Thank you very much. We turn now to First Minister's Questions and question number one from Ruth Davidson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I offer the best wishes of the season to you, to the chamber and to the people at home for a very happy Christmas? Can I also ask the First Minister on 28 June 2016 that the Scottish Government's delivery plan for Scottish education promised a new specialist programme to recruit high-quality graduates into priority teaching subjects. It was to be in place by the summer of this year. Can the First Minister say how many graduates it has recruited? First Minister. First Lady, can I also say to you to the chamber and to people right across Scotland, a very merry Christmas and best wishes for the new year. As Ruth Davidson is aware, this Government is taking a range of actions to encourage more teachers generally into the profession. Of course, the most recent statistics show that, over the last year, there have been more than 500 additional teachers coming into teaching, but also to attract teachers into particular subjects. That is why, just a matter of months ago, the Deputy First Minister announced incentive schemes to attract teachers into STEM subjects, for example. We will continue to take a range of actions coupled with the governance reforms and the actions that we are taking to increase transparency around the performance of our schools to make sure that we are driving up standards and closing the attainment gap. Ruth Davidson. I specifically asked the First Minister about her flagship specialist graduate teaching, which she announced last June. I asked her how many graduates it had recruited. The answer that I do not think that we heard in there was none—zero, because it has not even been set up yet. Here is the national improvement framework, which was published last week. This is Scottish education's report card. It clearly states, page 52, that the Government has missed the deadline for its specialist graduate recruitment programme. It was barely at tender stage. The programme was announced in 2016, due to being delivered by 2017, and it is still not here as we head to 2018. The promise for June 2017 was a new standards framework to help to improve the school inspections regime. Can the First Minister tell us whether that promise has been met? First, in terms of teachers, as Ruth Davidson I am sure is aware, there are a range of new routes into the teaching profession that have been made available. By the end of January 2018, it is expected that around 280 students will be studying on one of the 11 new routes into teaching. There has been a 7.5 per cent increase in the overall number of student teachers this year. That builds on a 19 per cent increase in 2016. As I said in my first answer, we also recently launched the £20,000 stem bursaries for career changers to attract teachers into particular subjects. That is the range of action that we are taking. In terms of improvement in our education system, again, as Ruth Davidson is aware, through the national improvement framework, we are taking a range of actions to make sure that there is that focus on improvement in our education system. Inspections have a crucial part to play in that, but there is a wider range of action underpinning our ambitions in that area. Under the SNP, teacher numbers are down by 3,500, and her flagship programme has not been delivered. Only the First Minister could come to the chamber and try to claim that as some sort of a success. In that second bite of the recruitment cherry, she completely missed the question that I would ask her, which was about a promised new standards framework for school inspections due to being delivered by 2017. The answer is that it has not been delivered and we do not know when it will be. Let us stick with some broken education promises. Everybody knows that good school leadership is crucial for a good education. Even the SNP acknowledged that, which is why they promised to publish a national action plan to get more teachers to take the step up from a classroom teacher to become a head teacher. All the more important is that so many head teachers are nearing retirement. The action plan was supposed to be in place by, yes, June of 2017. First Minister, where is it? As again, if Ruth Davidson took the time to look in detail at those things, she would know for example that this Government is funding the Headship Leadership Academy. That is working with Colomba 1400, which is saying that large numbers of teachers and head teachers go through that programme. We have again got a range of initiatives to support leadership in Scottish education. We also have the highest number of teachers working in our education system since 2011. There were an increased number of school inspections over the past year, and we will see that number increase even further over the year ahead. The reality here is that this is a Government taking a range of actions across all of those issues to improve standards in our schools. We are seeing the outcomes of that across a range of different areas, not least the increase in teacher numbers that I have now mentioned about three times in the course of this exchange, which I have not even heard Ruth Davidson acknowledge even once. Ruth Davidson? Let us cut through the back and forth between you and me, and let us go and look at what the improvement framework says. Let us see what the scorecard says about that. When it comes to an action plan on head teachers, not only has the deadline been missed, the plan is not published, but the First Minister apparently cannot tell us when it will be. We have a scheme to get more graduates into teaching that has been delayed. We have got a drive to boost inspections, which we are still waiting on, and we have got a plan to get more teachers to become heads, which appears to have been shelved. That is just the tip of the iceberg. If we go through—and we have—all 75 actions that the Government promised for education last year, fully a third of the commitments have either been delayed, they have been diverted or they have been ducked. This week, we have confirmed again how tough things are out there, with some schools having to shorten the school day because they do not have enough staff. The First Minister started this year again insisting that education would be her number one priority. At the end of the year, does she really think that it looks that way? Yes, I do. Let me recap. Over the last year, we have seen more than 500 additional teachers go into education. That takes us to the highest level of teachers in our schools since 2011. As I said earlier, through the 11 new routes into teaching by the end of January, we will have an additional 280 students in teaching because of that. We have the bursary scheme that I have mentioned to attract teachers into STEM subjects. We have the headteacher leadership programme that I have spoken about. Again, we are a Government taking a range of actions to make sure that we are improving education and closing the attainment gap. Remember that, if we were to follow the advice of the Conservatives, particularly around budgetary matters, we would have to take out of the draft budget that was published last week £500 million over and above the cuts that are already being imposed by the chancellor. That would not only wipe out the planned increase for the health service, it would wipe out most of the pupil equity fund as well. That is the reality. We are taking the action, we are putting the investment into education and that is what will deliver results. Presiding Officer, I wish you and members of this Parliament and the people who send us here a very merry Christmas and a peaceful 2018. One week on from the publication of the Government's draft budget, we now know that lifeline local services, local jobs, local wages are being hammered yet again by this SNP Government. We also know that, under the Scottish National Party, our Scottish economy is forecast by the Scottish Fiscal Commission to be facing, and I quote, subdued and sluggish economic growth, slow productivity growth, slowing employment growth for the rest of this Parliament. So, First Minister, is the Scottish Fiscal Commission simply talking Scotland down? First Minister. Our budget, of course, is based on the estimates and the forecasts of