Thank you for coming here I'm excited to talk to you about Ruby lambdas first. I want to apologize in advance for my very thick American accent I hope you'll still be able to understand me and I do know that I can be quickly and sometimes not so clearly so feel free to stop me anyway Who here has worked with Ruby before at all? okay, and Have you worked with Ruby like anybody worked with it quite a bit Okay, anybody explore lambdas with Ruby at all Okay, good and For you others. Are you mainly involved in object-oriented development? Java C sharp that kind of language Okay, good. So we have kind of a Equal mix I guess First I want to say I am not an expert on functional programming I've been to study groups for Erlang and closure and really enjoyed it and I've been exploring functional techniques in Ruby But I'm not a guru and so Please keep that in mind Lambda is a free floating function. It doesn't belong to a class or an object. It's not even associated with one Meal for it says Explains functions in a functional language are considered first class Meaning that functions can appear anywhere that any other language construct such as variables can appear and we'll see throughout the presentation how Lambdas are really very Flexible you can put them anywhere unlike methods which have to be in certain places And by enabling functions as return values and I would say also parameters and variables You can create the opportunity to build highly dynamic adaptable systems. We saw a lot of this in the last presentation about Java That's for me, I haven't As they say drunk the functional Kool-Aid completely yet I'm very excited about it, but I still have one of my feet in the object-oriented world and So I look at functional programming as a complement to object-oriented programming and feel that There's a place for both of them This is directed to Rubius. Do you remember when you encountered code blocks for the first time? And that they were very confusing at first. I know they were for me the syntax kind of confused me It wasn't really clear from the syntax. What was happening when? It was later that it I realized that this is just a block of code that was being passed to the method And the method could do whatever I wanted with it But you persevere it and you master them was it worth the effort Probably so in fact Ruby without code blocks would be a very different language Well coming from code blocks lambdas are the next step in that progression code blocks are kind of co-literals, but lambdas are objects that contain code and There's really a lot of similarity between them So whereas most Rubius avoid lambdas thinking that there's some functional corner of the universe that doesn't apply to me They're really already in that functional universe using code blocks Many Rubius will complain, but it's not idiomatic Ruby to use lambdas because nobody understands what lambdas are Rubius don't already know what it is. You will confuse them. They'll have to learn something new something else new This will discourage people from entering the Ruby world But I believe that the benefits of using lambdas are so compelling that it's worth Deviating from that idiomatic Ruby or even changing it Why should the rubius care about lambdas? lambdas can help us Simple hire code make it more extensible and we can become more productive and therefore have more fun doing what we're doing We heard a little bit about it before Unnecessary complexity is our enemy software developers We we do or should be doing our best to eliminate unnecessary complexity We strive to maximize the ratio of functionality over complexity If we absolutely need some complexity to get some functionality then we can live with that But if it's just there because we haven't taken the opportunity to improve our code, that's not so great So we're always trying to maximize this ratio so that our code can be highly functional and yet maintainable and extensible and comprehensible to the reader local variables have been around for a long time and I'm going to be a little bit sarcastic here when I when I say this When we define variables in Ruby, we define them all as instance or class variables, right limiting their scope By declaring them local has no value to us Does that make sense? No Of course, we want variable to be local because that limits their scope and makes them It makes the interrupt it Increases the number of possible interactions in the code which makes it simpler which is good And yet that's exactly what we do in languages like Ruby and until recently Java with instance methods Any piece of functionality except for code blocks is in a method and a method can only be in a class It can only be an instance method or a class method Define at this class level so every time you want to extract functionality into a method You're adding to this list of instance methods and when the reader comes and looks and reads your class He or she will see a long list of methods and there'll be a lot there and it'll be confusing One measure of complexity is the number of possible paths of interaction so let's say each of these circles is an instance method and The possible interactions are indicated by the lines between them and The method call can go in either direction So for each line we multiply by two to get the number of possible interactions Also, we can multiply n times the quantity and minus one and with five instance methods. We get 20 possible interactions We just five that's a lot Wouldn't it be nice if we could make method like things local to a method and In practice, I find at least I don't know about you but in my experience It's very often that a method is called by only one other method So it's kind of like the implementation detail for a member and so why not make them local methods? If we can do that and here we show what that might look like you have two lambdas That we remove two methods and make them two lambdas inside one of the methods. We now have decreased our count of instance methods from five to three Decrease the complexity from 20 to 6 that's over three times That's a lot So this is what it might look like let's say I had these lambdas Fetch type one data fetch type two data is doing two different types of information over a network and then some of the integrate the data and Then I can tie them all together at the bottom here These are implementation details for this out of method This could be the public method and this just the internal implementation detail So somebody reading the class wouldn't need to see this these as instance method So for all you oh developers, is there anything about the structure that looks familiar anybody? Does it look like something you're familiar with? for the indentation and the The subdivisions of functionality class It's kind of like a class right? So whereas before we have This here as a single method and these lambdas within the method instead We can have a class and those lambdas become instance methods of that class And that's really what object-oriented development the design is all about It's it's making small classes that do one thing. Well and because they started out writing this this big method with lambdas and Subdividing the functionality into units of like related behavior It was a very trivial matter to convert that to a class when we encourage ourselves to Convert code to classes we wind up with better quality code How many times have you seen really large humongous? Classes that are doing way too much for one class But to refactor that would just be so difficult that you never do it because you wouldn't have time If you start out at the beginning by using nested lambdas, then you already have that class structure So in in this case I might decide well, you know what? This is getting really complicated This really should be a class. I'm not anti-class or anything. Sometimes it should be a class So if you start out with this lambdas design, it's easy to make it a class and In this class this run method might be the only public method these kids all in private Feel free to interrupt with questions or another nice thing about using lambdas is that Once you have packaged your code in a lambda You can pass it around and do things with it that are easier than if it were just the longest block of code as an example At one point I realized I'm doing these network accesses. Why am I doing them in sequence when I can be doing them in parallel? Most of my time is just waiting anyway, right? so Since these are already lambdas it became trivial to put this structure around it To to do that and to threads One of the things that's been mentioned earlier today, and that I believe really strongly is that you should a Given chunk of code should have one Theme different things should be in different parts of the code Here I have the mechanism for running two threads and waiting for them to finish The only thing I have that says anything about what's actually being run in those threads is The minimum possible thing I could have which is the name of a lambda There is no implementation detail here So theoretically if this became a pattern that I was using really often I could extract it out into some methods somewhere and some utility things and Refactor it even more So let's step back a little bit and look at the syntax for defining lambdas and Ruby Ruby moved from version one eight to one nine several years ago And it was a pretty big change in the language and some new syntax was added Before one nine, this was the way the only way you could define a lambda use the lambda It looks like a keyword, but I believe it's actually a method on the kernel class In any case, you would say lambda and then curly braces or do and And any code would be inside the curly braces or the do and for those not familiar with Ruby These are pretty synonymous the curly braces and idiomatically if it's going to be only only one line We use the curly braces and it's going to be multiple lines we use to end Starting in one nine. We have what's called the stabby lambda syntax, which is this arrow here And I like this better because it's kind of like a picture rather than a word And so it stands out to me and if we have parameters in the lambda then Before one nine, we would have to define them like this And this is exactly the way it's done in the code block But starting with one nine we get to do it this way and this is exactly the way you would do it in a function method boring details, right? One of the first things I did with lambdas when I started experimenting with them was use them in unit tests There are many times when you might have a method that you've designed to raise an exception if they gets a bad input Something bad happens You might want to test that that really does happen when it's supposed to and our spec has a special Method here that you can use raised error You can pass a lambda in You won't get executed until it's safely inside the aspect framework and our spec will look to see if a result in error was raised and Either pass or fail the test accordingly The simplest thing I could think of would be to divide one by zero to generate an error Lambdas are also assignable. We can assign them to variables Here we have a lambda that takes a name as a parameter and Returns a string containing that name And again for those not familiar with Ruby when you have a double-coded string This pound curly braces will enclose an expression that will be evaluated and then that pound curly brace String will be replaced with a result of that It's called interpolation. It's a fancy word for Substitution and then we can call it in several ways in all versions of Ruby we can call it with the call method and The square