The next item of business is portfolio questions, moving straight on, questions on social security and world of people number one, John Scott. Allocates funding from the Scottish welfare fund to local authorities. The Scottish welfare funding is allocated to local authorities in accordance with the formula agreed by the Scottish Government and COSLA. The formula is based on the income domain of the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, so that local authorities, with more people on low incomes, get higher allocations, ensuring that the Scottish welfare fund is focused on the most deprived areas. John Scott. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. However, she will be aware that across various local authorities there are different overspends and underspends of the Scottish welfare fund, and does the Scottish Government take that into account or believe that it should when distributing the funding for the programme? Cabinet secretary. Well, it is up to each local authority to manage the budget within that year for their local area. It is important that the formula basis is held to. It is based on the deprived areas. As I said to the member, it is important that it stays that way. Therefore, we encourage local authorities to ensure that they manage their own expenditure, they use their allocation up, but we do not take underspend into account as we move on to the next financial year, because it is important that we recognise the private communities on which that formula is based. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the Scottish Government will not have to provide any welfare support to Scottish local authorities if it was not for the savage cuts to social security imposed by the UK Tory Government backed by Mr Scott? Well, I would absolutely agree with the premise of Mr Gibson's questions, the fact that we have to provide for nearly a third of a million households in Scotland to require a Scottish welfare fund is indeed a sad indictment of the UK Government's record on welfare cuts. We have provided money to ensure that the Scottish welfare fund is there to provide people in crisis, but what a sad time when we have to once again mitigate against UK Government welfare reforms. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the reported concerns raised by young carer groups that the current proposals for the young carer grant are unduly restrictive. The Scottish Government is committed to co-designing the young carer grant with young carers and stakeholder organisations to ensure that the grant meets the needs of our young carers. The draft regulations that have been passed for scrutiny to the Scottish Commission on Social Security have been amended in line with feedback that has been received through the consultation, user research, the young carer grant working group and young carer panels. Greens particularly welcome the decision to allow young carers to be recognised for caring for more than one person. However, the current proposals still only appear to extend only to one young carer, which Carers Trust Scotland says is unfair. When there are two young carers providing support, one would appear to miss out. Will the cabinet secretary take action to address that? We have moved on a number of issues as the Government has developed the regulations as we go through the different processes. As I said in my original answer to Alison Johnstone, the regulations are now with the commission, the first set of regulations that the commission will be looking at, and I look forward to their feedback on those in due time. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The cabinet secretary knows that carers want to see restrictions on study and ended support for caring for multiple people and changes to the poverty-inducing earnings cliff edge. When the carers strategic policy statement is launched next month, he can ask the cabinet secretary to ensure that the consultation that flows from that is not if the Government should introduce those long called for changes, but how carers want to see those policies developed. Ready for carers allowance is fully transferred. The announcements and proposals that will be coming forward that Mark McReynton mentions are not specifically to do with social security, but are on wider carers issues. It is not a development that will be led by myself. It is important that we look at social security within a wider context of what is happening for carers in Scotland. We are determined as a Government to ensure that we support carers as we move through that process, both in social security and in other aspects, and the developments that Mark Griffin referred to will be an important way to ensure that we are receiving feedback from carers and the stakeholder organisations about what they wish to see in the longer term. To ask the Scottish Government how it assists older people to stay in their homes for as long as possible. We are absolutely committed to supporting older people to live as independently as possible at home or in a homely setting. This year, we are increasing our package of investment in social care and integration to exceed £700 million. That demonstrates that this Government's commitment to support older people and disabled people and recognises the vital role of unpaid carers. Last month, the Government published the Fairer Scotland for Older People, a framework for action that identifies actions that will be taken to maximise the contribution of older people and to remove the barriers that face. Those include in the areas of housing and care, while maintaining the need for personal independence. I am sure that the minister would take the opportunity to acknowledge the contribution that care and repair services play in helping older people to live at home independently for as long as possible. Does she agree with me that denying this service to older people as some councils have chosen to do by withdrawing funding is unacceptable? Will she give a commitment to review the funding mechanisms that support such services, as Care and Repair Scotland and Age Scotland have called for, so that we ensure that it is consistent across the country? I know that Graham Simpson is well aware of some of the innovative work that is being done around all those areas, including the work that is still in university in Age Scotland. He will know that care and repair services are something that the local authority would have responsibility for. I have not had any direct issues raised with me on that, but it would be raised with my colleagues in housing, and I am happy to make sure that the colleagues in housing are aware of the concerns that Graham Simpson has raised today. To ask the Scottish Government in light of the 2016 SNP manifesto commitment whether it will legislate in the current parliamentary session to bring gender recognition law up to international best practice. The Scottish Government is strongly committed to maintaining and indeed advancing trans rights and equality. As with all parties in this Parliament, we want to reform the gender recognition law, and our programme for government 2018-2019 reaffirmed that commitment to legislation on gender recognition. The majority of the 15,500 responses to the Scottish Government's consultation on gender recognition supported the proposals, but we recognise that some respondents expressed sincerely heard concerns about reform. We will take account of those concerns as we reach our decisions on next steps, and we will announce our response to the consultation in due course. I am glad that the cabinet secretary gave a reminder to the chamber that all five political parties in this Parliament stood on the manifesto commitments to continue to advance the legislation. The equality network's hustings in advance of the 2016 election show every political party leader gave a clear personal commitment to see that legislation brought forward. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that the delay that we have seen since the consultation has also seen the development of a much more coherent campaign against trans rights and equality, including by those who seek to portray trans people as a threat in a way that is reminiscent of previous campaigns against lesbian, gay and bisexual equality? Does the cabinet secretary recognise that there is an impatience to see that legislation introduced and can she give us a timetable? I appreciate that there are stakeholder groups and individuals across Scotland who are looking to this Parliament to ensure that there is change. There is absolutely an imperative on all of us to ensure that this debate is carried out in the right manner, and it is done with respect. It is done of recognising different opinions, but ensuring that we do so on the foundation of trans inclusivity and of ensuring that trans rights are respected, along with other rights in our community. Trans people are not a threat, they never have been, they never will be, but it is important that we listen to people who have concerns to reassure them, to ensure that we are doing everything that we can to reassure those concerns and work through them. That is why I am ensuring that I go through a process of due diligence to look at the consultation responses, to understand the concerns that are out there and work with people to find solutions. At that ask would I put out to everybody in this chamber and beyond, if we are committed to ensuring that everyone in Scotland is respected and has a place in our society, then we all have an obligation to come forward with solutions about how we do that in a respectful manner. I would remind Patrick Harvie that one of the groups that is most concerned about those proposals are in fact lesbians. Nothing in the SNP 2016 manifesto said that males with male bodies, including male genitals, should be able to declare themselves female without any medical or psychological assessment or safeguarding.  So what evidence does the Government have that males who self-declare themselves as female no longer offend at male rates? I welcome Joan McAlpine's reaffirmation that trans people are not a threat. The important point that is picked up is that there is a perceived threat from men who will use the debate around trans rights. That is very important. We recognise it as something that I recognised in a blog that I put out in this area. We tackle that fear that women have of men and ensure that we deal with that and also ensure that we develop trans rights in a respectful manner. The Government is absolutely determined to move forward with the gender recognition laws. It is important that we do that in the right manner. It is important that we ensure that the process that is here at the moment does change, that we listen to the concerns that people have around how we are trying to change that. We also ensure that people recognise that what the Government is proposing is something that would be a solemn declaration that would be made in front of a notary public that would have very serious consequences if ever broken. It is very important that we ensure that, when we are talking about self-declaration, it is done on the basis of self-decoration in front of a notary public with criminal offences available to be charged if someone abuses that system. If we can work to ensure that what we are bringing forward recognises those concerns, we are also ensuring that we are delivering a system of gender recognition that is fit for purpose for what is going on within the international community, then we can move Scotland a long way forward in what is a very difficult subject for many of us to find a solution to. I appreciate that that was a lengthier answer to a sensitive position, but I would like shorter answers, please, as everybody gets in. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on DWP's removal of the protected date of claim guarantees, which previously allowed councils and citizens of Scotland to back to benefit claims of their clients to the staff of the application process rather than the final submission date. