need to do better on the big programmes as well um it's not acceptable i don't think that for example gender uh you know women are being pushed into low paid jobs rather than the higher paid higher skilled jobs that they could be going into and there's been a concentration on numbers rather than overcoming inequality and that particularly disadvantages disabled people because they tend to be left to one side that's why you know when i was saying earlier employment rate non-disabled people not the employment rate generally the employment rate non-disabled people is returned more or less to the same level but because more disabled people are unemployed the employment rate hasn't recovered completely so you know if we did concentrate on overcoming those inequalities within the mainstream programmes so that they were judged not only on numbers but on what are the gender outcomes what are the outcomes for disabled people what are the outcomes for young people within those programmes in terms of reducing long-term unemployment amongst that age group then i think you begin to see programmes that are more fit for purpose so that that it's not really just design but it's actually about what outcomes do you want to achieve through this and that and that then takes you back to how do we design the programme to achieve those outcomes okay and a couple of points following up from what Jim was saying one of the reasons we don't know how cost-effective programmes are is that the work programme and many others rely on free services and we don't include those in the calculations i know that from our own delivery of papas trust we go after everything that's free and then pay for what we can afford thereafter that is not included and yet it's vital so how do we manage that and deal with the overhead problem or the fragmentation issue not many programmes have addressed that very well one i remember 2003 2004 human resource commission in new york contracted providers in 24 boroughs with a mix of primes and voluntary agencies but paid centrally for drug and alcohol support, mental health support, housing and other advisory services because they are paid for services they work with volume not with you know one-off contracts are very expensive if that's the only client you're going to get from the work programme contract for the next three months you can't afford to sustain a service so that's one way of looking at this of where you know collectively you can use your purchasing power to buy big on services that on a per head basis could be small if they were if they have scale um i don't know whether it ultimately worked in new york i wasn't allowed to go back there by dwp so unfortunately the other point following on from what dim was saying about the investment in individuals the dutch have a system now where they ask 29 questions at the start of a claim and on the basis of those 29 questions they can predict with 70 accuracy who will not get a job for 12 months because they're not just about characteristics about attitudes and i think that is the basis for a needs assessment for understanding who it is you really need to invest in earlier and who it is you can save money on because if you don't do that this is going to be too expensive okay um is that what steven and then kevin thank you i think one of the reasons why we have such a sort of complex landscape when it comes to employability is because what was said earlier a lot of the sort of mainstream programmes weren't meeting the needs of groups who had additional needs or particular groups and many of us myself included went out and got bits of money to put together training programmes either for bme communities for women for people with disabilities and so you've ended up with this really diverse landscape some of which is delivering very well other bits of it which aren't and i think it also recognises the the complexity of people's lives and there's something about actually how do we make it so that people feel comfortable going and being able to ask for support from the system that we're providing as opposed to going to the local community group where they've got relationships and they know people and then they think about how they're going to put on some sort of employment training for them which is how many of these things have grown up in that sort of developmental way but i think at the heart of anything that we design have to be something around the quality of the experience for the individual who's coming into it and equality in terms of access in terms of experience and trying to achieve equality of outcomes and that's where the need for the tailored and the specialist programmes comes in because that's something recognising everybody's not starting at the same point and we have to level that playing field i also think there's something around how we get the balance right between rights and responsibilities i mean i feel at the moment with the families that we're working with they'll come to one of our programmes because they'll because there's an agreement there's a trust there's a culture that's been spoken about earlier where they will give time they will attend but they get something back that's a value to them and that means something to them and that they can see is going to help them and is assisting them whereas within the mainstream programmes through the work programme what we're seeing is all the responsibilities are on the individual to do lots of things through the claimant commitment but that their rights have been constantly eroded so whatever we try to design i feel we have to see how we can get that balance back and that mutual respect and that understanding and i think one of the ways we can look to see how we can save some money in the system is to see how we can integrate with other support services like for example many of us will probably have pots of money attached to our programmes to support with childcare and with other things and yet what we're wanting to do is look to see how we develop a childcare infrastructure that supports the child has the best outcomes for the child provides continuity of care and experience for the child and enables the parent to be able to go into training feeling confident that the child is not going to be suffering and hasn't just been parked somewhere so there's a way of how we can look to bring together the sort of support services and the various bits of funding there are for that to create greater coherence in the system. I just want to make a very general point about complexity in costs and one thing that's always intrigued and frustrated me is that active labour market programmes always seem to be judged on a different scale to other public policy interventions when it comes to admin costs in particular in deadweight costs i.e. those costs accrued in achieving outcomes that would have been achieved anyway. Now whenever we propose a new active labour market intervention to government at any level we immediately get potential deadweight costs flung back in our face now it's reasonable there should be a discussion round about the extent of deadweight in any programme but you'll look across the gamut of public policy and there are programmes being run at various levels of government with the deadweight costs about 100% the classic current example would be the patent box now why is deadweight always the first thing that we discuss in active labour market policy where it's ignored in big other strands of public policy making and I think if you know if we're ready to make the very general point about what we spend in the UK in active labour market interventions compared to other countries and it's been very low and I think we just have to love for the fact that any effective programme is going to have an element of deadweight costs and that admin costs will increase every time we try to provide the very necessary support to particular client groups now we just have to live with that I think and if we always tangle ourselves in knots about the potential costs and all of this then people will go without the very vital assistance they need and I think your one point leading on from that is if you're reading your research yesterday that seems to suggest that ITE is extremely limited and what it can deliver is part of the employability process you know there's been a number of programmes in various countries that try to introduce a much more online element to this kind of thing the outcomes do not appear to be very good now that is the one perhaps obvious way some people might think that the cost will be reduced well I suspect that will not be the case so again we have to understand that as long as people are at the centre of delivering decent services then the costs will be reduced and those costs will be very limited community we've been talking about complexities but in evidence that we've taken previously sometimes the most simplistic thing is the easiest way to get somebody into work and bill and others have talked about access to work we heard it in evidence last week from the support worker of the last who didn't feel that she could come in front of the committee some have said that it's almost a hidden programme in some regards and yet it has results simple and delivers and yet it's one of the areas that's not being devolved either and again you know there seems to be an inconsistency in this and maybe there are lessons from programmes and I'm sure there are others that are being delivered whether that be locally or nationally which have probably been formulated because for once government has listened to people and that I think should be one of our first things that we do audit and see what works because we'll often find I think that the simplistic thing works much better than some of the more complex okay thank you I'm aware of the time pressing on is there anything that our panel any members of our panel would wish to say in conclusion before we draw the session to a close I think I think Sam Yitch is very keen for a much more early intervention and inter-basid approach going forward whether that's referral pathways into employment from GPs or having a much more tailored approach through community mental health teams with individual placements and support we know one size doesn't fit all so we want to ensure that the 50% of individuals who receive employment and support alliance who have a mental health problem get the best opportunity going forward to getting into work or progressing towards work thank you Jim sorry Jim and then Bill did you want again I'll go off the just just a very brief point I very much echo what Rachel said we think that the lack of flexibility in terms of you know the 12 months before you can get into the programme is a real hindrance because there are a lot in disabled people who are being assessed out of being classed as a disabled person and placed on job seekers alliance that will need earlier intervention and also we're concerned about labour market churning where people remain in low paid work in and out of all their lives and again you'll know one point where you can intervene to address those issues increase their skills and maybe give them a chance to hire paid work rather than the low paid work that they're used to and that again particularly impacts on disabled people because they're likely to earn less in the first place just on putting ourselves in a position where we can actually work out what is effective for Scotland so the importance of data sharing protocols between Scottish Government DWP, HMRC so we can link properly the programmes interventions we designed in scotland with not just job outcomes but as we're seeing earlier you know wage levels and progression to be able to have more information about that will be really important and a final point would be about accountability and transparency. Whoever ends up delivering support in Scotland in future in whichever sector we need to make sure that there are clear scrutiny accountability guidelines that providers have the same requirement to share information, the same audit responsibilities and that ultimately participants have rights to switch provider, rights to appeal and so forth. We need to make sure that all that is taken care of or whatever to drive a system forward. Thank you very much for a fascinating session. There's been some hugely interesting and challenging suggestions made and I think to be honest the one thing, the main thing that I've taken from it notwithstanding some of the very specific and technical suggestions that have been made are actually the comments at the beginning that while there are challenges, while there are problems what we have ahead of us actually affords us an opportunity and the question is how we seize that opportunity and I've got no doubt that people like yourselves and the organisations that you represent are going to be critical in making sure that that opportunity is delivered to its full potential. So thank you very much and with that we'll draw the public session to a close. Thank you.