brackets and starting in one nine. We have the dot per end notation, which is the one I prefer The square brackets I really don't like using that because Square brackets have a special meaning to me and I think to most people It's the way we get a value out of a bigger thing such as a hash or an array and so I Hardly ever use it, but I'll show one case where I do A little later lambdas are closures, which means they carry with them the Context in which they were defined and by context. I mean basically the local variables. So here we have statement n equals 15 and we have a lambda Quits just is like a print print line and Java we output that value So we define a lambda here and then the dot parent calls it right there and The result we get would be 15 because it can see this This is it's gonna be a good thing, but this can also be a bad thing you may not intend To access that variable that's in the outer scope. For example, what if you have a lambda? That uses an intermediate variable what it thinks is a local variable But because it has already been defined in the scope instead it's modifying that thing that was already created outside the scope In this case, we have n equals 15 and then we run this lambda where we assign the string to n And when we output n we get the string. I just overwrote n Because we've overwritten this There's another thing that you can do with lambdas. That's can be risky can be powerful But also risky, which is kind of like the theme of Ruby. I guess is The lambda you can get the binding of a lambda by calling its binding method the binding contains the local variable and Binding has a method on it called eval or you can give it an arbitrary string of Ruby code And that string will be evaluated in the context of that binding So since name is in the binding of this lambda We can We can run this and we're going to overwrite name with another name And then this will print out here now This doesn't seem too harmful, right? But if you have several lambdas that you define in the same binding and one of them changes value in the Binding that's shared by the other that could be kind of dangerous So Ruby may not be the best functional language to use for functional programming but just be informed and Choose what you think is best. I love Ruby because I think it's an awesome general purpose programming language and to have the Functional aspects added to it. It's really It's really wonderful We can get around that problem by Specifying in the parameter list. This isn't really a parameter, but this is where the parameters would go if there were some We can specify that this is a lambda local by Having a semicolon and then the name of the variable that we want to be considered local If there were other parameters, they would be here before the semi-colon So here we're saying hey if you see and in this lambda Don't use an end from outside create a new local and We can see by this code that that work Because when the output and it's still 15, you know, we execute it Does that make sense I mentioned that there was there are a few cases where the square bracket notation might make sense And here is one of them. I have been working with a data set that was several levels deep and hashes and arrays and Accessing anything with square brackets is a real pain when you have to use five of them. And so I thought well Let me see if there's a better way and a colleague started this and I kind of carried the ball a little further and wrote something Like this where you could separate the levels with a period or any arbitrary Character and it would do the navigation the descending for you so here's a Collection this is an array of three elements. The first is a string second is a hash the third is another array and This array has three things in it And so if we access one dot color one is this hash color is this and we get yellow two dot two Two is this array and the second two is the last element of the inner array you get 75 so in this case accessor is a lambda and Normally, I wouldn't use these square brackets But because it's doing something that you would expect something with square brackets to do I think it's a good idea to use them in this case in Ruby We have like in Java we have public private protected methods the meaning is a little bit different, but almost the same But you can get around that privacy because With any class or any object you can call its send method and give it the name of a function And it will call that function even if it's private if you really want something to be private You can make it a lambda local to that method and then It only lives for the lifetime of the method call so there's no way you can reach in and find it and get to it I I gave this talk in Pittsburgh a couple months ago, and somebody pointed out After the conference he did some benchmarking and found that Creating and destroying a lot of lambdas actually takes time So that's something to be careful about if it's something that you're going to be doing a hundred thousand times You might not want to create the lambda inside the method You might want to make it in that case an instance method instead or move the lambda outside and assign it to a constant of the class In most cases the the time for creating destroying the lambda object is very minimal compared with the work It's actually doing and it doesn't matter, but in some cases it might matter I'm trying to demonstrate that I'm being objective about this. I'm not saying that you know the review is Perfect or the functional programming and the review is perfect Self-invoking anonymous functions. We actually saw this before But this is when you create a lambda and then you call it right away Here's an example We have this lambda that contains this code and then we call it right away Anybody know why we might want to do that because we want to show off for pretenses. We know what lambdas are. Is there another reason? What about these local variables here? Well, if this isn't the lambda these local variables will persist past the execution of this code But because this is a lambda These are local to the lambda and never go beyond the outside of the lambda They don't exist anymore after the lambda is finished running and that can be pretty handy In fact, copy script uses this exact technique so that when you write a copy script script You're now polluting the global JavaScript namespace with your variables lambdas are a natural for event handlers Here I'm defining an event handler that when it's called with an event will just output a string Saying this event occurred and then the event that occurred and then we can pass that to a method called ad event handler and Lambda is our first-class objects. We can pass them around and they can be held on to for later use and Called we can make this even more concise by defining a lambda right here without even using an intermediate variable What about when we have to customize behavior? We saw in the last episode in the Java session about filtering and This is a pretty common theme In fact, you know, we talked about it last time and this time As object-oriented developers the first thing that would come to mind would be polymorphism. We write classes that specialized the behavior so They might look something like this if you want an even filter and an odd filter we write a Class with a consistent function name that function name will be shared by all the other classes That we're using for this purpose and the name here is filter So we define these classes and then we instantiate them and then we can use them kind of a lot of code For something really simple If instead we use lambdas, it's much much more concise Here we have the even filter and the odd filter and we use them and it's very very concise and another nice thing about using lambdas rather than classes for this is that You can use lambdas to compose lambdas. You can have compound filters where you you have a Method or lambda that takes a bunch of filters and then combines them all together in one big and or something like that You can do a lot of things with lambdas more flexibly than a class method. This is method of a class duplication Where we're going down the same road we went from the last session again, but Here are some methods that Double quadruple double triple and quadruple a number and as you can see there's some duplication in these methods the times n part specifically Normally this wouldn't be really a huge red flag It's not that much duplication, but it helps us illustrate the concept of refactoring out the duplication So let's take a look at what we might do. We can use partial application or currying and with partial application We have here a an outer lambda That creates the returns an inner lambda We call the outer lambda with the factor the number that we want all numbers to be multiplied by It creates a lambda that when called with another number Multiplies it by that number that we will pass in when the lambda was created So we can get a tripler by calling this with three Then when we call it with a number we get tripling up a number And in this way the guts of the logic for all of these multipliers is in only one place similarly because Landers are first-class objects. They can be returned by methods So it doesn't have to be a lambda that creates a lambda. It can be a method so this is exactly the same thing except as a method instead of a lambda and Note here. We don't use the dot for it. We just use the regular Curring does the same thing but in a different way we start out with a function that takes all the parameters necessary for the computation Namely here the two and then we pre-fill one of them one of those parameters And this returns a lambda that we can then call with the second number to get the desired result Curry is a method on the proc class Which returns a lambda which went called with a method return with a number return with a value to pre-fill Returns another lambda predicates, I should have gone before the top of toast predicates are lambdas that return a true or false value and One of the common uses for predicates is filtering Here is an example of a function a method that takes a filter as an optional parameter in Ruby parameters can be optional if you say parameter name equals expression then if this Parameter is not passed then this expression will be used This is a lambda which takes a message as its parameter and unconditionally returns true So this is a default value It's like we heard in the last session rather than using nil and having to check for nil Instead we can just give it a default lambda and have a call that default lambda and That would just let everything through it would affect the unfiltered Then the way we call the filter is pretty simple filter dot friend parameter so This message will be added to the messages array if when we call filter with the message filter returns true pretty plain English right using the word filter. It's pretty apparent what it's doing. It's not complicated However, many Rubyists will say why use lambdas when you could do the same thing with a code block and You can't this is how you would do it with a code block But I ask you which way it looks clearer to you There's nothing in here. This is anything about filtering There's nothing here that indicates that you're passing it to the method because when you pass a block to a method You don't need to specify anything here so and The other thing is it if if a method should require more than one of these then you can't use co-block anyway because You can only pass one co-block to a Ruby method a common theme and the functional programming that I found is Create self-contained things that do one