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills is yet another area where there is great concerns over universal credit and the effect that it has on people in Scotland. There are many reasons why someone might not be able to make a claim from the day that they are entitled to make that claim. For example, people might not have digital access, so it is therefore important that those protected dates that were available are recognised and the UK Government does need to recognise that as well. The removal of those financial safeguards for some of my most vulnerable constituents are alarming and unacceptable. Glasgow City Council has estimated that 200 Glyzvedians will miss out each and every month because of that. Can I ask the cabinet secretary whether she agrees that the flaws in the universal credit system require us to be fixed, not made worse at the expense of the poorest in society, including many of my constituents? Will she join me in calling for an urgent rethink of those appalling changes for them to be scrapped altogether? Once again, Bob Doris-Rae's is a very important point. I would fully support his reasoning behind his question and his calls for action from the UK Government. 6. Fulton MacGregor Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government how much Social Security Scotland has paid out and benefits since the Social Security Scotland Act 2018 was passed. The Social Security Scotland Act received royal assent on 1 June 2018 with Social Security Scotland established on 1 September 2018. Since then, the agency has paid out £197 million between 1 September 2018 and 31 March 2019. That is broken down by £158.5 million on carers allowance and £33.9 million on carers allowance supplement and an investment in carers of more than £192 million. Payments of £4.4 million have also been made for the best start grant pregnancy and baby payments. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. She mentioned the best start grant, which has paid out more in two months than the DWP benefitted and replaced it in the whole year, putting money into the pockets of families with children, many of whom have been hit by the UK Government cuts. Would the cabinet secretary agree that it shows the positive difference that we are making to families across all of Scotland with her new powers over social security? The cabinet secretary wants to ensure that our children get the best start in life. Using our new social security powers to help make that happen is a very important part of our programme. In the first three months, more than 9,700 families received the pregnancy and baby payment. The best start grant takes provision for the first child from £500 under the sheer start maternity grant up to a total of £1,100 over three payments. Subsequent children who received nothing from the UK Government will receive up to a total of £800. That is an increase of £1,400 more than the UK system for a two-child family in Scotland. Last week, we heard that Social Security Scotland has spent £9.1 million on temporary and contract workers. Can I ask the cabinet secretary therefore how the Scottish Government plans to ensure that we will have enough permanent staff to deliver the remaining 98 per cent of devolved benefits? The use of contract staff within the programme is an important way to ensure that we have the right skill mix within the programme at the right time. There are other areas in particular where it is better to use a contract staff in a permanent member of the Scottish Government because the types of skills that we require are only required for a short period of time in a particular part of the programme. That is why we are taking important steps to ensure that we create the right mix of permanent staff, temporary staff and contract staff with a keen eye on the public purse. To ask the Scottish Government how many families in the Highlands and Islands have been awarded a best start grant pregnancy and baby payment since December 2018 and how many have their applications rejected. Social Security Scotland made around 600 best start grant pregnancy and baby payments to families in the Highlands and Islands electorate region by the end of February 2019. During the same period, around 300 applications were denied and a small number were withdrawn. The cabinet secretary will know that there are as many as one in five children in poverty in parts of my region and yet, as she has told us just now, more than 300 families had their grant application rejected. A recent report from Social Security Scotland on the delivery of the grant has shown that staff are unclear about the scheme and are working under intense pressure. The guidance is long winded and the systems are not fully tested. Can the cabinet secretary, given assurance that families entitled to the payment in my region, got them and that any failure in the system did not lead to anyone missing out? I will have to say to Rhoda Grant that I absolutely do not recognise her assessment of the Social Security Scotland agency or its workings. If she would refer to the new insights research that is published by Social Security Scotland, which shows satisfaction rates of 98 per cent and 100 per cent for online and telephone inquiries, that proves that we have an agency that is based on dignity, fairness and respect. Applications were denied, for example, particularly around a new benefit for many reasons. It could be, for example, because people were not on the low income benefits that you have to be to be eligible. We had a number of people who were applying for best start pregnancy and baby payments who did not live in Scotland. We had a number of people who were applying and whose child was not within the age range of which the developments and entitlements were actually for. We all look very seriously at why there are areas where there are different parts of the country where applications are rejected, but I absolutely refute the allegation that Rhoda Grant made that there are flaws in the Social Security Scotland system. People who are applying for those grants are getting those grants and it is a shame that the Scottish Labour Party cannot recognise the success of Social Security Scotland and its staff. I will just squeeze you in, Liz Smith. She was not ready for that. To ask the Scottish Government what the impact will be on benefit recipients of the expansion to 1140 hours of funded childcare. It must be brief, cabinet secretary. A key driver for the expansion of the 1140 hours is the evidence that all children, but especially those who are experiencing the most disadvantaged benefit from access to high quality early learning and childcare, the increase in hours and the new approach to flexibility and choice can make it easier, for example, for families to access work, training or study. The quickest supplementary ever. Can I just ask the cabinet secretary what contingency measures the Scottish Government has got in place for those who are on benefits if they are going to have to pay their childcare fees upfront because neither the public funded nurseries nor the private funded nurseries have got species available? Cabinet secretary, very briefly. Well, I think that it is very important to ensure that I get the point over to Liz Smith, that the Scottish Government and indeed local authorities and private providers are on track to deliver on the commitment for the 1140 hours. In that way, I hope that Liz Smith reassurances that the situation will not arise. To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to protect those employees in north sea oil and gas as the industry changes. As highlighted in our energy strategy, Scotland's oil and gas sector is a key component of our energy system and our economy. It can also play a positive role in supporting the global low-carbon transition. In taking forward the aims and ambitions of the strategy, Skills Development Scotland and stakeholders have been working across a number of sectoral groups to ensure alignment of skills planning and delivery. The work will enable pathways for future employment, reflecting the potential impact of challenging demographics while addressing demand, especially in areas such as digital technology, automation and advanced manufacturing. The minister will be aware that oil and gas supports 280,000 UK jobs and workers in the energy sector, many of whom are based in the north-east, each contributing an average of more than £170,000 to the economy. However, Aberdeen Council's general revenue grant is being cut by more than £20 million. Our north-east councils face funding cuts of £100,000 per day. Given that context, can the minister tell us when we can expect a fair share for the north-east councils? North-east councils, as all councils across Scotland, get a fair share of the support. The Scottish Government's support to councils, as you will be aware, has increased and councils in the north-east, as across Scotland, get to keep all their council tax payments and non-domestic rates receipts. Alex Cole-Hamilton has made of the contribution that immigration makes to Scotland's economy. Migration is vital to Scotland's population growth and makes an essential contribution to future economic prosperity and delivery of our public services. We know that people who come to live and work in Scotland and across the UK typically contribute more through tax revenues than they consume by way of public services. Research from Oxford Economics published last June found that people who arrived in the UK in 2016 are projected to make a total net positive contribution of £26.9 billion to the UK's public finances over the entirety of their stay. Alex Cole-Hamilton is grateful to the cabinet secretary for that response. Last week, the Federation of Small Businesses revealed that one in 10 small businesses in Scotland are led by an immigrant entrepreneur, contributing more than £13 billion to the Scottish economy. During its recent inquiry, the Economy and Fair Work Committee heard that the Scottish Chamber of Commerce said that businesses could find themselves in a position where their route to government support is somewhat unclear. Given the lack of transparency— No, I want a question, but I begin to get a lot of preambles, and I don't like preambles. Sorry, given that lack of transparency, what consideration has the Government given to whether that could deter immigrant entrepreneurs from starting or upscaling businesses in Scotland? The Scottish Government has welcomed the FSB report. There is a reception this evening. I think that it has been hosted by Stuart McMillan MSP. Jamie Hepburn has engaged with the FSB in relation to the report. I agree that we should look at further ways to support entrepreneurship, business growth and scaling up of those migrant entrepreneurs who are building very successful businesses in Scotland's economy and contributing to our shared prosperity. Jackie Baillie briefly, please. The minister is further on this, because despite immigrant-led SMEs generating £13 billion and 107,000 jobs, they struggle. Gross is erratic, exports, activity is poor. Is sufficient support available from Scottish Enterprise and Business Gateway to help immigrant-led SMEs to flourish? What more can be done? As Jackie Baillie is well aware, as a member of the economy committee, Business Gateway is led by local government, but we are proactively looking at that. Partly is a consequence of the committee's inquiry in that regard. In terms of Scottish Enterprise, yes, I do believe that there is support there, but I want to do more. That is why I will engage further with the FSB and other business representatives of our organisations to try and support those groups who, for whatever reason, feel that financial products and support has not been there for them. We want to address that and, of course, celebrate the economic and social contribution that migrants have made to this country. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government how to encourage its employers to commit to having living wage accreditation. Minister Kate Forbes. Thanks, Scotland has over 1,400 living wage accredited employers, which is proportionally or five times more than the rest of the UK. To support our ambition to be a fair work nation by 2025, we have provided £380,000 to the Poverty Alliance this year to support employers through the accreditation process and to drive that commitment to lift at least 25,000 additional workers to at least the real living wage by 2021, focusing on low-pay sectors, including hospitality, to help those most affected by low-income levels. Linda Fabiani. Can I ask the minister to join with me in recognising the excellent initiative of Excel Vending in East Kilbride in becoming a living wage employer to mark the 25th anniversary of their company? That encourages other employers to consider this way of marking special milestones in their company's development. I certainly can join with Linda Fabiani in congratulating them on 25 years and recognising that they have committed two fair work practices, which obviously improve staff retention and productivity as well. I hope that that success of that business will encourage others to follow suit. To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the amount of reserves that is required for a new central bank in the event of a separate Scottish currency. Cabinet Secretary? First, our proposals are to keep the pound in the immediate term. A Scottish National Party Government will take the steps that are necessary to enable the Scottish Parliament to authorise the preparation of a Scottish currency as soon as is practicable after independence. The Sustainable Growth Commission, which was established by the First Minister in her capacity as SNP leader, produced a detailed report on the financial, economic and regulatory requirements necessary for the transition to an independent currency. It engaged extensively with businesses in developing its recommendations. It recommended the introduction of six tests to guide that transition, one of which is the financial requirements of Scottish residents and businesses. Our position is clear until a new currency can be safely and securely established. In the interests of the economy as a whole, the currency of an independent Scotland should continue to be the pound sterling. Anas Sarwar I thank the cabinet secretary for that response, but I do not think that it sounds like they have done any assessment of what a foreign exchange level would need to be. Let me help him. Professor MacDonald of Glasgow University and the Adam Smith Business School have estimated that an independent currency would require £40 billion of foreign exchange reserves in order to run a managed system. Does the finance secretary, who sets the budgets of this Parliament, understand that that means more cuts, higher borrowing and tax rises? I do not accept that at all, but I am delighted, however, that Anas Sarwar is also a scenario planning for Scottish independence. That is a very welcome revelation. The six tests have been outlined within the growth commission's documentation. I would have thought that Anas Sarwar would welcome the fact that an economic plan on independence would be an alternative to austerity that we have endured under the Tory Government. We have outlined the test that we would apply as we transition to an independent country, making the right decisions for Scotland's economy. As I have said, on independence Scotland will keep the pound. Margie Fraser of Bruce Crawford Thank you, Deputy Secretary. Are we any clearer what the transaction costs will be to Scottish businesses if we have a different currency here in Scotland from our largest market in the rest of the United Kingdom? I would really encourage anyone with a genuine interest in how we can grow Scotland's economy to read the growth commission report and the resolution that was supported at the SNP conference. It sets out how we can grow our economy and deliver a more successful society using the levers and powers of independence. In terms of currency, it goes through all the requirements that would have to be fulfilled to enable us to move to an independent country if that was in the interests of the economy at the time, which would be advised by a Scottish central bank. It is all laid out in the growth commission documentation. I would encourage Opposition members to read it. Bruce Crawford, followed by Patrick Harvie Thank you, Deputy Secretary. For the sake of Anas Sarwar and other members in the chamber, who have not obviously read the growth commission or those proposals in depth, can he confirm that the tests that would guide any move to an independent currency includes the sufficiency of foreign exchange and financial reserves to allow for the successful currency management in a successful independent Scotland? Yes, of course, convener, for brevity. We have tried to cover the six tests previously, but again it is fiscal sustainability, central bank credibility and stability of debt insurance. Financial requirements of Scottish residents and business, sufficiency of foreign exchange and financial reserves fit to trade and investment patterns in correlation of economic and trade cycle. Those are the tests that we would apply. However, what independence gives us—it gives us choice, economic powers and levers that are currently denied to us—is that we can make the right decisions for Scotland's economy and any decision on currency would be taken by an independent Scottish Parliament. That is right. The right to choose is what this party is seeking for Scotland. Isn't it amusing to hear those who argued vociferously against the currency union a few years ago and still argue against sterlingisation, quite rightly so, now say how outrageous it would be not to continue to use the pound? Does the cabinet secretary share my feeling of looking forward to seeing those parties finally have to make a decision about what currency option they would support when Scotland votes for independence? The only currency that Labour and the Conservatives understand is austerity. That is what we have endured by consequence of their economic policies. The UK Government cannot stop an independent—I know that the Opposition does not like that right now—but it is the case that the UK Government cannot stop an independent Scotland from using the pound. We do not need their permission to do that. Sterling retention is perfectly open to the people of Scotland, but so, too, are the choices that come with independence. That is why we want the levers of independence. We looked at the most successful small advanced economies around the globe. The only thing that they have got that we have not is independence. I will let that run to some important questions. All of them are important, of course, but I want the rest to be short and snappy. To ask the Scottish Government how much revenue it expects to raise from the large business supplement in central Scotland in 2019-20. Members know that the non-domestic rate system is administered by local authorities and so information on revenue raised by the large business supplement is not currently available at constituency level. In 2019-20, we forecast the supplement to raise £8.3 million in Falkirk and North Lanarkshire, and a further £16.5 million is forecast to be raised in South Lanarkshire, reflecting their role as a designated authority responsible for collecting receipts from electricity generation, transmission and distribution subjects. Alison Harris I thank the minister for her answer. This financial year, businesses in Falkirk will pay £1.75 million more than they would if they were based in England. Can I ask the minister whether it remains the aim of the Scottish Government to implement the Barclay recommendation to reduce the large business supplement by 2020 and earlier, if affordable? Minister I will probably reflect to the national trend too that over 90 per cent of properties in Scotland will pay a lower poundage in 2019-20 than they would in other parts of the UK. They will benefit from the most generous rates relief scheme in the UK, which includes taking over 100,000 properties out of rates altogether through the small business bonus scheme. It was only a few weeks ago that a Westminster committee recommended that the UK Government adopt the Scottish Government's unique business growth accelerator. We accepted the Barclay review recommendations around the large business supplement, but, in the meantime, we are making sure that Scotland is the best place to do business. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to further strengthen the economy of Glasgow. The Scottish Government is committed to supporting and unlocking economic growth across Scotland. In Glasgow, our focus on delivering key infrastructure has helped to establish the city as a home for innovation and securing new jobs, including through inward investment. We are also working in partnership with others. Our £500 million commitment to the Glasgow City region deal has empowered local and regional partners to develop a transformational programme of investment that will help to drive inclusive economic growth for the city and right across the region. Thank you for that answer. Earlier this year, the managing director of Glasgow airport, Mark Johnstone, forecast that the airport was set to lose 1 million passengers from the levels that we saw in 2016. We have also seen Ryanairx many of its routes serving Glasgow due to a failure to cut air passenger duty. Now that the Scottish Government has performed a U-turn on its commitment to cut air passenger duty, can you explain how that decision will do anything to support future growth at Glasgow airport? The Scottish Government is committed to supporting our airports and recognises the importance of that to our economy, but the member will be aware that the reason that the air departure tax has not been transferred is because of issues with the UK Government's running of that scheme over a number of years. The member will also be aware of the importance of the climate change emergency that we are facing and the issues that need to be addressed as a consequence of that. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the most recent official statistics on Scotland's economic growth. The latest official statistics on Scotland's economic growth were published by the Scottish Government on 1 May in the GDP quarterly national accounts for 2018 quarter 4. Those confirmed that the Scottish economy grew by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018, higher than the UK rate of 0.2 per cent. In 2018, the value of Scotland's GDP per person, including offshore oil and gas, increased to £32,800, higher than the UK average of £31,900. The first estimate of GDP growth for 2019 quarter 1 will be published on 19 June. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. I am delighted to hear of the strength of Scotland's economy. Would the cabinet secretary agree that the biggest threat to this continued success is a Tory Brexit, particularly so in rural areas such as the south of Scotland, which the Government's analysis showed had one of the highest proportion of workforce in sectors most exposed by a no-deal Brexit? That assessment is accurate, but particularly a no-deal Brexit threatens recession, business contraction, soaring unemployment from record low levels of unemployment to 3.3 per cent right now, reduced exports. It is true to say that any form of Brexit will damage Scotland's economy, and a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic. To ask the Scottish Government what action it will take to capitalise on the skills of veterans returning to the labour market to benefit the Scottish economy. The Scottish Government aspires for Scotland to be the destination of choice for those leaving the armed forces. We recognise the challenges that are faced by those undergoing resettlement and taking the next steps in their careers. We work closely with partners to ensure that armed forces leavers are aware of training, development and employment opportunities available and to improve the support that is available to veterans and their families. Skills Development Scotland is also working with the Career Transition Partnerships Regular Forces Employment Association so that early leavers will be referred to SDS for support post-discharge if they wish to take up that offer. Maurice Corry I thank the minister for his answer. We are seeing several veterans who have good technical skills being taken on by companies such as BT Open Reach. Would the cabinet minister agree that the time is now right for the more concentrated effort in encouraging more trades-based apprenticeships to be taken up by our veterans? Yes, I do. The Scottish Government and SDS recognise the challenges for those who are undergoing resettlement. Apprenticeships and skills are a key part of that. It is important that all service leavers are planning to settle in Scotland under a fort informed over-apprenticeships and skills offering to ensure that those service leavers planning to settle in Scotland can access SDS services. SDS is currently working with partners, including the Scottish Government's strategic working group, to raise awareness of those offers. I would also like to let the member know that he is at a keen interest in these matters earlier this week. I visited the Scottish veterans residence in Glasgow in my constituency. I am wearing their tie and it was delighted to see the huge amount of work that they are undertaking in that area to focus on employment opportunities for veterans. Thank you. That concludes portfolio questions. Just a short moment while members take their positions for the next debate.