Hi, how you doing? This is Richard. We have a rich TV live. I'm here with a very special guest. It is Robert from Olympia Trust How you doing today Robert? I'm well. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here and how you enjoying the Lyft conference so far It's fantastic. I'm just in here meeting all these people. Everybody, you know, trying to do right Trying to keep this company their companies this industry moving forward. Absolutely. It's good to be here Now you said you're there they're trying to get the their companies moving forward And that's exactly what you guys do. That's me companies that are in distress So can you tell us a little bit about Olympia Trust? You guys are public Maybe tell us a little bit about your symbol and what you guys specialize in right so you can find Olympia stock tickers Oh, why on the TSX and essentially you bring us on we're gonna be your in-house facilitator for moving money You can now partial that out of your business And your count your CFO your controller now no longer has to worry about how am I gonna get money from one account to the Next without getting a slap on the wrist from the bank So we're a one-stop shop for any and all currencies that need to be moved And all regulation compliance it needs to go along with it So the solutions provider, you know for someone who's got their back up against the wall And do you just do this only for Canadian companies? Do you do this for US companies because I know that's a big issue for American companies right now They can't get any funding so it's actually we've we've Carved out a nice niche for ourself and the way we've been able to do it is if what you're doing is legal where you are Then I'm fine with that if you're properly licensed, you're not breaking any laws Depending for argument's sake if you're in California I'm fine doing business with you because what you're doing where you are is legal and that's how we've managed So if what you're doing say you're for argument's sake here in the UK and what you're doing is Licensed and proper I can do business with you So not just Canada, US pretty much all over the globe as long as what you're doing is legal. We do handle All industries I myself am cannabis specific. Okay, great. Now. This is obviously a cannabis conference Do you have any clients that are currently here?  Yes, there's a quite a few companies that are in distress. Well, there's quite a few companies that have Seen the light right and they saw it coming a mile off and they said, you know, let's get ahead of the problem Let's figure out what the solution is and for the longest time I've been you know word of mouth if you knew me or you knew someone that knew me you were you're okay Right, so for sure. Now we're branching out a little bit getting the word out there And everybody I think in this room has at one stage or another thought to themselves You know, I'm about to send click this button and send this money Should I be doing this? Do I know enough about this that I can confidently? Press this button and send these funds. Are they gonna arrive there? Are they gonna the accounts gonna get frozen?  Usually that's all very negative, right? So that's where we step in we're the buffer We make sure that your relationships with your banks do not change at all We're just another piece of the puzzle that we're gonna partial all that risk out for you Yeah, now if somebody has had a problem. Is that too late?  That's watching like there could be LPs right now that needs your services if they've already run into a problem Is that too late? Can you fix those problems? Well, I would say if you're out there and you need to move money It wouldn't hurt to even just reach out and ask if I if I can help I will And if you are past that point and you have received that phone call or that letter That you're you're you're beyond, you know reprieve you've you've made a boo boo Give me a call I can still help and a lot of what I do is I'm a solutions provider So when you take us on, you know, I'll eventually, you know, we'll be very close I'll be CC'd on everything that you're doing. I'll be you know, a WhatsApp or a text message or an email away And I'll be heavily integrated in everything that you're doing and we'll figure it out from there as the solutions based What do you need to do? How do we do it properly? Now this is a sector that is obviously a hyper growth sector We've seen massive growth and then massive Retraction this year for the entire sector the entire market cap is down like 60 70% this year What do you think of the future of the cannabis sector? Obviously you're focused on cannabis So do you guys believe that this is going to be a huge industry? Do you think like Jim Kramer from ad money came out and said that it's not what he thought it would be He's like the cannabis sector is not what I thought it would be I've been sitting back thinking to myself is this sector what I thought it would be What do you think about that? Is it what you thought it would be? Is it less than what you thought it would be or do you think it may be just early and it's going to grow to be something? Bigger than anyone even imagines. I think it's the latter. I think that No one really knows how big this can be I think it should be one of if not the biggest sectors in in the economy for every economy I think all over the world.  You're stronger. You got a line of defense and you know this this contraction is what it takes for you to Reach out from you know, where you are with your relationship with your bank or who you're doing business with and seek help from others I think that's a good thing. You know, so let's just say I'm an LP I'm a mile away from having some problems. I see this video and I'm like, yeah, I need that What's the process?   How far off you are on your licensing? and We're gonna go from there and Baby steps really if you're that far away from cultivating or or even having your license You know stamp approval with a date on it and an expiry date You know, we're still gonna be able to help and and not only you know My wheelhouse is moving money, but if you imagine I do know quite a few people that can help in different scenarios as well I know if you're looking for someone who's a Lawyer that's been in the position to help with whatever problem you have on your plate I probably know a guy right so I could probably help, you know in different ways to say, you know Maybe we look down this route or help even in the initial stages to say your shareholder structure needs to change If you want to have a positive banking relationship in Canada, you want to do business me? I highly suggest we look at a different share structure, right and that can help a lot of pitfalls down the road So yes, please, you know, it's it's worth the the foresight to see down the road and think Eventually you're gonna have to move money Now you guys are a public company. You're trading like at a hundred dollars or something like that Oh, why does quite well? It's yeah, I heard extremely Like the dividend is fantastic. How much is your dividend because ours community loves dividends? Well look into it.  I'm not gonna get swinging at it Take a swing. We love dividends. Don't check out. Oh, I think you'll be pleased We're doing a lot of good work and especially if you're running in this sector and you want to be a part of Say you're a value base value-based investor and you want to be a part of something that is part of your life Well, then Olympia might be right for you because we're involved in what you love most if you love Sitting back and enjoying a little bit of cannabis and we probably help facilitate that and for an investor That's interested a value investor in your company and investing in your company What does your company look like at 20 in for 2020? Do you have anything big coming anything new and exciting coming for an investor? That's interested investing in your company. We've got a very well-rounded company, right? So we're looking the RSP division transfer agents, you know corporate shareholder services for an exchange So and you know really cornering the cannabis market has really put us in a position You know, we're over four years doing this now when we move other people move with us Absolutely, you know you want to be looking at a company that's making Decisions for themselves not reacting, but you know set in the pace. So I think you know Olympia As a stock we're doing some good stuff. Absolutely. Well guys. Thank you so much for watching This is Robert from Olympia and keep up the good work. Congratulations on all your success Thank you guys for watching. Have yourselves a nice day Thank you so much. Thank you


What's drinking there? Well, the boo-chee-coo-chee the boo-chee-coo-chee. I'm trying to get it open But it's not cooperating kind of reminds me of your mom last night. That's what you deserve Hey, welcome back to our steve directs of Corbin I'm Rick and you can also Instagram Twitter from all juicy content. Thank you You have a social page on post but I can't subscribe to like button Today there's a new teaser that dropped last night and lies to me and it's Good Dar 2. Oh Wow You have no idea what it is. I haven't the foggiest It's a It's the sequel to I believe in 90s. I would imagine it's a sequel to a 90s film called Dar But I don't know if that's not Dar good Dar You said Dar. No good Dar Dar Dar to know Dar is SRK rewind it Yeah, I said Dar to you were trying to open your boots. Nope But it's with sunny deal. He was in the original sunny. What deal that's what she said, right? I don't remember. I just remember we say dole. I remember her proper pronunciation. I think it was deal. Okay You not do that I can try But it's I we haven't seen it so you guys can tell us if this is one that would be worth a watch Obviously, I don't think it's giving away spoiler. Obviously. I'm assuming good Dar is still alive. So that's Is good Dar the titular character? I don't know But you guys can tell us if good Dar is one that would be worth a watch Because there's been like sequels in the past with people like now the original is not really worth a watch This one's probably gonna be terrible anyway But I don't know about that has happened.  Oh, there's more It's a good moment there It's a good moment there by a sunny deal. I really liked the symbolism there of that wheel because of the The Indian flag. Yep. Yep so it seems like it's gonna be a Big kind of not not epic, but like a an action film Kind of one man versus Pakistan. Yeah Yeah, I didn't I didn't even notice the the symbolism until you just set up. It makes sense. Yeah Good catch there he's act Cuz I'm happy for him because he's having kind of like a career and I don't know how this one will be Who knows obviously, but he's kind of having a career revival. I feel like Sunny deal with With obviously what people saw he could do and love. Oh, yeah Now he's like obviously. I don't know. Maybe this was how this film was and I think it was the 90s. Let's let's check real quick Hmm Is that it from 2001 it must be an old Sharma Is it sunny deal? Yes. Okay. So 2001 So 20 22 years ago a nil Sharma Set during the partition of India in 1947 a Sikh truck driver drives falls in love with a Muslim girl Belonging to okay, and yeah, he's he clearly can be I don't know that the character's name is that but I'm rash poor. Um, it's it's taught us That one takes place during partition and this one takes place in 1971 And that's approximately how long it's been since between the two films. It's been about 20 years smart. So that works Let's see if there's a synopsis of it looked cool like I don't know the story. No, I don't know anything I don't know how the first one was You got like were you guys excited to hear that there was a sequel coming out of good Dar Set during the India Pakistan war of 1971 Returns to Pakistan to bring his son Okay, so the kind of it's kind of a continuation. Yeah The only spoiler is that he's still alive, right? Am I right? You assume that? In action film or like in in hero films most of the time the the hero doesn't die Right most of the time. Yeah, it doesn't usually happen Let's see who else is in this but did you like it the trailer and I did yeah, the teaser I did the pre-tease I did did this call itself. No, I was gonna say all of a sudden everything's coming out as a pre-tease Yeah, I did. Yeah, it looks cool. It looks like he has a signature like Sledgehammer almost like Yeah, do you need to? Know the first story. I mean obviously this is a sequel. So yeah I would assume maybe you do and it would it would help you to recognize. I'm sure they're gonna do things Backie and and to help you get on the same page But but my bet is to appreciate it obviously nobody knows because they haven't seen the film yet And is it to appreciate sunny? Yeah How was the first one? I know it was a popular film Back in the day But yeah, you guys can let us know. Yeah, what you think about this one if you're excited for this one And anything else we need to know and what should be the next semi-dual film that we should watch please let us know down below