thing. Well, like the unit scope and Try to separate unrelated code out Into separate areas. I saw a really good analogy on Twitter said something like a fully structured code is more like mangled coat hangers than spaghetti because the spaghetti you can pull one strand out pretty easily But the coat hangers it's not so easy if they're all kind of intertwined really He's in the park. Am I speaking clearly enough by the way? Okay, good. I just want to make sure Okay So here's an example of doing that I was writing some code that was doing some network accesses and then processing the results and Then I realized that I should really be chunking these messages into blocks and so For my previous years as a Java developer and before my first gut reaction was to do it right there in the same code Just add the chunking part to the same area of the code that Fetching but then I realized hey wait a minute. That's not clean what I should really be doing is separating out the The concept and the implementation of the chunking From the thing that is actually being done with the objects in the chunk Why should they be in the same place? Shouldn't be and when we separate them we get all kinds of opportunities for reuse and simplification so It went even further because I then I thought well. Hey The chunking thing Has logic that it has to know when to get the chunk how to dispense the objects and keep track of things and stuff But why does it need to know how to get the chunk? Why can't that be configurable, too? all right, so this is the signature of the Buffered enumerable, which is the name of that class method, it's a class method that creates an object and It takes a fetcher Lambda which is the implementation of how the record should be fetched and Optionally a fetched notifier lambda as well and this one I realized that I needed this when I Started the unit test that I thought how am I going to know when it's fetching when it's doing it the right way So I thought hey if I put a fetched notifier in there that's configurable then I can test it and people can use it for logging and Maybe displaying a message to the user or private bar, etc We talked about lambdas as nested functions already, but here's another example of how it can clarify your code Again, we try to separate high from low-level stuff and we try to separate unrelated things from each other the task of formatting the string really has nothing to do with what's in the string Plus by making it a lambda here. We eliminate the duplication so that this logic is only specified once And we can call it three times here lambdas when you have lambdas you can't just Specify them without the parentheses and expect them to be called as you can with methods Because without the parentheses it results to the lambda itself Methods are not always an option as I said before you can't define it just anywhere And here's an example where I defined it in an R-spec test And then I ran it right after I defined it and got an error saying undefined method so That was kind of frustrating and I found you that you could actually move it somewhere else and would work But then it was further away from the code and it really wasn't a great solution Lambda on the other hand worked great. I because you couldn't define that anywhere. You want so here's a lambda and I called it here and as you can see We can use a lambda where a code block is expected By putting an ampersand in front of it. We can use a method where a lambda is expected by doing that and I'm gonna pass over this unless we have more time later lambdas and prox are selfless I Was surprised when I tried this I tried out putting a self inside a lambda and Expected to see some 2s representation of the lambda. I didn't Instead you get the The object in which it lives in which it's enclosed. I was writing some code that modified Class attributes and private and public and that kind of thing and wanted to test that and in the tests I wanted to be able to set up and tear down classes before and after each test and so I tried defining a class inside a method and it didn't work Can't do it but with a lambda You can do it Here we have a lambda that defines a class and if there's no error and when you Instantiate that class it works So that's kind of an obscure thing, but that's helpful to Transform chains We heard about predicates already transformers or things that change a value from one to another When we think of iteration and enumeration we usually think of taking Data objects and passing them through something doing something with that, but if we rotate that 90 degrees and instead Take a single data item and pass it through multiple transforms So we're kind of switching the noun in the verb then We can create these little processing systems that can be very configurable That too is a bit obscure, but it's an interesting use of lambdas You just have an array of undefined size of lambdas and that's all the material I had Actually, I can go back to this Comparing lambdas and prox in Ruby. There's a class called prox lambdas are instances of prox but prox Also include non-lambda prox Which is kind of confusing in a pain, but they do behave differently. So if you return from a lambda It does not return from the method in which it lives You can see here Whereas if you return from a prox it does return from the method another thing is lambdas are much more strict in their argument checking They have Well, we see here we get an error if we give the one number of arguments to lambda, but not for the prox and I just want to show you one other thing This is a So I have a gem called trick bag and I've used some of these techniques in that It's a Ruby gem that has just a bag of kind of unrelated Utilities that I've found to be useful and wanted to put on the public Internet somewhere so I can get them from anywhere And that's where this collection access thing is defined. This is what It looked like to define that lambda that we used to access that stuff Although to be fair it's calling this method which is here So it's a little bit more, but one of the things I love about Ruby is you can do it a lot with a little bit of code So I guess that's it any questions comments. No Okay, well, thank you very much for your time


To be open with my LGBT peers, it's not that hard. Most of my friends are really accepting and if they don't accept me, then they're not really friends to begin with, so why hang out with them, you know? So, it's not that hard. They're all accepting and I love them very much. What my school can do to create a safer atmosphere is when bullying is reported that they need to take action and not just ignore it and just say like, oh, you know, kids will be kids, you know? They have to take action so that way this won't occur again. When I first began to realize my queer identity was when I was six years old, I began to realize that, you know, I don't know, just looking at women just made me feel more excited than just being around guys. You know, I would hang out with them, but it wasn't like that same feeling, that adrenaline rush that I would feel when I was with, you know, with girls. And so then, you know, on six, it was like that. Well, it came back to me like around 11 and it realized that, yeah, I'm a lesbian. And that was it. I don't really have a favorite movie. I like a lot of movies. I like horror, I like comedy, I like documentaries, so it's endless. I like any kind of color, generally gray and black. I like to wear black because when you wear all black, everything matches. And then when it's gray, it's like, it's not white, it's not black, but it's together and it's like a nice shade, you know. I like that.


Freedom today. I want to talk to you about a lot of things, but since George is sick I've decided that I am going to Yeah, I should go get back that rehash watch it Hey guys, what's going on? My name is James and one of the new recruits from freedom I've come all the way over to the Philippines to do tasks at freedom. So introducing myself. I'm a YouTube content creator I have over 25 million views across YouTube. So in terms of helping people grow I can do that. I'm a youtuber like you the freedom family So for those of you wondering what sort of channel I run I run a gaming community channel on YouTube So I'll be specifically working with the freedom family, but especially on MGM So I will be helping the gamers grow on YouTube and it's gonna be an exciting year for freedom Other than that guys, my name is from James from freedom and you've been watching


Hey guys, it's MJ the student's act tree and This is going to be a new little series called. Let's talk finance and it's going to be for students who are studying subject CA1 ST5 SA5 and also SA6 as well as anybody else who is interested in the topic of finance and what we're basically going to be doing is going through a question and Discussing the answer That's it. It's going to be very simple And yeah, I hope I hope you guys enjoy it if it gets a lot of views. I'll make a few more But yeah, let's get into it So this is question one from a fellowship exam and it says that you are the fund manager of a private equity fund Based in South Africa that invests in countries in the rest of Africa You are considering a proposal from a small engineering firm based in a neighboring country The firm wishes to expand its operations in a frontier African country that is on infrastructure spending drive The firm proposes that the expansion be financed through a rights issue and that your fund invests Now I'm not going to do part one because that's just book work And I'm not going to do part two because we're not going to have enough time I mean sorry part three because we're not going to have enough time But let's let's do part two which is discuss the factors that you would take into account in considering the proposal And bear in mind is worth 20 marks, which means you're probably going to have to write down 40 yes 40 Different points or 40 ideas so Let's get to it because I think we could all come up with 10 quite easily But to come up with 40 is a bit of the challenge Anyway, let's just focus in on what this question is talking about I mean the keywords that jump out to me are private equity small engineering firm And infrastructure spending so those are the three things I want to focus on as well as bearing in mind that it is African so Let's just get some mental images before we begin Um We're looking at private equity private equity is when people invest in companies that are not necessarily on the stock market um They're normally used to start a company up, but that is not their only purpose they can come in at various stages of the business and Basically, like I said, it's any investment in a company that isn't listed on the stock exchange So in this case, we're going to be seeing that this company is already established. They're small But they're going to be needing some extra capital to finance some new ventures We are based in Africa, which is the best continent in the world and We're going to be looking at some of the unique challenges and opportunities that are in this great continent And remember that the final theme or the whole thing here is on infrastructure spending. It's a small engineering company So let's get into it And I think the the important part to start with these type of questions is to realize that Investments is all about risk and reward I am willing to risk my money by investing in these various projects because I expect a reward If I wasn't going to get a reward, I wasn't going to do it And how can I expect a reward if I'm not prepared to take a risk? So the two go hand in hand So let's look at it. We've got you. We've got