to be in the browser with Meteor. I've got a couple links up here. If you guys are interested in following along, this is intended to be an interactive demo. So if you guys have a laptop or a phone or something available, this demo will be a lot cooler if you guys interact and play along. So here's the info to the slides. There's a Bitly URL and then a SoCute URL. I find the SoCute URLs to be easier for my brain to read and remember, a little bit longer to type, but easier for me to get down. So like I said, I'm Ryan, Ryan Jay on GitHub, IRC, and Twitter. So I pretty much have that name claimed on a bunch of different spaces. And I work at Red Hat as an open platform sky. So today we're going to learn some Meteor basics. How many of you guys have used Meteor before? One or two people? OK, all right, this should be really interesting for you guys. Are you guys all familiar with MongoDB? Couple, yeah, most people. Good, good, all right. That's exactly the crowd I'm looking for. All right, so we're going to look at Meteor. Meteor, one of the awesome things that it does, awesome and scary, is it basically exposes your MongoDB interface directly in your browser. So as you open up the JavaScript console, you can go and play around with the DB, which is great until you think about security.  Anyone can access this? And so if you get a chance, see if you can hack my DB.  And I think my data validation rules weren't being applied. So we'll see, hopefully I have them up to the right security standards this time. And we'll take a look at how to implement that. Let's see, combine, minify, and bundle to deploy anywhere. If we have time, we'll look at deploying to other systems other than just Meteor. And here's the source code that I'm going to be reviewing today. It's on my GitHub account. I have an app called Meteor Showcase. And what I was trying to build here is basically kind of like an open app store. The goal was pretty much to build an app store for people who use OpenShift and want to do a one-click spin-up of a one-click redeployment of an existing app or one command. So we'll see that in the demo a little bit. So what is Meteor for you guys who don't already know? They have seven principles that kind of help define what specifically is Meteor, what their goals are, and what they're trying to accomplish. So I'll quickly go through these. Data on the wire. So they want to have the way their apps are architected. They have one page load at the beginning for all the web content, HTML, CSS, that type of stuff. And then from then on, they basically stream down from the server to your browser. They'll keep an open socket connection. And push down updates that happen on the server. Push it down to the client machines. And then they'll just get no SQL data arriving. And then they'll reactively respond to this new data by updating the page client side. So that's the data on the wire component. Don't send HTML. Just send data. Let the client decide how to render it. This ends up being very scalable, but introduces some security concerns, at least. One language is another one of their founding principles. And it's JavaScript. So if you're already working in the browser anyway, this is easy, same language, front and back end. Database everywhere. Use the same APIs on the client and server. This is another way they're simplifying their application development. Latency compensation. This one's really interesting. We'll kind of see how this plays out. But essentially, if you have a virtual MongoDB in your browser and if you attempt to do a write locally to your browser's MongoDB, then what happens in order to make sure that that update happens right away on your screen? Your browser's MongoDB will apply the changes, act as if it just accepted some new JSON data from the server. And it'll update your DOM or your web page as a result of this data. And so it looks like the data appears, the changes appear in real time. And so it kind of preemptively updates the page before the update has actually succeeded on the server. And so you may end up in some cases where you do an update client side and then the server ends up rejecting it. And so your page has this latency compensation to try to proactively change it. And then that change gets backed out. So it works pretty well. It's kind of a cool feature. And it helps everyone's pages feel really responsive and snappy. So yeah, we'll see what that looks like. Full stack reactivity. Make real time your default. All layers from the DB to the templates should have an event-driven interface available. And embrace the ecosystem. This one is really important for me as someone who works with a lot of open source communities. This is really critical, is working with existing communities. Meteor has done a pretty good job of this. But I think there's still some room for improvement. And we'll see kind of their package manager is kind of like their own separate package manager that's separate from the rest of Node.js's packages. And that creates some kind of conflicts. Because which source do you go update? Which one do you bug patch? Which one do you maintain? They're not really working with the rest of the upstream community. But that's kind of because they have a little bit of a different product they're building here. So yeah, open source and integrates with other frameworks is one of their goals. And the last one, simplicity equals productivity. So the best way to make something seem simple is to actually have it be simple. And Meteor is definitely really nice and simple to work with. I have two or three source files. And that's it that we'll need to work through. So OpenShift is open source. And if we have time, I'll go into a little bit more about OpenShift. But it's a Red Hat product. We do application hosting. You can host your Meteor applications on OpenShift. You could also host anything, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP. You could do Postgres. You could do MySQL, MongoDB. I think we have an experimental Redis package available. All kind of like a Heroku style, really fast deployment, get push for deployment. So really clean interface. And it's all open source. So you could run OpenShift in your own data center. We also have a free plan. You could host three apps on us long term. So it's a cool thing to check out. If we have time, I'll cover some of that. OK, so let's look at some code here. I'll open up this Meteor showcase link. I'm actually working on a substitute laptop here. My other laptop had some problems connecting. But here's the source code we have here. So the CSS file is basically empty. There is some CSS that my application has. But most of it is handled through a package that I installed. So I did a with from the command line. Geez, open up another one of these guys. OK, so from the command line, and I'm missing some of the commands here, because I'm on my alternate setup. But you type MRT, and then you could create an application. And then once you have the app created, you could do MRT add and then add one of their smart packages. So I added things like jQuery. I also added they have a package for bootstrap. And so that's actually where all my CSS is. That's why I have an empty CSS file, is because I added this module to handle it for me. MRT is a command line tool, it's called Meteorite. And that offers kind of a super set of the packages that you'd get from just the Meteor command line tool. There's two different command line tools. Meteor, it kind of gives you a static release of MeteorJS and allows you to install maybe like 10 core packages that the Meteor team maintains. And then Meteorite actually gives you a lot more power on top of that, you can select different run times of Meteor and say I want to run the develop branch or I want to run this specific release. And you also have access to a lot more packages from a package management database called Atmosphere. So more available with this MRT command. So yeah, like I said, this Meteor showcase is empty. Here's what my HTML file looks like. You could see there's some kind of handlebars style injection things here in the page. The body element is like really small and it basically has a stub for navigation, a list of data, and then I have three separate forms here. A submit form, a kind of a detail view and an edit view for each of the objects in the list. And so that's about it. Then there's a couple other templates down here. There's a template for the list view and so that'll get injected up in that area where it says list up above up here. All of this content will be templated into this area and all of this item here is basically going to go into this item in the list. So if you've used handlebars before for client-side templating, this should be familiar. It's a very simple way of injecting data in here. So here I have a variable called date string and then another variable called author and we'll see how these get defined on the server side. OK, let's back up a page here. Last one I want to show you and we'll see some better examples is this JS file. In fact, I'm going to flip back to the slides because I think I covered a little bit better here. But now you know where the code is. OK, so in that big JS file there's basically, this kind of breaks it down and simplifies it for you guys. There's a big block of code that says meteor is server and then another big block that says meteor is client. So anything you want to have protected, that's like your data validation, you put it in that is server block. That stuff stays on the server side and does not get revealed to the client browser instances and everything you want running on the client, you just put inside that is client block. That's pretty simple. It's all just one file for all of your JavaScript code. So super simple. Here's how you would protect your DB access. I have a collection of data called showcase. I should have picked something that was a plural and a singular. I just have one showcase with many items. Items is too generic. I need a better variable name for these. But anyway, my data collection here is showcase. And then on that collection, I want to allow certain operations. So I have a remove operation here. And so who's allowed to remove? This is basically going to be, like I said, with that latency compensation. There's going to be someone who's going to try to do a remove operation in the browser. And it's going to succeed in the browser, but then it's going to get shipped up to the server. The server is going to actually decide, does this actually meet our validation test? And am I going to allow this change? If the change is allowed, it gets broadcasted back out to all the connected devices. If the change is denied, it basically returns false and then a message gets sent back to that one browser that did the latency compensation and accepted the change kind of proactively. And that guy gets rolled back. So that's basically how it happens. And so here, I default a username to false. And then I try to look up this user and see if they have a profile name defined. I'm actually using a plugin for Meteor called accounts. And then there's another plugin called accounts-github. So I have a login with GitHub on this app. If you're interested in seeing a live version of this app, you could go to appstore-appstore.meteor.com. So here's a live version. This is the one. So if I go in here and I say this sketch board, I think this is a great app. I want to upvote it. So I'll upvote it here. Instantly, it changes. There's some data validation on the server side. Do I have access to change this data? We'll look at that validation role next. So yeah, in order to remove something, you basically, in this code, the validation is if you're the owner of that data, then you can remove that data. Or else you're not allowed to delete that list item. Anyone who logs in to an account, that's my insert validation. Do they have a user ID? If they have a user ID on the server side, I know they're authenticated via GitHub. And so I'll allow them to insert some data. That's my only protection. You could integrate with your own authentication system or have some additional checks here. It's pretty easy to add additional validations as needed. Last one's an update. And I actually moved that over to a different slide. So my update rule is pretty interesting. I wanted anyone to be able to upvote an item without logging in. So I have kind of three different levels of authentication here. Anyone can upvote or downvote a particular application in this showcase. And only the owner can delete them. And then the administrator, which is basically my GitHub user ID. I hard-coded that in here. It's kind of a sloppy demo, but it shows kind of three levels of anonymous access, authenticated access, and then an admin level access. All done kind of on the server side. So here's some validation rules I have for update. It's going to find my username. It's going to check this item that I'm trying to update. If I'm trying to move the score over 9,000, it gets rejected, right? 