How long does a TEFL course take? There's no simple answer to this question, as it depends entirely on which type of TEFL course you choose to study. At ITTT, we have a range of courses that are designed to suit the various needs of our trainees, each with its own time scale for completion. Let's break down the various course options. Online courses are often the quickest route towards TEFL certification. If you are in a real hurry, a course such as our 60-hour introduction to TEFL may be a good choice as you can conceivably complete it in as little as five days. Even those who prefer to study at a slower rate should find they can complete the course within one month. However, it is worth remembering that the majority of employers worldwide insist on job applicants having a TEFL certificate of at least 100 hours. If you want to ensure you meet the criteria of these employers and therefore open the door to jobs offering a competitive salary, a 120-hour TEFL certificate may be more suitable. The 120-hour TEFL course includes more than enough content to satisfy the majority of employers and is therefore a very popular choice. This course can be completed in as little as two weeks if you're extremely motivated and have few other commitments. However, most trainees should expect to spend around six to eight weeks on this course. As the online courses are designed as self-study options, the time they take to complete is really down to the individual trainee. In contrast, the in-class TEFL certification course is a full-time course that runs for a set period of time. If you choose this option, you will attend the training center of your choice for a period of four weeks. During this time, you will complete all the theory lessons and have extensive teaching practice with authentic English language students to ensure you are ready to start work as soon as the four-week course is complete. As well as these standard TEFL certification courses, we also offer specialized and advanced online courses that allow you to expand your resume. Our specialized courses in teaching young learners and teaching business English are both 50-hour courses that can be completed in as little as one week with an average completion time of around four weeks. The online diploma course is an advanced qualification that will take a minimum of one month to complete with an average completion time of around eight months. As you can see, unless you choose the in-class TEFL course which has a fixed timetable of four weeks, the speed at which you complete your training really comes down to how much time you choose to spend on it. The good news is that all our standard online courses have a time limit of up to six months, which should be plenty of time to complete your certification and start out on your new career as an English language teacher.


Hey everybody, this is Brian. Welcome to the 6th LAMP tutorial. Today we're going to be showing you how to edit a PHP file. And we're going to actually write our first one I might add. First thing we want to do is go out to var, dot, dot, dot, right click, go to properties and then go permissions. Yours probably says root and root. So when you open up like g-edit or a text editor or something, you go to save a file out in this folder which is the root of your web server. You get it cannot write the folder or access to night or something like that. But we're going to fix that. Got the directions right here on the screen. I'm a big fan of Google. Press Ctrl Alt T to bring up a terminal window. Get that somewhere where we can juggle these windows around here. You don't really need to know what any of this stands for. Really, honestly, when you rent a server, this is all done for you. You don't have to worry about it. sudo and user. What we're going to do is we're going to add our current user, whoever you are. I should back up. If you don't know who you are, it's like, who am I? We are tests. So we're going to do sudo add user. The username, in my case, test to the group, dot, dot, dot, data. Now I get an error message already in group because I've already done this. I'm simply showing you how to do it. Then you can go sudo chown or chown which stands for change owner. Then we're going to say dot, dot, dot, data. Fair, dot, dot, dot. Now why did we do dot, dot, dot, dash, data twice? Well, the first one is the user. The second one is the group. In Linux, you have a user in a group. You don't really need to understand what those are. This is just file permissions we're setting at this point. sudo chmod. And then we're going to set the permissions on the directory itself. Now that we've done that, we can actually modify the files out in that directory. Now I want to talk to you real quickly about IDEs and editors. There's a ton of PHP editors out there. If you just go to Google and type in PHP editor, you will get so many hits it will completely boggle your mind. I mean, you will have so many choices. I mean, look at the number of choices here. Yep, a lot of them. Very rare. I mean, if you've watched any of my tutorials and other languages, it's very rare that I really put my seal of approval on a product. It's got to be really outstanding for me to do that. I searched high and low. I've looked at other, like, Genie. You can go into the Ubuntu Software Center and look for PHP and Genies out there. There's a bunch of others. There's even Eclipse. Eclipse has a, what is it, PTT. I could not even get PTT to run. I sat on the phone for an hour with a Linux guru friend of mine. I could not get the thing to run. I promised you at the beginning of these tutorials I would do this so you could do it dirt-free without paying a dime. That still holds true. Go out to ActiveState.com and you may have to go to Developer Tools and then Komodo. They have two versions of this. They have the IDE, which stands for Integrated Development Environment, and Komodo Edit. What's the difference between the two? As you can see from this little matrix here, the edit only gets these first four. We say, oh, it's only the first four. You know what, those first four are pretty much what most of the other editors out there have. It actually has a little bit more, in my opinion. The IDE has, look at all these. Wow. If you ever get into professional development, source code control, synchronization, profiling, database explorer, publishing. These things are real lifesavers, especially unit testing. Oh, don't get me going on that. Now, the IDE does come with a price of $295, and I know probably half of you just fell out of your chair having a heart attack. I've plucked down about $3,000 for Microsoft Visual Studio before. That's like buying a car. So, for me, $300 while painful is still worth the cost. Now, I'm a very blunt and honest person. I did email ActiveState and say, look, I really want to use your free version for these tutorials that I'm going to be building on PHP. And they said, why don't you use the IDE? And they gave me a license for it. Now, disclaimer time. No, I cannot give you my license. And no, do not email them asking them for a free license because you watch these tutorials. But if you do buy Komodo IDE, which you don't have to, but if you do buy it, do mention me because I'm sure they're wondering how many people are watching these videos and how many sales they got, et cetera, et cetera. Like I said, it is extremely rare that I endorse a product. And I'm not getting any kickback. I know some of you are saying, well, you got a free IDE out of it. Well, I got the IDE before I even made the tutorial, so I could have just taken the IDE and walked away. But I'm not. I'm actually making the tutorials because I really, really like this program. I'm going to get off my soapbox. IDEs become a religious war. Some people love Eclipse. Some people love NetBeans. Some people love Genie. Some people love Komodo. Some people love using Vim or Notepad or G-Edit or whatever you're using. Find something that works for you. All right. So I have Komodo IDE 7.1 in case you are watching this tutorial and you're on a newer version. And whenever I do a Komodo specific feature, I will try to note that I'm going to do a Komodo specific feature, File from Template. You can just do File New in whatever editor you have. I'm going to have to set the directory here. And this is going to be very conditional on what editor you use. So if you're following along at home and you're very new, I would recommend you go get Komodo IDE or Komodo Edit. Komodo Edit being the free one. Very good program. I'll call this File 1, PHP. Notice the .php extension at the end. I'm going to click Open. And here is our first PHP file. And that's all of its glory. Now, that start bracket and that end bracket. The question mark, question mark. Anything between those two is what's called a code block. So this is a block of PHP code. The reason why I like using an IDE is because it really saves time. You notice as I'm typing, it's making the commands for me. Just cut my work in half. I didn't type all that stuff out. I just did the first few letters of each one. Now, some of you already know that's the beginning of an HTML document. I'm almost going to say that HTML is a prerequisite for these tutorials, but I will explain things as I go. I do have an HTML video series out on my YouTube channel. So if you're watching this, click on my channel and then go watch the series. Anyways, there's your start tag and your end tag. Everything in HTML has either a tag or a block. If it's a tag, there's a start tag. You know it's a start tag because it's brackets. You know, this is an end tag because it's a bracket slash and then bracket. And inside is the tag itself, HTML, HTML. So we're turning HTML on, turning HTML off. And here's the body. The body is whatever is in the body of the document, what you're actually viewing on the page. Turn it on, turn it off. And then here's our code block of PHP. So we're going to write our first PHP script. Notice the syntax highlighting. Echo, we'll just print out whatever we put on the screen. And we're going to do quotes. And then hello, comma, my name is, and then whatever your name is, my name is Brian, by the way. Save your work by pressing control S. And then you can either open a web browser. And let's actually do that. So I can show you how. And then what did we name that thing? One dot PHP. There we go. Hello, my name is Brian. That's one way of doing it. A lot of IDEs, actually not a lot of them. Komodo has this and I love this feature. Preview buffer in browser. And you click that little guy. And it says, how do you want to view this thing? You say HTTP. Maybe if I could spell. Like I said, maybe if I could spell PHP. Preview. Ta-da! I like that feature. Another cool feature is when you modify it, you press control S to save. Watch the preview at the bottom. Automatically updates it for you. That is some very rapid prototyping right there. Anyways, thank you for watching. I hope you found this tutorial educational and entertaining. And if you're considering an IDE, I would check out Genie. I would check out Eclipse P-T-D. I would definitely check out Komodo Edit and especially Komodo IDE. You're under no obligation to buy anything. Remember that. But I will say I'm very impressed with Komodo IDE. And they not giving me a free version. I'd probably be plucking down the money for it. It's $295 I think. Let's go out. Let's go find out real quick. Komodo IDE. Let's see. Okay, Komodo IDE. Single license including upgrades and support. $382 total. No support is $295. I know some of you, especially outside of the United States, are probably bogging at that price tag. Let me tell you. $300, $400 is nothing. I bought Visual Studio for $4,000 before. And that was like buying a car. $400? I mean if you learn PHP and you do a website for somebody, you can make that your first website. So like I said, I'm not getting any kickbacks. I'm not getting any royalties from this. Yes, I will admit they gave me a full version of the IDE. They didn't have to do that. I commend them for that. If you're under no obligation to buy it, I would definitely check it out. I feel very strongly it's one of the better PHP editors out there. And for me, it's cross-platform. Because I work in both Linux and Windows. And so being cross-platform is very important. You can follow along in these tutorials in any IDE. You can even use Notepad or Gedit. There's no requirement saying you have to use specifically one type or another. So that's it for this one. Thank you for watching.