the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Interestingly, of course, the forecasts that the Scottish Fiscal Commission makes around growth are based on, among other things, two key factors. Firstly, Brexit and, of course, issues. Tories do not like it and, of course, concerns about lack of population growth. If Richard Leonard is concerned about those things, as he should be, as I am, it makes it all the more strange that he has appointed a Brexiteer as his Brexit spokesperson when what he should be doing is getting behind this Government to argue for continued single market membership. It also, I think, would make a lot of sense for Richard Leonard to back this Government in calling for greater powers over immigration for this Parliament so that we can focus on growing the Scottish population and not find ourselves at the mercy of the anti-immigration rhetoric and policy of the Conservative Government. There may be some common ground that we can develop if Richard Leonard is prepared to have the courage of his convictions or at least, I hope, his convictions. Richard Leonard. Of course, the Scottish Fiscal Commission's prognosis for the Scottish economy is not just based on Brexit, it is based on oil and gas contraction, low productivity, demography, and low private sector investment. So no matter how many times ministers say that the fundamentals of our economy are strong, it is clear that they are not, that they are weak. Research and development, announced yesterday, has grown, but it is far too narrow, with just 10 businesses accounting for nearly 40 per cent of all new business research and development. Our export base, as well, is far too narrow, with just 15 businesses accounting for 30 per cent of all our international exports. We have witnessed rising levels of bankruptcy, falling levels of business investment, and the SNP's own key economic targets, raising Scotland's GDP growth to the UK level by this year, is not met, matching the GDP growth of small independent EU countries by this year, not met. Order, please. So what will it take? Listen, Mr Leonard, hold on one second. Will members please listen to Mr Leonard's question and stop interrupting? So my question is to the First Minister. And to the people on her benches. When are you going to snap out of your complacency? Richard Leonard beaming at all of the applause that he's getting from his friends on the Tory benches. Do you know what it is? Richard Leonard is right on one thing. Scotland's growth rate is not yet matching that of other small independent countries. I wonder why that is. So if Richard Leonard wants to join me in supporting Scotland becoming a small independent successful country, then I will welcome its conversion. Right now in Scotland, the unemployment rate is close to an all-time low. The employment rate is close to an all-time high. Richard Leonard mentioned business research and development. We've now seen that exceed £1 billion for the first time. Growth in business research and development is outstripping that across the rest of the UK. We've closed the productivity cap with the rest of the UK, but yes, now we need to close it with our other European competitors as well. That is why the budget that Derek Mackay outlined last week had so many initiatives in it to support economic growth from the initiatives on business rates to make sure that we're the most competitive part of the UK on business rates to capitalise a new national investment bank to increase even further investment in research and development. If Richard Leonard doesn't think that all of that goes far enough, then here's an invitation to him. Between now and the next stage of the budget, Richard Leonard and Labour should come forward and tell us what further investments they want us to make in the economy. That would be a novelty for the Scottish Labour Party. Richard Leonard will be beyond all the rhetoric and oratory of the First Minister. It's the loss of real jobs in the real world. If things are so good, try telling that to the workers of the Edry savings bank of RBS of Quickfit Insurance, to the workers of Dueson Babcock of Ethicon and Tannoy, who have lost their jobs this year. Try telling it as well to the workers at Amazon, who it's been reported today are being forced to make unrealistic targets this Christmas to try to avoid redundancy in the new year. This is a company that you handed over millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to. You should be laying down the rules, because what Scotland's economy needs is real and radical change. It needs a Government with an industrial strategy to stimulate growth, and it needs a Government that is prepared to stand up to big business. So will the First Minister once and for all accept that she is presiding over an economy that is not serving the people of Scotland and that the people of Scotland demand real, radical and urgent change to her economic strategy? It's hard to know where to start with all of that. It is good to see Richard Leonard so enthusiastically entered into the spirit of pantomime season in that question. However, let me just try and perhaps insert a few facts into the debate that we are having. Firstly, the last Labour administration gave Amazon more money than this administration has done, fact one. Fact two, Richard Leonard has talked about RBS and Airdrie Savings banks, important institutions, but has it really escaped Richard Leonard's notice that, just like regulation of employment and most of the macro powers over the economy, banking regulation is reserved to the United Kingdom Government? It is not a responsibility of the Scottish Government. Has it also escaped Richard Leonard's notice that the unemployment rate in Scotland right now is not just close to a record low, it is actually lower than it is in the rest of the UK? Richard Leonard is shaking his head at the hat. That is actually a matter of basic fact that perhaps he might care to research before he next comes to this chamber. However, despite the limited powers that we have over matters relating to the economy, this is a Government that does always stand up for workers. Ask the workers at DL, for example, who would not be in a job right now without the intervention of this Government. Ask the workers at Ferguson's shipyard who would not be in a job right now, or ask the workers of BiFab who would not be in a job this Christmas without the intervention. While Richard Leonard was having wee photoshoots outside BiFab, I was actually making sure that we saved that company from administration and kept those workers in a job. That is real action to be compared with the empty rhetoric of Richard Leonard and the Scottish Labour Party. We have a number of constituency questions today. The first is from Jackie Baillie. The First Minister will be aware of the tragic fire at Cameron House hotel earlier this week. I am sure that she will join with me in sending condolences to the families that lost loved ones and to praise our emergency services, the firefighters, police officers and paramedics who attended, as well as the staff who played a critical role in evacuating the building. The investigation has yet to start because the building needs to be made safe. However, when the investigation is complete, will the First Minister ensure that lessons are learnt, whether that is in practice or if there is indeed a need to enhance building standards regulations? I thank Jackie Baillie for asking this question and raising an issue that is in all our minds this week. The tragic fire at Cameron House hotel on the morning of 19 December sadly claimed the lives of two young men. I want today to convey my deepest condolences to the families of the two young men who died and send my thoughts to all those who were affected by this tragedy. This horrific event demonstrates once again how our firefighters so willingly put themselves in the line of danger to assist others on a daily basis. I know that the whole chamber will want to send our grateful thanks to our firefighters and to all of our emergency services who responded. Of course, there will be a thorough investigation into what happened at Cameron House, and it is important that that investigation is allowed to run its course. However, I can give an assurance today that the Scottish Government with our partners and indeed with the owners of