established in 2013, is administered by local authorities and provides two forms of discretionary awards—a crisis grant and a community care grant. The community care grants can be awarded to prisoners leaving to help them to establish or maintain a settled home in the community, and that is invaluable support, especially when someone's previous tenancy has been lost and belongings have been cleared. They can also provide to family members to assist in the care of an individual who has been released from prison on a temporary release. We also must recognise the gendered nature of how supporting a family member in prison, especially during a cost of living crisis. Women bear the cost and income maximisation vital, so we must support those families to ensure that they are receiving all support that they can. I highlight the work of the Scottish Prison Service in supporting family contact and mitigating the impact of the cost of living crisis for prisoners and their families. That includes trying to keep prices within the prison canteens at a minimum and reviewing the application of prisoner wage policy. Whilst the vending machines and prisons are a matter for the SPS, I hope that they have heard Emma Harper's call to ensure that pricing is reasonable. I think that the example that she gave today is quite a stark one. The SPS is also committed to making visits as family friendly as possible. That may look different in each establishment, but it includes reviewing visiting timetables in light of family feedback, having family days and supporting virtual visits where appropriate. The SPS is currently revising their family strategy informed by active consultation with prisoners and their families. That strategy aims to support and encourage those SPS that care to play an active role in building strong and stable families. I would like to take a second to talk about the stark statistic that Collette Stevenson told us earlier when we think about the number of children who are in families where there is divorce is actually numbered by the number of children who are experiencing the trauma of having a family member in prison. I also reassure her that the Scottish Government and the SPS are actively working with Timsons and other employers to figure out how we can best support them to give people the opportunity to thrive and bring them opportunities. Michael Marra, I would like to assure you that we have established a cross portfolio mysterious working group to explore the urgent issues that he brought to the table tonight, but I would be really happy to meet you on a one-to-one to discuss all of that because you brought some really important points to the chamber. I would also like to take the opportunity to recognise Alla Marshall's family and their stoic and steadfast seek of justice for him, but I cannot comment any further at the moment. He will understand due to the ongoing issues at hand. I would like to say to everybody today that is out there who has a family member in prison, we have heard your voices loud and clear through this report. Thank you. Thank you Minister. That concludes the debate and I close this meeting.


of posters, instructions on how to run them up and all that. So we are very happy to have, I think, the record of posters at the STP school. But this also implies that we trust that you guys are very disciplined and really help us arrange them properly. So it's important that we are able to put two posters for each side of each wall. So if two posters are A0, they do not fit by roughly 20 centimeters. So the thing that you have to do, you have to fix your poster in the middle end, and you have 10 centimeters outside. If your poster is A1, it's no problem at all. If your poster is A0, by the way, in this way, this is really problematic. So search for a partner that has an A1 or A2 poster. Otherwise, it's very hard. And even these rules, we should be able to put all the A2 posters up. Please be collaborative. And if you have already fixed your posters upstairs and it's not according to these rules, please do that over the line so that people have space for their own posters. OK, with that, we start with the second lecture of the morning. So good morning, everyone. I'd like to continue in this lecture the theme that I started yesterday talking about systems which have macroscopically many degrees of freedom, but constraints amongst them. So as you remember, I started out using the largest part of the lecture yesterday to talk about this example of the triangular lattice anti-ferromagnet. And we saw how, well, firstly, degeneracy could arise in a reasonably realistic interacting system. In fact, as a result of frustration. And then we saw how you could get a long-distance description of the system, which I think is certainly much simpler by mapping configurations onto a height field. And that mapping can be done exactly at a microscopic level. But having got this more convenient degree of freedom to describe the system, that's to say, the height field in place of the spins, we could then start making approximations and go to a coarse-grained continuum description of the system. And then we have to check a few things, such as the relevance of cosine terms that might pin the height to integer values, but provided just the leading grad H squared term is relevant. Then we have a rather simple description, which allows us, for example, to understand power law correlations, and also allows us to go further. Although the height mapping was developed initially for ground states of the system, therefore, to describe zero-temperature properties, if we go to non-zero temperature, then we introduce defects into the system. But if the temperature is low on the scale of the exchange interaction, then these defects are dilute. And you have large regions of the system between the defects, which can be described by the height model. And we can capture the entropic interaction between defects by doing calculations in the height model. And then, depending on the stiffness parameter, you may either find that these defects, which you can think of as vortices in the same sense as in the XY model and the KT transition, if the stiffness is small enough, then the vortices are unbound. And that gives you exponentially decaying correlations at long distances, which is the case in the spin-half model at finite temperature. So then I started talking about dimer models, and I'll continue with that during this lecture. And then at the end of this lecture and in the lecture this afternoon, I'll talk about a class of magnetic materials that goes under the name spin ice, which is probably the best realization that we have in a concrete material of the physics that I'm talking about. So the endpoint of the lecture yesterday is this slide. And the overall idea was that if we think in the dimer language, then we can use dimers to specify