The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion number 1511, in the name of Alex Rowley, on the cost of saying goodbye, burial and cremation charges in Scotland. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Would those members who wish to speak in the debate please press the request to speak buttons now? I call on Alex Rowley to open the debate around seven minutes, please, Mr Rowley. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to begin by thanking all those members of this Parliament who signed my motion that allowed for this debate to take place today. Last year, I attended an event one evening in the Garden Lobby that was bringing together many elderly forum groups from across Scotland. As I spoke to many in attendance, I asked them what were the big issues for pensioners in Scotland. I have to say to my surprise the issue of the cost of funerals came up time and time again. A few months later, I attended another similar event where the then Cabinet Secretary, Alex Neil, spoke and in his speech he announced a review of funeral costs in Scotland to a very warm welcome and a very warm reception from those in the room. I am pleased that Alex Neil is here this afternoon to participate in the debate and I want to acknowledge the work that he did to kick off a review and steer the work in the direction that I believe has made good progress. I have brought forward the motion on the back of Citizens Advice Scotland report that highlighted the latest increases for cemetery and cremation charges across Scotland. The on average increase this year of 8 per cent for a burial and 11 per cent for cremation. I do remember that I highlighted this issue when I was an opposition councillor in Fife council because the increase in local charges at that time over the five years were quite horrific and yet Fife remains one of the lower cost areas for burial and cremation in Scotland. At the time, there was no doubt in my mind that the hikes and charges were directly linked to the cuts in council budgets. As we saw from the publication earlier this week from Spice and the University of Glasgow and Herot Walk University, cuts in public services disproportionately hit the poorest and those on the lowest incomes. That is also true for service charges where people do not have a choice, have to access a service and yet the costs continually go up. I would of course acknowledge that some councils have had to make significant investment but the key point that I would ask we consider is can it be right that those least able to pay are expected to bear the brunt of the cost to fund the future investment of cemeteries and crematoriums? Future capital investment must be met from general funding as burial and cremation should, in my view, be considered a public service. As well as acknowledging the role of Alec Neill in taking those issues forward, I would also acknowledge the very important work of Citizens Advice Scotland in highlighting the levels of funeral poverty in Scotland and the work that they have done to offer solutions. It is worth taking time to emphasise what funeral costs can mean. For those on the state pension, it would take seven and a half months off their pension income to pay for the average funeral. For those on job seekers allowance, it would take 12 months off benefit to pay for the average funeral. Around 10 per cent of people will struggle to pay for the cost of a funeral for which they are responsible. The average debt that is taken on by people in Scotland for funerals is £1,573, according to Royal London, which states that this debt is expected to rise in the coming years. The increasing costs of funerals has resulted in the gap between the contribution from the social fund funeral payment and the actual retail funeral cost, more than Dublin, from 2004 to 2015, leaving claimants with an average shortfall of over £2,000. As the working group has said, if an individual is unable to pay the cost of a funeral, there are two possible outcomes. Either they take on a level of debt that may create the stress that can interfere with the grieving process, or they seek to reduce the expense and provide less of a funeral, in which case guilt and stigma may interfere with the grieving. It is also a fact that the current DWP grant is described by Royal London as weak and flawed. Of the 66,000 applications to the fund in 2012-13, only 53 per cent were successful. Families can end up in a lot of debt where they have borrowed, thinking they will get support and then they are refused. Control over this part of social security will be with the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, and while some elements of the new powers coming to Scotland will take time to set up, I am hoping that the social fund funeral expense payment can be transferred sooner rather than later so that we can design a better system here in Scotland to support people when in need. I note that the Government paper published last week to create a fairer Scotland highlights funeral poverty as the last action point, action point 50, where they state that we will improve the current system of funeral payments so that it helps more people, is more predictable and provides help more quickly. This is welcome, I support this, and I hope that the Government can now put a timetable on when these powers will be transferred. The review by John Burrell in Fraser Sutherland has set out the detail of what needs to be done, and Citizens Advice Scotland has published further work on the social security powers so that we are well placed to move this issue forward. One of the first experiences of understanding poverty for me was when, as a child, I was in a graveyard and came across an area with no headstones and was told that this was an area of the popper's graves. At the weekend, I watched the film I, Daniel Blake, and heard the term used the popper's slot at the crematorium. I had thought that we had made progress and no one would be described as a popper in 21st century Scotland. Let us agree today that we will bring forward a timetable, build on the good work that is being done and sort this issue out once and for all. As I have indicated previously to your office, I apologise to the chamber for being unable to stay for the full debate. I would like to start by congratulating Alec Rowley on securing today's debate and joining with him and other members in welcoming Citizens Advice's report. I would also like to pay tribute to the work that Alec Neil did in this area before his work was rudely interrupted by the First Minister's reshuffle. I also want to draw members' attention to the fact that I was recently co-elected as a co-convener of the Parliament's cross-party group on funerals and bereavement and look forward to the group looking at these issues and the issues raised today in the motion. As a Lothian's MSP, I was particularly concerned with the report's finding that Edinburgh City in my region is the most expensive place in Scotland for a burial, with charges increasing another 4 per cent between 2015 and 2016 to reach £2,253. This is a very large amount of money for any individual or family to find, let alone those on low incomes or on benefit, and doesn't take into account funeral directors' fees or all the other expenses involved with the funeral. It can add to the stress that families feel at this already anxious and difficult time. I have already raised with ministers through written parliamentary questions concerns of Edinburgh constituents who are understandably alarmed at the high burial cost. Way above the Scottish average, as Alex Rowley has mentioned, of £1,363, they are struggling to understand the differences in the basic burial costs across Scotland, which vary by as much as £1,500 between local councils. I think that we need to know more from local authorities about the reasons behind this variation, and I hope that these discussions can take place through the Scottish Government's working group on funeral poverty at an early stage. Those disparities for charging for cremations in local authority crematoria also vary, although the difference is less marked than for actual burials. Given that cremation fees are around 50 per cent cheaper for those who decide on burials, we need to recognise that further burial charges rises in areas where those are already high, runs the alarming risk of putting pressure on older residents across Scotland and their families to rethink their future. The UK Government's funeral payment scheme has been of great assistance to many constituents on low incomes, facing funeral costs. I look forward to the Scottish Government developing a successor scheme, as has already been mentioned in the chamber before, and I recognise the work that is on going by the Government in this area. I am also very much conscious of the concerns that have been expressed about the lack of awareness around the current scheme, and I know that ministers will want to reflect on that as they