9,000 is the ceiling for my showcase, right? I also check, let's see, the first one here I log out. OK, this is just a voter. Anyone can vote. That's OK. If they're incrementing the score by 5, so you could see this modifier here. If I'm incrementing the score by exactly 5, then we'll allow the operation to succeed. So I could go into the JavaScript console and actually take an object, increment the score by 5, and then save it back to that DB right in the browser console. And if it's exactly 5, it'll work. If I try to update it by four points, then it'll get rejected. So really interesting validation there. I also allow you to vote down by exactly 5, but you can't go below 0. Also, if the username is Ryan, you could do whatever you want. You could probably change your GitHub username to Ryan and hack this pretty easy. But it's a proof of concept. And then the last one, if you're the item author, you're free to edit. So templates, we took a quick look at this earlier. Here's that list view with items being injected. Here's the actual item source. We're dropping in a description, time string, author. And we'll look at the JS side of this. It's going to be injecting the variables in just a minute. And here's the overall main template for the page. That's about it. OK, so for that list of items, we basically do a couple things here. There's a session variable that I have that shared across all the browsers. It's called sort by. And so if I flip back to this demo, is anyone else on the demo page here, one person? OK, so if I put the sort order on rating up here, your page should update to sort by rating as well. If I click on rating again, I could do a reverse sort. And if you click on rating, it should update my browser. There should be anyway. If anyone else is on this page, that's basically the effect is a real time. The more people who participate, the more fun the demo is, like I said. But basically, the sort order, anyone can change the sort order, any connected browser, and it'll update live. So I could try opening a second tab just for the sake of a demo. Let's open up one more and take it out of full screen mode. OK. So this guy, just so we could see what it looks like, is appstore.media.com. And then so this guy, I'll switch to sort by rating. And then, ooh, is that not working? Latest? Yeah, replication, it's not getting, it's not broadcasting out. Huh, ooh, bummer. That's like the core of the demo right there. OK. Well, let's see if we can take a look at the JavaScript console and at least do a query in here. Let's see. Anyone know what the, OK, here we go. So if we go to console, can you guys read this console here? It's a really small font. I don't know how to increase the font size in the console. Oh, here we go. All right. Let's see if I can make that bigger. OK. So I am going to type in db, db is not defined. Should be a db object. It's on the meteor object, meteor.db. Let's see if I have that in my slide somewhere. Back over here. All right, I think I have a command for that later.  So for someone who's looking at the list, if they wanted to open up one of these things, they could double click and then say, spin me up an etherpad. I want an instance of this running now. And one click, they could go spin that up. So, yeah? Oh, OK, good to know. Well, I'll switch my sort by rating. If you want to upvote or downvote etherpad, we should be able to see it. Oh, there, some reveal.js and sketchboard just swapped positions. So sort by seems to have some issues. I just updated to a new version of Meteor last night, which is probably a bad move. I was on version 6.3, and all of a sudden I'm on version 6.5. And so I tested some of this, but I didn't actually test multiple browsers with this. There we could see a couple more things. I'm not, look, no hands. I'm not changing this. Someone else is changing it. They're voting quake up really high, right? Yeah, cool. So now we at least know something's working here. And that's all based on these click events, right? They're doing click. There's a A tag. And if you hit A tag with an increment class on it, then this action gets fired off, right? And it's doing a showcase.update. Actually, let me see, is that the right syntax? Is it showcase.find that I'm looking for? Let's see about that web console. Showcase, yeah, here we go. Showcase.find1, and here's an object that we have back. Can you guys read that? We've got an object ID and authors. It looks like this one's community maintained. There's a demo URL and a score, which is currently 25, right?  Look at the data attributes on that. A dot score should have this one's got 75 and then I could set this equal to 80 and then try to save it back to the DB, right? So that's essentially what you get right in the browser client side. Okay, about five minutes left. Let's see, here is basically the packages that I use that I mentioned earlier. The why the CSS file is basically empty is because I've added a bootstrap. I'm also using underscore. Previously I had accounts. Now it's called accounts base. That was a change I learned last night, right? Accounts.github is the other and I'll show you right here. I'm not logged in currently. I'll hit login should authenticate against github here. Okay, thank you. And now here I am logged in via github, right? So now that I'm logged in, I actually have an edit button here. There's a settings and then I could go in and I could say, okay, I know I could only change the score up and down by five. I'm gonna change it to 81, right? So I'm changing it by six this time. So that succeeded because of my user ID, right? If I were to take one of the other variables and now it's at 101. Okay, so that's still going up by five at a time.  And that was the application name. So it looks like I don't see any new apps. It looks like all the client side interaction is working within the kind of validation rules that we have set up, which is good news. A couple of packages that are really great for experimentation, but also really dangerous. There's a package called Insecure and a package called Autopublish. This makes it great, you know, awesome when you're just starting out with Meteor and you wanna make sure you're sending data back and forth across all these environments. But those are two packages that you're supposed to remove eventually after you get your security models in place.  I know a lot of the Node.js community would say, hey, why do you have your own, you know, proprietary package management system?  But they're making a lot of progress. The Meteor team's doing a lot of really awesome stuff. The deployment with Meteor is super simple. You create an app and then just type in Meteor deploy if you wanna deploy to their hosted service. That's something they offer. If you were interested in taking your Meteor code and then running it on your own server somewhere else, you could either just type in Meteor if you wanna run it in a development environment, which is really cool, the way it works in development. I could go into one of these templates, change the layout of the page, and the server will push those HTML and template changes down to the client and update the whole DOM just like it does with data changes. It'll actually push HTML changes down the wire as well. That's only in development mode. That's not in a kind of production mode. But it's great for fast development where you don't have to do check-ins and you could kind of experiment on the fly, get a lot done in a really short amount of time. This bundle step kind of locks you down to here's my release. This is what I wanna ship. This is going to a production environment. And if you wanted to send it out to an OpenShift environment, for example, I have some notes and a blog post on how you might do that. You basically take this bundle and overlay it on top of this Meteor Quick Start that I've made for OpenShift. So that would assume you've done something like RHC app create the name of the app and then you list your dependencies here. So for OpenShift, I'm gonna depend on Node.js and MongoDB, and I'm also gonna say, hey, I want this Meteor Quick Start code to be added in as kind of a, this is basically a wrapper that just sets the right port and IP address and the Meteor connection to MongoDB. That's really the only three things that Meteor needs to know. And so this wrapper is really tiny. Basically just sets those three variables and then refers to the bundle for the rest of the work. I'll skip over this stuff because I'm running short on time. But does anyone have any questions about Meteor? Got one here? Yeah. So Meteor is pretty tightly coupled with MongoDB. You can't use it with other data stores. It's pretty much that one NoSQL option. And Meteor basically is some Node.js code and some browser side JavaScript code that talks to Mongo and basically exposes kind of a virtual MongoDB interface in your JavaScript console and for any JavaScript application development. So that's kind of how it all fits together. But like I said, pretty tightly coupled to MongoDB. If you were interested in using a different NoSQL solution, you'd probably have to look at one of these alternatives like AngularJS. Angular does a lot of the same things but much less work on the data management side. You can have it set up to automatically update the DOM but you have to have some other hook or trigger that you code yourself. But you could definitely use Socket.io and MongoDB and then pipe down information and get the same type of effect with Angular, Ember, Hooties, a really new one. And LevelDB is another kind of alternative where I've seen people using LevelDB you could actually run a real LevelDB instance in your browser and on the server and you could set up real replication back and forth between these. I don't know if they've worked out all the security issues or if they've gotten as far in securing it as Meteor has. I think Meteor's a little bit ahead of them on security currently. For more information, Meteor's got great docs. Check out Meteor.com. There's a lot of great demos there and sample applications. And I've got a blog post as well. I think this links to it here. Yeah, this fireball should link to my, links to something. Yeah, oh, here you go. So this is my blog on using that Meteor Quick Start if you wanted to deploy somewhere else but really that just Meteor deploy, you can't get much simpler than that, right? So that's about it. Let's see, is there any other questions or does that cover it? I think I'm done at 10. One more. You know, I haven't used deployed. I've been, like I said, I'm with the OpenShift team. We have a really smooth deployment model that works for pretty much any. You could use it from Windows, from Apple, from Linux. I do all my work from Linux. But I know, deployed sounds interesting. I'll have to look into that. Yeah, I know Meteor's a little bit, they say they wanna work with everyone but then they have this awkward kind of bundle step that I wish was a little bit smoother. So yeah, yeah, it sounds like a cool suggestion though. All right, cool. Well, thanks guys. Thanks for listening.