the strength of flux on links of the lattice. And this flux is divergence-free at the microscopic level. And so again, it's a suitable quantity to use when we construct a coarse-grained description of the system. And we can think of a divergence-free flux, of course, as coming from the curl of vector potential. And if we want to use that idea in two dimensions and use a three-dimensional curl, then we can say that we have three-component vector potential, which is in the z direction and with a size given by a height field, which is just, in fact, the height field that we were talking about before, because then the flux strength is the gradient of the height field. And we get back to this effective description on the basis that if we have large values of the flux, then we have low entropy. And so in these effective theories, we should penalize those microscopic configurations. And in three dimensions, we have something similar. We can construct an effective weight for configurations in terms of an integral over the flux density in the configuration. And the main difference between the two-dimensional theory and the three-dimensional theory is that in two dimensions, the fact that the height field is microscopically discrete can, if the stiffness is large enough, give you a crystalline phase where the height locks uniformly to an integer value. But in three dimensions, there are no small perturbations of this theory that are relevant in the RG sense. So what I want to do next is talk about calculating correlation functions starting from this point. Are there any questions which I should answer before I get going? Yeah. Well, firstly, you say if the ground state is the zero flux state, I mean, I think I'd like to emphasize that in these problems, we have many configurations which all have the same energy. So in the dimer problems, we have microscopically many allowed dimer configurations. And if we do a statistical average, we should take account of all of those. And it's only after we've done some coarse-graining that we say that the configurations that in a coarse-grained sense have lower values of this flux B are the ones with more microscopic entropy. So by that argument, what we want to do is suppress configurations with large values of B. And it's B itself rather than its gradient that matters. I mean, that's why it's not gradient of B.  But for example, if I have a dimer configuration which is like this, then it translates to a large flux. And what's more, there's no way of locally reorganizing these dimers. So it's got a small entropy. Whereas a configuration which is like this has lots of possible local reorganizations. And what's more, this turns out to be high flux. And this is a low flux. So it's for that sort of reason that you penalize flux itself rather than the gradient. OK, so what I want to start with is a calculation of the correlation functions of the flux here. And so obviously, that's likely to be somewhat analogous to the calculation that I did just of spin-spin correlation functions. If it were completely the same, I wouldn't simply repeat it. And the difference is that when we talked about mapping from the height field back to spins in the triangular lattice antiferromagnet, the argument was that the spins are given by a periodic function of the height field. And in the leading approximation, you just take the lowest Fourier component, which was this cosine. And for that reason, what we had to average was the exponential of i times a constant times the height field. What I want to talk about calculating averages of now is components of this B field. So what we want to calculate is an average of one component of the B field at the origin and a possibly different component of the B field at some point r with the average meaning of functional integral over B with this effective Hamiltonian as a weight. And the effective Hamiltonian is some microscopic stiffness times the flux density. So the first point to make is that the fact that this B field is constrained to have zero divergence is absolutely essential in having the possibility of a non-trivial answer here. Because if you did a calculation like this, but where B was completely unconstrained, then the B's at different points in the functional integral would be independent of each other. And this would just be some delta function on r. So what we want to do is impose the constraint that if B is zero, and of course, there's more than one way of doing that. One way would be to express B in terms of the vector potential and switch the integration variables to the vector potential. And another possibility, which is the one that I'll follow, is to put in some penalty in the weight for having a non-zero divergence and take the limit at the end of the calculation of infinite value for this parameter, which suppresses things. So if we do Fourier transforms, we can talk about Fourier components and we have the inverse transform. So if we use Fourier transforms, we diagonalize the effective Hamiltonian. And what we have then is a sum over the Fourier modes and the spin components or field components. And then as the weight, this term, we just have unity in the space of components. And here we have something to impose this constraint, so plus mu. And if I think of the action of divergence on B, then of course, the gradient just brings down a q. So what I have is, if I'm thinking about field components i and j, what I have is qi, qj. And it's useful to be clear about what we've got here and to see what we've really got. It's convenient to take out the length squared of this vector and I can write it as mu times q squared and then qi, qj over q squared. And that's in fact a projection operator. So I can think of this projection operator, qi, qj over q squared. And to convince yourself that it's a projection operator while projection operators square to themselves and it's one line of algebra to see that's the case. OK, so then we want to calculate the firstly in 0 if the Fourier components are different from each other. And then what we've got from doing the Gaussian integral is 1 over k times the inverse of that kernel to the weight. So we need to take the inverse of 1 plus mu q squared and then we take the ijth entry. And thinking of things in terms of a projection operator, I think makes it easy to see what the inverse of this is. What you get is a piece which is just 1 minus the projection operator and another piece which involves this Lagrange multiplier that's going to keep the divergence 0 and that's 1 plus mu q squared times p. And then the point is that when we take the limit and fix the divergence of b to be 0, then because mu is on the bottom, this term goes away. And what we've got is something that's proportional to delta ij minus qi qj on q squared. So what you see from that is that there's some kind of non-analytic behavior at q equals 0 because