develop the new benefit, and I hope that we can hear of that early on to be able to make sure that that gets out across Scotland. It is important to those on low income to know what support is available. I also wonder what action ministers can take to promote affordable funeral prepayment plans among people on low incomes, as those can protect family members from rising funeral costs. To conclude, I again would like to welcome today's debate, which I hope will help inform the Scottish Government's thinking and work on funeral poverty and help address the genuine and legitimate concerns that have been raised by our constituents. I hope that by working together we can find a way of addressing the growing issue and that funeral poverty in Scotland will be something that we can put behind us. It was Nancy Mitford, the red sheep of the Mitford family, and the author of the extraordinary work, The American Way of Death, a book that, over 50 years ago, exposed the shameless, profiteering exploitation of families at a time of great distress and vulnerability, the time of bereavement. It was Nancy Mitford who said, you may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. I hope that, when it comes to ending fuel poverty in this country, we can do both. I am delighted that Alex Rowley has tabled this motion for debate. Timing is everything in politics and this motion is timed to perfection because it comes at the very point that this Parliament has been handed responsibility for state funeral payments. It comes at the very point that the Government is consulting on a new future for social security in Scotland and, at the very point, the newly passed Burial and Cremation Act is being enacted with a new regulatory regime established and new inspectors appointed. It comes at the very point, too, that the Government is considering its budget for next year. I do not make this observation simply regarding the £4 million spent on state funeral payments in Scotland last year, although I would like to see provision for that rise. I say in the context of the forthcoming local government financial settlement in Scotland, too, because we know that local government in Scotland is responsible for setting most burial and cremation charges. I have to report that I attended the Parliament's cross-party group for older people age and ageing last week, where this subject came up. Some of the pensioners representatives, such as my old friend Jimmy Miller from the GMB Union's retired members association, were quite rightly taking issue with the enormous differences in these burial and cremation charges from local authority to local authority across Scotland. In my view, there should be greater parity. However, the Scottish Government representative at the cross-party group said that this was a matter of local political choice, which is contentious and incomplete, because it is also a matter of national political choice. Deputy Presiding Officer, put simply, you cannot freeze the council tax for nine years and expect local charges not to go up. If you compare the current costs of cremation across Scotland as Citizens Advice Scotland has compared them, then it is clear that eight out of the ten least expensive cremation charges are in crematoria owned and run by Scotland's local councils. Eight out of the ten most expensive cremation charges in Scotland are in crematoria owned and run by the private sector. I say to the Scottish Government that we need a first settlement for Scottish local government this year in order that these burial and cremation charges disproportionately levied on the elderly are coming down not going up. Let me also say this to the minister and I think I hope that she'll agree with me on this that we don't simply need palliative welfare proposals to alleviate funeral poverty, we need a serious and decisive alteration of the balance of power, a structural change in our society if we are to truly tackle funeral poverty. Poverty is not simply about not having any wealth, it is also about not having any power either, the one reinforcing the other. If I can conclude, Deputy Presiding Officer, by saying that I do think it's important that this Parliament says loud and clear that we will redouble our efforts to make funeral poverty history, we will construct a social security system which is designed to support people literally from the cradle to the grave and designed to end what R.H. Tony famously described as the religion of inequality which persists in this country and that we will recommit ourselves to dignity, to the universal values of humanity and to the goal of equality, the goal that drove many of us into politics in the first place. Ruth Maguire, followed by Graham Simpson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate Alec Rowley on securing this debate on the cost of saying goodbye and I share colleagues' concerns about funeral poverty and the number of constituents who have difficulty in raising the money they need to pay to bury a loved one. Losing a loved one is hard enough without any added burden and I think that we could probably all agree that everyone deserves a funeral that's meaningful to the bereaved, affordable and doesn't leave someone facing financial hardship. Crucially, for me, it allows people to get on with the grieving process without financial distress. As Alec Rowley mentioned in opening, the Citizens Advice report lays out that 2016 has seen the basic costs of burial fees, not including undertaker charges, increased by on average 8 per cent. Although local authorities should recognise the impact that rising costs have on how they contribute to funeral poverty, we have to acknowledge that the money that they raise is being invested back in local facilities and services. Of course, the cost of burial or cremation is not the only factor that contributes to funeral poverty. There are also the funeral director's fees and additional expenditure such as flowers, notices in the paper, catering for the wake and many, many other things that add up. Crucially has been touched on with all poverty about the level of personal finance available and the level of assistance available to those who cannot pay. One such manner of assistance available is the DWP funeral payment. The issues around which have been pretty well rehearsed. This benefit is being devolved to us here in Scotland and I think that we should endeavour to simplify it and promote it when it comes. But even before it is transferred, it is important that we do all that we can to ensure that the low uptake is tackled. We know that approximately 4,000 people receive a funeral payment in Scotland and the Scottish Government estimates that up to 16,000 people are in need and could apply for that benefit of all those entitled to make claims where reached. It is not a particularly comfortable topic to discuss or plan for and perhaps that is something else that we need to get better at. Maybe we need to try and encourage more open and honest conversations about dying, death and bereavement. If we can increase awareness about funerals and funeral costs then maybe those who are in a position to can plan their finances and more importantly everyone who is entitled to assistance will know how to get it so that when the time comes as it will to all of us to bury a loved one the focus can be on a meaningful send off and not on money worries. Can I also thank Alec Rowley for bringing this to the chamber? As you know, Deputy Presiding Officer, last week I spoke in a member's debate about the condition of Scotland's mortuaries. Like the subject for today's discussion, it is something that I have not given a great deal of thought to until now. But as a councillor in South Lanarkshire and I declare an interest here and that I still sit as one, I have voted on budgets which increase the cost of burials and cremations. It is quite easy to do but until you are faced with having to meet that cost after death of a loved one then it is obviously not personal. The Citizens Advice report highlights the huge disparities in the cost of dying between different parts of Scotland. It is a rather grim postcode lottery. If a relative dies here in Edinburgh and you want to bury them here, you are going to be hit for £2,200. The highest in Scotland. My own council is also among the most expensive £1,900. Yet in the Western Isles that price is £701. Still a lot to find but the cheapest there is. It is quite a difference. The story with cremations is much the same. Highland is the most expensive area, £849. By comparison, a cremation in Inverclyde is £552. However you look at it, saying goodbye in Scotland is not cheap. It isn't. So it is no surprise then that people do struggle to pay those bills. It is no surprise that we have the poverty around saying goodbye that Alex Rowley has mentioned. I must be honest and say I didn't even realise we had privately run crematoriums. I see no reason why we shouldn't but their costs are on average higher than