Hello friends, hope you're all doing great. Welcome to today's video where we're going over all the latest leaks and rumors in regards to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. We've got a bunch of things to cover in today's video. We are going to talk about a potential leak of Woopa's new regional form, a potential brand new evolution for Quagsire. We've got a lot of information to go over in regards to multiple new bug lines potentially coming in Scarlet and Violet plus much more. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. Do drop a like on the video. It does really help out the channel. Hit that subscribe button if you would like to stay up to date with all the latest leaks and rumors. Without further ado, friends, let's jump into it. We're going to hop over first onto Twitter and take a look at the latest leaks by Ridlaku, big renowned leaker within the community. He's put out this picture of the next hint, which is all relating to the month that he's giving riddles to his new Pokemon. So this hints at a new Pokemon.  You put a coin into a vending machine and you get a ball out, and that's what this refers to. The funny thing is though that Woopa is also the Japanese name for Woopa. So if we go over to Soul Silver Art, very well known, leak analyst within the community breaks things down brilliantly. So we're going to have a look at what they are saying about this. My number one pick for this answer to this theory is simply its hint to Woopa. In Japanese, Woopa's name is Woopa. So like we've just mentioned, it makes complete sense, but it's not just that you will remember who second RF Riddle. Well, I've been saying for a month now that it's Woopa and probably not Quagsah, as I believe. It will evolve into a brand new Pokemon based on Eldrack. Now Eldrack is this picture here. This is kind of a mosaic design that was created in the early 1900s, I believe, which Eldrack translates into the dragon. So this has been hinted at from a previous riddle from Ku, which was originally put out in regards to a bunch of numbers, hex symbols and things like that, which was cracked and came back as a water ground type hinting again at Woopa-Quagsah line. So Soul Silver goes on to say it evolved into a brand new Pokemon based on Eldrack. This just fully solidifies this theory since it's new Pokemon month. And if this really is pointing to Woopa, it means it would have to get a new evolution, but also a new RF or regional form because of the previous riddle. It's simple, but hidden in plain sight. And it makes sense that we'd revisit Woopa-RF if he knew it would evolve into a new mon. Oddly, this could also hint to it being steel type. And that's in regards to the actual picture itself. The steel typing is coming from the Woopa here or the Woopa that is metal, hinting at potentially a steel type. We'll get into that in a minute. All the colors he added could be further pointing to it evolving into Eldrack. Dragon steel type adds up nicely. I'll add to this theory as well. Now, all 4.5 theories are in one thread. Woopa, one still wins for me, but let's see what happens. This is all I've got for me from now. So I think this makes perfect sense. I think Soul Silver's breakdown of this as usual is pretty spot on. So we've got the Woopa here, the Woopa which has actually been colored in by Ku. Now, in the original movie where this pitch is taken from, this thing is just silver, but Ku's added different colors to it here, which could indicate it may be hinting at the new evolution Eldrack. There's the same sort of coloration in Eldrack as you've got here. You've got these kind of turquoisey blues and reds that we are going to see in Eldrack if you come down to this and you've got similar colors like the turquoisey blue here. You've got kind of the reds and things. So maybe hinting at it as well, I don't know, or just hinting at that kind of mosaic sort of pattern. But this is the original picture here, which is just that steel typing, but for some reason in the riddle itself, Ku has colored that in. So that must hint at something. Woopa is the translation of Woopa in Japan. So it makes perfect sense that this turns over into Woopa or Woopa being having a regional form. We've got some more further kind of backup information from this Pokemon FM. Watch this scene and the following things happened during the scene. So Pokemon FM actually breaks down what happens in this scene. One coin was inserted to get Woopa, a ball item from the box of toys. The machine spits out a yellow item that contains the Woopa. Then they open it and they find the Woopa where the girl comments it is a metal Woopa and that the metal Woopa is rare. Maybe steel type reference and that's a big hint potentially to have a steel type Woopa in Scotland Violet that evolves into something that's taken a lot of influence from Eldrack. Potentially a water dragon type or ground dragon type. Potentially it could be up in the air, you know. So they're potentially the new things because it is new Pokemon month, although Woopa won't be a new Pokemon. Quag si if it does get a new evolution or regional form would be a new Pokemon that we haven't seen before kind of falling into that theory. When they open it, they find the Woopa where the girl comments it is a metal Woopa. We've covered that one. Also there was a poster showing different types of Woopa Woopa and they are based on a mouse bear. So all in all what I get from this is coin number two toy, metal, different colors, bear mouse, secret form. The unpainted Woopa was painted by Kuu to look like a Voltaub. Possibilities that I see. Voltaub, Evo, future form or Evo's to a new Pokemon. Pokemon based on a toy. The coin Pokemon has two different Evo's. One is a chest and the other is a toy. Whatever that Pokemon is, it will be a steel type. So that's kind of interesting, hinting at potentially other leaks that Kuu's put out or the riddles that Kuu's put out. We've already covered the coin Pokemon. Interesting that in this scene there is a coin as well so there could be referencing to that. Like Pokemon FM says, there could be some sort of rarity to that and steel type in reference to that as well. I'm not really too sure on the painting to the Voltaub Evo. It could be a new regional form of Voltaub. It could hint at that. But all in all I feel like what Soul Silver's kind of wrapped this up into being a new regional form of Woopa and then a brand new evolution into a different Quagsire that's based on Eldrack makes perfect sense to me. But let me know down in the comment section what your thoughts are on this would love to hear about them. And then we've got another breakdown here and this is from Chansey Channel which I really do like and it kind of links back to a previous image that we've talked about in other videos. This is an indication the Woopa line is getting a new Evo in Pokemon Scotland Violet. I'm betting on Quagsire Regional Evo. I'd say a water dragon or ground dragon quadrupedal Pokemon. So if you go back down to this leak that we had previously and then you've got the kind of Woopa kind of hint here. We mentioned that and I think the big link to this in the Eldrackle is the fact that you've got like a multicoloured kind of gecko looking lizard I guess in this picture here which links up well with Woopa being the Woopa and then and then you can see here on the the Bulbapedia link here you've got the Japanese translation its name in Japan translates directly to Woopa and then you've got Eldrack as well. So there is similarities between these leaked or debunked potentially what would class this fake images. I do believe that these are not fake. I think these are a genuine leak and they do add up to the Eldrack image pretty well. So that's interesting potentially new Woopa Regional form and brand new Quagsire form very exciting though coming and that kind of wraps up this new leak. Like I say let me know what your thoughts are down in the comment section below. This moves us on to our next Riddlerku has been so busy recently we don't normally get this amount of riddles and hints like we have in the short space of time so we've got to really appreciate them while we get them but considering we're coming up to the end of the month soon and we're potentially getting maybe new news alongside Pokemon and Nintendo Direct it could hint that Ku wants to get information out now so he's ahead of the curb when announcements official announcements get dropped. So the next thing that Ku dropped this was yesterday was a new riddle and it was all just kind of coding which I have to admit I am completely stumped by this sort of stuff I have no real idea what's going on here but he follows it up by saying how many bugmons do you find while debugging this project each is a new line enjoy hardcore riddle series which it definitely is and then one final follow-up kindly reminder descriptions for each line are also mentioned so this is the code in the code if you can crack it if you are a coder you're going to be able to I guess navigate around this and find out where the errors are but the hint in this is obviously how many bugmons do you find while debugging this project so there are bugs in this coding and if you're a coder you'll be able to kind of decipher where these bugs are where the errors are and that's going to indicate how many bug Pokemon or bug lines they're going to be in this coding and so he's kind of hinted at that again we'll go back to soul silver here and because he breaks it down great and along with a bunch of other leaking analysts within the community they will mention as we go through this I think we get a good idea of what and how many bug type Pokemon bug lines we're going to expect in skull and violet which is pretty exciting for you bug fans out there okay I was completely stumped by this one but now who has given us a key to the riddle above I had a feeling he made those mistakes on purpose so now how many bug errors are there in this code each error is a new bug line or a line of the riddle we need to decipher so he goes on to say I'm getting reports that there are at least three errors but there could be more if there was really over a hundred new Pokemon I'm praying there's over five new bug lines if we don't understand we need someone to fully debug the code the amount of code could add up to the new bug lines in skull and violet now here we go this is where we've got other people in the community coming through that are coders relevant know what they're doing in this sort of thing looks like plausible to me I don't know much about coding but four to five bug lines make sense to me though we are leaning heavily towards for great job by summer theories either way I'll add up to this date if there's any changes I love my bug type so summer theories is a person on Twitter who has actually pretty much cracked this code as far as we know right now put a lot of work into this so big props to them this was a little conversation that they had with soul silver art and so wow so it is four five though yes I'm not sure whether he count the first one marked on yellow as one or two that's why I'm not sure whether exactly four or five counts I'd say more four than five because at the end of the day you can put that into one single line so this is summer theories post this is the breakdown of it here we are I don't know whether the first one marked yellow or count as one or two so the answer is either four or five so that's still up for debate now and also here I will leave as well the path that the puppy follows to tries to follow until it reaches the goal good backtracking so we've got like coding here which is directing I guess the puppy which is referred to here and it's kind of going round of maze to get to this endpoint which is a hundred