depending on which direction you approach q equals 0, once you've picked on components i and j, you get different values. Well, that's the correlator in reciprocal space. But what we'd like to do is understand the implications in real space. And so if we go back in the Fourier transform, then we have Fourier transform of this correlator and then there's also 1 over k. And all the interest comes from the behavior of the Fourier transform of this term and a convenient way of doing the integral if I turn this into 1 over 2 pi cubed integral over q. A convenient way of doing this is to think of the integral of eta iq dot r and take derivatives with respect to components of r in order to bring down these factors. So we have 1 over k and d2 by drid drj of, and then as far as this term is concerned, it's minus 1 over q squared times e to the iq dot r. I'm missing a view. Well, I took mu to infinity, which killed this term. And so what I'm dealing with is this term. And what I'm saying is, in fact, this first contribution is not the important one. The interesting long distance behavior comes from this term because of its singularity. And so the Fourier transform of 1 over q squared gives me just 1 over r. So what I have finally is d2 by drij of 1 over r. And if I evaluate the derivatives, then I get 3 rij minus r squared over r to the fifth. And if I'm careful and put back the prefactors, then it goes like 1 over k. So if we stop and look at this result, we can compare it with what we had in the triangular lattice ising model. And there are some similarities, but also some differences. So the first point is that whereas in the ising model, we had a power law of 1 half, which we saw later on would vary continuously with the sniffness in the height model. Here we've got a fixed power. It's basically 1 over r cubed, regardless of the value of the stiffness. And we've also got an interesting angular dependence, which is basically the angular dependence that you have in the dipolar interaction. And I'll come back later to some consequences of that. So any questions about the calculation? Sorry, should I write the final result higher up so that it's easier to see? So the result was 3 rij minus r squared over r to the fifth for the correlator that we had originally. OK, so in other words, we've done a parallel calculation for the three-dimensional system to the one that we had of spin correlations in the two-dimensional system. And what I want to do now is go back to dimer models and talk about other aspects of their properties. And so the first aspect that I want to talk about is the analog for dimer models of the possibility in the triangular lattice antiferromagnet of introducing excitations out of the ground state. Now, in the Ising model, we started with a statistical mechanics problem with some energy scale, and we got our constrained set of states by going to the ground states. In dimer problems, you don't initially have any kind of energy scale. You just have this way of constructing allowed configurations with dimers on links and exactly one dimer touching each site. But we can go in the same direction if we allow ourselves to break up a few dimers into pairs of monomers. And then we consider configurations in the system with monomers arranged in particular places. And presumably the interesting situation is going to be when the concentration of monomers is low. And so let's focus on what happens if we have a single monomer in a dimer configuration. So our basis for talking about dimer configurations was this mapping from dimer configurations onto fluxes, which involved, first of all, taking a convention for the orientation of links from, say, sublattice A towards sublattice B, and then associating a flux with each link with a value and a sign that depends on whether there's a dimer present or not. So in a situation where we have a monomer here, that means that we have four links around a site with no dimer on. And that means that they all carry flux in the same direction relative to the site. And so we see in the right-hand picture that the monomer acts as a source of flux. And if I place the monomer on the opposite sublattice, then the links would have been directed in the other direction. That's to say towards the site where the monomer is. And in that case, we'd have had a sink of flux. So then we can ask about the entropic interactions that we have between monomers. So that's to say we can think of placing a pair of monomers in the system at two fixed sites and ask about the entropy of the configurations of the dimer background as a function of the separation between the two monomers. Yes, question. No, there's something that we introduced. So before you decide that you'd like to study monomers, then you might just stick with a rule that you can only consider dimer coverings of the lattice, which have exactly one dimer touching every site. And then there's no possibility of monomers. So it's a conscious choice to break that rule and to investigate the consequences of breaking it. OK, so then we ask what the entropic interaction is between a pair of monomers. And that means something very concrete. We put monomers down at a given separation and we count the number of dimer configurations that there are for that separation. And then we vary the separation and see how the number of dimer configurations varies with separation. So that gives us an entropy as a function of separation. And that's what we're computing. And the idea is that this continuum effective theory can tell us what that entropy is. And I haven't actually put any explicit calculations because the results of the calculations that you do are familiar to you from electromagnetism. So the point is that if we put a pair of dimers, one on the A-sublattice and one on the B-sublattice, they're a source and a sink of this flux. So if you like, you can think of them as positively and negatively charged electric charges. And when we do this calculation of the entropy, what we're asking for is in the electrostatic analogy, we're asking for the energy of the electric field between the two charges. And in other words, we're asking for the interaction potential in electrostatics. So in three dimensions, you know that the interaction potential goes like 1 over r. And we start with some attractive interaction for opposite charges when they're close together. And so we have some value of r that corresponds to the lattice spacing. And the crucial thing is that if we separate the charges to infinity, we only have to pay a finite amount of electrostatic energy or in the analogy entropy. And so in three dimensions, these charge pairs are unbound. In two-dimensional electrostatics, because the electric field due to a point charge falls off in two dimensions like 1 over r rather than 1 over r squared, if we integrate that up, we get a potential that varies logarithmically