a private equity company They're they're out there to to seek a reward We've got um an engineering um firm that you know needs some cash in order to to develop And this deal is going down in Africa Now, let's say we are going to consider purchasing this Um, we need to ask ourselves. Well, what price is required because It could be great but too expensive and then it's not worth it or it could be quite lousy But at a very good price, it might be worth the risk So in order to evaluate the risk and the reward the first thing we need to do is consider the valuation And I know this is where it gets a little bit boring because you know, we have to go to our accounting ratios We need to look at what is the expected growth, you know, how much Money do they want? How much are they going to give us? We also want to look at just the balance sheet strengths, you know, what are the the future earnings What is their gear ratio? How much debt do they have? What is their dividend policy? Are they even giving out dividends? What is their liquidity situation? How are they going to use this additional capital, you know, whether all the project details And how does this compare to the rest of the industry? So With regards to valuation, you can see there's a lot of stuff you can go down But remember we need to discuss 40 points and we don't want to just focus too much on the valuation There is a lot to talk about. So yes, we can maybe get in some nice five marks here Or two and a half but Let's let's move on. So but the very important is to value this whole investment Um, we also want to consider who are our co-investors. I mean who else Is going into this project? I mean, are there some big names behind it? You know, which would make it more attractive or our competitor private equity funds also going into it And we want to match their position, you know, what are who well, who are our co-investors, you know What experience do they have? What knowledge do they bring and what is their reputation and how is that going to influence our decision? We also need to consider the time frames. I mean looking at this project You kind of feel it's a bit of a long-term deal I mean, you're not listed on the stock market, which means you need to consider what are your exit strategies Um Like an investment like this is not going to be that marketable. I mean, you're not going to have a whole line of buyers Offering you every day for you know, your shares in this company So you need to consider the time frames. It is going to be quite long term Which means if liquidity is an issue Um, you look at what are the dividend expectations, you know, how long are you expecting to be in this project? How long until a dividends start coming out? How much do you expect those to be and for how long? So very important to draw your timeline and Yeah, just figure out when things are going to happen What you also want to do is you want to get to know this engineering firm a little bit better You know, you want to maybe meet with the guys say, hey, what is your business plan? You know, what what are they considering? Does their future growth depend on this expansion? Like is this project their, you know, their final thing? Like if this fails does their whole business go out? Um, you want to look at their track record, you know, what are the previous goals that they've set themselves and have they reached those? Um, you also want to consider who the current management team is, you know, their quality guys Have they got good experience and knowledge and degrees and all that type of stuff And then you also want to look at their order book. I mean, who is paying these guys? Um, you know, is it the government? Is it local municipalities? And are they very dependent on one or two clients? So if one government says, hey, hang on We don't want to build these new roads Will that destroy the firm because that is something you need to consider um The order book is very important with companies like this It would be better if it was diversified and you had lots of small clients rather than a few big ones Where if one left it could, you know, damage the entire business um You also want to look at external factors. I mean, how competitive is the the market there? What are the local economic prospects? I mean, if it's an African country that is growing rapidly Then, you know, a lot of spending will be done on infrastructure. So That's a good sign. You want to look at what are the available skills in the market?  Um, you're going to be looking at, you know, the country's rules and regulations How easy is it to do business in this country? Uh, you also want to look at the infrastructure I mean, what already is in place? Do they have railway and airports to get materials in and out? Um, do they have good telecoms and internet to, you know, just facilitate with communication? And what is your exposure to the government because remember your infrastructure? There is going to be a big government influence So you want to know what are the government's plans and I guess also what are some big private companies plans? With regards to spending and what is the expectations? Regarding that, I mean, you could also maybe talk about commodity prices How steel's at like, you know, quite low at the moment and that's quite good for infrastructure And oil's low so that's also good. So you could also talk about commodity prices as well Um, coming back to the engineering firm, you want to look at their government and structure? I mean, are these guys conforming to the king three, um, standards? Um, is their accounting correct? You know, like are they doing it properly? Are they getting audited by a respectable firm, you know, so that the books are clean? They haven't been cooked and what you also want to look at is when you make your investment Is there a potential for you to be on the board or maybe have a board representative? You know, just to give your views and make sure, you know, everybody's views are aligned And also just to keep an eye on what what's actually happening Um, then of course, there's a lot to be said about risk I mean, you can score lots of marks by always talking about risk I mean, there's the political risk in Africa, you know, where's the current regime?  What are the rules and laws that he's imposed? Um, are their property rights? I mean, some countries they just take away Your land or they take away your business off you built into it Um, so you want to make sure that that's not going to happen And you also want to see are there like supportive policies that will, you know, Maybe provide a bit of an opportunity, you know, governments might be encouraging infrastructure Spending and give some subsidies or something like that Um, regulation always remains a risk. Um, you know, what are the current constraints it has on you? Like can you only, you know, bring in so many foreign workers? Do you have to hire so many locals? What are those type of things? And what are the potential future changes that could happen in the regulations? Um, there's also the exchange rate and that's on both countries. So the South African rent and whatever currency this country uses Both of them can be hit hard. Um, both of them can be devalued Or both of them can interact with each other in a different way So consider the exchange rate risk on both sides A lot of people just focus on one side of the exchange rate But it is a, you know, a coin does have two sides Um, you also can look at operational risk, you know, what happens if You know, it's a small engineering firm and the main boss gets malaria and quits or does or something like that So lots of key individuals What happens if there's fraud? What happens if there's governance failure? You know, all this type of stuff then of course there is liquidity risk Um, you locked in on this in the long run. Like we said, there's not, you know, it's not a very marketable asset Um, try not to repeat yourself though because you're only going to get remember We mentioned that a little bit earlier on and you're only going to get points for saying something once So best to move on to like another topic Another big thing to talk about is the ethical social and whole governance system Um, you know, how is corruption affecting business? What are the labor practices? You know, are the conditions safer workers? Um, are there any international sanctions on this country? You know, is the dictator got bringing in some issues? Um, this type of business that you're doing this infrastructure is it seen as positive or negative? I mean, if you're building a school that's considered positive if you're building like an oil well in a rain forest that's considered negative And also a big thing to consider with regards to this is What is the community's participation?  The the locals is this uplifting the community? That's that's very important. It's very important. It's not always about the money It's about the softer things as well Although talking about the money, um, this investment is going to incur Probably quite a few costs. I mean, there's the initial negotiations Um, there's all the oversight that you're going to have required. You're gonna need a board member there um That's going to involve traveling costs and you know, it's it's going to get expensive So bear that in mind take that into consideration when determining whether or not to buy this So it's going to involve a little bit of a hassle, but hey, you're a private equity manager. This is your day job Speaking of private equity, uh, managers, let's finally discuss their issues and then we're going to conclude so Other issues that private equity guys are going to have to consider. What are the tax agreements of both countries? Um, does this deal fit with your mandate? I mean private equity has a whole bunch of investors themselves And you want to make sure that this is not breaching any of your restrictions or limits that you've put in like Maybe you're not supposed to go into this country or Maybe you've specifically said you're not going to go into these type of industries Or this is an amount that it's just too much for your firm to take on now and Again, you don't want to invest a lot into this country on this project And then that causes concentration exposure in that said country in that industry You want to look to make sure that this um Improves diversification and does not negate it if it's too large Um, also you want to look at the capital requirements. Like I said, if they're requiring a lot of capital And it's like 90 percent of your private equity fund That's going to be disastrous for your diversification because all your eggs are in one basket But if this is very small like just a drop in the ocean Is really worth all the effort of doing the research and sending board representatives and all that type of stuff So the size of your private equity fund is very important Also, what is this going to do to your liquidity constraints? Is this going to use up, you know, your lost bit of cash flow? Um, how is this going to change your position?  You know, they've invested in you because they want to be exposed to Africa They want access to these type of investments and they kind of do have, you know, a high risk appetite Um, all depends on what your your positioning is. So do consider this and Yeah, think about that But that's all I kind of came up with. I mean, I basically went through the memo and maybe added one or two of my own points Let me know in the comment section below if there's any other factors that you would consider before you invested in an engineering firm in Africa, you know, doing infrastructure spending So, yeah, let me know in the comment section below and I hope you like this video if it was a nice way of doing it I'll do some more if this gets like, you know, five views and five thumb downs Then I'll take the message and I'll probably make other videos But I kind of like this idea Let me know if you want to see more financial videos where we take an exam question and we talk about it like we did now Thanks for watching guys. Cheers