Cameron House hotel will make sure that any lessons that emerge from that investigation are learned and fully applied. However, for now, all of us in this chamber will want to send our thoughts and our condolences to all those who were affected by this tragedy. John Mason Thank you for that. I think that the First Minister is familiar with the Belgrove hotel in my constituency, which is allegedly a private hotel but which is in fact a large, homeless, privately run hostel. Can I ask what the Government's response is to reports that there has been an outbreak of group A strep infections in the Belgrove hotel? First, I understand that the reported outbreak of necrotise and fasiatis is inaccurate, but the prevalence of group A strep infections is putting residents at risk of that condition, and that in itself is, of course, hugely concerning. It is important to remember that the Belgrove is not typical of homeless accommodation in Scotland, but we are working closely with Glasgow City Council on the issue and on improving the service for some of our most vulnerable people. The recently formed homelessness and rough sleeping action group is looking directly at how we can transform services for those who are homeless. We have, of course, also established a £50 million ending homelessness together fund from the start of the next financial year to help us to drive change and improvement. Thank you. Edinburgh's Hogminay festival attracts visitors from around the world and is one of the highlights of Scotland's cultural calendar. This year, around 300 unpaid volunteers are being hired as Hogminay ambassadors for the event, despite those roles being paid in previous years. The better than zero campaign has described the move as using volunteers to displace paid work and threatened to raise a number of tribunal cases against the organisers over the issue. Does the First Minister agree with me that we must have greater clarity over the role of volunteers at large-scale events and that volunteers should not be recruited as a simple alternative to employing paid staff? Yes, I agree with that. The delivery of Edinburgh's Hogminay is a matter for underbelly, the company that has been contracted to produce the event by the City of Edinburgh Council. I understand that the event will be staffed with 1,700 paid staff. Can I say this about volunteers? It is important. Volunteering is a good thing, and I think that all of us across the chamber would agree with that. Volunteers contribute hugely to festivals and major events. That was the case at Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. It was the case earlier this year at the Edinburgh festival. However, those who contribute voluntarily to making those events a success must be treated fairly and must never be exploited. Volunteers should complement paid professionals to deliver an event and never replace those paid professionals. Value of volunteers should not be used to reduce contract costs. We expect organisers of major events to work with Volunteer Scotland to ensure that volunteers are treated fairly. We would also expect organisers to follow the charter that Volunteer Scotland and the STUC put in place to strengthen relationships between volunteers and paid staff. I welcome the fact that all parties in this particular dispute have agreed to get round the table and discuss the matter with Volunteer Scotland. Volunteer Scotland is a suspended promotion of the opportunities on its website until the dispute is resolved. I hope that the dispute is resolved quickly, and that Edinburgh's hug money is the roaring success that we have come to expect. Jamie Greene I also start by offering my condolaces to those who are affected by the tragedy in Cameron House, especially at this time of year. I recently wrote to the cabinet secretaries for environment, climate change and land reform and the economy jobs and fair work regarding two important issues around the Huntison site in North Ayrshire. One letter was a constructive proposal for economic regeneration of the site and promotion of green energy, and the other on the testing of offshore wind turbines. More than a month later, I am yet to receive a response from either. In the spirit of the festive season, would the First Minister ask her ministers to double-check their inboxes before clocking off this afternoon? The First Minister I hope that my ministers are not clocking off this afternoon would be the first thing that I would say. I hope that that is not too much of a disappointment to any of them. Of course, I will check the position with the minister's concern that I am sure replies to the letters. I am not aware of the detailed content of the letters, so I am not able to comment in any more detail, but I will ensure that replies are winging their way to the member and, hopefully, they are on his desk in the early part of the new year. Willie Rennie Gordon Edwards was on the BBC this week. Nicola Sturgeon should remember him. I have spoken before about his weight to get mental health treatment. He is angry that spending on mental health for young people has fallen in three health boards. That is despite Nicola Sturgeon telling him that spending would go up and waiting times would go down. That was not true, was it? A majority of her health boards have failed to meet the basic target. I can tell her that, in the past three years, more than 10,000 young people have had their mental health treatment delayed. Can Nicola Sturgeon answer this question for Gordon?  First, let me address the issue of spending, because I paid close attention to the reports earlier this week that came from freedom of information requests. When you look into the detail of that, it is not quite as it appeared in those reports. The data that was reported was not comparing with like it. For example, it was comparing CAMHS expenditure—actual expenditure in 2016-17—against budgeted expenditure in 2017-18. As members will be aware, those are not comparable figures, because, for a variety of reasons, boards will spend more in-year than they originally budget for. For example, if you look at one of the boards that was cited in those reports, NHS Lothian, if you examine actual expenditure in this financial year to date, that is April 2, November, and compare it to the same period last year, there is no reduction. Instead, what you see is that actual NHS Lothian CAMHS expenditure has increased by 6 per cent. There is an important point of detail there. Willie Rennie may be saying something from a sedentary position, but I am trying to give him a detailed answer to very important questions that he has raised. On the issue of waiting times, the Government and the health secretary are very clear that we have much more work to do to reduce waiting times for mental health treatment to levels that I would consider to be the acceptable levels that we want. That is why we are investing record sums of money in mental health. It is why the numbers of staff working in mental health services are increasing, but that work continues until we have no young person that is waiting longer than we would want to have the wait for the mental health treatment that they need. Willie Rennie? I am disappointed with the answer, because her excuses will not hide the Government's failings on mental health. Nicola Sturgeon promised things would get better, but they have got worse. Her ministers delayed the mental health strategy. Her ministers delayed millions of pounds of investment. Her ministers delayed the suicide prevention plan. I now discover that an important part of the workforce recruitment plan has been delayed by her ministers as well. Delay, delay, delay, while young people have to wait, wait and wait. Can Nicola Sturgeon tell us this? Is she proud of her record on mental health? We will continue to do the work that is required to deliver the mental health services that not just young people but everybody across our society has the right to expect. Willie Rennie, I appreciate that he is seeking to make a particular point. Anybody fairly listening to my last answer would not have heard me make excuses. They would have heard me first point out some important facts. I think that it is important that the public have facts about those things, but they would have heard me recognise that we have more work to do. Some of what Willie Rennie has