which might indicate how many pokemon we're getting in total in skull and violet new pokemon at least which is absolutely huge like it's been rumored that we're going to get a lot of new pokemon in these games but if this is a direct hint to say we're going to get a hundred brand new pokemon in these games that is massive because that is a huge amount of new pokemon which we haven't had that amount of new pokemon in a new generation for a very long time so big hint here and then he goes on to kind of break down the coding a bit and put some information on it so that's some of theory's work there and if we go over to soul silver he's kind of updated this to say you know potential spoilers had luck cracking coo's riddles as a list of the most recent probably by pedo waifus brigatito evil we've covered that as well in previous videos corn object mon we have covered that as well probably evolves by collecting many coins to release a ghost steel type mimic treasure object mon uh whooper new regional evolution which we've covered today and there are at least four waifu mon with less than four husbando mon's we've got three to four new bug lines and that's from directly from this coding riddle here and we've got potentially one Japanese bug which coo has hinted at a dung beetle pokemon which is kind of translated within the coding stink bug and then the fourth one this still is unknown at the moment working on bigger list of all the riddles and my answers to them coming soon these are just a very educated guesses I could easily be wrong about something that's pretty interesting as well so the the coding kind of hints at different sort of bugs because if you look at coo each line is added um and then he hints at that can you remember descriptions for east line are also mentioned so descriptions of these bug lines are mentioned and that's what soul silver is referring to here there was a Japanese bug mentioned a dung beetle and a stink bug from the coding and deciphering of that so there's potentially another one and maybe even a fifth one on top of that just depends if certain areas of the code are included in this or if there are sections of it not like we've already mentioned but uh potentially getting five four to five new bug type lines in scholar and violet which is very exciting especially for all you bug fans out there Pokemon FM who we've already mentioned um does go on to say I can see two types of insects hinted here the first one is the dog flea and this is very common in Spain especially with the climate and coo is hinting on a dog a lot or in the code which makes sense so uh flea very common um bug in Spain and um this one could could be referenced you know uh in the the code puppy has mentioned a lot so there is that kind of dog mention as well which could hint to it as well the second Pokemon is probably a new butterfly or moth that was implied by the word board in the code spreading board is a tool for insect collection mainly butterflies and insects with wings maybe implying a butterfly bug ghost type Pokemon you can see this here this is hinting to that in the code uh what is spreading board spreading board all butterflies and moths and sometimes other insects are mounted on with their wings spread spreading board is therefore an important piece of equipment for insect collectors poor butterflies and moths uh so the the basic kind of round up from Pokemon FM so basically what I think he is hinting at uh not more than five bug Pokemon lines dog flea Pokemon butterfly moth bug ghost type Pokemon Japanese bug which is pretty much synonymous across the board I think for most of the leakers impossible regional forms from past bugs that we've already had in other generations so very exciting new bug line Pokemon which I'm sure we will get information of as we go forward official releases uh we'll confirm all of this I'm sure and maybe we get some more hints from riddler coup as the days go on if we do of course we're going to cover those as and when they drop out so the final things they are the main things that we're going to cover today the next thing that I did want to mention just a little bit on a light heart or not was this tweet as well just to get your opinions on it because I I believe it's a fake it's fine art I think but you can never know you never know these things I do think it's fine art but I wanted to get your opinion on what you thought of this design I think the concept art here for sprigatito's final evolution is awesome it's probably the my favorite one I've seen of sprigatito um although I do think the game shot is fake we've got obviously this is the image here of the the the concept art of sprigatito looks very familiar to previous concept arts for other past starters we've had in older generations and then this image here of a potentially supposedly in-game image of the sprigatito final evil um but you know there's there's big hints to say why it's it's fake the the fact that it's blurry for one is always a big sign for me to say well if you're kind of putting this out as a leak why is it blurry it's obviously to I guess make it try and make it more believable or you know like there's something wrong with the camera but they they the fakes always seem to have the blur like I say we don't know yet but I would say 99% of this is fake but this is from MK8 Moto Pappy it's the way I would sign in a heartbeat for this to be sprigatito's evolution it keeps its iberian lynx design which I really do like it's serving a warish kitten it's not bipedal and it's not ruined trying to turn the line into a puss in boots elzoro concept now this could be something that we see you know it could be a quadrupedal and then actually when it's in battle there's nothing to say it's not going to be bipedal where it goes up onto two legs but for some of the time it does stay on four legs but I would say as you can see through the comment section from this tweet that it is fake but I did want to mention it in today's video I think the design itself is really cool and the other reason why it did bring it up today is because it doesn't look very dark typing here it kind of has that kind of sinister look to it of course and but it doesn't look like a dark typing and that was pointed out by blaze incinero in the thread below but the thing that I wanted to kind of hint on was another pokemon youtuber on the pokemon sutame has just put out a video recently of all the latest japanese rumors from japanese social media in regards to the star and evolutions now if you get a chance I would go watch this video it is in english so you can you're gonna understand it it's not in japanese but some great information in this video itself I'll not show it on here let you go and watch this video um but the one thing that she mentions in the video is the potential final evil the the stats the typing of spriggetito and in her leaks from the japanese community spriggetito is not a grass dark typing even though kuz confirmed that pretty much it is just a pure grass typing which this adds up to perfectly and this is why I mention this I think the grass typing would make sense for this particular fan art now whether this is taken inspiration from the japanese kind of social media theories or leaks and this is where it's come from who knows but it does have a bit of interest as well as the meaning behind the japanese meaning of spriggetito's final evolution the name of it has flower in it referenced in it so it kind of pulls as well towards this design um like I say I'm not really too sure on it but they do hint at the uh the hidden ability for spriggetito as well and they talk about having protein which ku has already mentioned it as well that spriggetito would be the pokemon that he chooses in game because of its broken hidden ability but it depends on its move set protein depends on the move pool that a pokemon has so makes complete sense so maybe we are going to get a protein hidden ability spriggetito final evil whether or not this is the this is the one or not I don't think so to be honest I I would believe ku more than I would believe the japanese social media seen leaks I think grass stock is what we're going to get and if we do get a grass stock and it does have a hidden ability of protein that is going to be insane but let me know your thoughts down below friends and that about wraps up today's updates and leaks that we've had over the past few days so I hope you've enjoyed the video got something out of it if you have please remember to drop a like on the video and like I say subscribe to the channel to make sure you stay up to date with all of these latest leaks and rumors in regards to scholar and violet I'm so hyped for these games exciting that we could potentially be getting brand new bug lines and not just one a bunch of them as well bug pokemon are very cool some of my favorites and I would love to see them get a buff in competitive and just in general and just have a bit more usability and so we'll see what happens spaghetti are kind of interesting as well especially if that hidden ability is protein seems absolutely broken let me know your thoughts down below very excited about woopa quacks are one of my favorite pokemon when they got released in gen 2 so to see them coming back and having a bit more love and potentially new forms is very exciting but we're going to relieve it there friends we'll be back very soon to cover more of the latest leaks and rumors so until then take care of yourselves thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you in the next one so until then take care bye bye


Congratulations! You've finished week 5 of Denial 101x. We're now into the home stretch. This week we looked at the impacts of climate change. Dana Nietzsche-Towey, Keir Shahneman and Peter Jacobs looked at the complex issue of climate sensitivity. When you add up all the different feedbacks in our climate system, just how sensitive is our climate to increasing greenhouse gases? Dana also looked at the impacts of climate change on species, the environment and society. While our resident coral reef researcher, Ove Hogeberg examined how ocean acidification is hitting our coral reefs. We also featured interviews with scientists who are researching the impacts of climate change. One highlight was our interview with Christine Husking talking about her research into the impacts of climate change on koalas and agriculture. Of course, Pistachio the koala stole the show. He may not have published as much scientific research as Christine, but he certainly knew how to play to the camera. Another highlight was our trip to Heron Island, where we spoke to Sir David Attenborough and his scientists researching coral reef impacts. But it wasn't all just cuddly koalas and BBC royalty. We also spoke to scientists researching the impacts of warming on species and how heat waves are affecting humans. Next week is our last week of lectures. Yes, I know it's sad news. We'll be addressing a key question. What does the science say about how to respond to science denial? We'll examine research into what happens when you communicate scientific evidence to people who deny the science. We'll look at several strands of research exploring how to neutralize the influence of misconceptions. And we'll look at the psychology of debunking. We'll finish off week six with the final assessment of denial 101x, where you get to write a debunking of a myth and have it peer assessed by your fellow students. What strategies or techniques have you learned so far that might affect how you respond to climate myths? What is the most effective way of refuting myth? Spoiler alert, some approaches can backfire. Be sure to share some of those initial ideas on this week's wrap up discussion forum. And we'll see you in week six.