Okay, we're going to make a start. I know a few of you are still in the breakout refreshment room... ...but you can make your way back in now. We've got an important conversation about to take place. Last year at Congress, we started a conversation around social care. And we just asked who's doing what in the cooperative movement... Mae'r problemau i amser, yn cael ei wneud o'r ffaith cermarc. Mae'n holl gwrs o ffaintol, mae'n holl gwrs o cwrs o cael balau. Mae'r coop ym Llyfrgellau, mae'n holl i gwrs o'ch coop yn holl i gael.  A bod ni'n fawr eich dwylo'r cyflwyno i'r bobl hefyd dyna'r 7 cyngor Cymrydol pwgol yng Nghymru neu'r cyfrwno fawr. co-operatives ffoster interdependence rather than dependence in care, given by privilege in voice and inclusion, which is a theme that came out really strongly last year. In their 2017 report they broke down day care, foster care, persons living with disability, physical illness, auxiliary care, elderly care, domestic workers co-operatives and provided a whole host of information and case studies. I showed how legislation in places like Italy enabled the legal recognition of social co-operatives through the adoption of law 381 and it dramatically increased the ability of co-operatives to assist elders and persons living with disabilities. So, what is it actually that we're doing? You know, in terms of the broken markets, like Shireen said, it's on all our minds, there's a lot of broken things at the moment and it's where best to put our efforts, but again looking at the ideas from the international health co-operative organisation, some of their findings across the world around the way that care co-operatives are financed and these are consultants with vast knowledge and experience of working with co-operatives and social economy organisations, and looking at the ideas that we're developing around maybe having a care dividend, a way to put in and get something out in later life, and the idea of equity and supporting maybe young and new people into care, and we'll hear from Emma Shortley, but Emma's equal care co-op, 63% of the people working in the co-operative have never been in care before, so we're absolutely convinced that there are solutions, but what we're trying to do here today is understand precisely what the problem is, because once we're clear on what the problem is, then we can start looking at applying co-operative solutions to that, so I've got a really amazing panel to discuss what the problem is. We've got Lord Victor Adebowale, who's chair of the NHS Confederation, we've got Emma Back, equal care co-op, we've got Paul Gerard from co-op group and I'm hoping about to appear on screen, I've got Michelle Rashman, there she is, wonderful, and Michelle is a dimestillery care services user, and of course we've got our very excellent chair today for this panel, how to fix a broken market and that will be led by our esteemed mayor, Labour and co-operative at Greater Manchester Andy Vernon, thank you. Thank you very much Rose, thank you very much indeed Rose, good afternoon everybody, I think it is just about afternoon, great to see you all here, I suppose I should do the formal bit first, fulfil my official duties in welcoming you all to sunny Greater Manchester, have a great congress here, enjoy the facilities, enjoy the city, in the sun, but maybe, maybe don't do the full Jack Grealish if you're thinking about tomorrow and everything, we do, Jack has single handedly restored our reputation as the home of 24 hour party people, so well done Jack, but we will move on to a much more serious topic and as Rose said it's about social care, the state of social care in England, what we do to fix it. You might remember when I was health secretary, 14 years ago now, I tried to bring through a major reform of social care, I proposed a national care service, I was clear at the time that if we didn't fix what was then a broken system, it would in the end make the NHS dysfunctional as well, and I think in the decade or so since then we've only seen that start to play out and the situation. I've always believed that a big part of the solution to social care in England is in this room, it's in the cooperative movement, and today's discussion is to see if we can really unpack that and find a way of bringing forward cooperative solutions to fix a broken market, and here in Greater Manchester we're very interested to see if we can develop those ideas and bring them forward into our more devolved integrated care system here. So we've got a great discussion ahead, we've got experts who are about to enlighten us, but I'm going to start with Michelle, great to see you Michelle on the screen and everyone can see you in the room. First and foremost I think it's important to get the perspective of somebody who uses care services, could you tell us what's wrong, could you describe what has been the problem with social care as far as you see it? I think it's one of those things, there's a lot of things like this now, where you don't know it's broken until you need to use it, and we're all going to need to use it one way or another at some point. I think we all like to live under that, we all like to think we're going to be that sort of feisty non-agenarian who lives independently and then dies peacefully in the sleep, but that's not the reality for most of us. Unless you've got the Barclay brothers paying for you at the Ritz, like Thatcher, it's going to fall on friends, family, neighbours and the care sector to look after us and look after our loved ones as we all age longer. I looked after my mum and my dad, my dad died 18 months ago, my mum's now 94, and that's something I started to do because we lived a long way from each other, I did a 600 mile round trip to take my dad to the dentist and I thought we've got to sort this out. So we ended up having to sell our house that we loved to move it, to move all in together in a big house so we could look after my mum and dad. And that's now, we're now just about to go into the eighth year of that, and during that time we've sort of cobbled together a system where, you know, there's me, there's my husband, but he's in his 70s. So you've also got a situation where old people are looking after old people, and then my dad had strokes, so that kicked in for a little while a sort of reablement service that was a bit ramshackle. Then my dad died, and then that meant that even though he was very, very old, you know, he was kind of also helping as my eyes and ears for my mum, so it meant that I went from living upstairs to having to move in with my mum, and all of this has been done, you know, in a sort of ad hoc chaotic way. There's very little information out there that's that's sort of obvious to people. So for instance, I didn't know until my charopatist told me that my mum was entitled to a council tax exemption because she has dementia. And I told somebody else this who I thought they would need to know and they said, oh, I know this because somebody told me in the queue at home bargains. And I think that kind of sums up how we find out things. It's just so chaotic and relies on a lot of well meaning, you know, it relies on a lot of people pulling themselves out of line, and I think nobody understands how it impacts your life until it happens to you. And I think that's true of lots of things at the moment, you know, I think that, but yeah, I think we need to all keep in mind that this is going to affect us all one way or another, whether it's us that need care or whether it's our loved ones or our neighbours or our friends. At some point, we all have to access extra care. And if it's not there, it's really, really frightening. Well, Michelle, thank you. You've said it so succinctly and powerfully and thank you for sharing some of your personal experience with everybody here at the Congress. I know what you're saying. I'm just entering that world myself at the moment and just having my kind of first experience of it from a family point of view. And I think you've put your finger on the problem as to why social care never gets its rightful place at the top of the agenda. It's because most people can't see it and don't experience it and it's only too late, isn't it? When they do experience it, they probably wish they'd kind of focus more on it before, but that I think is part of the issue and it's something we've got to change. I mean, I'm going to turn, thank you, Michelle. I'll come back to you a little later. I'm going to turn to Victor now, perhaps more from an NHS point of view, Victor. You know, something, I think the word Michelle used was ramshackle.  But also, if you think about just the kind of the basic sort of operating standards of social care where staff are paid a minimum wage, they don't get the travel time between the 15-minute care visits that they do, you know, looking after someone else's parent should be the highest calling you can answer in life, isn't it? Instead, as a society, we're almost saying it's the lowest, which is entirely wrong as far as I'm concerned. How can a system organised like or not organised, you know, so disorganised as that and so malnourished as that in terms of the way it's funded? How can that ever do the job that you needed to do for the NHS? So, as well as being on the board of the co-op group, a proud board member, I'm also the chair of NHS Confederation, which is, we represent where the large representative body of health and social care leaders in the UK, and I've just come from the conference in Manchester where you were at, Andy. And actually, your idea when you were the health minister of a proper national care service is one I personally support of then and support now. But to cut to the chase, one in three of our beds in this country are occupied by people who don't need to be there. And one of the reasons that they are there is because we don't have care packages in the community for those people. So it's a clear and present danger. And when people talk about the health system being in crisis, i.e. blocks at the front door of hospitals and blocks at the exit, it's because of social care. So if you were to talk to anyone in the Confed, they would say, if the government was going to give the system more money, they should prioritise social care. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, even if there were to give it more money, it's an atomised system with very little structure and there are various markets. So people say that you can't make any money out of social care well a couple of years ago. Bridgepoint bought Care UK for £432 million Bridgepoint's venture capital group. They don't give money away. They've bought it because they can make money out of it on the one hand. On the other hand, we do have a problem of very low wages. I mean, I've been to places literally and sat on one side of the road and watched people leave care homes and go and get jobs at Amazon because they get paid more. I've literally seen the flow. They get paid more, a lack of career training, infrastructure, poor management, poor leadership. Crisis is too light a word actually for the social care system because crisis implies that you've reached a point where we could go one way or the other. It's far worse than that. It is literally broken. So what do we do about it? There are three things. One I'm here because one of the solutions that we should explore more is the co-op solution. The reason why we should explore the co-op solution is that actually local, close, connected, bespoke is the answer. These are principles. I think that it is possible to make a profit. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's at whose expense and where does that money go? If it's kept in the community, it's more likely to be valuable. I have run large-scale social care services that have been designed by communities, delivered by those communities, and they work and have been evaluated by the LSE for every £1 spend. You save £6 minimum, leading to £28, so it would save the taxpayer money. So it is possible. The principles are obvious. I cannot understand, and you're a politician, so you can tell me. I don't understand politics any more. I thought I did, but I don't. You couldn't make it up, could you? No, you really couldn't. But I cannot understand why successive governments have failed to get to grip with it, because actually I see it as relatively low-hanging fruit, most people, when they get to, I would say, around about 35-40, either know somebody or are directly experiencing a social care challenge themselves, or know somebody who is, or they're starting to think, you know what, my mum and dad are getting on a bit, or my sister are getting on a bit. So it actually would be a very popular measure, and we've been let down. So I do think it's right for co-ops, disrupted market, very dodgy practice where the consumer doesn't know what they're getting. There's poor quality, which is where co-ops started, adulterated milk, poisonous food, it's the equivalent. I'll just say this about the co-op group. I'll just say this because I think you're great, you know that. I've said this about the co-op group. The co-op group does funerals at the one end, so it will bury you. And at the other end, it will feed you. And in between it will do you a bit of insurance. The bit that's missing is the social care bit, isn't it? A bit of care before the co-op buries you, and some decent food while you're growing up. It seems to be an obvious one, so I do think it's worth exploring. It doesn't mean that we're going to do it, but I think the co-op model is one that we need to explore. We can't carry on like this. It's going to do dotage as well as death. People like me, you're 60s, you know, I'm knocking on. Because one of the things about social care that we don't explore, it's not about the elderly, the thing that really gets to people is the uncertainty. As we've just heard there, it's not knowing, it's not being able to plan your life. It's not having the system come to you. This is one area where you need certainty, quality, and then the peace of mind that comes from that. At the moment, what's just been described there by Michelle is what's called negative value transfer, whereby the person has to go around the houses trying to get bits, and that costs the person, but more to the point, it costs the system, keeping all those bits going. There's no value. What we need is positive value transfer where you go to one place and you get what you need, like the sort of thing that you're doing. I want to hear about that. That's brilliant service. That is really clear. That figure, one in three of the best. My political life, having put forward the national care service, of people telling me, we can't afford to invest in social care, but we can afford an inefficiency on that scale in the NHS. Really? I'm afraid of the reflection of what you were saying about broken politics, actually. I don't know whether the co-op movement really... Well, you are in politics. But seriously, this is a major failure of our political structures, isn't it, to pick up this issue. In that situation, again, the co-op movement can move in from the bottom up, can't it, and start to show the political world proper solutions and Emma, no pressure. We think you've got what you've got. So, tell us about it. Well, I'm going to come right out there and say that co-ops aren't actually the solution to social care, but they are the right starting point. Equal care started because there is a problem with power in social care. It sits with the people who are not at the heart of what the entire system is built around and for, and that is the people getting support, but it's also, it takes two to tango, the people who are giving it as well. Fundamentally, at the heart of social care, there is a relationship that has been ignored, that has been exploited, that has been venture capitalised, and the people who have been left are the people who are in that relationship and the people who are very close to it, as Michelle was saying, so family, friends, the ones who are there to pick up the pieces. So, it started with power. It's like, right, we have to set out to rebalance the power dynamic in social care in favour of recognising that power is a funny thing, it's spread through systems, it sits in different places, it builds up, it moves around, but in favour of the people who are getting support, that is ground, that is the ground of what we're doing. Easy to say. So, some objectives associated with that, it's about relationships, so we have to put that relationship above all else, that means noticing it in the system, that means picking it up, that means designing for it. We want to share power and we want to move away from this idea of care, something that is really scarce and really kind of like you have to hoard it, like it's sort of dragons gold. It's not scarce. We are all human beings, we all care for one another. I thought I was going to get to this point a little bit later on, but we all care for one another and we all care for the people that we love. So, it is not a scarce resource, it is abundant, we have a lot of it. The problem is that none of that is recognised by our current economy, by our current health and social care system. There is no way of understanding and valuing that labour, which is for home care at least, has been valued at around 60 billion, 62 billion of informal unpaid care in the UK. Those are the grounding principles. The way that we do it, and this took a lot of trial and error, is that the way that we do it is that we start with teams.  And the team is owned and led by the person who gets that support. They choose who's on their team. It can be paid members, it's family, it's friends, it can be community volunteers, it can be people from other organisations. Some of whom are paid employees of the co-op, but the team can also be comprised of family, friends. Private care workers, anyone who is involved in that person's care. Anyone who is part of there to support that individual. The co-op is then coordinating that team. Yes. One of the things that's emerged over this past year is hats. We think of hats as in some organisations that's called dynamic roles or dynamic governance, but a hat is basically a role or responsibility or a part that you play. So, it could be husband, wife, daughter, unpaid carer, it could be rotor holder, it could be the person who updates that person's support profile, it could be the medication administration record keeper. But the point being that all of that work that's usually transferred to someone in the office and who therefore doesn't know that person remains with the people who know that individual best, which means they don't make mistakes. No, it's brilliant, isn't it? The co-op doesn't employ care workers. Yes, we do. You do, because you mentioned private care workers, but you can work with people who've got, let's say, council or private domiciliary care coming in, but you also can supply your own if that is what that person wants. So, we see them as they are all members of the team.  Yes. So, our care and support workers can choose to either be employed or independent and self-employed. So, this is where the gig economy kind of discussion here always seems to miss out the fact that some people would like a choice, everyone would like a choice, over what their employment relationship is to their work. And, frankly, the relationship between employer and employee in social care in particular is so toxic. It's been so, so, so, so, so disrespected that a lot of our care workers join us. Rhoters that people just couldn't know if you were to deliver that rote, you'd be working until 12 o'clock at night. So, it's given to people that have no chance of working. And, as you say, total disregard for those staff often in private domiciliary care. I asked one of our care and support workers who writes everything down in her diary, just who she's going to see and when, and she did it for the previous agency that she worked with. So, I asked her to do all of the number of hours in the person, and you can just see it in the data.  And just kind of going back to the whole idea of being a human, our capacity for compassion is limited. Our capacity for emotional labour is limited. And if we're designing a system which is continuously getting people to hit those limits, then you get people leaving. So, she left you to bone out and joined us. And if you look at the, like, if you were to plot on a graph, like all of the key relationships in your life, it would be this continuous, like this beautiful kind of flowing stream for a lot of those relationships. And for care, like, it can be the same thing for the people who care for you and with you in your later years. So, looking at that, the relationships now that people have in equal care when they join teams, they are continuous, they are committed, they are connected to the people that they can work the best with. And it's doable because everyone's playing that part when they can. And also for the person receiving the care, they've got the variety of different people coming in it, and that makes life interesting. Average is about three or four people that people receive support from. So, yeah. It is brilliant, I have to say. Well, hang on, so I'm just going to pause it there and say, it sounds brilliant. It sounds brilliant. And this is when I'm going to come back to you, Michelle, if you don't mind, because as I understand it, you've been a member of this co-op and have received some of the support or been part of some of the support. Does it work from your perspective? Yes, it does, actually. So, my mum had council care for, I don't know, quite a while, a few months. And it actually started off relatively OK, but it deteriorated really, really quickly. I don't know if that was just as everything's falling apart, it just seemed to be exponential. And so she ended up in a situation where, I'll just explain what happens is, I have care coming in for one hour a day in the morning, just so that I can basically, so I can take the dog for a walk, to be honest, and just have one hour, hour to 24, where I can not think about anything, just let somebody else deal with my mum. And that one hour is supposed to be 10, 30-ish. And what was happening is that the carers were coming either at 8 o'clock in the morning or half 12 in the afternoon. And the problem with that was, first of all, if they came at 8 o'clock in the morning, my mum was wiped out for the day because she's a late riser. And it also meant that, and if it was later, I'd be hanging around the dog a big cross in his legs. And it was just, it was so disruptive that I ended up just thinking, I might as well do it myself, it would be easier for me to do it myself. And the other issue was that the council installed a keysafe so that carers could just let themselves in, so I wouldn't have to actually be physically waiting. And I've got a baby monitor, so I'd be in another room with a baby monitor. And there was the