said in that question is a mischaracterisation of reality. Take the mental health strategy, for example. Willie Rennie and I have had exchanges about that in the past. It was delayed at the request of the health committee of this Parliament, because they wanted to have more time to input into that strategy. It is important on all matters, but it is particularly important here that we make sure that we have a strategy that has the support of people working on the front line. We all know the pressures on mental health services. More people are coming forward for treatment because of the reduction in stigma, but that places an even bigger responsibility in our shoulders to make sure that we can meet that demand. That is why we are investing record sums. It is why there are record numbers of people working in mental health and why we will continue to get on with the work that needs to be done to ensure that we deliver the mental health services that people have the right to expect. Richard Lochhead, on a further supplementary question. The First Minister may recall that it was this time last year that I first raised the impact of partial delivery surcharges on customers in Murray in the north of Scotland, and since then with the Scottish and UK ministers and others, including the Advertising Standards Authority, pledging to act. Will she join me in urging those Scrooge-like UK retailers who continue to discriminate against many parts of Scotland to ensure that this is the last Christmas where customers are ripped off, especially given that we now know that Scotland is paying extra £36 million in surcharges? Given that at least Santa Claus will be delivering presents free of charge to all parts of Scotland, I would like to wish the First Minister a prosperous Christmas and thank her for all her hard work in 2017. The First Minister Thank you to Richard Lochhead and let me reciprocate those sentiments. That, of course, is a serious matter and let me take the opportunity to pay tribute to Richard Lochhead for the fantastic work that he has been doing to raise awareness of this issue. It is deeply unfair that customers right across the north of Scotland in particular are still facing disproportionate delivery costs when buying online, and we have seen this week that is to the tune of an extra £36 million in delivery surcharges. Of course, the regulation of prices for parcels is a matter reserved to the Westminster Government. The UK Government should take action. I certainly welcome the recent increased attention to this issue, which is undoubtedly a direct result of Richard Lochhead's campaign. Let us hope that we see concrete action from the UK Government soon, and that this is the last Christmas for consumers in the north of Scotland to be so blatantly ripped off in this unacceptable manner. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government is doing to promote road safety over the festive period. The Scottish Government works with a broad range of partners all year round to promote road safety. Over and above that, there are a host of specific initiatives during the festive period, such as Police Scotland's drink and drug drive campaign, which is now under way. Gritters will be available 24-7 to deal with ice and snow, and we have necessary salt stocks in place, nearly half a million tonnes, which equates to 140 per cent of all the salt that was used last winter. In addition, Transport Scotland's multi-agency response team will be convened periodically to monitor conditions and keep the travelling public informed. Stuart McMillan I thank the First Minister for that reply. This time of year is particularly challenging for our emergency services. Does the First Minister agree with me that prevention is always better than the cure when it is to continue messages about driving or roads being mended timuously? The Scottish Government should never stand still and consider fully how it can best work with our all-partner agencies to improve road safety in the country. The First Minister Yes, I think that the member makes a very important point. In 2014, of course, we reduced the drink drive limit to send the very clear message that drinking and driving is unacceptable and it is simply not worth the risk. We did that with the aim of changing behaviour and preventing drink driving ruining lives. Over the festive period, our excellent relationship with all key partners, including local government, is key to delivering the road safety framework. I am sure that all members would wish to pay tribute to all those who work tirelessly to keep our roads and our transport infrastructure operating and safe at this time of the year. Christine Grahame Thank you, Presiding Officer. On the issue of safety over the festive period, can I make a plea for gritting of icy pavements? It would not cost an arm and a leg, but speaking of arms and legs would reduce some schedule visits to A and E. First Minister Of course, we have seen an increase in orthopedic trauma cases attending at our accident emergency services over the last week or so due to the icy conditions. So, Christine Grahame raises an extremely important issue. Whether at this time of the year in particular can make footpaths difficult, that is why there are measures in place. The salt stock that I mentioned in my previous answer covers the salt stocks held by local authorities, trunk road operating companies and that that is held in strategic reserve. The Scottish Government, as the trunk roads authority, is responsible for taking steps to prevent snow and ice endangering, the safe passage of pedestrians and vehicles over public roads. Scottish councils of course have comparable duties for local roads, and that includes all footways, footpaths and cycle tracks. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's response is to the figures from NSPC Scotland, which suggests that there has been a 42 per cent increase in child sexual abuse referrals in the last year. All children should grow up free from the risk of abuse. Those statistics highlight that there is more for all of us to do to keep our young people safe. The NSPCC indicates that the rise in referrals may reflect greater awareness of the risk posed to children and the need to take action in response. It may also be due to greater willingness by children who have been sexually abused to tell someone what has happened to them. That suggests that victims of abuse now have greater confidence that they will be listened to and that appropriate action will be taken by agencies and professionals. We are, of course, all responsible for protecting children, and I would urge anyone who is worried about a child perhaps being abused to report their concerns to the police. I thank the First Minister for that response. Research carried out by the NSPCC found that there were at least 14 local authorities across Scotland where there were no services for child victims of sexual abuse. As we approach the year of young people, will the First Minister commit to ensuring that all child victims of sexual abuse in Scotland will have adequate access to the specialist recovery services that they require? It is vitally important that all children have access to the specialist services that they require. In light of the member's questions, I will discuss the issue further with the relevant minister to see whether there is more action that the Government should be taking in partnership with local authorities to improve the availability of those services. Often, when we see increases in statistics of this type, we can, and we should look at that as something of concern. It is of deep concern, but we should also be aware that what often lies behind an increase in statistics like this is an increase in awareness and people feeling more able to come forward. That is something that we should encourage, but, as the member rightly says, when we are encouraging people to come forward, we must make sure that the services are there to support them when they do. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to protect vulnerable people from rogue money lenders over the festive period. Illegal money lending will not be tolerated in Scotland at this time of the year or at any other time of the year. We fully support the Scottish Illegal Money Lending Unit, which is hosted by COSLA, in its drive to investigate and prosecute those who prey on vulnerable people in this way. We are also working hard to raise the profile of credit unions, which provide ethical and affordable financial services for those who need those services. In addition, we provided around £21 million of funding for advice projects last year, helping people to seek solutions in a range of areas, including money and debt. Of course, if any member of the public has any information on illegal money lenders, they can report this in confidence via the Trading Standards Scotland website. Despite the excellent work that is done by trading standards and Police Scotland, rogue lenders are still slipping through the net and continue to wreak havoc in some of Scotland's more deprived communities. Evidence collated by those organisations show that some of the methods include intimidation and demanding of sexual favours. I welcome what the First Minister has said today and previously about the role of credit unions, and I wonder if she would consider a higher profile public information campaign, particularly in those communities, talking about the importance and the existence of credit unions. Does she agree that that might protect more families from those criminals? Yes, I agree, and we will carefully consider any proposals to further highlight the important role that credit unions play. Credit unions provide financial services to a range of customers and they are a very valuable option for many, including those facing financial inclusion. We are already implementing the recommendations of the credit union working group, which were published last year. Those include making available £300,000 to credit unions to develop junior savers schemes and working with the sector to design a national awareness raising campaign, which will be delivered during 2018. I hope that campaign is something that members across the chamber will get behind. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government takes to acknowledge both seasonal workers and companies that operate over the festive period. We value the contribution that temporary seasonal workers make to our economy throughout the year. I am particularly happy to acknowledge the hard work and the sacrifices of those who are working at this time of the year to ensure that the rest of us can enjoy the festive period with our families. Of course, the UK Government's position on migration post Brexit is likely to have a major impact on the availability of labour. That is one of the many reasons why we are lobbying so hard to maintain single market membership. I am also determined that, should the UK Government continue down its hard Brexit route, the rights of all workers, including those in precarius employment, will not only be protected but enhanced to help us deliver a fairer Scotland. Edward Mountain. I thank the First Minister for that answer and let's see if we can get back on track. There will, of course, be many other people working over the Christmas period. Those in the health sector, police force, fire brigade and those keeping our roads and other services working. There will also be those who will be away from their families at Christmas, our servicemen and women. Although they might not all be in conflict zones, many will remain on call to respond to events in our increasingly dangerous world. Will the First Minister, on behalf of us all, wish them all a very happy Christmas and thank them for all that they do on our behalf? In the spirit of consensus, yes, I will.  They will be on call people in our emergency services, people in our hospitality sector, people keeping the transport system moving to name but a few. We owe all of them a debt of gratitude, so let me take the opportunity to thank them from the bottom of my heart for all that they do, wish them and everybody across the country a very happy Christmas. Thank you and a very nice note. Can I bring question time to an end? Can I also wish all members, all our visitors today in the chamber and everyone we try to represent across Scotland a very merry Christmas and a happy and peaceful new year? I close this meeting.


Hey there, NJRoot22.com here with another installment of the Cheap Wine Reviews. I can call it Cheap Wine Review, but it's Cheap Wine Reviews. And today, we're going to talk about the Dona Aramalinda Tinto Red. It's a 2015 out of Portugal. I kind of did some research, but I mean, what goddamn difference does it make about the whole history? And I looked on this, you go to idlewines.com. It's A-I-D-I-L-wines.com. And you can read about, they have dozens of different wines from Portugal, Chile, and all these other places. This particular wine, the Dona Aramalinda, is about some wine maker that croaked. His name was like Manuel or something, and then he left the wine business to his wife. And now it's like some female kind of eccentric wine company. And apparently this lady, Leonor Fritas, was featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine back in March of 2017. She's like really filthy rich and has this massive wine winery. You should see the picture. Let me show you. It may not show up too well, but this is their winery. It looks like a giant fricking factory of some kind. Look at that. The focus? I think so. I don't know. But I got this wine as a special buy over at Shop Right Wines and Liquor over in Clinton, New Jersey. My buddy over there, Curtis, he mentioned it to me because he knows I like wines in the $5 to $10 range. He said this one is actually like a $10 to $15 bottle if it wasn't scooped up as a special buy. This is the 2015. I think the 2014 may have been better, but it's 14% alcohol. And I'm starting to mix my wine with high alkaline water. It's 8.8 to 9.1. Apparently alkaline water is really good for you. So anyway, I wanted to talk about this. I'm not going to get into the pairings and the tastings and the finish. I got to tell you one thing about this wine that immediately stood out. And it had nothing to do with the fact that someone recommended it to me. And I started tasting this and drinking this before I read anything about it. But I'm going to taste it here. I water my wine down at least 2 to 1, sometimes 3 to 1, sometimes 4 to 1, depending. But this wine has a very full flavor. I have to say, it was $7.99 like I said. $7.99 wines don't normally have this kind of complexity.  I just want to get a good buzz and feel good the next day. Not have liver problems like I'm having right now. I shouldn't be drinking. I probably will die if I finish two bottles. I'm going to try my best to survive. I'm laughing, but I don't know what happens when your liver goes bad. And I've been doing good in September. I think I've only drank eight or nine times so far in the month of September. Which is pretty good considering I'm filming this. I believe the 28th or 29th of September. That's good for someone who normally drinks three or more days a week. Whatever happened to this drinking on Friday night, I remember days when I worked at nine to five. I would drink on Friday night, maybe. If I was feeling bold, I would drink at happy hour with the dope set at the computer department. We would go to Hula Hands. And it was fun back then. There was a lot of fun people there. But you'd drink on Thursday night and drive home after like six beers. And go to work the next day and have whatever. But drinking one day a week. I think that whole tradition is gone. But anyway, I want to get back to this whole little wine. I am not a wine connoisseur at all. I drink two bottles and see how I feel the next day type guy. But I have to say, who knows?  I'm going to know the difference between a piece of junk and a wine that's actually good. But I focus on how I feel. And also the taste too. Obviously, if something tastes like turpentine or rat piss, I'm not going to recommend it. But this is a very good tasting wine compared to all the other, I think I've done about 10 or 11 or 12 episodes of this vlog for the njbu22.com. And I didn't bring my little flyer today. But whatever, who cares? This, I'm about to kick bottle number one here. And as you can see here, I use these Starbucks cups. Or sometimes I use a glass, a glass mason jar. But it's extremely refreshing. Especially when watered down. It's great, straight.  Drinking it with a steak and so on. Eat meat only, by the way. You shouldn't really eat.  