instead of as 1 over r with separation. And so we have a logarithmic entropic binding potential. And as I explained yesterday, we should then see how that plays off with the increased entropy from different positions to put the charges as you separate them. And if the coefficient here is small enough, then charges are unbound. And on the other hand, if it's large, then charges can be bound in pairs. So any questions about that? Yeah. I'm sorry, I didn't get the question. Yeah. Yeah, this is quite a long way from quantization. I mean, we're really, well, we're strictly in three dimensions rather than 3 plus 1 dimensions. So I think it's a formal analogy. I mean, I can talk more afterwards. So there's one caveat to that idea that in three dimensions or in two dimensions, if the stiffness is small enough, monomers are unbound from each other. And the caveat is that it's crucial that the background of dimers in between the monomers is in a liquid-like state and not in a crystalline state. So I mean, I explained that if the stiffness is large enough, then that can lead the height field to lock. And that corresponds to the dimers ordering in some kind of crystalline pattern. And if we start with a crystalline pattern and then break up one of these dimers into two monomers and shuffle the dimers around to separate the monomers, then what happens when we do that is that we leave a clear string behind along the line on which we've separated the two monomers. And because we can identify this visually when we look at the configuration, we can expect that there'll be an entropy penalty associated with this string, which is proportional to the length. And so instead of having an entropic potential, that grows logarithmically with separation in two dimensions or goes like 1 over r in three dimensions, if we have a crystalline background, we can expect a potential that increases linearly and therefore binds pairs of monomers rather strongly. Well, this is a limitation of drawing cartoons. But suppose you have a situation in two dimensions where the stiffness of the height field is just bigger than the critical value so that the height field is relevant, but only relevant at long scale, sorry, so that the discreteness of the height field is relevant on long scales, then the configurations that you'll get will not be as rigid as this, but they'll have some average order but with fluctuations around the order. So there'll be a finite entropy density but also an order parameter and it's how that finite entropy density is affected by the pair of monomers that I'm talking about. Thanks. Okay, you can also go back to the triangular lattice problem and think of the mapping from spin configurations to dimers and check how this idea of monomers fits in with what we were talking about there and the answer turns out to be to some extent it fits but to some extent it's a slightly different idea. So in the context of the triangular lattice, the idea you remember was that if we have a pair of spins in a triangle which are parallel to each other, then in the mapping to a dimer configuration, we place a dimer on the corresponding bond of the hexagonal lattice. So now we should see what that rule means if we have a triangle that's excited out of the ground state so that all three spins are parallel. Well, clearly what that means is that on the site of the hexagonal lattice which is at the center of this triangle, there are dimers arranged on all of the three hexagonal lattice bonds that go outwards from that site. So the spin excitations correspond to having sites of the hexagonal lattice not with one dimer touching them but with three dimers touching them. And you can see that this will give you sources and sinks of flux but in a slightly more elaborate way than the monomers that I was talking about. So in the context of the hexagonal lattice dimer model, we can introduce monomers but these don't have any correspondence back in the Ising model language. OK, so there's one final point which I want to make about this type of dimer model and it's the analog or the extension of the point that I made about sectors of states in the triangular lattice antiferromagnet. So the point there was that if we consider ground state configurations that satisfy say periodic boundary conditions on a tourist, the fact that the spins satisfy periodic boundary conditions doesn't necessarily mean that the height variables will satisfy periodic boundary conditions. And as I explained yesterday, the boundary conditions on the height fields are that they have to match modulo 6 in both directions around the tourist. So you can have configurations with a tilt to them. And there are analogous ideas that apply in these dimer models. So the first point I want to make is that if we take a dimer configuration and ask about the flux crossing a line through the system or a line in two dimensions or a surface if we're thinking about a three dimensional model, then that flux is conserved in the sense that it doesn't matter where you locate the line. We'll calculate the same flux across the red dotted line as we will across the green dotted line. And you can convince yourself that that's true. Across this green line, we've got three units of flux going down and three units of flux going up. So those cancel. And then on these two, we've got four units of flux in the upward direction altogether. And if we look at things across the red line, then again, we've got four units of flux upwards here. And again, we've got a cancellation but a different cancellation on the two leftmost links. That was just one example. But you can convince yourself more generally that nothing that we do with local rearrangements of dimers can change the flux crossing one of these hypersurfaces. So for example, you can start with this top picture and think about rearranging the dimers on this green loop. And the loop is chosen so that on alternate steps, it crosses a dimer and then crosses an empty bond and then crosses a dimer and so on. And that means that you can rearrange the dimers on the loop moving the dimers from the occupied to the empty bonds. And if you do that with this loop, then you'll switch from this bond that goes across the cut being occupied and similarly with this one being occupied. But if you check things out, you'll find that this link is in the convention for directing the links from one sub lattice to the other. This link has one direction relative to the cut and the other link has the opposite direction. And so the contributions to the flux from these two dimers cancels. And that remains true whether they're both occupied or both unoccupied. And alternatively, if you find a loop which crosses two bonds that are directed in the same sense, then on these bipartite lattices, you always find that in the initial configuration, one of the links is empty and the other is occupied by a dimer. And