As my channel continues to grow and more and more people are trying to discredit me, there's a lot that we can learn from this because you know, although I'm handling it in my own way and I'm trying to grow, like I really want you guys to learn from this because I don't want you to ever, ever, ever, ever let anybody invalidate your experience or your trauma. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and what I typically do is pull different topics from the YouTube community to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. So for any of that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So yeah, Thomas Halbert and I, we just did a video about how we're trying to grow and improve who we are as people in 2019 and actually scratch that, not just 2019 but forever, all right? Like that's one of the reasons I didn't make videos about like New Year's resolutions and all that stuff. I don't really believe in them. Like don't just try to become a better person like at the beginning of the new year, like always try to become a better person. So if you one of my thoughts on New Year's resolutions, there it is, all right? Anyways, Thomas Halbert and I, if you didn't watch that video, will be linked up in the info card and all that. But we're talking about tapping back at people on Twitter and all of that and trying to get down to our root fears and the reason why we do that. And while we're both working on that, and I suggest you work on it too, like from some of the comments I've been getting from people who don't like the channel, don't like what I'm doing, things like that, I'm wondering what you guys are seeing. And I tried to put myself in your position because I've been getting these comments forever and like there's certain comments that don't bug me, some that do some that don't. And some of them that don't bug me might bug you because they're happening in your life. So I want to talk about people trying to invalidate your experience or minimize it, you know, and, and it's a bummer. So basically what I'm talking about is with people trying to, you know, expose me or whatever, or I'm reading the comments on like the video I did with Donna over at Psycho IRL, go check that video out too, or my videos, people are really trying to minimize my experience and like, I get it, they're ignorant and that's cool. But for example, for example, I'm getting comments like, like, oh, this guy, he's just a drug addict, right, you know, or somebody said one of the comments I just read that made me want to make this video. And it's like, oh, when he talks about, you know, his experience, he was just, he was just some guy working at a rehab center with, you know, some other drug addicts or whatever.  And people just kind of gloss over that real quick.  Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. All right. This is present day Chris, because as you probably realized that video, the video that you're watching was recorded while I was in California. All right. So I'm back in Las Vegas and basically hitting 100,000 subscriber, my mom wrote this beautiful story that actually got me teary-eyed explaining, you know, from her perspective of when I was dying and got sober. And I just sent it out in an email blast to my email list. It'll be linked down in the description and in the pinned comments. But I thought it would be perfect for this video when I'm talking about, don't let anybody invalidate your experience because reading my mom's story and the perspective and how I was dying and where I've come and like where I'm at now, like a lot of people will try to just brush aside like, oh, you were just this, but nah, nah, nah. So go check it out, read my mom's story, pause this video, go watch it or watch it after. But anyways, back to past Chris in Los Angeles. Like, if I was earlier on in my mental health journey, this stuff would have messed me up.  Like, don't, don't, like, it is one of the most ridiculous things ever.  Congratulations. But like, for me, for me, for example, like, I wasn't just a drug addict, okay? I'm a guy who like, like, I have been through stuff. You know, I had a traumatic childhood and this isn't trying to get a sympathy party. Like, I've, you know, I've overcome my things and my issues and I'm in therapy and I've worked in 12 step programs and all this. But you know, like traumatic childhood, alcoholic mom, seen and heard things that many people don't want to see or hear, you know, watched, you know, my, my parents or my mom and my stepdad rather, be in a an abusive relationship physically, not, not physically, not physically that I saw at least, but verbally and emotionally, those are things that I saw, you know, other traumatic experiences growing up, being a drug addict and alcoholic, like self-hatred and suicidal thoughts and, you know, destroying my life and just burning everything down to the ground.  Like, I get it. I get the ignorance.  But like, I always joke around, like, to the rest of the world, that ain't nothing. Like, I can't just go up to random, some random person said, Hey, guess what? I haven't snorted a, you know, opioid in six and a half years. Like, it's like, who cares to them? But for me, that's a big deal. For me, staying clean and sober for a day is a big deal. You know what I mean? So when other people say, Oh, yeah, this guy's just a recovering drug addict, right? Or for somebody to say, Oh, he just, you know, he just worked in a mental health treatment center for three years. Like, I worked with literally thousands of people and I've had so many of them thank me for playing a part in their recovery, which helped save their life. I don't take credit for that. But that's something that helps me overcome my imposter syndrome. So I know a lot of you struggle with imposter syndrome. So don't let anybody minimize your experience. Like, could you imagine if we did that to other careers, right?  He just went to a few wars, right? Or Oh, her over there. Yeah, that woman over there. Yeah, she just went through medical school and just became a brain surgeon. That's all she did. Right? Like, you could say this about anything. That's why it's so ridiculous and so silly. Oh, oh, that guy over there. Yeah, he's just a firefighter. He's just carrying people out of a burning building. That's it. That's, you know, not a big deal at all. You know what I mean? Like, it's just dumb. It's a way that people try to discredit you or make you feel like your accomplishments aren't that much. Like, to thine own self be true. I know what I've done. I've been there. I've been in that experience. And like, as I'm continuing to grow and work on myself and try to work on replying to comments and not replying to comments and stuff, like, those are comments that honestly don't bug me. I'm like, I honestly think I'm like, this person isn't that intelligent or they're just ignorant or maybe a combination of both. You know what I mean? So I hope you can do the same. I feel sorry for those people.  But people like you and me, the people who I'm talking to in this video, we are what you call a wounded healer, right? We've been through it and our experience is a huge benefit to other people. All right? So don't let anybody invalidate what you've been through. Like, if you're somebody who's overcome trauma, right? If you're somebody who's left an abusive relationship, if you're someone who's left an abusive family, right?  So you aren't just a person doing that.   Okay? Like, so don't let other people's comments get to you in that way and saying that you're just this or just that. What fascinates me about people, people who are saying that and trying to minimize my experience and your experience, they, they virtue signal in a way that they care about mental health, right? They're putting on this facade that they care about mental health, but they don't understand how stigmatizing that is. Like trying to lessen your experience, trying to lessen my experience, like, especially like for anybody who has overcome addiction, like tens of thousands of people every single year, if not over a hundred thousand people a year in the United States alone are dying from the disease of addiction. So to tell somebody that, oh, they're just a recovering drug addict is mind blowing. Every day I wake up so fortunate and grateful. And there's times where I deal with survivors guilt, why wonder, why am I so lucky, but not even addiction. Like somebody who battled suicidal thoughts for years, right? And I'm still here to this day why other people are taking their lives. Like, why am I so lucky? And, and, you know, part of it's luck, part of it's because I'm willing to put in the work on my mental health, but don't let anybody minimize your experience either. Like there are some people out there who will never understand how hard it is to just get out of bed in the morning. There are other people out there who won't understand how hard it is to just shower, you know, in the morning. There are other people who don't understand how hard it is to pick up the phone and call somebody and say, hey, I need help. There is an entire world out there of people who will not understand. Okay. But do not make that, let that invalidate you. Okay. And my biggest suggestion for you, I get a lot of DMs. I get emails and people trying to reach out to me personally. I'm sorry. I wish I could reply to you all, but you need to check out the description and go join our Facebook group and or the discord server, which are meant as mental health support groups. Okay. Because you will be surrounded by people who are not going to minimize your experience. They're not going to try to invalidate you.  All right. I want you to remember that. So yeah, I wanted to take this and turn it into a learning experience because I was just thinking about how early you're on in my mental health journey. This really would have messed me up. So I really hope that you gain something from this. If you have any advice or suggestions or if you've been through this experience, like if your parents or family or friends or your job or whoever has tried to minimize or invalidate you, give some tips and advice down in the comments below. All right. But anyways, that's a like after this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And if you would like to become a patron and support the channel and get extra perks and benefits and all that stuff, click your top right there. All right. Thanks again for watching. Don't let anybody invalidate your experience and I'll see you next time.