Those vegans out there are squirming when I talk about this.  I'll tell you from personal experience, I took many months off from eating vegetables. And I had some onions and red peppers and some tomato today with a delicious organic omelet I made. And I felt really in pain.  I mean, try it. Try to take a week off from all vegetables and then eat vegetables alone. And you're going to notice something. You're going to say, wait a minute, this doesn't feel right. Anyway, so I'm going to come back after I crack into this second bottle here. But the Dona Aramalinda Tinto Red Wine from Portugal. It's from the peninsula in the central region of Portugal if that makes any damn bit of difference. I don't care if they make it in a lab in some greenhouse in Newark, New Jersey. I don't care. The wine has to have a wine taste and not a crappy liver pain feeling the next day. So I'll come back and finish this one up. I don't know how long I'm going to be doing these little reviews because it really should be a 30 second. Was it good? Did it taste good? How do I feel in the morning? That's how it should be. But I ramble on because I'm drinking. Don't forget the alkaline. And that's it. And this is not sponsored by anybody. I bought it at Wegmans in Bridgewater today. A six pack was like 750. Six quarts of alkaline water. Oh, by the way, alkaline water is actually good for you. But if you want to set your house up to have alkaline water like 9.5, it's like a $5,000 contraption. Holy mackerel. You can buy Brita-like pitchers to have alkaline water. And they're about between $50 and $80 or $100 for a quality one. And then you need $20 filters. They're not like the Brita filters, which I think you can get $3 for $20. These filters cost a lot of money and there's a lot of fake reviews online. So be careful. Just do your research. Talk to somebody who knows who has a high quality pH tester. But alkaline water apparently is like the key to long life and good health because apparently you can't survive. And that's beyond not eating sugar or carbs. But I'm rambling. See, I ramble when I drink. So I'm going to finish this. I'm going to pop this. I'll top off my Starbucks. This is kicking bottle number one. We're going to add some alkaline water to my little cocktail here. Mmm. And this spent a week in Massachusetts. And holy crap, could I tell you a lot about Massachusetts that I don't like? But there's a lot of things I do like. But there's something profoundly different about it. It's only like, you know, 300 or 400 miles away from any part in New Jersey. 400 tops. But Massachusetts is weird. Holy, it's amazing just going like an eight hour or four six or eight hour drive away from the garden state how you can pick up instantly the number of different things going on. But I'm going to save that to private cocktail party discussions and not public YouTube videos. And by the way, if I did 30 second videos, I don't think I would get, I'm never going to reach the monetization level of YouTube. They just don't want honest good creators to make any money on YouTube.  And I went about 10 minutes, 11 minutes. I saw something outside. I don't know, was it an animal? God knows. 11 minutes in for the first take. Maybe I think I did took me three times to start. So I'll see you back in about, it'll take me about two hours. And I'll be back when I finish my next NJRoot22.com. I'm back here again. It's like freaking 3am. I'm on my last little cup of cup. This is like a, this is like a, it docked my jet ski in this freaking glass of wine. That cup of wine. Anyway, I'm back here. I've been kind of in the fence because we have a sick dog. And I just took like a week long vacation, quote unquote vacation. I'm kind of exhausted. And like a lot of things have been kind of like, heavy duty kind of, you know the deal, right? And so I'm not in the most fired up mood, even though I'm kind of energetic, I'm not in the most fired up happy kind of mood. But to get back to this, the purpose of this, this blog is that this wine here, I have to say is so far, this is not tomorrow morning, this Erma Linda is at the present time going to be in our rotation, I think. Because it's good. It's really, really a really good wine. I can tell from how I feel at the moment. I don't know how I'm going to feel tomorrow, but in terms of how I feel as I'm drinking it, it really is in the top 10%, I think. And I think, by far, I mean, I don't think there's any 10% wine I'm drinking currently, like those Explorer doors or any of the other wines I've drank or consumed in the last 10 or so videos. I buy them for financial reasons, mostly. But this one fits the financial model and it actually is pretty good. I'm freezing cold right now, I don't know why.  But I'm going to give this, I may not film my morning after, I may just put a comment in my blog post, which you should read blog post. Don't just read YouTube.  I prefer anybody who watches this to watch it on my blog, because I get credit for the ad views and as well as the YouTube views as well. It's just something I created. You know what I mean? It's not like I'm using somebody else's platform. I'm using somebody else's platform for the video distribution, because it's free and there's a whole lot of give back and trade offs that you have to do. I can host my own video, but that would cost me money and so on. You can't really monetize hosted video.  There's a few companies out there that do it, but unless you're like a million view per video person, it doesn't really make sense. Right now, I'm doing this on YouTube. Notice how I go off on tangents a lot? I go off on tangents a whole lot, because they're all related. You have to go off on tangents. And that's why, hang on a second, I'm going to pause the video and I'm going to come back because I didn't click my external lights. There's some studio here. I don't have like Canon Mark 5D, 20, you know, like 3500 camera. I'm using a 10 year old first generation DSLR, a micro four thirds, which I knew when it came out that that was the way to go. There's smaller lenses are great. Anyway, I can go on and on. Let's get back to the point here. The Erma Linda, I think it's Erma Linda. That's how I would say it. Could be Erma Linda. The accent you need to use. This is unique for a couple of reasons, because I didn't choose it by myself. I had a little help from Curtis at Shop Bright Wines and Liquors in Clinton. And it's not a promotion. I'm not paid. Nobody's giving me like pokes to promote them. I'm doing it on my own free will. I really like the wine. I stayed up a little bit late tonight. I should have gone to bed at midnight, but it's 3 a.m. And that's how it works. But I think this is like, why is this bottle taking up the center of the screen? I think this is a good wine. It's going to be in my rotation for as long as Shop Bright has it for Shop Bright Wines and Liquors. It's not Shop Bright. It's owned by Quick Check. It's so fricking bizarre. How can a Shop Bright Wines and Liquors be owned by Quick Check? It's retarded. Wines are called Quick Check Liquors. Why do they have to be under the Shop Bright brand name?  Although, I think that's a really good place to shop for wine. In Clinton, you know, one of my last videos, I really edited the Living Daylights out of it. I mean like, I cut like 90% of it out because I was rambling. It was like a two-hour video. I made like a motion picture-length video because I got hung up on stuff. I get hung up on stuff very easily here. And that's being honest, you know. I don't know. So what are the key takeaways from this Dona? Dona? Dona? Dona? I don't even... D-O-N-A. How would you say D-O-N-A? Dona or Dona? It's not definitely a Dona. Dona is two ends. Dona. I think Dona is the right way. You could be D-O-N-A. I don't even know how to say it. I think it's so far. I can tell... Here's one thing. Here's a really good perception I have about this wine. I can tell it's cleaner. And I hope that translates into not feeling as crappy in the morning. I want to say curse words so bad. So I'm a very profane individual. I'm extremely profane. I curse. It's nobody's business. And I think it shouldn't really matter. There's words. There's sounds. You can hear whatever sound you want to hear. I'm going off on a tangent. You can tell I'm going off on a tangent. I'm using a wide angle lens. It's cool. This is my favorite lens.  