that remains true if I shuffle the dimers around the loop. So whatever rearrangements I make of dimers around local loops, I can't change the flux cutting any of these hyper-surfaces around the system. So what that means is that we can separate the configurations of dimer models according to the values of the flux. And in d-dimensions, we'd have fluxes around all d-directions on the hyper-tourists. And you can't get from one sector to another just by making local rearrangements of the dimers. So any questions? I mean, I've got a bit more to explain on this slide. But any questions so far? So if you want to get between sectors, then one way of doing things is to break a dimer up into a pair of monomers. And then because they're initially on different sublattices, they correspond to charges with opposite signs. And if you then make dimer rearrangements locally, you can eventually move one of the charges right around the torus. And if you then bring the two monomers together, you can recombine them into a dimer. And in the process of doing that, what you've done is arrange for an extra flux line to thread around the torus. And that gets you between one sector and another. So one thing that you can get from this height model description is an understanding of what the fluctuations ought to be in the fluxes winding around the torus if you average over all these different sectors. And the result is easy to work out and useful to see. So do it, calculate it now. So the point is that if we want to describe configurations of the flux in this coarse-grained way in the presence of some average flux winding around the torus, then we can split B into something which has no net flux and then the average. And if I have a flux winding around the torus, which I write as 5, then the flux density will indeed dimensions be like that. And so if I take this decomposition and put it into the statistical weight that we're using, then I get, obviously, a contribution involving delta B squared and then something involving pi squared. And the coefficient here, since this is a constant, it'll be the square of this 1 over l to the d minus 1 times the volume of the system from the integral. So that will give us 2 minus d as the pre-factor. And then you might think that you'd have a cross-term. But if you have net flux 0, then that averages to 0. So the point is that this gives you a statistical weight for fluctuations in the flux between sectors. And what you see is that pi squared average varies with system size like delta D minus 2. So in two dimensions, this is an order 1 quantity. And when it's an order 1 quantity, the fact that, microscopically, it's actually discrete valued becomes important. And then we get back to the relevance and the cosine terms that I talked about in detail yesterday. But if we're in three dimensions, then the fluctuations in the flux grow with system size. And then the fact that we're fluctuating through integer values rather than fluctuating through a set of real values becomes unimportant in a large system. And that's how you see that the discreteness of the flux at a microscopic level is not important in three-dimensional systems. So any questions? OK, so the next topic that I want to talk about is what difference it makes, what type of lattice you define your dimo model on. And in the examples I've talked about so far, the lattice was bipartite. So a lot of my pictures were drawn for a square lattice. And the lattice that I arrived at starting from the triangular lattice sizing model was hexagonal one. And both of those are bipartite. And the fact that they were bipartite was crucial in the way that I went from dimo configurations to a definition of fluxes that I could coarse grain. So you would expect things to change a lot when you go to a non-bipartite lattice. And indeed, they do. So when we go to a non-bipartite lattice and ask what's conserved or whether there's anything that's conserved when we shuffle dimers around loops, it turns out that there is something simpler that's conserved. And that's just the parity of the number of dimers cutting a particular line. So for example, suppose you start with this configuration and then you pick out the dimers lying under this blue line. And again, I've selected a path on the lattice where the links alternately go over a dimer and over an empty bond. And that means that I can make a rearrangement of the dimers on this blue line, switching the dimers to the empty bonds and leaving the occupied bonds empty. And clearly, if I do that, then I'll change the number of dimers cutting this red dash line by 2. And so I leave the parity unchanged. And you can think about other examples. So here, I've chosen things differently. But again, if I move the dimers around, I'll leave the parity of the number of dimers crossing the dash line unchanged. So what this means is that the set of configurations is still separated on a tourist into disconnected sectors. But now the number of sectors is much smaller. So in the bipartite case, the sectors were labeled by these total fluxes, which had integer values ranging up to something of order the size of the cross-section of the system. Here, the sectors are labeled, but just by the parity of the number of dimers crossing a line in each of the directions encircling the tourists. So in d dimensions, we have 2 to the d sectors. Or if you took a surface or a hypersurface to embed the model on with some more general genus, then you'd have 2 to the genus disconnected sectors. So you can also ask the other questions that we've talked about in connection with dimer models for these non-byte-partite lattices. And in particular, you can ask about what the entropic interaction is between monomers. And what you find, well, firstly, dimer correlations on these non-byte-partite lattices are generically short-ranged rather than giving you these power law correlations. So they decay exponentially. And in turn, that means that you just have short-ranged entropic interactions between monomers provided you don't pick some model where the dimers are ordered into some crystalline state. So any questions on that? Right. So you have to do a proper calculation, of course, to get that. And in two dimensions, like a lot of other classical statistical mechanics problems in two dimensions, these dimer models are generically exactly solvable. And there are Grasman variable techniques for calculating the entropy and the correlation functions and so on. So you have to do a concrete calculation. In three dimensions, you can't do exact calculations. But of course, you can do Monte Carlo simulations. And you can measure the correlation functions in simulations. OK, so that's probably a good point to stop, because I want to move on next to an entirely new topic, which is about these magnetic materials that realize Coulomb phases. So maybe I can stop there. Thank you.