Thank you very much for coming and thank you very much, Shari, for having me. Yes, I'm a children's author and also a publisher. I've published all of my books and I've learnt an awful lot about obviously publishing books, but I've also, because I spend a lot of my time in schools and because I run a regular writing competition on my blog, I'm absolutely passionate about children's literacy and I'm very worried of what's happening with children's literacy and I think we probably all are. And so I want to talk about it today, but before I do, I'd quite like to know why you're here and what you hope to get out of this particular talk because I don't want to be going over stuff you already know, and I also want it to be a bit of a dialogue as well. So if you've got something to say about what I'm saying or if you've got your own suggestions, please speak up and we can all benefit from each other's experience because I know I've got a lot of academics here. So of course I'm feeling terribly nervous because I'm not an academic. I do have a law degree and I did practice as a lawyer for a long time, but I have never lectured in academia. So, you know, please get involved. Okay, I was just wondering, I mean, are you here because of your own kids or because you are teaching kids or you're teaching older students or why is it that you're particularly interested in this talk? Does anyone want to, sorry? I want to hear from them on books. I may be preaching to the converted with you. I do this talk a lot in schools and I do it for parents and one of the things that really upsets me is I'm always preaching to the converted because if a parent doesn't care that their child is illiterate, they're not going to come along. And what I feel like doing is setting up camp outside the gate of the school and just dragging them all in with a fishing net and say, you've really got to understand what a lack of literacy is going to do for your child in the future and what kind of a society we are building with children who are increasingly becoming less and less literate. And we all know what the bogeymen are and I'll be talking quite a bit about the bogeymen as we go through the talk. Okay, hang on. I'm just going to use this little arrow forward. These are my books. The only one for sale outside is the Tale of Rodney Ram and better be quick because there's only two copies. But you've all got bookmarks and I just wanted to let you know when you try to get all my books I've got a very good deal if you get the whole set on my online website which is on your bookmark. Okay, so first the bad news. I go into schools and I give my talk about how to write a riveting story. It's a workshop. And in this workshop I say to these little kids and they are anything between 8 and 12 years old. And I'll say to them, righto. Now we're going to look at the genre and we're going to look to say adventure. Why don't you describe for me, I say now in adventures we're involving a physical challenge. Can someone give me a description of a main character? This is going to be the good guy or the good girl. Can you give me a description using adjectives? And the kids say, like Spider-Man. And I'll say, like Spider-Man. And they say, yeah, like Spider-Man. Well, we're not going to have any characters from popular fiction here. I want you to create someone for yourself. Give me some adjectives. They absolutely look at me blankly. They don't know what to say. Now this is becoming a more and more common phenomenon. Kids are becoming less articulate every day. There's a particular school that I go to which is so keen on books and I love this school. They actually have book balconies right around the school. And the headmistress really believes in music and books. So if you've got a sportsman on your hands, you don't send them to this particular school. Now at this school, I talk to the grade fives and I give them my lecture. And the teacher came up to me this year because I go in every year to do the grade fives. And they said, you know what you're saying, because I go, this talk to the teachers is exactly right. This is what we're seeing. And this is what we are seeing an epidemic of right throughout English language schools. And I'm not just talking about here in Hong Kong. I'm talking about in Australia, I'm ashamed to say, where literacy is appalling at the moment. And this is happening in the States and the UK as well. And this is basically kids with poor vocabulary, unable to construct a sentence properly, non-existent grammar, little story structure, few original ideas, poor general knowledge. And this is the real crunch. I've gone into extremely posh schools in Melbourne where money is no object. And the librarian will proudly show me the books that the children are producing. And I look at these books and digitally they're superb. I mean, they've got the bills and whistles. They look absolutely fantastic. They look highly professional. And then I start reading the story and it's embarrassing. And I don't know what to say to the librarian because the kids cannot write. So this is a problem. And this obviously. And is this the experience that you are finding in your schools or with your teaching or with the kids you come into contact with this kind of a problem? When I was a kid, we had hobbies. I'm an old lady. And I can remember the first television we got. And it was tiny. It was black and white. And it only had programming from about 4 until 8pm. And it had, at that time, two channels. And we were allowed to watch for half an hour. But what we spent our time doing, obviously, we were playing outside. We were building things inside if it rained. We had hobbies. That word that some kids don't even know the meaning of these days. And in particular, we read. And we read and we read copiously because that's what you did when it rained. This particularly for boys. Now all of these things, of course, the kids think they're playing. But what they're doing is their imaginations are working over time and they're also observing great knowledge. Stamp collecting in particular, my gosh. I have met one child in Hong Kong who collects stamps. And I went to see him. And he could tell me about every country in the world that's phenomenal. But he is the class geek. That's how he's regarded. Now when I was a kid, everybody collected stamps. This one is fascinating. Two years ago, Mattel posted its biggest loss ever. And they're the producers of Barbie dolls. And you're like, Barbie dolls? That is absolutely, that was sort of fundamental for girls. Everyone had a Barbie doll and dressed their Barbies and played with their dolls. They've lost those little kids to digital games. I love that picture of the guy bumping into the pole because, of course, that's what happens regularly. Every day I watch kids, adults walking on the street and saying, oops, they're going to hit that bad. But this is where the real crime begins. Here. Very serendipitously. My husband, who's French, pointed out to me an article in the Figaro just yesterday. And this is absolutely phenomenal, but it's not a unique occurrence. These are basically kindergarten psychologists and teachers who are reporting babies who have less than 10 words in their vocabulary who cannot speak. They talk in particular in this article about a little girl whose parents were terribly proud of her because at the age of three she's starting school and she can speak some words of English.  That's when she got her first laptop. But as soon as this little child hit school where there were no tablets, she couldn't relate to anybody. She didn't respond to her own name. She couldn't stack blocks and in particular she couldn't play without a teacher sitting beside her using, manipulating her limbs to follow what the other kids were doing. This child was almost unresponsive. And it's a very interesting article because basically and you'll be getting... I've got a handout for everyone to take home and read, which will have my top tips on it but also have the references for all of the literature I'll be referring to. But what's happening is that there seems to be this explosion of autism in the population and yet for a lot of kids that are diagnosed as autistic you take their screens away and within months they're normal. So it's not autism. And of course ADHD. Children unable to focus for any length of time. So this is pretty scary but then on the other hand back in 2014 it was being reported by teachers in the UK infants unable to stack building blocks. It's really scary. And if you look at this article basically there was a increase from 1 in 33 children to 1 in 5 over the last 12 years who were reporting major developmental delays. And here's the American Association of Pediatrics. It's fascinating you know. I look for the Australian Association of Pediatrics and I look for the UK Association of Pediatrics and they're not coming out and just putting it bluntly what we ought to be doing. The American Association is terrific. And they're saying basically 1 or 2 hours a day of high quality content will stop and yet the average kids 7 hours a day. So I just don't know why we're doing it and why we're doing it to our kids. But I think it's basically first of all it's the great sort of pacifier. It's very easy to give a kid a screen and the kid will be quiet and the kid won't be outside at fear of the roaming pedophile. There are no more pedophiles today than there ever were but the fact is there's no more kids on the streets. So if you're the parent who decides to use some common sense and get their kids playing outside and using the streets I guess that kid's at more risk. But we all grew up playing outside. And these kids are basically in their rooms. Now we heard of the horrible batch of suicides recently here in Hong Kong from these kids who just felt so alone and so isolated. And I know that at least one of those suicides was associated with a row over basically the boy would not stop using his digital screen. So it doesn't have to be this way. This is a child and she's one of a few I've got a clutch of kids who are regular winners in my writing competition they're there every time and my god they can write. And I'd love you to have a look actually at my writing competitions. It's on my blog so if you go it's just Sarah Brennan blog I've just announced the results of the latest one but it's very interesting basically you get these kids who can write their heads off and they have beautiful literacy skills they have the power of imagination they have lyrical language A lot of these kids from the Indian subcontinent which is really interesting also we've got some fabulous Chinese kids from Shanghai and from Hong Kong and we've got a few kids coming up from Australia, America and the UK so the kids are there but these kids now are the exception rather than the rule the kids that can literally write beautifully this little girl Gemma Julian I always talk about because the first time she entered one of my competitions her writing was so good I didn't believe she'd done it so I wrote and said well what school does she go to well actually she's home educated which is interesting so I write to the mum and I say can you verify for me that this is your child's own work and she wrote back and said she said do you want to see the rest and this is what this girl's doing and this was when she was eight and you know she's got the bees flirting with the daffodils I mean what child thinks of bees flirting with the daffodils but this child has a beautiful creative brain now I've made a friend of Gemma because when I go to Sydney I meet up with her and her mum and I asked