day when I heard my mum going, who are you, who are you, who are you? And I went down and there was a strange man she'd never seen before standing at the end of her bed. And that was the new carer that she saw once for twice. And that was the other issue, was that there was no continuity of care. So carers might come once and you'd never see them again. And because my mum's got dementia, that was really disruptive. And also, as a family member, you're allowing somebody into your home with a lot of trust. And if you don't even know the name of that person, that's a very unsettling situation to find yourself in. So with equal care, what we have is this team of three or four people. It sort of alters a little bit from time to time. But basically, I know from day to day who's coming, roughly what time they're coming, I know loads about them. They all input into a rocket chat app that I can also access and input as well. So for something I think that the care of the next day is going to need to know, but my mum might be a bit off-colour or hadn't slept well or something. I can include it in the rocket chat. And so they're up to speed all the time. And it's, you know, those things are really obvious. But they don't seem to... It doesn't seem to happen with the council care. And finally, the other thing I would say that was really... It was uncomfortable when my mum had the council care was the feeling that the carers were being exploited. So, you know, they would rush in, you know, rush in, you know, do the minimum really, because they didn't have very long, rush out again. And there was one particular carer that I would, you know, she might come to my mum at nine o'clock in the morning, and then I'd be, you know, sort of nine o'clock at night, I'd be out taking the dog for a walk again. And I'd see Marie rushing, you know, round town going to a... You know, and that's... It's horrible for the carers, but it's also... My mum's fortunate because she has family around her, but for people that only get to see a carer, that's the only person they're going to see all day, if that visit is 20 minutes long, what's the standard of care going to be? And that was my... That was the point with my mum that I thought, I can't have this any more, because there was one particular time when a carer came at 10 past 12 and they'd gone by half 12, and I just thought that she's very, very slow, she's got very poor mobility, she's confused, she gets dizzy. You know, how are they washing, dressing, getting her to the breakfast table in 20 minutes? You know, and it was really disturbing, and that's why I turned to equal care, because I heard a bit about them, and I just liked the idea of a continuity of care and also a system where the carers weren't being exploited. That is a brilliant explanation. And when you contrast what you had to what you've now got, I think it really kind of shows the kind of shift that you've achieved. Emma, so you must be delighted, aren't you, hearing that? What it says to me is, the model that you've got through equal care is in some ways future proof for families and that it can deal with complexity as the complexity increases, whereas Michelle was describing a situation when complexity increased, the situation of just the council-providing model just doesn't work at all. So, do you want to just respond to Michelle? Yeah. Thanks, Michelle. Just speaking to complexity, we supported one man for about two and a half years, and it started off with one person in his team. He had a diagnosis of motor neurone disease. We all got very attached to him. And then it ended up with around 13, 14 people in the team when it moved to kind of completely round the clock care. And they were all, we did the introductions, they were all people that he was able to meet, to get to know, to consent to be in his team and to join his team. And he started off as well, kind of going back to this sort of being, having that ownership, having that control, he started off being the one managing the rotor. So, he was saying, right, do you want to do this when you're available? So, there's nobody at Equal Care who manages, there's no person in the office sitting and managing the rotors. People say whether or not they can do something and are responsible for their own time, which means that people are on time a lot more often. And this kind of seeing this transition from being able to go from something that was a very simple setup to something that eventually like lots and lots of agencies involved, it became multidisciplinary meetings and a lot of contact with the continuing healthcare team and his NHS district nursing team. And I think that's what, if we're going to create systems that really work for people, there has to be that space, you have to design for space in a way, for people to be people in them. And for those situations to change because they always will, they always do. The... Just coming back to Victor's point around kind of hospital beds, we had one situation in December where a woman we support needed to go into hospital with suspected sepsis. She was in there for three days. She really wanted to come home. They weren't going to let her come home without appropriately kind of the usual story was the stepped up care package in place, she was able to do it. The team, I mean it was stressful but the team got together, decided the rotor, what can we do, who can contribute to what and we got her out on a day of discharge. She didn't sit in a bed, she didn't stay there any longer than she had to. And the team went from a support that was around I think it was seven hours a day through to nearly 24 seven care in order to get her out and then we're able to step it back down. And they were in charge of that. It's fantastic. And one thing I've not asked you, you mentioned you do employ some of your own care workers. Do you mind if I ask what they get paid? We're a real living wage employer so this is another reason why Equal Care only really works at scale so with enough care and support workers. So the annual salary is 21.255 is what that works out to outside of London, that's 10.90 an hour. We were paying above the real living wage but then it did go up quite a lot. And we pay that as a salary. So if you're a community nurse and you get a salary from the NHS there is no reason why you would expect your pay to stop for a moment that you step outside the door of somebody's house. So why should it be the same for social care? So why should it be different for social care? So whether you're travelling or regardless. And then for the independent workers that is a situation where you're travelling to the place, you're not getting paid. So their rates are around £18 an hour now. So they get paid for their travel time? They factor in the travel time in their hourly rate so it depends on where they are and which teams they want to join. Wow, something that works in social care. This is really, I think. You deserve all of that appreciation because what you've achieved here is pretty huge really in the midst of a broken world you've made something work. Don't underestimate that. That is an incredible achievement. Paul, I'm going to look in your direction now and say we have a solution here. I think, as Emma said at the start, perhaps it's not the only solution. How do you see it in terms of this plus other co-operative models? I think the one bit as well just to last point on equal care co-op is attrition rates. Attrition rates across the social care sector up to 40% attrition rates in equal care co-op. We're an average of 3.4 on a quarterly basis. So you've got that continuity and the expertise and capability that comes with the continuity of the people providing care. For me, if you look at co-operative models, three things would jump out of me and Emma's set them out so powerfully. One is democracy in a sense that if you put the person receiving the support at the heart of it, it's fundamentally democratic and co-ops at the best of fundamentally democratic organisations. I think that's a really powerful part of it. I think... This is odd saying this to a former Secretary of State for Health. There is not enough money in the social care system. Full stop. Eve Denney's, as Victor suggested, businesses extracting profit and asset out of it. Well, as Michelle's right, it's the worst type of extractive capitalism, isn't it? You're doing it on the back of vulnerability, aren't you? Absolutely. And people who are struggling to make life work. It couldn't be more broken, could it? Absolutely. The co-operative model is a non-extractive model. Profits surplus come back to members. It's the second point. I guess the third point for me, and this is the thing that's really struck me, and Emma Broad brought it out so well, co-operation is a noun. You have a co-operative. It's also a verb. The point about social care is to integrate. It works when it's integrated. When you get both unpaid as well as statutory provision voluntary, when it's integrated, co-operatives, when we operate well, co-operate, integration is natural. Absolutely. Those three things are powerful. The one thing I would say on these and I've had the privilege to speak to Emma on a few occasions, co-ops provide a solution. I think they absolutely do. I have no doubt on that. There needs to be a framework for co-operatives to fruition. We need to think about capital. We need to think about the commissioning process. We need to think about how we help them scale. But the solution, it just feels it has to be because it's non-extractive, it's democratic, and it's integrated. You see, you've really put your finger on it there, because when Emma was describing the discharge process you were working with the continuing healthcare team and also the process of managing a discharge. I noticed you perk up a little bit at that because discharge is not something universally done well in the NHS. You don't need me to tell you that. But that point that Paul has made there about how this model or all co-operatives models, because of their collaborative approach, can, if you like, integrate with NHS staff as well. That's where this might be hitting something really important. First of all, the reason why it's problematic is because it's a boundary issue. It's at the boundary of what the NHS does and what the social care system should be doing. That's why it's problematic. It's at its most complex in the boundary. I think what Emma's described is a learning system. The thing that you need if you're going to operate teams around an individual is that they need to be capable of learning, because the individual's changed, you learn new things about them, and then applying that learning in new ways of intervening and what have you. On the co-op thing, can I just say, I think there are three buckets of learning that we need to explore, because I'm not going to sit here and say, you know, equal care is a brilliant model, but I'm not going to sit here and say the answer. What I'm going to say is that it's worth exploring, right? It's worth exploring, because I've learned the hard way that it's better to be slightly sceptical about every solution that's presented to you. But I think there are three buckets that are worth exploring from a co-op point of view, and I'm speaking as a co-op board member, if I may. The first is what I call the lack of a personal financial infrastructure. So you can put money in every month to pay for your funeral, but you can't put money in every month to pay for your social care. And why isn't it not possible to do that, and be guaranteed that care when you need it from an organisation like equal care, because you're putting in something? So why can't we explore