Well This was unexpected. So one of the main criticisms of Super Mario 3d all-stars is that it just seems to pretend that Super Mario Galaxy 2 doesn't exist and I Don't mean like it doesn't exist in that the game literally doesn't exist It's that it really doesn't make sense to not have it as part of the pack It is a direct sequel to Mario Galaxy and if Mario Galaxy could be HD, why couldn't Galaxy 2? But there's hope There is hope that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is actually included in Super Mario 3d all-stars before we get into that I got to remind you we do have a giveaway going on right now I'm giving away three copies of Super Mario 3d all-stars If you would like your chance to win that go to the gleam.io link down in the description You can also join our patreon at patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime for as little as one dollar a month You get you know 15 entries into this giveaway I'm gonna be updating the patreon tiers and the member tiers on YouTube as well for next month to include different levels of automatic entries Plus exclusive giveaways just for our patrons and YouTube members now We have a second giveaway for a switch light. That's what we're giving away a console To enter that giveaway you just do the laundry list items that are down in the description Which includes subscribing to the channel hitting the like button on this video commenting on the video hitting the bell icon Bunch of stuff you'll see it down in the description a huge list of things to enter for that There are two separate giveaways six total winners Announced on October 1st. All right So Nintendo minute had a chance to Play Super Mario 3d all-stars now in 10 a minute officially work for Nintendo. It's on the Nintendo YouTube channel and they included a clip in their video showing the intro to To Super Mario 3d all-stars, you know the little little five-second ditty it does to like dude to introduce the game Well, take a listen Does that music sound familiar? Seriously does that music sound familiar? Well, it should because it is from Super Mario Galaxy 2 Why would they have Super Mario Galaxy 2 music kicking off the intro to Super Mario 3d all-stars? After all the game's not included in it, right? Or is it? Nintendo has done some weird things in the past hidden levels hidden Extras that they don't even advertise What if what if when you beat Super Mario Galaxy or heck? What if when you get to the end of Super Mario 64 and you beat that you get to the end of Sunshine you beat that and you get to the end of Super Mario Galaxy need to beat that a secret unlock happens and You get to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 What if Super Mario Galaxy 2 was included the entire time and then Nintendo just didn't want us to know They wanted it to be an Easter egg that was basically going to be discovered on day one when reviews went out or Coverage or impressions or whatever, right? It would be discovered day one the moment that the media is able to talk about it Think about that for a moment. What if Super Mario Galaxy 2 is actually in this game? Or you know if it's not in this game What if it is being teased because they plan to release it later as an add-on DLC pack or What if they just plan to offer it as free DLC? Why the hell is Nintendo teasing Super Mario Galaxy 2 music after all there's not supposed to be galaxy 2 music in the game It wouldn't make any sense to have galaxy 2 exclusive music in the game galaxy 2 is not in the game So yes, you can play music from all the games of course And maybe the simple explanation is they just included Mario galaxy 2 music in the game along with Mario Galaxy But that would only make things more frustrating that we don't have galaxy 2 Why would we be able to get play galaxy 2 music but not play galaxy to the game when we have music? That's only available for the other games This is why there are many many theories going on much speculation out there that we are going to get Super Mario Galaxy 2 In this game at some point whether it's already in the game as an Easter egg that you discovered later or And you have to unlock or you know as its own little its own little ditty You know, it's just a little ditty. It's just a little edit.  Chances are and I've had independent confirmation that this is the intro music to the game What does that mean? I'd love to tell you I'd love to say I'm talking to people that are playing the game right now And I can confirm to you or deny to you that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is in it Reality is the only person I know with the game won't tell me you would figure it's a simple question Like if it's not in the game, it hasn't been teased by Nintendo You can just tell me it's not in the game, but the NDA on this game is super super tight Why is that? Why would the NDA on? This game Be super super tight. These are games that already exist. We can go play them right now on virtual consoles We can go play the original games like you know a lot of people still own Mario Galaxy and we like you play it On your Wii or just last gen's Wii U Why then would there be such a tight lip in the NDA on like you know You figure they should just allow media members to have free reign with this game They should be able to talk about and show as much as these games as possible drop their reviews whenever because hello These are games that already exist. Why be so tight-lipped? Could it be because Nintendo's really trying to hide this surprise To get a double whammy of press on launch day to kind of be like oh you thought it was just a 3 by the way We have a galaxy 2 as well Now yes, we see the menu of the game and the menu does not have galaxy 2 in it But again Nintendo wouldn't show that if they don't want it yet. It could be unlocked later It could be a game and a soundtrack you don't get until after you beat all three games Just just throwing that out there.  I mean there was an entire level in a Zelda game once That was dedicated to a fan There have been a lot of strange things Strange strange things.  You know you wanted to play that one star Fox game that never released back in the day by SNES classic We now we knew about that of course Nintendo advertised that it was a selling point for the system But you get my point. We don't know what Nintendo is doing. Why is the NDA so tight-lipped? Why is Super Mario Galaxy 2 music just slipped into the menu or just slipped into the intro? I should say I I don't know. I wish I had the answers But I don't and nobody really does all I know is I'm ready for this game to be here man this Friday the official release date get those preloads ready Get those pre-orders in if you can't do the pre-doors show up at the show up at the shops You know right at opening try to get a physical copy if you need it. This is a Kind of weird, but I'm super stoked We are in the midst of the release or re-release a three of the best platforming games of all time in kind of sort of HD Sort of because 64 is in widescreen, but still HD. It's weird and it's in like the lowest HD 720. I Don't I just I don't understand that but you know what that's a criticism. We're gonna keep it positive here What do you think do you think Nintendo's slipping Super Mario Galaxy 2 into this game? Let me know down in the comments below. All right. I'll catch you guys in the next video