this child how much time do you actually spend on screens and she said a little bit but she said I find it a bit boring she's got pen pals but she actually writes them by hand she's got pen pals all over the place and she does a lot of drawing and writing and so she'll use the internet occasionally but she doesn't do social media because she thinks it's stupid and to write is it stupid especially at that age my gosh so we all know that you have to read before you can learn but why is it important to read books and in particular why is it important to read real books as in print books the sort of ones we can pick up and hold has anyone heard of this guy before yes now this is absolutely essential reading for everybody who wants to join the fight against illiteracy read this guy this book was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and he is remarkable you will have the references on a handout which I think Shari might be getting but you can give me your cards and I will send you my talk and in particular all of the referrals you can do and that might be better because then you can just click on the links and you'll be right through you won't have to type them all into computers but this guy is fascinating he's a real thinker I think he's a bit of a seer he doesn't just address children's literature he addresses adult literacy and he also addresses things like for example what the hell are we doing with our bathrooms when you can't manually turn on a tap anywhere anymore before you've even set up off the seat but this whole idea of basically how we're digitalising our worlds to such an extent that when we have the next sun or the solar flare and it's not a case of if it's a case of when this solar flare is coming it's going to knock out every computer on this planet and then let's see if the human race can survive and for that this is not on my page but you can write it down next time you're on a plane and watch a documentary called Low and Behold it's by the German writer and philosopher Werner Herzog and he is looking at the internet and what the hell is happening with the internet and he is talking about the solar flare that occurred in the 19th century about 1886 and at that time every telegraph system in the world was knocked out and it didn't affect too many people because not many people were using the telegraph however when we have the solar flare that happens and we are overdue a major solar flare it's going to knock out every single computer system here on Earth for quite some time now the US government knows about this they've got a bit of a sort of contingency plan but nobody tells us about it just be careful you've got a tap that turns on of its own volition that is actually connected to a water supply that doesn't depend on electronic devices to turn it on or off because we're going to have major problems with everything when this solar flare happens we are getting too smart for our own good however that's not the subject of my talk today this guy does address it he's got a fabulous blog and now I'm going to try and remember the name of it rough type R-O-U-G-H T-Y-P-E because the guys are thinker and we need more of these thinkers today because a lot of us are not thinking enough right what he does in his book and you know when I found his book I found it in Paris actually and I was just like hello Lulia there is a god because for many years I have been so upset about seeing kids addicted to screens particularly little kids I mean even to the point that I go up and actually say to their parents do you know what you're doing to your kids brain I have been told to my own business on more than one occasion I get so distressed though when I see kids put in front of screens at dinner tables but I found this book and I thought hello Lulia there's the science and since then I've been following the science because it's not just me being a Luddite it's not just me not getting with the program there is a major neurological, neurophysical developmental problem with kids being subjected to overuse of screens and most kids are now overusing screens so he talks about basically how our brains have been wired and he talks about first of all we're wired for flight and fight because we have to shift attention to the air or to avoid the saber tooth tiger and that ensured our survival so we had fairly rudimentary wiring of the brain back then and then we go through the oral tradition where the wiring changes immediately so that we can remember and we can repeat we become all rhythmic and then the earliest writing so again we've suddenly got new neural pathways developing right through to this fab chap in the second century who invented the first properly usable paper here in China and this fantastic guy B. Sheng everyone talks about Gutenberg and it wasn't Gutenberg at all who invented movable type printing it was this guy here and very little is known about him they think he was just a peasant who was very clever and so he started carving individual Chinese characters on blocks and then he ordered them on a grid depending on their meaning and then instead of having to do these massive great carvings on an entire wooden block of an entire poster so you had to carve every character he just selected every block and that way he could shift it around and it was it appeared to be a lot quicker it never really took off in China because there are thousands of pictograms and no one can do all the pictograms but when it hit the west with a 26 letter alphabet it took off in the meantime in the middle ages you've got basically knowledge was in the hands of a few it was basically the church and it was the nobility and the power structure was unaltered and the peasants didn't have a chance because the only people who were educated were the people at the top then the merchant class starts reading this is fascinating apparently there were no gaps and no punctuation it must have been very hard to read so they insisted on the gaps in the punctuation at the middle ages and this is the big thing in Europe where suddenly you get this virtuous cycle books are suddenly affordable and plentiful and the common man starts reading and it's absolutely no coincidence that it was the common man starting to read and this is what it did to our brains this one in particular the ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time on a static object it led to deep thought amongst ordinary people that's you and me and not just the people at the top of the hierarchy and of course that turned everything upside down so you ended up I love this quote this is from Nicholas Carr deep concentration combined with a highly active and efficient deciphering of text and interpretation meaning and I love this and the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged undistracted reading of a book people start thinking deeply and that's what we got we got the renaissance absolute explosion of ideas of thought and creativity and the reformation the whole power structure was turned upside down and the age of enlightenment where suddenly the individual was important and you know radical ideas like democracy started spreading through the world that's what books did and that's what reading did and I chose these books very deliberately you got Gibbon who did the first ever proper history Darwin it was interesting because when I did this I actually started having difficulty around about the 1990s where do I find the world changing book in the 1990s and that's the one I found but the reason why of course because it was in the 1990s that everything changed and suddenly we all start getting onto the internet and then of course this one has been the phenomenon of the last five years do you know what that one is think about it 50 shades of grey isn't it an indictment of us as a human species that this is the publishing phenomenon of the last five years I think every word of this quote from Nicholas Carr when I read it I said yes yes yes this is what's going to happen what's happening to our minds so he goes into how the brains wired and you see I always thought that our brains were pretty much you know they were pristine when we were born but undeveloped and then they got developed through our education and then around about the age of 22 they started declining rapidly and by the age of 90 we were dead meat and that apparently is not true apparently as far as neurologists are concerned the brain keeps wiring all the time in response to the stimulus you put in front of it all the time right up to the time we die the brain is changing changing changing so what you do a lot you get really good at and what you don't do much basically the brains capacity to deal with that deteriorates and you can't do it very well and that's of course why we do best what we practice the most has anyone read this guy Malcolm Gladwell he's fascinating I love this guy he's such an original thinker who thinks outside the box but this outliers book is fascinating because he's looking at the concept of genius does it really exist and he says no it doesn't he said maybe Mozart was a genius maybe but no one else is a genius at all and having done studies particularly on the kids that are absolutely fantastic at sport and the kids that are fantastic at music he says it's nothing to do with innate ability it's everything to do with the amount of time they practice it and he talks in particular about a German school where kids go in at the age of 12 and come out at the age of 16 and these kids are all regarded as prodigies when they go in they're all absolutely brilliant at violin, piano or whatever when they come out at 16 there's a marked difference between the kids so what they did was study why these kids different are they actually inherently more able but no they weren't it wasn't that it's just they put in more hours so it's this concept of 10,000 hours so if we look at what repeatedly reading books does for the brain interpretation, interpretation of meeting imagination, making associations drawing inferences and sort of developing new ideas you can imagine what that does to a kid's brain and if they can rack up 10,000 hours you're going to have a kid with absolutely fabulous general knowledge a kid who has fabulous vocabulary and a kid who can think for themselves I love this quote from Einstein and he's absolutely right everyone talks about you know we don't need books anymore because we've got Google but that's just knowledge and if knowledge were everything then we wouldn't have the problems we have today and what we need today particularly with our kids is kids who can think outside the box because we've got ideas that we certainly never expected to face terrible problems I mean obviously global warming global terrorism and how about artificial intelligence that's a doozy I don't know if you've read the latest Vanity Fair but my gosh Elon Musk good old Elon Musk is taking on the AI industry because it is led at the moment by a guy in London who actually thinks it's okay to say that they are inventing artificial intelligence that will make humans irrelevant and he thinks it's okay to say that why that guy isn't behind bars I do not know he talks about having gone to a meeting with this guy and out comes another guy who says you know I should shoot him right away because that will save the human race now these guys, these brilliant minds are actually working on making artificial intelligence to supplant us it's horrifying and that's what our kids are facing so what we want is kids we want kids who are articulate kids with ideas kids who are thinkers kids who are originals and kids who can challenge