council ones. The motion calls for more to be done to address rising costs. It doesn't say what should be done but Alex Rowley has helpfully given some ideas there and the Scottish Government working group which is set up I hope can come up with more. Councils investing in crematorium or graveyards will want to claw back some of that investment and tighter and tighter local authority budgets are definitely a factor as Alex Rowley has said. All councils have had to find colossal savings as the Government puts the squeeze on them. Tough decisions have had to be made by councillors and even with the ability to increase council tax from next year that will continue. Really it's up to the Scottish Government to look at its funding for local government and make it more of a priority. Councils deliver so many of the services that really matter to people and yet they've been hit year after year by the central grant settlement being cut. If we want to limit price rises for burials, cremations and indeed other services then we have to help councils. One positive thing to come from this debate is it has shone a light on the issue of costs and I think that's been very useful. So as I said at the start few of us will give it any thought until we have to but it is a lesson to all of us to plan ahead and I do hope that something good comes from this. I really thank Alex Rowley once again for bringing it. I have Alex Neil followed by Monica Lennon. Thank you very much indeed, Deputy Presiding Officer on kind. I congratulate Alex Rowley on securing this debate and say that I fully support everything that he said in his introductory speech. I say that this is an issue that requires a comprehensive response in terms of how we deal with the situation because there's no doubt at all that funeral poverty is a blight on our communities whether people live in urban areas or in rural areas and there are sometimes different pressures in each. The report that was produced by the Scottish Government, commissioned by myself, made a whole series of very worthwhile recommendations and I would recommend the Government to pursue those and not always be following them to the letter but certainly in terms of the spirit in which they are presented. For my money there are four priorities that we need to tackle. The first one is in relation to the bereavement allowance when it is devolved to this Parliament. As Richard Leonard said, the total budget is around £4 million to £5 million but those who are in receipt of the allowance, which has been frozen for quite a number of years, will only get enough to pay for one third of the funeral costs if you look at the average of funeral costs in today's world. Clearly, the allowance needs to be upgraded to allow it to pay for a much larger percentage of total funeral costs. Secondly, we need to look at other ways of supporting people financially because we need to look at the eligibility criteria but there will be some people who might not quite make the eligibility criteria but might need some form of other type of financial assistance such as a loan finance without going to a loan shark. All those things need to be looked at and I think that there is an ideal opportunity here given the small amounts of money involved. There is a need to increase the overall budget significantly but even a 100 per cent increase would only cost something of the order of £4 million a year but it would make a significant dent in the issue of funeral poverty. Secondly, I believe that we have got to pursue the recommendations in terms of the licensing of funeral directors because there is no doubt at all that this is an industry that needs more regulation, not less. There are too many cowboys coming into this industry and there are too many scams in the industry and they need to be sorted. Although some of that responsibility resides still with Westminster, there are things that we can do in this Parliament in order to tackle that problem. I hope that the minister will not be taken in by the monopoly groups who control some of the membership organisations of funeral directors. They should listen to what funeral directors across the board are saying and not just the two big boys who control a large share of the market. The third point is that I am all in favour of cutting the cost of funerals but there is a danger if we go down the route as they have in Cardiff and it has got some things to recommend it of council contract funerals for £1,000. Why should poor people have inferior funerals to everyone else? They should have the same rights as everyone else to a decent funeral and, quite frankly, it would be very difficult to get a decent funeral for £1,000 at today's prices. The fourth priority is in relation to local authority charges. Although I absolutely recognise the financial pressures on our councils and the need for them to raise additional revenue, too many of them see this as a bit of a cash cow. If you take my own local authority that I represent in North Lanarkshire Council, it has increased fees by 39 per cent in one year. That is totally unacceptable. It is not just about the charges but we should be looking at a discount system whereby someone who is living in poverty, someone who is struggling, might be able to get some kind of discount from the local authority to help them cover the cost. That is an area where we can really, really make a difference and I would urge the minister to take a radical comprehensive approach and to have us ready so that when the bereavement allowance is finally devolved, we are able to make a quick announcement about how we are going to increase that significantly both in terms of the money and the eligibility to help deal with the real problem of funeral poverty that we have in this country. The last of the open speeches is Monica Lennon. I, too, welcome the opportunity to be able to speak in this important members' debate today on a topic that touches the lives of us all and I am grateful to Alex Rowley for putting forward the motion. I would also like to add my thanks to Citizens Advice Scotland for putting together their compelling research and their report, The Cost of Saying Goodbye 2016. Saying goodbye to loved ones is something that we all have to deal with at some point in our lives. It is something that is never easy and when this emotionally stressful time is compounded by the anxiety of ever rising funeral costs, it can quickly become overwhelming. The work that Citizens Advice Scotland has compiled on the rising costs of funerals over the last few years is nothing short of shocking. During my recent visit to the Citizens Advice Bureau in East Kilbride in the central Scotland region, I represent, I was concerned to hear the issues of funeral poverty and debt were being raised with advisers. In one case, a client attended the bureau looking to receive advice about assistance with the costs of the funeral of their child. As both the client and their partner were employed and living in rented accommodation, they had no entitlement to any Government assistance with the costs of the funeral. They had no savings and no way to pay the costs of the funeral up front and were left with no alternative but to take it alone to pay the costs of the funeral in advance. Understandably, that caused a great deal of stress for the family involved and would have caused great financial hardship. As the parents advised the cab, you never think that you will have to bury your child. The family were being thrown into complete turmoil both emotionally and financially due to the worst situation imaginable, one that they had absolutely no control over. Through the parents discussion with the cab, it came to light that one of the parents was ex-service personnel and through an application to the Armed Services Advice project and Armed Services charity was thankfully able to cover the costs of the funeral. For those in a similar situation who are not able to find a financial solution, the consequences can be bleak. No-one should have to get themselves into debt as a result of having to pay for the funeral of a loved one. The wide variation in the costs of the funeral, depending on your geographical location and levels of income, is deeply troubling. As Graham Simpson alluded to earlier, the postcode lottery that people face is nothing less than grim. As Scottish Labour's spokeswoman for inequalities, I find it extremely concerning that we can have such a disparity in funeral costs across the country. For the ability to have a dignified funeral is a right for all. Alex Rowley's motion also rightly makes reference to the fact that rising costs of funerals levelled by councils are due to a range of reasons from significant new investment in burial sites and crematoriums to increasingly constrained council budgets. I echo Richard Leonard when he talks about the need for a fair settlement across local government. Basic burial costs are also only part of the total cost of a funeral, as Ruth Maguire has stated, with many additional costs such as flowers, celebrant fees and death notices adding to the stress and making the cost even more difficult to meet for many families. I have learned from personal experience following the death of my dad last year just how overwhelming it can be when so many choices need to be made in a very short space of time. It is clear that we need to do more to address the rising funeral costs, debts and funeral poverty that we are hearing about. I know that there is agreement from colleagues across the chamber about the importance to do so. I hope that we can reach agreement that it is important that the Government look again at the issue of funeral poverty and to work with parties right across the chamber to explore in detail the recommendations of the cash review from earlier this year during the lifetime of this Parliament. I now call June Freeman to close the debate around about seven minutes, please minister. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I not only welcome the opportunity to close this debate but also thank the member for bringing it to the chamber to say that I support not only his concern and many of the issues raised by other speakers but I also support the motion that he has brought before us. For families who are mourning the loss of a loved one to be faced with mounting debt and distress because of the cost of a funeral is not only unacceptable but it seems to me at times also cruel. Members have referred to the report that was commissioned by the Scottish Government from John Burrow, the chair of the Scottish working group on funeral poverty and Citizens Advice Scotland, which was published earlier this year. That report recommended action across a number of sectors and for our part as Scottish Government we are progressing activities to support people to plan ahead for their own funerals and discuss that with relatives to influence relevant sectors to create a downward pressure on funeral costs and I'll return to that. To put in place a more effective safety net in the form of a Scottish funeral payment when the powers are transferred to us from the DWP. Of course as Richard Leonard rightly pointed out, the approach to funeral poverty needs to sit alongside our analysis and understanding of the situation with respect to poverty and work across Scotland on both poverty and inequalities. I have to say that of course that situation is not assisted by the UK Government's persistence in its ideological clinging to the economics of austerity and the welfare cut upon welfare cut that it imposes on those least able to manage. Our approach to funeral poverty also sits alongside our work to develop a modern and comprehensive legislative framework for burial and cremation in Scotland. The Certification of Death Scotland Act 2011 allowed us in May of 2015 to remove the doctors fee from cremation costs, resulting in a saving of £170 for bereaved families. The Burial and Cremation Scotland Act 2016 contains provision for the reuse of burial layers, which will reduce pressure on burial ground capacity in the longer term, requires local authorities to publish and display their fees online so that they are easily accessible and powers to introduce inspection schemes for directors. Although I have made note of Mr Neil's point with respect to the regulation of funeral directors, I should take this opportunity to thank him for his work on which we have such a strong foundation. Our work on palliative and end-of-life care, supporting greater public and personal discussion of bereavement, death, dying and care at the end of life, chimes very well with what Ms Maguire said about our general reluctance as individuals and as a society to discuss openly that one fact that we all know we will have to address ourselves at some point. We are also exploring as a Government options around a Scottish funeral bond to help people to save and plan ahead financially for their funeral. At the same time, as members have noted, we are preparing to take over the DWP's funeral payment. As for our wider work on social security powers, we have undertaken engagement with people and organisations across Scotland. In that, we have heard of much that is wrong with the current system. We have established our Funal Poverty and Funal Payment Reference Group, which includes funeral director organisations, bereavement services, advice services and local authority representatives. There are a number of failings with the DWP's current funeral payment. It is complex in its eligibility criteria. It asks intrusive and unnecessary questions about family circumstances. It sits on a range of complicated rules, making it unclear what you are entitled to and the current value of the DWP's funeral payment does not cover all of the costs, leaving many in debt. It is also exacerbated by very slow processing times. Mr Rowley asked, I think, fairly about the timetable that we might pursue on the transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament in regard to this particular benefit. The consultation that we held, which lasted three months and included this benefit, ended only on Monday. It would be, I think, quite wrong, for me as a minister, to pre-empt the analysis of that consultation in terms of identifying which areas we want to change, the improvements that we want to make or even the timetable at this point of the benefits that we will take responsibility for. I take his point about using our capacity in areas of benefit responsibility, where perhaps the benefit affects fewer numbers of people to try to take those areas over earlier. We are working at the moment to identify what our timetable process might be. I hope that we will be able to bring members up to date with that, certainly in the coming months. It is, of course, made more complex because the DWP system across all of the benefits that we will take responsibility for is itself complex simply in retrieving the basic data that we need to know who it is that we are talking about and which individuals receive some of the benefits that we will take responsibility for. I am mindful of the point. I hope that Mr Rowley will take the assurance that we are actively looking at what our timetable of progress in taking over responsibility for the individual benefits will be over the lifetime of this Parliament. I also have to say that there is another benefit, if you like, area of financial support called the bereavement payment, which still sits with the UK Government. It does seem to me a pity that that remains the case because it is an area in this comprehensive response that we would want to adopt to the whole question of poverty that we will not be able to take responsibility for and use in the work that we are taking forward. Both the application and the success rates for the DWP benefits are low, as has already been mentioned. We know that only around 4,000 people a year receive a funeral payment in Scotland. While the DWP fails to publish accurate statistics, we estimate that the reality is that up to 16,000 bereave people in Scotland would be eligible. This is a failure of the system, as it currently stands, for low-income families. When the funding is transferred to Scotland, this point is critically important. It will be based on the spend in Scotland during the year before the transfer. That 4,000 figure that we have just mentioned of those who have received the benefit compared to our estimate of 16,000. We know that the resources that are transferred to the Scottish Government will not come anywhere close to make the current need or our desire to increase the reach of the benefit to all those who are eligible. For this reason and to help those who do not qualify for a benefit, we need to act also on rising funeral costs. We are looking in particular not only to local authorities but also to funeral directors to work with us, because they too bear our responsibility in those rising costs. We have set up a number of round tables led by the cabinet secretary. We have worked with local authorities on the shared agenda. We know that local authorities are considering their approach in terms of their own charges and want to work with us on that. On 16 November, the cabinet secretary will host a summit that will look to bring together all the work in addition to the DWP and the changes that we might make into a more comprehensive package about how we deal with the matter. I am conscious that I have gone on. There is a lot to say, and my apologies for that. I hope that members take our assurance that we take the matter very seriously. There is clearly cross-party support in terms of what we might do to tackle it. I look forward to those conversations with my colleagues across the chamber. I hope that Mr Rowley and others will take my response as assurance that we are not only looking at what we do in terms of the benefit payment but at the wider discussions that we need to have to properly address the issue.


Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Pure Accelerate 2021. I'm Lisa Martin, pleased to be welcoming back one of our alumni to theCUBE. Prakash Darje is here, the VP and GM of the Digital Experience Business Unit at Pure Storage. Prakash, it's great to have you back on the program. Yeah, Lisa, thanks for having me. It's been, I don't know, more than a year since I've seen theCUBE, right? Pre-COVID, so it's been a little while. Pre-COVID, remember those days. Well, thank you for joining us virtually. We appreciate that. And also excited to hear some of the things that are going to be coming out at Accelerate, an event that I've covered in person several times. So talk to me about this Digital Experience Business Unit. This is relatively new. What is it encompassed? What are you hoping to deliver from a portfolio perspective to your customers? Well, what's interesting is it's new and it's not, right? Because we've been as a company, a SaaS company that happened to ship storage boxes on premise. So we've had Pure One, which was largely used for monitoring and supporting our fleet like a SaaS company would do. And customers had access to that as their single pane of glass. But as we expanded beyond just observability and monitoring, we realized that we could use this observability to do more for customers. And we introduced our Pure as a service offering about three years ago now, which customers just sign up for SLAs. Like they went on a cloud, you sign up, I want this performance, I want this capacity at storage. So why don't you just sign up for what you need? And we created the DX Business Unit, the Digital Experience Business Unit to bring those things together because frankly, we're using Pure One to monitor, manage and allow customers to sign up for their SLAs in a very digital way. And I guess the world's changed a little bit because previously you would call up your sales rep to do things and then COVID happened. And I think a lot of people got a little bit of Zoom fatigue and therefore, we see a lot of traction right now in terms of people just self-serving and going up and signing up for the SLAs they need. Talk to me about some of those SLAs the customers are signing up for. What is it that they know with Pure as a service, for example, in Pure One that they can get?  Number one thing with storage is you're signing up for capacity and performance, right? When you think storage, you're like, oh, I need to store my videos or I need to store my apps or I need to store something. And right now we've got customers and multiple hundreds of petabytes, right?  And we've got small customers as well, five to 10 terabytes of storage as well. So, but across that entire range in storage, you're basically want to make sure you don't lose your data, it's protected, it's safe, the world's becoming a little less secure, ransomware and attacks and all of those types of things. So we've introduced concepts of ransomware assessment and capabilities like that but the performance of capacity are the two things you want to sign up for. So what if you just said, I want it this fast and I want this much space and all of the other technology problems you give to pure, right? Because you know what, you run out of space, we'll ship the box, we'll manage it. You don't need to call us, you don't need to order, you don't need to do that. So it's more than just, I think when people think about services, they think about subscriptions, right? CapEx versus Apex. And sure there's an element to CapEx versus Apex but that's not really what a service is, that's just a subscription. A service is, hey, I just want this performance and this capacity, who's going to run it and operate it and manage it for me? You know, when you sign up for a SaaS service, you don't really care when you sign up for Salesforce, how it runs, who's running it, et cetera. You just want to manage your CRM pipeline. And you know, we're bringing that same SaaS experience to storage. You do expect that, you bring up a good point when you're talking about SaaS applications, one of the things that we saw in the last year is this massive proliferation or acceleration of companies in every industry dependent on so many SaaS apps just for collaboration alone and internally, let alone externally, brought up ransomware. It's something I've been talking a lot about in the last year, how that's been on the rise. Talk to me about, you know, as enterprise, enterprises need storage to do more than just that. Talk to me about how you're working with customers to ensure that this data across the enterprise is secure. Well, so it's interesting. When I talk to people and they ask me, are you secure? I'm like, well, that's kind of a silly question. Because, you know, if you think about security, there's always more you could do. It's not am I secure, it's how secure am I? And you want to be the NSA where everything's under a lock and key, you can do that. And it's just going to be really expensive to do. So what we're, the way we're approaching it is we're giving customers levels of ransomware that they can actually implement for production. Level zero, right? The simplest is make sure that I've got, you know, an air gap of my data and a copy of it to prevent you from altering it for up to 30 days or some time period, which, you know, is the first level of threat that, you know, someone can't hold you hostage by encrypting your data or those types of things. And we've done that for our whole portfolio, we provide that, and we now even give customers an assessment to tell them, you know, whether they can go into our digital experience and do an assessment to see how secure are they? But that's only the first step. Hackers are actually getting more sophisticated now on air gap and just saying, well, what if I do a time delayed encryption thing that overcomes the 30 day thing?  So the next level is a physical gap where you take it off the primary system and you actually put it on the secondary system, your data. So, you know, your virtual air gaps, one thing, your physical distance provides another layer of security because now it's another physical asset with another copy of your data. Sure it costs more money because you're storing it twice. So you have to decide based on the sensitivity of your information, how many layers of security you want to build it. You can even build in a third layer that says, if something happens, I don't want to pay the ransomware, I just need to be able to recover quickly. So let me have a rapid recovery SLA. And, you know, we use our Flash Play to deliver that because it's one of the, you know, fastest recovery products on the planet based on the performance threshold. So, you know, we've seen a lot of companies now adopt and use Flash Play is kind of that level three for rapid recovery. In, instead of paying for the insurance, they're paying for the remediation, you know what I mean? So it's a different, it's interesting how the landscape has evolved. Right, and as the threat actors have access to more and more sophistication, obviously that becomes a challenge, but you bring up a good point and that is it's sort of, it's not a matter of, is it going to happen to us? It's when, and it's kind of that tolerance level based on the data. Modern data experience, here's been talking about this. Obviously the modern data experience has changed a lot in the last year. Talk to us about what that is. How does the modern data experience, our Pure One and Pure as a Service foundational to that and talk to me about the benefits in it for customers? Well, so when we think about the modern data experience there's really three pillars we talk about in the modern data experience. The first one is just innovation leadership. Pure's got a little bit of a history of redefining storage. First of all, flash, first the unified fast pollen object. You know, we're on a third generation of QLC technology. So we figure if we don't invent the future who else is going to? You know, we look around the landscape and there's a lot of data technology. So we need to invent a future that people have a blueprint to copy. Like, that's our goal of modernizing the landscape. You know, we don't see a lot of original and innovative thought happening in the industry. So we have to create the blueprint of the future, right? We pride ourselves on that innovation leadership. And Evergreen, which, you know, we've introduced as an innovation where, you know, people buy at 500 terabytes of storage today they don't have to rebuy it every three to five years. That innovation that we introduced is still unmatched in industry after we've been in industry for 10 years because companies haven't figured out how to copy it. Evergreen is still a differentiator. It sounds like the modern data experience what you're looking to do is also define it with and for customers and have that be a unique differentiator for what Pure delivers. 100%.  