Hey, what's good y'all should boy down for the down show in France and we back for another K-pop reaction now What's good y'all? I know I've been gone for a minute. I can explain why I've been gone I've been really busy with dance projects I've been very very busy doing a lot of work with that and it was crazy And I will announce that in the middle of this reaction about what's going on All right, so but fun to do because I miss me because I know I miss y'all I love y'all I appreciate y'all y'all still here y'all didn't unsubscribe so I still bang with the boys Thank you now check this out. What we're gonna do today to get back into shape for the new season You know soon we gotta get back into it. Um We're gonna do choreography John Cook, I apologize. I'm standing wrong. So please correct me in the comments y'all know how y'all helped me So let me know seven future and lotto dance practice. Okay, so I'm gonna check this out And I know I had a couple emails couple DMs like yo we need you to check this out seven future and lotto The track was seven, but it was about John Cook, you know saying seven future and lotto dance practice So we're gonna check this out. But in that y'all already know the dude hit the like button Ring that bell Subscribe, you know I'm saying share with your mama and your daddy. All right, but I miss y'all Ah, I got a lot to catch up with y'all, but we're getting to that in the middle of the reaction So I want to get into this now because I know it's been a minute.  I am going to bring back the water bottle. I promise I'm bringing it back So let's get into y'all. All right, here we go and three man spend a minute since I did this and three two One let's do it And don't forget to see the full version without no reaction cuts Check out my uh, patreon Uh, let's go back You know how I be I be multitasking. I want to see how the intro is going to be Hmm What else? Nice Okay, so let's go back So his language with that was crazy. I was paying attention to his language. Let me mute this real quick So I want to check this part out So let's see what we got Okay Boom one two I was watching the control with his arms Like since he's in the middle and he's the head directing He's the lead singer boom and you got the artist in the back They're set up the way they need to be. This is clean. This is clean Wait a minute. Okay I thought that was Brian Poo's pose Wait, is that Brian Poo's pose? Hey, y'all is that Brian Poo's pose? Is that Brian? I'm gonna keep looking but by the time y'all watch this in the comments Y'all probably gonna be yelling me like down on that snout or that is so we'll find out Shout out to the first dance of hip hop The b-boys the b-girls breaking. Yes. This is nice. This is clean This was clean. Look at that transition Set the body up Get right into it. That was clean. That was very clean And what this choreography? Already it gives a lot of chance to breathe and the movements It's not like a boom. Ka ka boom ka ka boom ka ka boom ka ka boom. It's nothing like that. It's Even the way they're wearing their clothes the fashion The honestly the video itself even though it's just a dance practice But this choreography you can really breathe with this like you can watch this and break it down as long as you need to So this is very clean very very clean I love that part. That was my favorite part right there How y'all gonna come up front? Okay with the grinding Ooh Gotta have some good knees. You gotta have some good knees.  You know what I'm saying? You don't want all that You don't want your knees be click-clacking it at 22. You feel me? So this right here was definitely dope dope coming from the grind on me. You know what I'm saying? Okay They gave us a little bit of pretty Ricky grind on me and grind. Don't okay Look it up pretty Ricky grind on me. It was it was my track when we was in high school We had no business listening to that in high school, but check it out pretty Ricky Ricky Rickhead One two three four five six seven eight one two three and four five I think that's Brian. That has to be Brian. That looks like Brian in the back First off real quick on a choreography tip. It's hitting that Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday and they just following if you're not too sure what they're doing with their legwork It's pretty clean. It's pretty clean It's it's a step back That's what I'm saying this choreography is not over stacked with so much where you like it's kind of like a I like it. I like it. I like it But I know this more to do I notice more in the choreography. I need to watch groove it out. Yeah Yeah, yeah, put me in this choreography for effort. Put me in this choreography Okay Okay Yeah, we getting video ready. We getting video ready We getting video ready. We getting video ready. Yeah, we getting video ready But let's be real with this choreography you would absolutely put this on a concert stage Yeah, do y'all see what I mean though? Like really like they literally is like letting the choreography breathe and That's a choreography that you're gonna really digest. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you do see choreography on these artists where it's like boom boom boom boom boom is just everywhere So it'd be it'd be crazy. It'd be looking real real good But sometimes you get choreography where it's not too much You know, it's just enough it gets the right feeling And we in there real talk so water break So I'm absolutely with that. I'm I'm all the way up for that. I'm definitely for that definitely for that. All right, let's go One two three four. Oh Look how quick they got down Man To land that in practice I can't even imagine how many times they had to run that part Because look at that rock into it You set yourself in your spotting pop that ding ding set them up Legs open up nice wide boom and then watch them Quick and easy get down there at the same time laying at the same time One two get right back into it. Yeah Okay, one two three four five six seven eight And probably ain't freestyling get into it go Nice if that's Brian, I'm gonna say that's Brian It's on my left side my left side For I'm looking at I think that's Brian. But did you see how fast like He got over He grooved over I don't even know like if he wanted to be that far or you want to be that close but However, he got hit to the spotting and that camera I mean if Carter was right here, I'm telling you when he be talking about how like It's balanced even on this shot. It's real good balance on this Nice nice nice See just a little step that I like it's real groovy One two three and four five and six and seven and eight one and two boom boom boom boom See what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay One two three and four five six seven eight See what I like about this choreography how smart it is to this choreography to me is very smart very very smart Because it's the little things that I'm paying attention to so let me share with y'all if you'll never watch my videos I like little things that makes me appreciate the choreography so We got drunk Look where he's at, right? Okay. Now watch watch the artist watch the other artist, right? Watch them get down By the way, we don't say backup dancers on this page. So This artist right here slid over to give it balance John Cook goes right into the center. Boom. Nice and clean and easy He can he can groove right over there I think that's really smart. Yes, it's simple It's not like it's a big deal But to be honest with you it's just really smart Because sometimes you could make up choreography for an artist And don't have no plans of think about all the places they're going to be standing at if you don't prepare that And if