This Lumix. But the 7 to 14mm which translates to 14 to 28mm in regular 35mm lens terminology or whatever. Look how cool it is. It's completely... It's such a cool lens. I've used this lens in my life for the last 10 years. It's still one of the top lenses for Micro Four Thirds. It's great. I think I don't know what the millimeters I am at but it's perfect. It's not a good low-light lens and I think they have a newer version but I love it. It's really a good lens for taking property photos and so on and so forth.  This is not a photography vlog. Ah! I get... This is why it's entertaining to watch somebody vlogging while drinking. You know what I mean? Because like you... I have a zero script here. This script I have here is from the Laia vlog. I wrote, I don't know when like a week or two or three or five ago. Shall I conclude one more time and try to conclude? It's already another 10 minutes. It's like a 20 minute rambling. This is, I recommend it.  Pour the rest of this in here because it's alkaline. Alkaline. Alkaline. Wasn't he like a baseball player or something like that? Here's the summary. Refreshing. I don't feel like there's impurities in it. It was grown in like sandy limestone climate. I bet you there's hardly any pesticides on it. I love this wine. So far. I'll tell you tomorrow in the comments or in the blog post whether it passed the two bottle test. Reminder that the two bottle test may be invalidated because I was feeling crappy all day today because of my liver issue. But I can tell you right now that I like this wine and I'm going to buy it again. I'll buy it at least one more time and if the second time I buy the feeling isn't the same I will revise my feeling about it. But so far in a very daring drinking when I shouldn't be drinking scenario I think this does a damn good job. So gets a thumb up for now.  But I would feel really crappy for saying all these great things about this wine and how I feel if the end point says well guys the whole thing what did dad say we're calling off the vacation call off the vacation for just Irma Linda because I'm like dizzier than like a space cadet and like some sort of like testing program where they spin you around you know I don't know I mean maybe tomorrow my whole day will be ruined because I can't get out of bed I don't know but I can almost I'm not going to feel that way I'm going to hydrate it more with my alkaline alkaline alkaline water and just go to sleep it's like 315 I think my phone with me I bet you a lot of you are panicking right now like what if I didn't have my phone on me where is it I don't have it it's somewhere it's in my office somewhere but that's it you don't know how bad I have been with this rambling I cut out almost more than half of my videos but that's it this is it's like 51 degrees here in western New Jersey and that's it I wish I had a live show where there was like like a million people watching because I would have a ball talk show I mean I've done radio shows in the past I've done TV interviews in the past on mainstream media shop bright liquors special by 7.99 a bottle 14% alcohol a red wine a pinto and I think it's really good I'm gonna put it up to my my picky significant other and I bet you she will switch to this wine but I'm gonna tell her here's the secret okay by the way she'll never watch my video the secret is I'm gonna tell her it was the worst wine ever I'm gonna say it tastes like shit sorry I'm gonna bleep that out and she'll want me to buy it for every time guaranteed if I said I loved it she would find a reason to not like it isn't it weird how you connect with the people or the people that you meet up and end up with I thought it was in the garbage can I missed it went into the basin okay I'm not doing it tomorrow morning I'm gonna put a comment in the blog okay I'm done this is the test tonight I feel great I'm going to bed njroute22.com signing off


My name's Ken. I'm one half of Infinite Red with Todd. I've been doing Ruby since 2004 or so. And I'm mostly a back-end kind of guy, so this is my thing. And I'm really excited by how big this crowd is and how quickly our little community seems to be growing. So I'm going to talk to you about CDQ, what it is, how you use it, and some of the motivation behind its creation. Core Data is really great. And Lori just told you a bunch about that, but sort of the essence for me is that it lets you work with your models as objects, as a graph of object, and it will handle how to make that fit into memory pretty much. And on a mobile device that's really important. So it really is awesome, but there's some assembly required. So this is actually, if you ordered a Rolls Royce in like 1920, this is what you got. And you'd have to take it to your coach builder, like you do, and have them fit it with doors and roofs and all the things that you need as an actual human to use it. So this is what I kind of aimed to do. Like, I also kind of went and looked around at the available libraries and things were in a pretty immature state of the time. But I wanted to make a nice body to go with Core Data's chassis. I really, really hate Xcode.  Hi JetBrains guys, sorry. When I code Java, I do use IntelliJ, but so I would like to be able to work with Core Data. I do not want to have to open Xcode ever in order to do that. So how can you improve software you don't control? How Apple controls it? I can't make the interface any better than it is. And the answer, of course, is you can wrap around it. Now some of the libraries out there, I would say we're trying to make Core Data behave like Active Record or something else, and that was not what I wanted to do. I wanted Core Data to be Core Data. I also wanted ways that you could easily escape whatever I was writing so that if you needed to do something more complicated, you didn't have to throw everything out in order to kind of go down all the way to bare metal. You could use bare metal where you needed it and not where you don't. So I wanted something that would automate the complex or sort of needlessly obscure ways that it does things but still give you the freedom to do whatever you need to do. This is going to make sense hopefully by the end of the talk. So traditionally you would use Xcode and its data modeling tool. I think even if you like GUI Dev tools, that their data modeling tool is really pretty terrible. And so you remember those inverse relationships that Laurie was talking about? It gives you no help doing these. You have to set them up like two or three times for each relation. It just made me want to shoot things. So I made this. So when you do use that tool, what it gives you at the end of that process is basically an XML file or rather a directory full of XML files. Each one is a version of your schema. And the one really great thing about doing it that way is that it gives you automatic migration. If you deliver your model in this bundle, it will load it all up at once, wire up all your relationship and if it sees version one here and your stored data that it finds is on that version and there's another version here, it will figure out how to migrate that for you. Subject to some restrictions. But first I would say a very large percentage of the use cases out there if you can avoid things like column renames, those automatic migrations will work well. I really, really wanted to keep this, having tried to do migrations by hand already. So I just made a DSL that gets translated into the same XML format that data modeling uses. And so you see at the top there's a version number and if you ever need a new version, you just make a copy of this and change the version number so that your app always has a record of all the different versions you use. And you remember the inverse relationships? Well, I don't have to do anything with them because it just smartly figures out what they should be. You can override it, but by default it doesn't make you. I think a lot of people give up on Core Data, frankly, because it just seems like a lot. And it can seem like a better idea to use something simpler. And I think it's often actually not a better idea for the reasons I mentioned before, because if you're using something that is not as smart about it, how it uses memory, you can get yourself into trouble later on. So even if you don't think that you have a data set big