this new hierarchy we need kids who have minds but what's happening to kids minds at the moment now I love this one because I say to kids when I go to schools I do this talk for little kids believe in me and my gosh to the kids they they catch on it's the parents who are the problem the kids get it and I say to them who read Harry Potter and they all put up their hands and I say right when you read Harry Potter was he naked and there's this little titter like this and I say no no seriously and they're like no and I'm like well does J.K. Rowling tell you what he was wearing every day and they're like no and I say well who put on the clothes and the fascinating thing of course is this process of what's called sensory simulation as you read and there have been some fabulous experiments done recently on adults and what they do is they wire them up all over the brain and then they get them to read a story about a man who's climbing a mountain and he slips and he falls and he slips and he falls and he gets to the top and they all pull together and what they're finding is that the brain is lighting up in the reader in exactly the same place it would be lighting up if they were that person climbing the mountain that's what happens when we read and we don't know it we are imagining ourselves in that role in every particular we are seeing it we are hearing it and even more importantly we are feeling it now imagine what that does if you're doing that for 10,000 years you might like to be somebody else there's a lot of studies that I'll show you later on empathy people who read particularly fiction are far more likely to adopt a child to give to charity to work for an NGO for basically to do things for other people than people who do not read lots of fiction there are wonderful studies on this there was a study done two years ago in the United States that had been done 10 years earlier at a university and these 19 year olds and they all came from similar socioeconomic backgrounds but they were wired up and they were showing distressing images and 12 years ago these kids their brains flashed up all over the place they were distressed by the images and then two years ago they read exactly the same experiment with 19 year olds entering university and they showed them the same images and there was barely a response in their brains and what the researchers concluded not me but the researchers concluded that the only difference between these two cohorts was that one cohort was used to reading books and read copiously and the other cohort had stopped reading books that was the difference so we've got to ask ourselves what kind of society we want this is fascinating this is another book that I would urge you to read particularly if you're a parent you've seen editions before the poor guy died just fairly recently wonderful man but he talks about the fact that even in children's story books there are double the number of rare words than in adult conversation ah we've got the handouts great so you can get these afterwards but yeah absolutely so I say to kids you know say to mum and dad sorry I'm too busy to talk to you I'm going to read a children's book because I'm going to get better language out of the children's book but this is fascinating in children's books there is this rich these rich words now I am not panning the internet as a whole it's a fabulous tool and I would certainly not have been able to build my business without the internet and nor would most of us be able to function now with it as a tool for business so as a tool it has many astounding benefits and obviously these are the four main ones your access to information search and filtering tools ease of access, more connections, more ideas etc I even put hearts on this just to prove I am not someone who hates the internet I'm not, I need it I need it every day and yet Steve Jobs was a low-tech parent he did not allow his children access to iPads and tablets and indeed it's interesting in Silicon Valley you've got these Steiner Waldorf schools where the kids aren't allowed access to screens at all in primary school and it is packed with the kids of these techy founders you know there's very experimental they're right on the cutting edge of technology so what do they know that they're not telling us and here's some fabulous recent studies reduced IQ and short-term memory and workers distracted by multitask and digital devices I love this one the Norwegian study it's fascinating it's actually been reported and repeated in America if you give two people of apparently equal education and intelligence a book and you randomise them with the print book and one to kindle and then when they've read it you test them on recall it's something like a third less if you've read it on kindle now they think what it is is it something to do with pixels and they think that you know pixels while it's not picked up by your eye it is picked up by your inner brain so that is constant distraction and why you're not absorbing the information in the same way I love this one American linguistics academic he actually asked these students university students be honest how likely are you to be distracted if you're studying from hard copy 1% on screen 90% what's it doing to our brains now you've got, you will have all the actual references so don't worry about it you'll be able to look it up for yourself and read it so if we look at what if we repeatedly use the internet cursory reading, hurry distracted thinking and superficial learning and teachers will tell you time and again they are fighting all the time cut and paste and I don't know when I was little and I was given an assignment on elephants I used to go to the library and pull out every single book because that was my only source of information and then I'd have to read those books to get the information about elephants I needed but because I couldn't photocopy it I had to think for myself what information am I selecting and I'd write it down and then I'd end up with pages of information and then from that I would have to select what am I going to put in my project whereas today what the kids do is they go to the first page of Google only very lucky to even get to the second page they'll never get that rare nugget about elephants that's on page 20 of Google so they go to the first page, they all look at the same articles they cut and paste from them and then the primary skill is how do I manipulate this information so it doesn't look plagiarised that's the primary skill that they're learning about elephants and at the end of the day they know very little about elephants they remember very little about elephants what they do know is how to manipulate a mouse they know how to cut and paste and they know how to basically change the words up so it doesn't look plagiarised now we all know I don't know about you, I'm making a point now once a month I learn a new phone number I'm doing it on purpose because I discovered to my shock and horror you know I was thinking about it and I thought well crikey how many phone numbers do I know but I knew about five and that was it this is terrible, we all used to have phone numbers just right through our heads so of course we are outsourcing our memories and that's all very well but what is that actually doing to our brains because if we're not practicing memory then we're not going to be good at memorising other things and then also what happens when you lose your mobile phone and your computer goes on the blink or god forbid there is a sun flare we're not going to be able to phone our mums so it's pretty scary we need to use our brains and we need to keep our memories sharp this business here the automated information sorters of course with google or with any of the other search engines as we all know they were put on the first page the pages that are searched the most so everybody starts thinking exactly the same that's if they're thinking at all their information all comes off page one of this information sorter and they're not going to be thinking outside the box and this empathy and compassion business the other thing with empathy and compassion apparently is that these are called higher emotions and what has to happen is that it develops over a long period of time with a slow drip drip into the inner brain now you don't get slow drip drip into the inner brain if the brain is then constantly distracted on a more shallow level so I think we're going backwards I really do I think our brains are going backwards to brains that have very little capacity to remember to brains that are distracted all the time and particularly the children I mean the problem is we all grew up in the linear age so we all have an experience and a knowledge of what it's like to live without these tools but children think that this is the way humans are and they will always choose digital they'll go for digital because it's mighty attractive and particularly digital games and the horrific thing obviously about digital games is that the makers of digital games make them addictive by manipulating the pixels they know exactly how fast they've got to get these pixels moving to actually switch off the critical elements in the brain and to switch on or to make those games addictive it is so cynical it is unbelievable so what's going to happen to our singular intelligences I'm lucky to have the most wonderful husband and he's a Frenchman and he has been reading all his life and he I kind of like my you know some of my BBC2 sewing programs and cooking programs and things like that he never watches them he sits there and reads every single night and I've learnt to keep him company most nights and boy has it done a lot of good to me it's been fabulous but I have to say that Philippe we actually wouldn't need Google in our house because his knowledge of the world and of politics and of particularly history and how history has affected politics is profound now the reason why is that we've lived it it's just a man who has read all his life and what we do now for Christmas which is rather fabulous and I'd encourage you all to do it is instead of getting the piece of jewellery or the piece of tech spend that same money on books because we do that now and you end up with your reading for the year and that way you can explore themes and I now know so much more about fantasy eclat Austria which is the first world war and then I start reading because my darling Philippe starts really getting interesting books out there for me and now I know quite a lot and can tell you quite a lot and that's only happened in the space of a couple of years but the beauty of reading and reading in depth is that you can start getting to the real nuggets of books the gems of books and you start building this idiosyncratic intelligence because no one else has read the same books as you so you end up with a spider web of intense knowledge about a particular subject this is what I want kids to develop I did this talk at Australian International School two days ago and I can tell you the kids aren't going oh no give them a digital games they are listening intently and I had kids coming straight back afterwards a little girl saying how much per day do you think I should spend on social media and I said well what do you think social media is doing for your brain particularly at that age OMG that's very silly she's like uh like this alright well you're going to get very good at what you do the most so I reckon I would limit it to half an hour and then I would say to your friends sorry you've got to go off and read a book and make that trendy make that cool get all the kids onto reading books