And, you know, we lean very heavily into what we're doing for DevOps and developers not just for our administrators. And, you know, part of the modern data experience is being cloud ready and container ready. And then finally just having the best digital experience which, you know, Pure one and Pure as a service is foundational to where customers can go in and procure easy, support easy and all of it starts with the data. Like if I was to say, hey, you're going to get into a Tesla, right? And you're going to turn on the self-driving mode. Would you turn it on if you knew that there were zero miles clocked on the odometer, right? Where no, like, yeah, you're the first we haven't really trained this yet, right? No one would turn that on. So for you to be able to offer a digital experience and a service experience to a customer it's all about miles driven. And since we've introduced Pure one five years ago, you know, now on a yearly basis we're collecting over 20 petabytes of data tons of signals, training the algorithms around giving customers recommendations which we've been doing now. Customers can get performance recommendations and upgrade recommendations. And now we've used the recommendations are such high fidelity that because of our miles driven we're using that internally to run and operate our services for on behalf of customers. And when companies think about disruptive events let me take my old portfolio and create a new one you're resetting the odometer at zero. So without something like Evergreen it makes no sense in terms of how do you get to as a service? You can get to CapEx versus OpEx, right? And, you know, we were the first people to do that in storage with Pure as a service three plus years ago but we've moved beyond a financial offering now to talk about, you know how do you run and operate performance and capacity as a lease? What's your point is so much more that customers need especially as there's more and more data being generated, you know the edges exploding, IoT devices are exploding and there's more challenges that customers have to do but it's also able to get those fast insights from data to be able to make those data driven decisions which it sounds like what you're doing from all of the mileage that Pure One and Pure as a service have to talk to me about some of the things that are being announced with respect to the digital experience of Pure One at Accelerate. So there's three primary announcements. We've moved beyond observability first to do assessments. So, you know, we can now say, you know instead of just monitoring and watching what's going on we can give you a threat level assessment specific to ransomware. That's a new capability we're introducing. We've also been, you know in monitoring monitoring storage and monitoring virtual machines for a while but if you take a look at how people deploy on storage they deploy VMs and they deploy containers. We've seen very little like they also have bare metal, right? But between those three now you cover how people are using storage from a deployment model and we've brought container monitoring into Pure One for end-to-end traceability monitoring for, you know both your container landscape as well as your storage landscape underneath with our flash drive and flash play. So, you know this observability and assessment space has a lot of new capabilities we're bringing. The second piece is recommendations. So previously we've had this data and customers could go into Pure One and use the data they could simulate adding performance they could simulate adding capacity they could simulate moving this workload from here to here. But now instead of you doing it we've created a recommendation engine where we'll tell you what to do because we actually tracked, you know how much time is spent with people trying to figure out what to do. There were times when storage admins were in the products like let me try moving it from here to here and see what would happen let me try moving it from here to here. If you've got thousands of volumes and hundreds of arrays and that type of thing you can spend weeks trying to figure out what to do by running permutational combinatorics. So instead we've used our AI engine now to simulate taking into account customer preference load capacity previous buying patterns, et cetera to create high fidelity recommendations for performance capacity, placing new workloads workload rebalancing and even for Pure as a service which SLA should I sign up for? When you go to Amazon one of the biggest problems on the cloud is too much choice. There's like 300 items on the service catalog even in storage there's like, I don't know 20, 30 options of should I pick this storage type or this storage type or that storage type? How do you even know? Because we've been the miles driven analogy because we've now know how customers have been deploying you can choose your workloads and based on what we've seen based on the wisdom of what we've collected across all the other customers we can tell you which service instance type you need. So this recommendation approach is big and then the last one is self-service. So customers now in control and set the reserved instances, expand, set the renewals we've even introduced a partner persona where partners can manage things on behalf of a customer and see transparency and billing in order traffic. So all of those things that you're used to in kind of a commerce and a cloud experience we've brought that to traditional storage. So some pretty big changes there and I like how here has always been very bold in defining its differentiators using its own data to make better decisions to as you said customers have a ton of choice, which is great. It's also challenging at the same time for them to be able to understand objectively what is it that my environment needs? Talk to me a little bit about some of the changes that you saw in the last year as companies shifted almost overnight to a remote working situation can't get into my data center. What are some of the ways in which here has helped organizations with the advancements that you've made in your services portfolio? Well, so the first thing we did and we did this kind of literally I think last February when, you know everything immediately went into lockdown we introduced a zero touch provisioning category. You don't want people in the data center, right? You need to obviously if there's physical stuff you have to rack stack and cable but beyond that everything else should be zero touch. And so we've introduced zero touch provisioning capability immediately and some of like the largest one of the largest, you know video conferencing providers on the planet happened to call us immediately saying look we can't even get stuff to keep up with the demand and overnight we were able to go ahead and work with them to, you know get them the efficiency that they needed. So, you know, if I take a look at our supply chain throughout COVID, we were able, you know to meet most shipments in sub four days throughout COVID even in a globally disrupted supply chain because of the agility and the flexibility we have in our portfolio. And frankly just a phenomenal supply chain team as well. So, you know that approach has engendered a ton of trust whenever you do anything, like, you know in this environment, COVID pandemic, et cetera people are under stress. It creates stress for human beings and even creates stress for families, right? I have two small children and it creates stress. What do you, how do you get through that stress? All the things that are unnecessary are things you just forget about and to get the things that are necessary done to go to the people you trust. So that's a great point you bring up about trust because that is table stakes for an organization to trust its partners or its customers to be able to trust that it's going to deliver what it needs. It's no longer a nice to have. I think this, one of the things that COVID climate has shown us is that it's absolutely essential. Last question, Prakash, I want to get to you is let's talk about AI ops for a second. We're seeing more and more organizations turning to AI ops for more intelligent operations. What is it? What are some of the benefits that Pure can deliver in that response? Well, look, I have a lot of opinions on AI ops but the first one is like saying AI ops now is like saying web 2.0 a few years ago, right? It's a hot term. Everyone likes to talk about it and the very few people actually do anything real AI, right? It's like, well, let me tell you something. So as you think about AI ops today you need to first get the data and the miles driven matter. The second thing you need to do is you could use that data and create a ton of recommendations that you tell send to customers. And you will be the equivalent of Facebook ads, right? Like click, click, click, click, click. Some of these are relevant. Some of these aren't, right?  The number one thing to really make it learning based is if someone rejects a recommendation you now have to collect that and train your algorithms to say, you know what? This person doesn't need that, right? And maybe the other person accepted that same recommendation and they do. So the time isn't just about data collection and miles driven but the amount of recommendations that customers accept and reject can train and personalize how you do your AI operations. And I feel like this economy because AI ops is hot everyone's just like, I have AI ops and it's just so facetious.  The way you train support is support personnel and bug fixes. You need to monitor how your support personnel fixes things to be able to replicate and have higher efficiencies and support. So even small customers can get the same level of support as the large customers because, you know, it's not like the big guys get 50 people and the small guys only get one, right? You need to use software as the great equalizer. And the same thing goes in sales when you're approaching customers with offers and recommendations or when customers, whether they need performance or capacity the fidelity matters and data and technology will only go so far. You need to use the human feedback loop to train your AI. If you don't do that you're missing the concept of machine learning. Agreed, last question since we have about 30 seconds left or so talk to me about how peer is going to continue to utilize AI and to your point not just throughout recommendations but actually have learning going on so that the right relevant offers, for example can be delivered to the right customer at the right time. Well, we pride ourselves on simplicity and customer first, right? Our net promoter score is, you know one of the top crust scores in the industry. And because of that we've got a very vibrant and active customer community that goes into, you know tier one on a daily basis to monitor the landscape to see what's going on, to create support cases whatever it may be. And because of that we're going to continue engaging and learning from our customers. And, you know I think you can't do it without the trust and, you know a large portion of our business is large SaaS providers. So, you know you think about, you know very, very large SaaS companies we service them because of our Evergreen model and now bringing this level of predictability creates a level of efficiency for SaaS companies that means they could do more with less. And that's what this industry is about. Well said. Prakash, thank you so much for joining me at our coverage of Accelerate excited to see what's going on with the modern data experience how you're getting in there and working and partnering with customers using the data to learn and tweak and improve. Excited to hear some of the other stuff that comes up but I appreciate you joining me this morning. Thanks for having me Lisa. I enjoyed the conversation. Excellent. Prakash Darje, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Pure Accelerate 2021.