enough for Core Data, it can still be a good idea to go ahead and start with it. But how can I make it more appealing for not only me to use it, but for anybody to use it? And the first step is probably just to make it easier to set up. You saw all that stuff that Larry was doing, and I'm going to show you what Xcode helps you if you ask it to. If you ask it to. So if you set up a new project, just an objective scene, you check the little box that says use Core Data. This is what it does. It sort of vomits this into your application delegate. Right? And it's not even doing any sort of like really sort of special complex setup. It's just a very normal sort of setup. And if you want to do anything more exotic, and there's lots of exotic, genuinely useful things you can do with your stack, you're kind of on your own. So that's how it works in CDQ. It makes some reasonable assumptions, right? So, for example, it assumes that you want your database file and your data model file named the same name as your app, and that you'll find those in your document directory. Pretty reasonable assumptions for 95% of apps. And this model, this one only has one context, which is also what Xcode did to you. A little aside about context. So, contacts are kind of roughly like the object equivalent of a transaction. It's a single, coherent place where your objects can live temporarily or permanently. And you can nest them and stack them, and they have different kinds, and they do have different properties, so I'll talk about that in just a second. So, if anything that you want to do doesn't fit into the assumptions that we're making, you can override any of them in any layer. So, this first example here, this is using a two-context layout. This one's pretty common. So what it does is it has a private queue concurrency type on the bottom right next to the store coordinator, and that will do its saves in a private thread outside the main thread. And the reason you might want to do that is so that your main thread isn't sitting there waiting for your data to stay. And then on top of that is the main one, which is what your main thread interacts with. So when you save, it goes down the stack, saves to your main queue, and then saves to your private queue. Very common. If anybody's familiar with Magical Records, Magical Records uses this. But there's also cases where something like RESTKit, it wants to own the contacts. It wants to set those up for you. And so in that case, that's fine. CDQ just skips all of the low-level setup, and you tell it what contacts you use, and you're on your way. This is how you create and destroy objects. Does the Win&Baggle make any more sense now? It looks just like Active Record pretty much. You're not having to interact with contacts at this point. You can anytime you want to, but you don't have to. So 90% of the time, you can kind of operate blissfully unaware of them. The only thing that you do have to know is this down at the bottom, which is you don't save objects. You never save objects. You add the objects to the contacts, which we're doing for you, and save the contacts. So one of my goals is to make sure that coordinates gotchas become encapsulated as code instead of transmitted as lore. And there's a lot of lore in core data. There's things that you have to do right, and you just have to know. It won't complain. It might not blow up right away. It might just work. And I'm going to give you a couple of examples. In that private queue contact, if you're using those, they work great. But every time you save that contact, you have to remember to do it in a perform block. Because otherwise, it will just run in your main thread. And that might look like it works just fine the first time. Someone else, somewhere else, does it the right way? You now have a race condition and you can get corrupted data.  As it walks down the stack that you've created, when it finds one that's a private queue contact, it does this for you. It's also notifying the application that you're doing something expensive in the background. And please, please give us a little extra time if the user tries to quit in the middle of it. Also really important. So this is what's sort of scary about it. Which is that there's things you can do if you don't, you didn't happen to read that paragraph in the documentation that will result in corrupted data for your users. And so I really want to paper around those things and this is one of those cases. And this is why I love open source. This was submitted as a patch. This is something I was actually doing wrong. Which is that when you get out a set for a has many type relationship, you think you could just say, oh, I'm going to stick something into this set and now I have put another thing in that relationship. No. It will let you do it. It will happily put something into that set and it will have no idea you've done so. You have to actually specifically request a special mutable set that has been instrumented to do that the way you think. So this is how you do it in CDQ. Because it's already encapsulated that. What just happened? It really doesn't like my animation anyway. So not so much pretty really as readable code that looks like what it does. Code that's easy to sort of intuitively brass and see that it did right. So these are some queries. At first glance, it looks kind of like Active Records. It's not really. It's a little different from Active Records. I tried to make it so that you can always tack just another method on the end, rather than having to do special little subqueries that you pass into a method or something like that. And for the most part, that does work like that. You can also use core data's native query syntax, which is what this is here. I figure a lot of people in this room probably would not want to do that. But if you do or if you happen to need to do something really complex, that can work too. Scopes. So I love scopes. And you can give them a block so that they're parameterized. They're basically just queries that are saved with a name. It's like they are in Active Records. And you can have them refer to each other. Like small and medium are being defined in terms of the size range. And you can sort of chain them together along with whatever other queries you want to add into them. And under the hood, all this is doing is creating an NSFetch request for you. So what that means is if you want to use the NSFetch results controller, that's all you have to do. You can just pull that out at any point and do whatever you need with it. I've made it easy to print out your objects on the command line. There is kind of a native format that they have, which I think is really terrible.  So I made that nice wish list. So there is a lot more that we could be doing. Callbacks. Now what's going on? Callbacks. So you can do something like callbacks natively. You basically have to, you put an observer onto the context and you listen for stuff happening on it.  You have to go hunt for your object and do it that way. It would be nice to have something that was nice to yourself with that. Lightweight validations. Again, you can kind of put some of that stuff in your data model. You can override some methods, but it's all fairly complex. It should be pretty doable, but it's not in there yet. A ResKit integration. So you can use it with ResKit right now, but there's a few sharp edges. And ResKit itself, there's a lot that's good about it, and it's really, really complicated. So it seems like the collective Ruby brain trust probably could do better. But that would be nice. Friendlier error messages. This is definitely a common complaint, is that it's very cryptic if something goes wrong.  Manual migrations. This is when I get asked a lot from iOS people who have been dealing with this already, which is that if whatever you're doing doesn't work with automatic migration, it can be a huge, huge pain in the neck. And the only reason that we haven't really tackled this is that we just haven't needed it yet. So what would be most helpful here is if somebody actually gets to that point where they need to do manual migrations, call us. We would love to have a concrete use case for that. So there you go. I don't want to break the core data. I want to make it easier, safer, prettier. And I would really love more people to be using it. So thanks. Any questions?