the kids get it it's the mums and dads out there who aren't getting it and I think it's because it's kind of easy to think and it's desirable to think that you are being a good parent keeping your child up to date with digital this is why I think even babies are given digital I was a Kina Kanya bookshop in Sydney two years ago and I was talking to the bookseller there and he said he had had a parent in the day before who wanted a book about digital programming for a five year old now that's astounding schools think that's important I say there should be no screens in primary school the more I read about this the more I think we should get screens out of primary school and I'll give you some research later on in the next OECD report that came out last year and what that report said that there is simply no benefit whatsoever that has been found over studying it now for at least a decade there is no benefit to educating children on screens none at all in fact the reverse the results are going down now there are always individual kids with certain neurological difficulties who can process material better off a screen and I say give them a screen but that's the exception rather than rule and you do it on a medical report but for everybody else out there we have to teach our kids the primary ability to think to focus on a static object to read and to start developing all this rich language and this ability to process ideas to make connections all those things you get through reading we must do that we've got to turn it back so my top 10 tips first check your child's eyesight because some kids are reluctant readers because they just can't see the page okay you've got to give your child the gift of time this is such a huge one these days particularly here in Hong Kong and also in Shanghai I did this talk at Sharton Junior the other day and I shall tell you a secret that's got a very enlightened head teacher his name is Perry Tienisi I adore Perry Perry has just made homework at school and he's very professional he says that there is no benefit that has been found on papers on kids doing homework over the years that shows there's a benefit to kids that age having to do homework after school they should be outside playing they should be reading and they should be having fun and socially interacting and that is better for them as students and you know who he's had problems from? the parents up in arms absolutely up in arms he has them all in individually and talks them all individually this is why we're doing it it's actually an academic benefit to your child not to be doing the homework so what a lot of these parents have done is because their child now has acres of time and god forbid a child should have time on their hands they have stacked them up with extracurricular activities and learning so I spoke to these grade 5s and I asked them how many extracurricular activities do you do one child put up his hand I said congratulations, that's reasonable who does 3 more hands their median number was 5 extracurricular activities and these kids are expected to basically be able to breathe it's awful and then I had one dear little girl came up to me afterwards ringing her hands and she said you've got to talk to my parents and I said what's going on well it's just that they think that weekends are for music school they think it's for work and then I'm doing come on and I'm doing this, that and the other this beautiful intelligent little girl was being crushed and I said well what would you do if you had time read, that's what she wants to do, read and this little darling child and I said but you can't be good at you know I mean and I say to kids talk to mum and dad and say to them I want to do only 2 or maybe 1 choose your favourites I only do those favourite activities because if they're favourites you'll do them well and you'll enjoy them and that's what it's all about if you're studying Mandarin if you're studying advanced maths if you're studying I don't know French, if you're studying acrobatics if you're studying ballet you're not going to become world class at all those things you don't need them and you absolutely don't need that kind of a childhood which is no childhood at all what you need is time time to build things out of cornflakes packets time to get bored boredom is terribly important okay I've been told I've got 5 minutes left are you ready it's all on the list anyway but we're going to shoot through this how to create time, reorder priorities be realistic about their abilities only choose 1 or 2 activities and the rest of the time give them time to breathe never force your child to read what you do is your brainwash there is a billion dollar multi-billion dollar industry digital industry out there that is set on brainwashing not just your kids but you so you have to brainwash them back this is what you say to the kids we're a family that read books okay now this is really fascinating this is an absolute top tip there are two absolute top tips you have to read in front of your children and read for pleasure not just on holidays on the beach you have to do it every night you get out your book and you read and you comment and you talk about it at the table and talk so if you don't read books of pleasure yourself you can talk till you're blue in the face to your child that they should be doing it but they're going to be watching what you do and if what you do as a lot of us attempted to do and I am no exception I can be on my Richard's screen in the evening if you're on your screen kids will think that's what you do as a grown up I love that picture beautiful that's what life used to be like and we can recreate it boys do what dads do if you've got a son who's a reluctant reader and many boys are the major problem with reluctant reading dad if he's away on business a lot and he comes back he has to decide is it kicking a football or is it reading with my child what is more important because if the dad reads with a child the child thinks ah that's what's important make over your home it was very hard for me to find that photo and in fact you go into a lot of homes these days bookshelves are filled with photographs and medals and obje d'ar but they're not filled with books take your TV off centre stage so it's not the first thing a kid sees it's all visual cues the first thing a kid sees has to be books not the television a kid's bedroom must have bookshelves and this is a lovely idea you can get these online that's a good use of online get them an exliberist stamp very exciting get them a library membership card get them a bedside light this is probably the most efficient way of creating a great reader and that is reading aloud to your child and you can do that right up until their teens you can if you get the right material because actually what kids want is they want you all kids want mum and dad and they want your love and your attention so if what your love and your attention for them is associated with is every day we curl up with a book and they'll be a Pavlovian effect and they will believe forever after they'll feel warm, cosy and full of love when they see a book that's how you make them love books associated with your time and your attention so it most of all improves their attitudes to reading but it's fascinating if you read to a child from the time it's born then by the time it hits school it's two years ahead of its peers and that persists right up to university two years ahead and that's how you make them love books and your attention general knowledge demonstrates you think books are important builds their attention span and it associates reading with pleasure fabulous experiment this you will find in Jim Tralees' book but all this headmaster did in a failing school was to improve the lighting and then to have the teachers do ten minutes reading aloud at the beginning of the day ten minutes sustained silent reading and he turned the school around in just four years and that same experiment and you make it special and above all when you're reading to your child you turn off your digital devices and you close the door so that they get the message books are more important than digital screens family outings we're blessed here in Hong Kong that's me with one of my book launches but we are blessed with many many book launches you've just got to get on the mailing list of people like Bookazine and you can get your kid to book launches fabulous and then when you go home you rave to your children about meeting the authors and about the books you're just conditioning their brain we're the family that revolves around books books for birthdays, what happened to that and you get the kids to choose the books finding the hook there are some kids that no matter what you seem to do they're still not interested in reading this is where your librarians come in handy and your teachers because there are the children's book selection now is greater than it's ever been they're totally hooked into things like I don't know soccer or I don't know grooming horses or racing cars or even even if they're totally hooked into their digital games get books about kids who got involved in a digital game you know you can do it that way just find the subject that turns them on and if all else fails the Guinness Book of Records always always succeeds take an interest in what your child's reading rank bribery and corruption I'm all into blackmail bribery and corruption you give them a bedside lamp and you give them a later bedtime if they're reading a book but the one thing you do is get digital out of their bedrooms it's hard in Hong Kong we have such tiny houses it's really difficult but you got to do it you can't have them with digital in their rooms and you can sneak it under the radar especially with boys it's a goodie you've got to be really inventive and think how to left field reading reading reading reading as a normal part of their lives and this is huge for some reason parents seem to have this sort of idea that digital technology and the internet is sort of like sacrosanct and that they cannot say no to their child because somehow they're breaching some unwritten law and it's not true all parents have the right to say no and I always say to mums and dads ok for salesman comes to your door and he says I have got a drink for your child and this drink is going to inhibit social development their language development it's going to inhibit their gross motor development it's going to inhibit their fine motor development it is going to bring them backwards so far that they are going to be literally when they get to school slightly catatonic you would report that person to social services or to the police and they'd be locked up in jail and yet parents are bringing in these screens right through the door thinking they're doing their children good computers are tools not toys get them off the digital games you can follow my blog because my blog's the anti-digital blog I have writing competitions I have amazing books they can read and they can read about their favourite authors and this is the last thing who wants to be rich and famous this is what studies in the United States that have followed kids who are readers for decades shows that basically if you're a reader that's what you can expect I don't put up a slide for the other side but that was fascinating all the ones more likely to be put in prison it's pretty awful and I love this one for Abraham Lincoln he grew up in a a hut with dirt floor and he said it was books that made him into what he was and we mustn't forget that so and this is true so that's it sorry I know I'm probably talking to a converted and you've all of you know all of this anyway read the handouts and at the back you've got all of the stuff I've been digging up but there is so much more we've just got to be aware now if you just put into Google or whatever delayed development digital screens you come up with a plethora so I just say what the hell are we doing and why isn't someone going to the government and why isn't the government taking on the digital industry and saying no for children anyway thank you