that? That's bucket one, see if that happens. Bucket two is the federated model. So what co-ops are good at, and that's what the co-op group is good at, is actually bringing in lots of small things together to make a hole and put in an infrastructure in place. Which you're doing a bit of that, but it's a very human level. So is it possible that we could create a federated model that actually delivers at scale, commissioned by social care or NHS, but actually the co-op lets come explore that. And the final model is direct provision. So either by investing in, or finding a model that the co-op can deliver to your employer. I think those three models are worthy of exploration, or go somewhere to answer the problem. I'll take your point about scale, and I think it needs to be matched on the commissioning side. Correct. So you may need an authority, or a group of authorities to say, we'll take the equal care principles, but we'll do it across a scale with people who are getting care paid for by the local authority, or self-funded as well. Anyway, I think you're making a really important point there. We're coming to the end, and I think we've got the five-minute warning. So I suppose a big question to you all. I'd like just to hear from you all one more time. I guess the question is, should the co-op movement get behind fixing this broken market? I know there's lots of other broken markets out there, so it's not the only broken market that we have to live with. But the question is, should we do that? Michelle, I'll come to you again for a final thought. Given what everyone's just described, it does feel the co-op ideal is uniquely suited to social care, doesn't it, in terms of the culture and the ethos of cooperatives feels that the fit is perfect. There's a kind of reason why NHS organisations and councils provided care, sometimes it doesn't work, because it isn't personal enough. So maybe the co-op movement is the only movement really that can fix social care. Well, somebody has to step in, because this isn't a bullet that any of us are going to swerve. So there should be much more of an imperative out there. Never mind Philip Schofield, but there should be much more imperative out there to get this fixed. Talking about Boris Johnson. I was actually thinking Philip Schofield must be relieved. That's my favourite. The things that people, especially middle class people, don't realise how this is a welfare issue that's going to affect them. For instance, I know somebody who, her in-laws, both went into residential care. One was in for about 18 months, the other one's still in residential care. It's been going on for three years, and it's cost those people £300,000 and rising by £1,000 a week to keep her mother in a bed, because her mother's got dementia, she's blind and she's deaf, and yet with all of those issues, she hasn't yet qualified for free care because she's been assessed as being able to come home and have carers, so therefore she doesn't need nursing care, which would be free. That's the sort of situation we're in. I don't know if this is true, but I'm hoping it is. In Germany, carers like me, people who get carers allowance get £1,500 a month. My carer allowance is just over £10 a day. My mum's attendance allowance doesn't cover her monthly care package with equal care, so her savings that my dad ferreted away all through his working life are hemorrhaging. I think if the middle classes woke up to the fact that their children who couldn't get on the housing market aren't going to inherit anything anymore because everything's going to be eaten up and dad's care needs, and I think it's like we've slept-walked into this situation as a society, and I think it should be much more at the forefront of people's minds, actually. 100% you could not have put it better, and I hope you can hear the applause. I don't know if I can hear anything. I'm just a disembodded head. A very articulate one, though. I'm sure. Thanks for sharing everything you have, though, today. I just want to say, Andy, that my little old dad was a lifelong Everton supporter. Who was he? God, well, you know how that is. We need care as well. I think we need equal care. He went out to the Zedcast theme tune. When my day comes, so will I. Lovely to meet you virtually, Michelle. I'll just turn to the panel and just say, is there any reason why the co-op movement shouldn't now move its might into this space? Paul, I'll start with you. Co-ops currently provide less than 1% of care in this country and social care. If you're in Italy, it's 40%. There's a reason. I think there's lots of broken markets and I think the movement, co-operatives, and as Victor said, primary or secondary co-operatives can be a really powerful solution. Another thing I would say, honestly, is the Fairbanks produced that document last week with Unison. They did. It's an interesting document. You will know this far better than me. There's not a lot of flesh on that. I wonder if there's any other answers out there that aren't as compelling as the co-operative part of the answer. I don't think anyone's got a better idea of what you're talking about. I think what Emma's getting towards is a whole system solution, isn't it? Absolutely. It's joining all the dots between the players who will be involved anyway. That's really something quite exciting. Emma, from your perspective, is there any reason why the co-op movement shouldn't, you know, in the absence of politics at a national level and anyone else doing anything, I think as Michelle said, someone's got to do it, so why not the co-op? I know of less than five really other co-ops in social care. I signalise the way. So there are some in the room, Michelle. So there are some, yeah. And it's a bit lonely, you know. But, yeah, I mean, as I said at the beginning, co-operation is the right, it's the right mindset, it's the right approach to start with. It's because the right levels of tension towards how power is distributed in and amongst organisations. But it is the beginning of the journey, not the end. The bit about co-ops that I think could also be brought in to this conversation is the attention to where the money goes, so like where the value is and how co-ops can start to bring some of that value that's currently sitting outside the externalities of our economy and to start looking at really innovative ways, really human ways of how we can bring that in. And stop leaving people on the outskirts. Come on, co-ops. Honestly, I had us all hanging on every word today. Well done again to you, Victor. So in November 2022, the director of ADAS said, and it was reported in Manchester Evening News, things have never been so bad. This is a human crisis at a massive scale. It's not just a few thousands of people, it's millions, and it's going to affect you regardless of what class you're in. Co-ops have got a duty to get involved in this. Last year I came and I said co-ops need to make themselves relevant, well, easier opportunity. I think you've got to do it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you need to hurry slowly. You need to explore the solutions rather than rushing. So I'm really grateful for Sireen's leadership on this at the co-op group. Let's explore, let's do that properly, and then when we do it, let's go real fast. So let's learn short, think long. And the third thing I want to say is that I don't think that this is something which requires us to look for a solution. I think we need your leadership, because if we're going to do it first, I think we should do it in Manchester for all kinds of reasons, not least you're the mayor. But I think don't look up. The days of looking for solutions up there, if you look up, all you're going to get is a great neck.  I think the co-op movement and the co-op group go a long way, quite fast to solving this. Manchester first and then nationally. Let's just get on with it, please. A great neck and something else dropped on me when I found when you look up and try and deal with the... You heard it from the chair of the NHS Confederation. You've got to do it. Did you all hear that? Which is pretty direct, Rose. I think we're just at a bit of a reset moment, aren't we? We've kind of lived through a period of time, you go back to the 80s, where essentials were sold off. And where have we got to? We've got to a point where there's sewage in our streams and our rivers, as people with no water down in the southeast today. We've got energy bills people can't afford. We've got trains that are utterly chaotic. Places with no bus service. Where has it got us this approach? Extractive capitalism has just left us, left people without the basics. So it is a reset moment. We have got devolution in places like this. We have got a strong co-op movement. Let's get these two things together. We're open to the idea, Rose, of being the first, if we can construct a pilot taking equal care values and putting it on a bigger footprint. We're open to that idea. I'll hand back to you at this point. That's brilliant. Thank you. Thank you very much now. We're just going to test that with all of you because, as we all know, co-ops are member-led and it's never top down. It's not about anybody dictating how things should be for anyone. So this is a piece of work. We've been doing, like, starting the conversation last year at Congress. We've been working with co-op group on this.  And so on page four of your programme are coming up on the screens now. You're going to be able to see a QR code. And we just, first of all, not least led by, again, a co-op group on the team. We just want to check have we got the question right? Because those of you who have been to co-op at those UK events, you know we love a design sprint, so we know that's how to look at the solutions. So have we got the problem right? The UK domiciliary care market is broken. We've generally poor provision, which means quality and outcomes. We've got poor working conditions and pay. We've got lack of trust, lack of equity, lack of voice and lack of consumer choice in the UK domiciliary care market. So I just want to give you a chance now, and we'd just like you to vote on have we got the problem correct. Is that the problem that you're seeing, that you're hearing, that you're experiencing? Few, 78% straight off there. And those notes are really important because we will keep working on this. So I imagine knowing the co-operators that I do will have got one word slightly wrong or there'll be a bit of a nuance that we need to pick up. But we will of course take that all on board, but I think that's pretty indicative that we think we've got the problem correct. So okay, moving to the next slide then. It's the same question that Andy asked Emma and the panel here when it comes up. The question is going to be is this something that as a movement, we should put as a priority focus on this broken market? Yes or no? So should the co-operative movement work together to find solutions as a priority? Hallelujah! I think we've got our remit there, Cherine, Victor and everybody to go do some work on further work on this. As we've said, there are other co-ops out there. We've focused on one model not least because you pay well. You've got 63% of people coming from non-care positions into the place. Loads are really good, but there's lots of co-ops and this idea as well, we should say as well. You're one of our co-op platforms who came through our program out here. So the co-op is the app itself. What we did, I don't think we were clear on that. The app is the co-op in a sense so you join that app and that's how it all works. So okay, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Andy, Victor, Emma, Carl and Michelle. Thank you.