My goal is to be world champion and I want to do this. We will see what happens all season because we have 10 rounds and I think it will be hard but I can do that. In the back of my mind I have a picture when I'm standing on the top of the podium in Torren with the gold medal around my neck. So that's the ultimate goal but it's a long way there and we've got to stay in the present and take one round by one round. I'm 100% healthy, that's the main thing for the sportmen and now I can just focus only on racing, on winning and this is all I do this season. So focus on the good racing and try to win the most heat as possible. I'm not here just to take part so I'm in the GP to fight for a top place so that's what I am to do. We will see because we have the first meeting in Warsaw, it's open the Speedway Grand Prix, we need to remember we had 10 rounds. So I hope to race in the all rounds and fighting for the best place and make the more points so this is important I think for me. But we will see what's happened and waiting for the Torren, the last round. We've got many hopes, I'm just going to stay positive and get the points in the first couple of rounds and try to stay injury free again. Had a crash a couple of weeks back but hopefully that's the last one. Obviously I have hopes to be able to win meetings and be able to be at the top but I think everybody is the same here. Everybody is aiming for the top and that's why I'm here too but it's going to be a long season, it's going to be a tough one. I just need to take it step by step and I know I'm able to win meetings and one Grand Prix before and obviously that's what I'm able to do as well here. Audio would be brilliant, anything is possible to be honest, the feel is really even so as I said before it's very important to be consistent. It's simple, it's just got to be fast, that's it.


Hi everyone, Joe for jazzy's case breaks.com coming at you with 2021 Panini contenders baseball pack break Random team number one at the end of the break six of those 35 box Baseball mixer spots have been given away. So that's gonna be pretty nice You'll be able to get a get one of those big mixer spots for a fraction of the price big Thanks to this group for making it happen appreciate it There are the teams right here. So let's do the pack break first Then we'll do a separate dice roll for the giveaway part. So for the break four and a one five times one two three four I don't want fifth and final time Yeah, I realize that yeah, the Dodgers have spring training in Arizona now. I do realize that four and a one five times I'm surprised that they that they were in That they're in Vero Beach for so long a's down to the Rockies That would be great Yeah, full day of baseball. Let's play two. Let's watch two.  That's not a bad not a bad filler So there is the final print out hot off the presses So we're gonna roll the die will go one two three for the left side four five six for the right side And then we'll go roll it again for one two three or one two Three four and five six for the for the individual packs. You'll you'll see what I do this To one two so I'll be Left side and then one two three four five six It's two again. So one two Top pack and we'll save these for next time. I did Tim. That was great And they actually made some baseball car. I forget what set that was in But they actually made baseball right good luck. Got a Matt Olson and behind Oh, I thought those and then a Cody Ballinger blue parallel jazz Chisholm. That's a nice auto to get draft ticket auto 28 out of 99 Tiny little ding in that bottom right hand corner, but right down here Kind of hard to see on camera, but But still nice David big boys 007 with the Miami Marlins. Thanks Dave There's the rest All right, so not a bad pack at all now Let's see who's going to win those mixer spots So let's gather everybody's names from Steven down a Martin and everybody in between new dice new list and Let's roll it and randomize it Five and a four nine times top six after nine. Good luck one two three four five six seven eight and Ninth and final time after nine So from seven on down. Sorry Dave. It's gonna be sad times For David and everybody else But I appreciate everybody taking the risk on this top six is happy though because you're in that mixer Joe Anthony Joe Jose Steven and Martin Martin got a lot of spots, but at least he got one Martin. Thank you. Thanks everybody appreciate everybody getting in We got to do a couple a few more of these packs So keep working on those and we'll finally unlock that 35 box baseball mixer. I'm Joe for jaspy's case breaks calm Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us, and I'll see you next time for the next one


Everybody forced here ripping a 2022 top shrimp black baseball hobby 12 bucks full case number 34 random team style check out the results right here Let's go ahead and get started y'all Also like to wish George E a happy birthday. Happy birthday, dude. Let's uh, let's get you a wander. You got the raise So let's get a wander Happy birthday, man. Let's get started y'all when I was 11 What do I what would I want probably like probably video games or something probably like a probably a bat a new basketball or like a bat a basket 11 probably like a Dwight Howard Jersey In video games Maybe a 2003 so probably like a Tom Brady I had a team at Jersey, so wouldn't have been Dwight Howard's time yet. No three not yet not yet But I've been Steve Francis Jersey time I had a Francis Jersey to Yeah, man, I mean, I don't know if I was in the cards, I would have won a card But here we go. Good luck y'all get that birthday wander hit Can't sing happy birthday Gavin sheets Andrew Vaughan got green Corbin burns number 25 at a 99 for the Brewers Just the autos first hit goes to the Cardinals rookie out of one yep as Go Cardinals one yep as base rookie auto. I would it's gonna be so few cards anyway Out of there Entendee Ashby Purple rookie Rodolfo Castro Pirates 103 of 150 and Pirates auto cabrion Hayes Pirates base auto It's like a lot if you give like the 10 or something like that Yeah, so like you can use nine points That's cool though. I like that. Yeah, if you're gonna if you're gonna survive you have to do things differently You can't be the exact same thing you have to have wacky stuff that makes the game like Even if it's like a 15 point game it has to be interesting Ramos India Vidal Bruhan rookie green atomic number 51 of 99 there you go George The rookie auto Hoy Park Pirates Oh, I see you're saying yeah, that's kind of cool though. Yeah, but I don't know Yeah Like All right, Cedric Mullins who a nice color here magenta or red after the Adele is Jonathan India Yeah, five at ten magenta for the Reds You go sincey And rookie auto for the White Sox Gavin sheets base auto here. We gotta have some word on numbered autos coming up Everything's been based so far Remember guys Sam is live on drip currently ripping personals tonight. There'll be no personals on this stream here But Sam now until midnight as long as orders keep coming and he will be there if impersonals on drip All right, rookie's Edward Cabrera for the Marlins base stanton rookie refractor Julio Rodriguez Number 16 of 199 nice card mariners There we go Seattle And gold auto here finally some color on these Rockies Larry Walker 25 of 50 That's pretty cool. Larry Walker man gold mini diamonds Rockies Burns rookie variations say a Suzuki for the Cubs and a green atomic rookie Yankees will be seal 35 of 99 Set the turnover. There's only other women's college and men's college basketball on so I was like, yeah U.S. Soccer. Oh, yeah soccer post game. I'm like, what? Rookie auto Rockies Colton Welker now Rockies two hits for you play Peter Lonzo Otto from jumbo today Hey, I bet illegal that'll sell pretty well though at least you pulled like a Good Nets hit as if it's a met, you know Peter Lonzo Byron Buxton rookie blue hunter green green blue 39 of 75 blue green Refractor Otto Mets Darrell strawberry 81 of 150 there wasn't a whole lot of talk after the game Like I told Serena this I was like if you're like you have to tell me like you're depending on like Is what it is man I'll to vey contrair us purple Randy Rosa Rainer 131 of 150 Raise there you go again George a green auto Paul Molliter 78 and 99 for the Brewers Yeah, they didn't change anything. They just kept rushing for And like I don't know they didn't change one thing. They