There should not be one billionaire in America None And I'll tell you why Because there is nobody that works hard enough to earn a billion dollars and My argument is this the two jobs I did in my life that were physically the most demanding and mentally the most difficult that I ever did Paid me the least amount of money One was going through butts, and I challenge any billionaire to put up with six weeks of that shit At sixty two dollars every two weeks, you know, and the second was right before I went in the Navy I had a job with the Minnesota Highway Department a couple bucks above minimum wage I Worked for the bridge crew, and you know what my job was I worked a four-day work week ten hours a day So I could have Friday Saturday Sunday for the weekend you're 18 of course you're gonna do that But I worked 40 hours in four days on the bridge crew and Guess what I did ran the 80 pound jackhammer. I Challenge any billionaire to run the jackhammer for 40 hours one week and tell me he works harder than that No, he doesn't That's why I believe there should not be a billionaire in the world That was incredible You just listened to former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura make a very simple yet compelling case against the existence of billionaires And what he said there is apparently resonating considering the fact that that rent is now going viral on TikTok And I think that the reason why it speaks to people so much is because it just makes sense on a visceral level So consider this the CEO to worker pay ratio was about 20 to 1 back in the 1960s And since we are told that we live in a meritocracy, it's not true But since we're told this while it makes sense to equate pay with productivity So you'd have to assume that back then CEOs worked 20 times harder on average than just regular employees Which is a pretty insane proposition to accept in the first place, right? But consider this since 1978 average CEO pay jumped by 1460 percent according to the Economic Policy Institute, which means that CEOs are now paid 399 times more than average workers ask yourself Do you believe that CEOs are working 400 times harder now than they were in the 1960s? Does anyone actually believe that CEOs ever worked harder than average workers? I don't think so but as absurd as that ratio is Most CEOs are not even billionaires. Sure. They're multi millionaires multi multi millionaires in some instances But most of them are not actually billionaires billionaires aren't even smaller subset of the population In fact, the total number of billionaires is estimated to be 3311 according to visual capitalist with a plurality of them living in the United States totaling 975 in total mostly living in New York and California now most of these individuals own multiple companies. We're talking empires here So this includes the likes of Elon Musk worth 151 billion dollars at least according to when this estimate was taken Bill Gates worth 106 billion Warren Buffett worth 97 billion Jim Walton worth 57.9 billion Mark Zuckerberg worth 57.7 billion now Billionaires a word that gets thrown around a lot and we all know that to be a billionaire means you have a metric Fuck ton of money, which is an actual unit of measurement by the way I'm kidding. Of course, but I want you to truly comprehend How much money that is because it's difficult to visualize that amount of money But what I want to do is share this video that is almost 10 years old It went viral back in 2012-2013-2014 around that era and it helped me realize just how enormous That amount of money is an actuality. So let's watch and then we'll discuss when we come back Here is $100,000 current here that it is there it is.  Right. That's a lot of money. All right now We have someone named on hi who is top twitch donator of all time. He has like probably a billion dollars, right?  You know, it's 10,000 times more but here One two three four five. That's 500,000 Copy paste that's a million dollars. Okay? Then we go we have to go Two three four five. That's five million. Let's copy paste that. That's 10 million. Okay. Let's copy paste the 10 million That's 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 a hundred million dollars. Okay, let's copy paste the hundred million Okay, that's 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 a billion dollars, okay? And now I'm I'm high and I'm gonna donate soda pop in a hundred thousand dollars like this Is that the elite key? Yeah, and now we're gonna try to find we're gonna try to find the money that we're missing now Okay, it's on the right. It's on the right. I see it There it is He saw it it was right there But it's kind of hard to feel it if I put it somewhere in the middle you guys probably wouldn't find it But you know what you wouldn't find it for sure.  He could probably live a swell life with four million dollars here up. I'm I'm high I'm giving venruki four million dollars real quick four million dollars I actually do not notice it's gone. I can never find it again. It's really difficult You know because it's just lines missing. I'm not gonna count my lines.  Let me real quick.   Let's buy another one Okay, we got another lambo. It's cool. This one has a nice. I like yellow. You know, I don't like yellow I'm gonna buy green Okay, green lambo. Okay, then hold on Let me just normal priced lambo. Let me buy normal priced lambo for like five of my friends It's like 300k. Okay 300k there one friend two friend Three friends. Okay. Let me buy for the rest of you. There you guys all have lambos. Oh, wait. I want another lambo for myself Okay, there we go. We're chilling. Okay. Let me see if I still have any money left. Hold on Looks like I got a little bit So that kind of helps to put it into perspective, right when you're talking about a billion dollars Spending 100,000 is similar to us spending pennies. We don't even realize that we're missing those pennies But then you scale that level of wealth to elon musk and jeff bezos And they have more than 100 times that amount right there that we just watched So we're talking about sums of money So incomprehensibly large that it could probably sustain someone for more than a thousand years If human beings could live that long like it would be difficult to spend all of that money Even if you tried after you bought multiple mansions and multiple super yachts and a private jet and luxury vehicles and a couple of sports teams and You bought a private island or two and you took a trip to space you would still have so much money left over That most of us wouldn't even have a taste of what that amount of wealth feels like Now in truth Money is fake. We made it all up But within the confines of our capitalist system money is finite It's a resource that is limited Which means that battle over resources by its nature is a zero-sum game and billionaires earning more money Is the direct result of exploitation and working class people losing money the empires that these individuals Undemocratically lord over weren't built exclusively by them Their workers are the ones who are responsible for their success But regardless of how productive the workers are in these instances despite them Making capitalist owners like elan musk and bill gates rich. They don't get to share in the fruits of their labor The rich people the billionaires They took it all as jesse ventura was saying it's impossible to work hard enough to earn a billion dollars And he's right. So how exactly do people become billionaires in this current context? well, if you can't feasibly earn that much then They're not working hard. They're not working harder than anyone. So Where does this money come from? Well, they steal it obviously and they keep getting an increasingly large share of the pie And it's to the point where average workers, they don't even get a small slice of the pie They don't even get crumbs at this point What workers get is an infinitesimal amount compared to some of these CEOs And the existence of billionaires isn't just problematic because their existence is inherently immoral Their existence also poses a threat to democracy Because as the new york times put it the issue with billionaires is not that they're sociopaths though, certainly some are It's that their power comes with no accountability They dwell or don't dwell as is often the case above the clouds in super tall skyscrapers They fly to private islands on private jets and do god knows what there their yachts remind us That no matter what the paperwork says, they're citizens of no nation that if we try to fix them in place They can just go elsewhere They become enamored of certain ideas fixing african agriculture resurrecting von misis and hayak terraforming mars being the president and can spend nearly unlimited sums in pursuit of making them a reality Even if they fail at any or all of it, they will remain billionaires and there's not much you can do about it They're not elected to the role so you can't vote them out of it very well said in my opinion So think about the implications of this the implications of the existence of a billionaire They can spend money to buy off politicians and entire political parties. They can take over massive news organizations They can control social discourse by purchasing social media organizations And these aren't just like hypothetical examples that i'm bringing up. We've seen it happen These are things that they are doing currently and there's nothing that we can do to stop them If a billionaire decided to buy youtube tomorrow They could fundamentally change this platform that we all use and love and there's really nothing that we can do about it It's their world and we're just living in it now. You might think mike I mean there are things that we can do we can pass laws Taxing them out of existence. We can have a wealth tax We can invoke anti-trust when they go on these purchasing sprees and try to rein in the amount of companies that they own And look you're right about that I support all of these policies But the problem is when they control government and media and social media To say that this is a david versus goliath situation would be an understatement See it's so hard to put the cat back in the bag once it's out once we allow human beings to accumulate that much wealth Well, that's a level of power that Is almost impossible to rein in and remember in a capitalist system Wealth directly translates into power. So allowing people to get that rich in the first place That's where we as a species I think went wrong But despite the media manipulation and capitalist brainwashing that we've all been subjected to since we were children People are beginning to comprehend that this is absurd. This entire system is genuinely absurd And people are tired Of living with crumbs while these rich fuckheads have it all Hence why I think videos like the one that we watched are so popular Because even if these billionaires hold more power than us The biggest disadvantage that they face is that there's far less of them than there are of us And once people realize the power that we have collectively at the macro level. Well, that's when billionaires are really in trouble