you got something like this one you got a group of four I mean Make it simple that's simple and clean I think you can learn from that like if you have not been focusing on when people are spotted at This is a great choreography in my opinion to start off with looking at like watching your spotting Because it was really simple to get right over there Boom boom why they moving and the choreography was able to just groove right in and he could get right back into dancing with them How here however you want to I'm for that. I think that was just really smart. I think that was very very smart Like look at this And the step It's not too hard for him to catch on boom boom and he could get right back into the choreography And it's very clean and it's very smooth If you're gonna be clean really be clean And and if you're gonna have a little bit of moments of sharpness with a different type of bounce you might switch it up a little bit This is some good choreography. I think like I not even trying to be funny. I think like I I suspect to see this On social media of people doing this this combination. Absolutely I mean, let's just keep it honest like I definitely expect to see this one Absolutely great work Yeah, look at that Very easy to get right into Groving it out. He's filling it out And and I and you got to understand like when in dance practice you got to fill it out sometimes like You got to see where you're gonna spot You're gonna set things up and then when he gets on the stage or when he gets in the music video He's gonna snap You know, however he wants to it doesn't matter what I expect But I when I'll see the choreography performance video I'm gonna watch it. You can see how he really react Yeah, yeah Yeah, very good choreography Very good choreography And then okay, that's one lotto does the thing Okay Getting your spotting together One and two and three and four one two three four freestyle moments One two three and four five six.  So real quick. I want to say this As you know, I do a lot of community work with the dancing here in Ohio And I have a link in my bio for to see if anybody will love to support us I have this event called the gathering and this is a chance for the love of music and dance And this is for the dance community. They just have a good time build our network Continue to find out what's going on in our community. We have the gathering. So if you would like to support Check the link in my bio and if you have any questions about what I do in the community as an artist as a teacher Please don't hesitate to ask those questions in the comments I would love to have that conversation with y'all and also on my birthday.  All right. I love y'all. Okay. Now. Let's get back into this video That was my commercial because you too, you know saying I got one commercials Yeah, we getting video ready video ready Really getting to that video ready Ah, I love that step. I love that step I really do like that step. I already do it's it's it's one of my favorite steps.  Let's Let's keep it real. You gotta have one of those moments to make people go I was clean. I banged with that Okay, we back in there. We started off with this. Okay, I like this choreography video So for me in my honest opinion, I think if you are still learning How to Do better or grow into combinations. I think y'all should watch this one I think so, especially if you a big fan of their work, but then when it comes to this like Style of how to get down because you know every k-pop group and and every individual artists have a certain perspective That they approach how they want their choreography to be and if you do love this song and you do love this combination Practice this combination practices and let me know your thoughts how you feel when you're doing it But I think it's good to practice. I think it's really good other than that. I thank y'all so much Please hit the like button share. Let me know your thoughts about this Did you did you understand what I was trying to say about like why it was so clean and good to watch? Like I can I can really digest this choreography and damn Wanted to step outside and do it to be real with you. So but yeah, let me know your thoughts I am back And no, we're not gonna talk about all the things that's coming. What we're gonna do is just get them done Okay, so don't forget y'all if you want to support the community gathering that I host every single month for the dance community Please do me a favor. We're trying to raise a goal right now. Please Go into the the description. I'll be getting my words all mixed up going to the description Check it out And every dollar counts. It helps us. All right, so I love y'all Birthday's coming up this friday. Yes, my birthday is this friday. So I will be live for my birthday All right, go ahead and that I'll see y'all soon. Let me go ahead and make this video And let's get back into this y'all new season, baby peace


Israeli opposition parties have reached an agreement to form a new government that would end Benjamin Netanyahu's 12-year tenure as Prime Minister. Year Lapid, leader of the centrist Yish Atid party, announced 8th faction coalition had been formed. Under a rotation agreement, the head of the right-wing Yamina party, Naftali Bennett, would serve as Prime Minister first before handing over to Mr. Lapid. There still needs to be a parliamentary vote before the government is sworn in. In a statement, Mr. Lapid said he had informed President Reuven Rivlin of the agreement pledging that his government would work in the service of all Israeli citizens, those who voted for it and those who did not. An image carried on Israeli media showed Mr. Lapid, Mr. Bennett and Arab Ram party leader Mansour Abbas signing the agreement a deal many thought impossible. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Ukrainian army prepares to seize Tokmak and close the land corridor from Crimea to Russia. By the new year, the Ukrainian army can take important road junctions in Tokmak and close the land corridor from Crimea to Russia. This was said by Roman Svitan, a Ukrainian military expert. According to him, due to the rains, the front in Donbas will calm down so the Ukrainian army will start moving in the direction of Zaporizia. The land in this direction is not the same as in Donbas. Therefore, the Ukrainian army will be able to move comfortably in tracked vehicles even in the rainy season. Before the new year, we can see progress towards the railway to Tokmak. The line along this railway junction is Russia's main land corridor from Crimea and along this corridor, they transport equipment deep into the front. Therefore, it is extremely important to control it. Tokmak is a vital railway junction and the key to taking the city of Militopol at the neck of the Crimean Peninsula. It is less than 20 kilometers behind the front line and surrounded by its own defensive ring. Approaches to the town are heavily fortified. The Russians proving adept at making Ukraine pay for every kilometer taken. Russian military logistics depends heavily on the rail system but this network is under increasing attacks not just from Ukrainian artillery but also from precision strikes by Himmars rocket batteries and storm shadow cruise missiles. The Russian military realizes Tokmak's importance and has heavily reinforced its units there. Ukrainian forces can choose to directly assault the town with its implication of high casualties or go around it which would result in it being surrounded and cut off. Either way, the town's rail line would be cut.