never brought pressure Chapman Crawford or a fractured George Springer Blue Jays number 90 of 199 Rookie auto Rockies Ryan Vellade Rockies third hit It could have been you're gonna have to kind of Figure it out again because the defense is already kind of pieced together The hunter green rookie it was done very well, but it was like a it wasn't like a long-term thing Atomic green Bryson Stotz 27 to 99 rookie Phillies Can we count this one? You go fills and a purple Jared Kilnick 81 of 150 mariners Fractor auto now rookie pirates for adult focastra 124 of 150 Like That's weird Devers Katal Marte green rookie Giants Elliott Ramos number two three of 99 and Green auto for the Yankees Jorge Posada 23 of 99 good stuff for the Yankees there. Yo Yeah, you have she's pretty solid man I Pulled we when I did the brakes on Wednesday pulled on card Liddell on card Lesnar on card Amanda Nunez Adesanya on card I want to say It based our in not of Lattie a gold Kibrian Hayes pirates number 37 to 50 Pretty it's pretty solid The big names a beam Connor Like it's not like the young guy like the young guys they some young guys do well like if Patty had autos in it They would be huge for sure like Auto Ted Simmons Cardinals base. Let's do a quick recap everybody Yeah, Sean's don't Sean O'Malley is definitely one of them Patty Pimblit is another For the older ones. It's definitely like Connor Habib Lesnar's pretty good Certain legends do better than others. Yeah, I know Taking it out auto recap here. We have Hoy Park Juan Yepez Kibrian Hayes Gavin sheets Larry Walker gold to 50 We had Ted Simmons green Posada for the Yankees Ryan Velaid Ricky refractor Julio Rodriguez Mariners to 199 Redulfo Castro for the pirates Colton Welker Daryl Strawberry for the Mets and a Green Paul Muller for the Brewers that will do it. Thanks again everybody onto more baseball


Hello and welcome to the chart of the week video with me dead laden today's date is Wednesday the 23rd of May And the time has just gone 1240 British summer time This week's chart of the week is the 40 minute the Italian market as we call it here on a platform the Italy 40 Take a look now at the weekly chart. We can see since the lows of 2016 you can see that the Italian market a lot of many global global market has had a terrific run But in recent weeks, we have seen a quite a sizable sell-off And the in the Italy 40 this is all down to political uncertainty in Italy There's a possibility we could have a new government Italy to populous parties to your skeptic and Anti-euro parties could be looking to form a coalition government And this is as rattled investor confidence in the in the country's index There's even Scrutiny being applied to Giuseppe Conte who's tipped to be the next Italian Prime Minister This allegation that he wasn't entirely truthful on his CV This is also adding political certainty and pressure to the footsie to the footsie maim So we've been drifting off for the last two or three weeks Where can we potentially drift lower to well this blue line here is the 50 week moving average it comes into play at 22,448 and notice how in early parts of 2018 We did see that level act as support so so move to the downside from here We could see the 50 week moving average be targeted at twenty two thousand four hundred and forty eight Taking a look now at the weekly at the daily chart We can get an idea of how much the market has declined in the past two and a half weeks As we can see there's been a sizable sell-off in the past two and a half weeks This is has also been confirmed by the steady increase in negative momentum on the MacD indicator The MacD Instagram here is is steady rising so while the market's driving lower We can see that the momentum but by the bears by the sellers is actually on the rise So if you do manage to kind of push lower here And if you do manage to drop below this red line the turning moving average that comes to the play at twenty two thousand six hundred and eighty nine Should you move smooth south of the turning moving average? We could be looking at targeting the April low or the early April low of twenty two thousand two hundred And if you go south of there, we could find support from the twenty two thousand figure itself Twenty thousand is a big cycle on June number But also we could see in recent months to our twenty eighteen It did act as a decent area of support And if you go and if you have a size of a break south of twenty two thousand You could be looking at testing the the lows of twenty eighteen which come into play at two thousand twenty one thousand four hundred and fifty two But the the two hundred day moving average is this red line here has also acted as a significant level in recent months We can see both back back in back in January and also a few times in February March It did manage to act as support So if we do see the market running to run find support from the two day moving average at twenty thousand Six hundred and ninety three we could see the market bounce higher And if you do manage to see it bounce higher Where could we go when we potentially bounce back up toward this blue line here at the fifth of the moving average Which comes into play at twenty three thousand three hundred twenty nine notice how it did manage to act as resistance In both February and and also and also in March They're actually active support in April as well So while a market has recent history of acting as support and or resistance It makes it more likely that it will do again in the future And if you do have a size of a break north of this blue line here The fifth of the moving average the next there to keep an eye on for to the upside would be twenty four thousand big psychological number And if you go north of twenty four thousand we can then become more confident that the wider upward trend is going to continue And we could be linking testing the may high of twenty four thousand five hundred and sixty five Well, that's all for me this week. Thank you very much


So let's try and write some numbers in other bases. And so the thing to remember is that in base n, we have names for amounts between 0 and n. And we also have abstract symbols for amounts between 0 and n minus 1. But if we have larger amounts, what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to form these into units consisting of n objects of piece. And then when we write our number, we're going to record how many of which units. And the key thing to remember here always is that arithmetic is bookkeeping. So for example, let's take an amount and let's see if we can express this amount as a number in base 3. So remember in base 3, we have names for the amounts 0, 1, 2, and 3. And we have symbols for the amounts 0, 1, and 2. And so we don't have a symbol for a set of three things. So what we'll do is we'll start by taking sets of three. And so we'll look and see if we can find a set of three. Well, here's one and we'll put it together. And here's another and we'll put it together. Another set and another set. And it looks like we don't have any more sets of three individual objects. However, notice that these blocks that we formed by taking three cubes, there is a set of three blocks we can put together. So we'll put together that set of three blocks. And there doesn't seem to be three of anything else that we can put together. So as far as the bundling is concerned, we can't put any more sets together and arithmetic is bookkeeping. We can now record the amount that we have. We have one of these big squares. We have two of these blocks. And we have one of the cubes. Now to write our number in base three, we're going to go through two final steps. First of all, we don't need these base designations as long as we remember that we're going to write down our amounts in order from largest unit down to the smallest unit present. And so I can drop the unit designations. And then to avoid later confusion, I do want to spell out the fact that we are working in base three. So I'll spell that out. And there's my number, one, two, one, base three. And again, a quick reminder, it is very important to remember that how you speak influences how you think. We should read this number here as one, two, one, base three. We should never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never read this as something like 121 base three because it is not 121 base three. It is one, two, one, base three.